Facets of Mayday

From Industrial Worker

May Day has layers of meaning—some celebratory, others tragic—shaped across centuries. From its origins as a festival of spring and renewal, to its modern incarnation as International Workers’ Day, May Day reflects the aspirations and struggles of generations. It is a celebration of life beyond labor: time for ourselves, for our friends and families, for leisure, for imagination. It is both a remembrance and a call to action.

In the heroic period of the classical workers’ movement, May Day became a rallying cry to reduce working hours and to promote international working class consciousness. Today, it still affirms the dignity of those whose lives are defined by toil. It’s a promise to show solidarity with other proletarians across the world. And precisely because it celebrates these virtues, it has long been contested. Governments and reactionaries have repeatedly sought to suppress or redefine the holiday, antagonistic to its social and political implications.

Today, it remains the international working class holiday—while also evolving to encompass broader struggles for justice. To understand its relevance now, it is worth revisiting the history from which it emerged.

The modern history of May Day goes back 140 years, although its roots trace back further into the past.
In the words of Lucy Parsons:

May 1st has marked a time in the long procession of the centuries. The beautiful month of May, when all nature emerges from her long, dreary, winter’s sleep. Beautiful month of springtime and flowers. Man, too, revives his hopes and renews his resolves, for he, also, feels the flood-tide of nature in his own being and responds as best he can to her charming voice.
What more appropriate time could the workers choose to renew their efforts to inaugurate a better day, a better life for themselves?

In the nineteenth century, as industrialization reshaped the largest economies, working conditions deteriorated for millions. Former peasants and rural laborers were displaced and forced into factories and cities, where they endured long hours and dangerous environments, and earned meager pay. The rapid growth of industrial production enriched capitalists while leaving workers struggling to survive. The favorable labor market for capital, along with technological advancements, meant that profit rates increased substantially.

Central to this system was the extension of the working day. Time itself became a key site of class conflict. Internationally, workers and their friends created a movement to fight for an eight-hour working day.

At its Geneva convention in 1866, the International Workingmen’s Association (AKA the “First International”) proclaimed that “The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive.” It proposed “eight hours as the legal limit of the working day.” The first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital was published the next year, 1867. Chapter 10, entitled “The Working Day,” has detailed descriptions and insights into what working life was like during the industrial revolution, and how capital tried to maximize working time.

While many people were overworked, others were unemployed or underemployed, unable to secure wages at all. Revolutionary socialists knew that an exhausted, run down, and starving working class would not have the wherewithal to organize itself and mount a challenge capital.

In the US, the Federation of Organized Labor and Trade Unions announced that, starting May 1, 1886, “…eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor…” To enforce this proclamation, the eight-hour-day movement orchestrated a massive work stoppage starting on May 1, 1886 in Chicago.

On that day, Albert Parsons, who was then head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, led what has come to be known as the first May Day. There were around 80,000 people in attendance. Over the next few days, approximately 70,000 workers in Chicago went on strike in a city of 1.2 million. Around 350,000 went on strike nationwide.

The strikers included the workers at McCormick Reaper Works. In the 1860s in the US, Cyrus McCormack’s reaper became a symbol of mechanization in agriculture in the fields, as well as mechanization of labor in the factories. By the 1880s, his company produced tens of thousands of these machines per year.

As much a product of hope and ambition, May Day was also born of resistance and suppression.
Following that first ever May Day march, on May 3, the Chicago police fired into a crowd of strikers at the McCormick factory, killing several men and wounding some others.

The next day, May 4, some anarchists held a protest meeting in Haymarket Square in Chicago. Although they intended their meeting to be peaceful, they could clearly see the latent threat of police violence against them. As August Spies stated in his address to the crowd:

For more than twenty years the wage workers of this country begged and prayed their masters, the factory lords, to reduce their burdens. It has been in vain. They have pointed out the fact that over a million of willing and strong hands were in a state of enforced idleness and starvation, that to help them to obtain employment it would not only be advisable, nay; it was necessary to reduce the hours of daily toil of those who were fortunate enough in having found a buyer for their muscles, their bones, and their brain. The masters of this earth have treated them with contempt, have condemned them to vagabondage whenever they insisted. The legislatures have been called upon, one petition has succeeded the other, but with no avail.

At last the condition of the disinherited producers has become unbearable. Seeing that neither “boss” nor law would concede anything to them, they have organized for the purpose of helping themselves – a wise and prudent resolution.

Police and militiamen began to surround the meeting. As they approached, someone threw a bomb. Then the shooting began. Within minutes, Haymarket Square was emptied. 11 people were dead and many were injured.

This has come to be known as the “Haymarket Incident”, May 4, 1886.

Over the course of the next several months, eight men were brought to trial for the bomb throwing. Though none of them was responsible, they were railroaded at trial. The accused included Albert Parsons and August Spies. No evidence was ever presented that connected them to the bomb throwing. In fact, six of them weren’t present at the rally at all, and the two who were were demonstrably innocent.
Nevertheless, all eight men were found guilty. On November 11, 1887, Parsons and Spies were hung, along with two others. One of the defendants committed suicide in prison. These five Chicago anarchists came to be considered the Haymarket Martyrs. November 11 is now also known as “Black Friday” to commemorate their lives.

Albert Spies is famously quoted as he approached his executioners as saying:

“There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons’ widow, sought to make that silence powerful. Herself a union activist and anarchist of black, Hispanic, and Native American ancestry, she would campaign to make May Day an international holiday dedicated to shortening the working day. Thanks in large part to her efforts, the holiday has won its recognition.

Suffice it to say, May Day has also become a scandal for many in power, who have since sought to erase its legacy. It was outlawed in Germany. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland formally created and endorsed the patriotic “Labor Day” on the first Monday in September in an attempt to confuse the issue; not to celebrate workers so much as to divide American workers from the international working class. Instead of celebrating May Day, there would be an American labor holiday, separate from the international workers’ holiday. In 1919 right wing mobs attacked May Day demonstrations across the country, as part of a “Red Scare”. In 1947, congress set aside May 1 as “Loyalty Day”, and in 1958, Eisenhower declared May 1 to be “Law Day”. This has long be recognized as an attempt to minimize May Day as International Workers’ Day. And last year, 2025, President Trump made this explicit in a speech he gave where he said “(Law and) Loyalty Day was inaugurated to directly counter commemorations of May Day.”

Despite undeniable qualitative changes in the economy since the nineteenth century, the root problem that gave rise to May Day persists. Around the world, many workers still endure long hours, unsafe conditions, and economic precarity. Capital still dominates our lives. From shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh to mining operations in Central Africa, from agricultural labor to warehouse and service work in North America, exploitation persists in both old and new forms.

May Day speaks to these realities. It is not only about reducing working hours, though that remains relevant. It is about challenging a system in which economic necessity can be used as a tool of coercion—where the threat of unemployment, poverty, or worse enforces compliance. It is about envisioning a society in which human well-being takes precedence over profit.

At the same time, May Day continues to serve as a unifying force. It brings people together across industries, identities, and causes. It reminds us that collective action remains one of the most powerful tools available to those seeking change.

It asks not only that we remember the past, but that we engage with the present. The struggles that defined its origins are ongoing. The forms may have changed, but the underlying questions remain.
What kind of society do we want?

What kind of lives should people be able to lead?

Answering those questions requires more than reflection. It requires participation.

As May Day approaches, communities across the country will gather once again—in marches, rallies, and demonstrations. These events are not merely symbolic. They are part of a living tradition, one that continues to evolve with each generation that takes it up.

May Day endures because people continue to make it meaningful by taking action.

Image courtesy of the IWW Materials Preservation Project.

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