Highlights Archives
May 5: Milwaukee's Labor Tragedy
Most Americans know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day, despite the fact that it began in the United States in the 1880s with the fight for an eight-hour work day and that workers in Milwaukee played an integral part in the campaign.
Across the nation, talk of reducing daily work to eight hours had intensified by the 1880s, and the Milwaukee Labor Reform Association (later the Eight-Hour League) began to agitate locally for the eight-hour day. Milwaukee workers organized extensive efforts around this issue, especially among the more militant members of the Knights of Labor under Robert Schilling. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions proclaimed at its national conference in Chicago that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886," initiating a two-year campaign to urge all employers to adopt a standard eight-hour day. All workers not yet on the system by May 1, 1886, were to cease working until their employers met the demand.
Striking workers successfully shut down industrial plants in Milwaukee during the first five days of May — all except one, the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View. On May 5, 1886, a crowd of labor demonstrators marched on the factory, seeking to call out the workers still inside. Governor Jeremiah Rusk, fearing anarchy, called out the state militia which fired on the marching workers, killing five and injuring at least four others. Among those killed were an elderly man feeding his chickens a half-mile away and a young boy who fell on his school books as he walked along the railroad embankment paralleling the road where the strikers were marching.
While the massacre at Bay View did not end the agitation for an eight-hour day, the shots fired dampened momentum for the movement. Governor Rusk became a celebrated national hero for his prompt action, particularly when compared with the vacillating government response to the Chicago Haymarket bombing only the day before.
As the 19th century ended, Wisconsin labor's fragmented trade unions came together under a new organization, the American Federation of Labor,
whose political alliance with Victor Berger's Socialists
created a more effective movement for worker rights.
Learn more about the Bay View Massacre:
:: Posted May 5, 2005
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