HAYMARKET SQUARE

By the spring of 1886, the movement for an eight-hour day had grown. On May 1,
350,000 workers in 11,562 establishments all over the country went out on strike
Chicago Mail on May 1 asked that Albert Parsons and August Spies, the anarchist leaders of the International Working People's Association, be watched

On May 3, in front of the McCormick Harvester Works, where strikers and sympathizers fought scabs, the police fired into a crowd of strikers, wounded many of them, and killed four

A meeting was called for Haymarket Square on the evening of May 4, and about three thousand persons assembled. the hour grew late, the crowd dwindled to a few hundred. A detachment of 180 policemen showed up, advanced on the speakers' platform
A bomb then exploded in the midst of the police, wounding sixty-six policemen, of whom seven later died. The police fired into the crowd, killing several

With no evidence, the police arrested eight anarchist leaders in Chicago

accessories to crime, anyone inciting a murder was guilty of that murder.

The evidence against the eight anarchists was their ideas, their literature; none had been at Haymarket that day except Fielden. they were sentenced to death. This created an international excitement

A year after the trial, four of the convicted anarchists-Albert Parsons, a printer, August Spies, an upholsterer, Adolph Eischer, and George Engel-were hanged. Louis Lingg, a twenty-one-year-old carpenter, blew himself up in his cell by exploding a dynamite tube in his mouth. Three remained in prison.