'Selected Works: Haymarket Speeches ' Summary

Riots, lockouts and police murders were near-daily affairs. Strikes and protest marches often turned violent, and the violence often turned deadly. Among the communists and anarchists, in particular, there was a widespread sentiment that violent revolution was the best path forward. In Chicago, the talk among the unions was of imminent uprising: a workers’ militia, one thousand strong, practiced regularly with rifles in the union halls and the forests, and the knowledge and materials for bomb-making were widely shared.

The labor struggles of the era were at their most intense in Chicago, where the anarchists were very popular and held considerable sway. They organized all sorts of union activities, and led strikes and marches for various labor causes. On May 1, 1886, the day of a massive general strike, the anarchists of Chicago marched with a crowd of some 80,000 people through the streets, demanding the right to an eight-hour workday. This had been the foremost demand of the labor movement in the previous years: eight hours’ work, eight hours’ sleep, and eight hours’ recreation. The socialists, communists, anarchists and liberals of Chicago as much rivals as they were allies were generally in agreement on this point.