The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-04-29
By SOL AUERBACH.

International May Day took number of
wavering and fatering steps before it STROBE
forward in full form as the fighting day Oh
the international proletariat
As far back as 1856 the workers Of Aus
tralia had already created a May Day out OF
their struggles. Except that their May Day
did not fall on May First, but on April u. 1t
was on April 81, 1856, that the building work
ers of Victoria, Australia, won their S-hour
day. under the banner:
IS hours work,
IS hours recreation,
IS hours rest"
April 21st became a workers holiday in
Australia but it took but a few years for 1t
to lose its untarnished working class char
acter 1t was taken out of the hands OF the
workers by the reformists and the government
and by 1S90-when there was a real interna-
tional May Day to celebrate-it had become
the day of the reformists and the betrayers,
similar to Labor Day in the United States
Another hint at May Day let itself be felt
slightly in San Francisco in the year 1888,
On February of that year the cabinet work
ers of San Francisco decided to start the
fight for the 9-hour day on Moving Day of
the same year. Moving Day was the popu-
lar term given to May First They won their
strike and the workers at Los Angeles won
theirs a year later. But these struggles left
no aftermath-they were just born and that's
ALL
1t was on wave of intense conflict and the
rebirth and growth of international working
class solidarity that International May Day
rose and developed to the meaning which 1t
holds for us today.
1t sprung from the valiant struggle for the
S-hour day, carried on, not only in the United
States, but also in France, England and Ger
VI Ia bod nv lohn
historians, who, anxious to gather the full
credit for the American working class and its
brave struggle typified in "Haymarket," are
too ready to forget the international scope of
the S-hour fight. To forget that is to forget
the international solidarity inherent in May
Day from its very inception
By 1886 rumblings of the S-hour fight were
already heard turnout this country. The fight
needed direction and unity. The Federation Of
Organized Trade and Labor Unions made an
effort in that direction. 1t set aside May l.
1886, as the day which no one was to work
more than hours. The Federation did not
call upon the workers to Down Tools!' but to
work only hours that day. That was
their way of fighting. That was also clear
ing the ground for May Day.
1t was the Chicago Anarchists" however,
who really made the strike effective. By agi-
tation at the factories in Chicago, by calling
upon the workers to Down Tools!" they sue
ceeded in leading a strike of over 10000 work
ers in Chicago alone for the S-hour day. They
were made to pay for it. An agent provoca-
teur was set to work, bomb exploded at a
mass protest meeting May 4, and Parsons,
Spies and their companions were hung or
given long prison terms.
But on May /, 1886, in Chicago, May Day
struck its first clear note. In the heat of the
S-hour movement, whtened by the political
slogans of the anarchists, it first strobe forth,
as day of struggle-not yet international,
but having its political well as its economic
demands. 1t remained for it to become a
recognized child of proetarian struggle, inter-
nationally honorel and developed in its poll
teal meaning.
At the convention of the recently formed
American Federation of Labor at ST. Louis in
1883, May First, 1890, was chosen as the day
from which to start the new 8-hour movement.
That fact is significant in the history of May
Day, only because it showed that American
labor remembered Haymarket, altho Samuel
Gompers had remained distant and aloof and
because it influenced much more important
decision. The American Federation of Labor
never decided upon accepted May Day as
an international working class day of struggle.
Instead it accepted the Labor Day, first Mon
day in September, decided upon by the Central
Labor Union in 1885 as a day for holiday
and parade. The bosses and the government
made that day legal holiday so the A. F.