May 1, 1886, was set aside by the Knights of Labor and other trade union organizations as a day on which workers would leave work and demonstrate for the eight-hour day. In Chicago, where tensions had already been raised by a strike at the McCormick Reaper plant that had been going on for two months, there was a city-wide lockout the next day. On May 3 Chicago police opened fire on workers outside of the McCormick plant, killing four and wounding scores. A mass protest meeting was called for the next day in Haymarket Square.

As the Haymarket meeting was breaking up, it was attacked by police. A dynamite bomb was thrown into the police ranks by an agent provocateur, and the police opened fire on the crowd. Four workers and seven policemen were dead before the day was over.

On May 5 every prominent labor leader in Chicago was arrested. Eight men, all anarchists, were indicted for murder. The government was unable to link any of the eight with the bombing (one of the defendants, Samuel Fielden, was speaking at the time the bomb was thrown), but it organized a witch-hunt trial that led to the conviction of all of them.

May 3, 1948
SEATTLE, April 26 - 15,000 workers at the Boeing Airplane plant are striking for a 30-cent wage increase, eight paid holidays and strengthened seniority provisions. Members of Lodge 751 of the International Association of Machinists since 1937, and traditionally conservative, Boeing workers have been goaded into their first strike in 32 years by the arrogant House of Morgan-controlled corporation.

The strike began at 12:30 a.m. last Thursday morning, ending two years of futile negotiations and attempts at arbitration. In the face of the year-old refusal of the IAM national officers to grant strike sanction, aroused union members pressured their local leadership into calling the strike.

There exists considerable public support and sympathy for the strike, and even the Hearst press is relatively subdued after its initial editorial outburst which pleaded with the workers to stop and reconsider in view of the national defense.

Boeing workers are in no mood to "cool off." As one committeeman put it: "I've cooled off for so long I'm frozen stiff."  
 
 
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