from the International Socialist Review:
....(snip)....
IN YOUR book, you go over the different social, political, and economic dynamics that feed the struggle for an eight-hour day, both in Chicago and nationally. You quote Karl Marx on the impact of the Civil War, that “the first fruit” of the war “was the eight-hours agitation.” Why did the Civil War have this impact? Why did the initial eight-hours movement in the 1860s eventually decline? And what was the role of the Radical Republicans—the abolitionist wing of the Republican Party at the time—in the initial success and defeat of the eight-hours struggle?THE CIVIL War aroused mixed feelings among Northern white workingmen. Many immigrants who served in the place of rich young men—who had bought their way out—were unwilling conscripts. But a lot of Northern white workingmen were, and they were a key element of the Union Army. Once the Emancipation Proclamation was declared—making it clear the war aim would affect slavery—workingmen started to think about their own freedom, and felt as though they had an opportunity to end what they called the “slavery of the twelve- or thirteen-hour day.” They made many references to “wage slavery.”
Workers also believed that if the U.S. Congress could amend the Constitution to abolish slavery and create voting rights for Black men, then certainly Congress could create an eight-hour day. Workers invested great hope that this could be the first step towards ending the wage-system and creating some sort of cooperative economy. As a result, in 1866, the first great wave of a national labor movement appeared around the “eight-hour leagues”—beginning in Boston—and becoming popular in cities across the United States. However, this first movement ends badly. A few legislatures pass eight-hour laws, but employers and the courts refuse to obey them. By 1869, the focus is entirely on getting a law passed in Congress for federal employees. The law was enacted, but it is a very small victory compared to the hopes raised in 1866.
There was a great deal of optimism in 1866. It seemed as though the Republican Party was headed by Radical Republicans, who believed in the reconstruction of the South and in depriving the slave-owners of their “property” and franchise in order to empower Black citizens. At the same time, these Radical Republicans were very indebted to the labor vote and seemed supportive of the eight-hour day movement. One of these Republicans was Governor Richard Oglesby of Illinois—who signed the first eight-hour law, which was supposed to go into effect on May 1, 1867. This date marks the first real May Day demonstration by workers.
When employers refused to enact the law—workers in Chicago went on a huge strike which resulted in violence and rioting. Workers never got the eight-hour law enforced. even though Oglesby had signed it. There were some underlying problems, of course, because the Republican Party was the party of manufacturers as well as workers. Ultimately the idea of the eight-hour day conflicted with a fundamental Republican Party principle that there should be no laws that would interfere with “property rights.” The Republicans also considered the “right” of employers to manage employees sacred.
YOU DESCRIBE Chicago as a dynamic city growing up almost overnight—with amazing wealth and grinding poverty, with slums like those that were destroyed in the Great Fire. How did the economic growth—and crisis—in Chicago feed into the eventual resurrection of the movement for the eight-hour day?CHICAGO WAS caught in the midst of the huge depression that swept America in the 1870s. Before the depression there was the trauma of the Chicago Fire <1871> and anxieties that the crowds displaced by the fire would become mobs—and engage in the sort of things that the people of Paris did during the Paris Commune. There was a fear of communism. That fear heightened during the Great Depression along with huge demonstrations of the unemployed demanding work and bread. This is what radicalizes Albert Parsons and August Spies—who would later become anarchists. In the aftermath of the depression—which gradually comes to an end in 1879—a very strong socialist movement emerges in Chicago. The movement was led by German socialists—young immigrants like Spies, some of whom had followed Marx in Germany—and young Americans like Parsons. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/haymarket.shtml
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