Chapter XXVII
Cities and Workers
During the nineteenth century, a larger and larger proportion of the American people moved into cities. In 1800, 10% of American people lived in cities; in 1860, it was 17%; by 1900, it was 33%. In 1860, New York had less than a million people; by 1900, more than three million. During the same period, Chicago grew from one hundred thousand to more than one million.
After the Civil War, the cities had hot and cold water, baker's bread, gas, theaters, and horse drawn streetcars. By 1900, the cities had electricity and telephones, libraries and museums, and better schools and colleges; most important of all, better jobs.
The people who owned the factories became very rich. One percent of the families owned eighty eight percent of the wealth. In the year 1900, Carnegie earned $23 million from his steel company. The Vanderbilt family had huge mansions along Fifth Avenue in New York. They also had huge country estates scattered throughout the United States. At their mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, they had more than 100 rooms. After the automobile was invented, they built a garage for seventy automobiles near their mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. They had many hundreds of servants to take care of their estates.
Rich people such as Mrs. Martin Bradley put on elaborate parties. She once spent $250,000 on a single party. Other rich people sometimes put on dinners at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. These dinners were served on plates made of gold. The dinner could cost as much as $10,000 for forty people or $250.00 apiece. At that time, $250 was six months wages for a factory worker.
About one-fifth of the factory workers lived in real poverty. Labor unions had appeared early in the nineteenth century. After 1880, they began growing rapidly. One labor union was named the Knights of Labor. By 1886, it had 700,000 members. There were other unions as well. The workday for workers was ten hours long. Many unions wanted an eight-hour workday. However, they wanted as much money for eight hours as they had been paid for ten. Their slogan was "An eight hour day with ten hours pay."
The unions were strongest in Chicago. Many of the Chicago workers were immigrants. The unions called a strike to begin on the first of May in 1886. In Chicago, many of the strike leaders were anarchists. There was a fight between the strikers and the police. The police shot and killed four workers. The anarchists called for a protest meeting to take place in Haymarket Square. In the daytime, Haymarket Square was used as the site for a bazaar where people bought hay for their horses. However, in the evenings, it was usually empty. That evening, a huge crowd gathered in Haymarket Square. The speakers began talking. Then the police came and said that the meeting must stop and everybody must go home. Somebody threw a bomb at the police. The bomb killed seven policemen and injured sixty-seven others. Nobody knows who threw the bomb. The other police started shooting and killed four more people..
The police arrested eight anarchists who had organized the meeting. The police said that these eight men had incited the bomb throwing and were therefore responsible for the death of the policemen. In an unfair trial, seven of them were found guilty and sentenced to death. Four of them were actually executed. But this did not stop the strike. After a while, many of the Chicago factories granted the workers an eight-hour day. This was the first time in the history of the world that a large number of workers got an eight hour day, Earlier it had been ten hours or even twelve in many places.
The next year, in some cities, unions organized meetings or parades to celebrate winning the eight-hour workday. The unions also mourned the death of the anarchists who had been unjustly executed. May Day, the first of May, began to be celebrated as Labor Day in some American cities. However, after a number of years, many factory owners and business people did not like this holiday. They asked Congress to declare the first Monday in September to be Labor Day. The business people did not like unions, and they wanted a Labor Day that was not connected with unions or strikes. The majority of Congress agreed with them, and so the first Monday of September became the official American Labor Day.
In Europe, many of the Socialist and Social-Democratic Parties were united in the Second International. These parties were connected with workers organizations and labor unions in their countries. The Second International asked all of their parties to make May Day an international workers holiday. In Russia, the party that Lenin belonged to was first called the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party(Bolshevik). It was part of the Second International. When they came to power, they made May Day an official holiday. This is how it came about that Ukraine has a holiday to commemorate a strike that took place in America.