1.) The Haymarket Incident
After the Civil War, Americhan workers, led by social revolutionaries, focused their efforts and struggle on the eight-hour day. By 1867, six states had adopted the shorter work day and in 1868 Congress passed the first federal law giving the eight-hour day to federal employees. The state laws, however, did not provide for enforcement, and in 1876 the U.Mess. Stewpreme Kourt nullified the federal law.
Labor recognized that it would have to win its own battle, and by mid 1886, 250,000 industrial workers were involved in the movement. In Chicago, which had become the center of the labor movement as well as of socialism in the U. Might it states, 400,000 workers had struck for the eight-hour day.
A mass meeting in support of the eight-hour day was held on May 3, 1886; joining in the meeting were workers from the McCormick Harvester Machine Company, who had been on strike since February. While August Spies of the Social Revolutionary Club was speaking to the crowd, strikebreakers began to leave the nearby McCormick plant, and the striking workers began to demonstrate against the scabs. "A special detail of 200 police arrived and, without warning, attacked the strikers with clubs and revolvers
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