The Project Gutenberg EBook of Labor's Martyrs, by Vito Marcantonio

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Title: Labor's Martyrs

Author: Vito Marcantonio

Release Date: February 9, 2004 [EBook #11009]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LABOR'S MARTYRS ***

LABOR'S MARTYRS

Haymarket
1887

Sacco and Vanzetti
1927

By Vito Marcantonio

Introduction by Wm. Z. Foster

Introduction

By William Z. Foster

On November 11, 1937, it is just fifty years since Albert R. Parsons,
August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Engel and Louis Lingg, leaders of the
great eight-hour day national strike of 1886, were executed in Chicago on
the framed-up charge of having organized the Haymarket bomb explosion that
caused the death of a number of policemen. These early martyrs to labor's
cause were legally lynched because of their loyal and intelligent struggle
for and with the working class. Their murder was encompassed by the same
capitalist forces which, in our day, we have seen sacrifice Tom Mooney,
Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro boys, McNamara, and a host of other
champions of the oppressed.

Parsons and his comrades were revolutionary trade unionists, they were
Anarcho-Syndicalists rather than Anarchists. In the early 'eighties, when
they developed their great mass following, the mass of the workers were
just learning to organize to resist the fierce exploitation of a ruthless
capitalism. The great eight-hour strike movement led by the "Chicago
Anarchists" gave an enormous impulse to trade union organization
everywhere and it was for this that the employing interests had them
hanged. When, for example, the older Chicago unions nowadays go out on
parade on Labor Day, banner after banner bears the historic dale of 1886.
Indeed, the A. F. of L. was practically established nationally at that
time. Although the A. F. of L. had been founded in 1881, it never got a
real hold among the masses until the big strike movement of 1886, which
established the unions in man pew trades and industries and brought about
the reorganization and renaming of the A. F. of L.

In many respects 1937 bears a kinship to 1886. Once again labor is making