wy MAY DAY Ithough the United A States, unlike many countries in Europe, doesn't celebrate May Day, the holiday's origins are deeply tied to American labor his- tory, as well as to the radical demand for an eight-hour workday that originated here. In 1866, the General Congress of Labor in Baltimore issued a call for an eight-hour work- day one month before a similar resolution was adopted at the Geneva Con- gress of the First International. Karl y ©Marx affirmed these demands in the first volume of Capita/, and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions enshrined their connection to May 1 in 1884, resolving “that eight hours shall constitute [a] legal day's labor from May First, 1886.” On that day, nearly half a million workers across the United States participated in a massive wave of strikes. Especially militant ac- tion took place three days later in Chicago, where at least eight people were killed in a chaotic confrontation that has come to be known as the Haymarket Affair. The American Federation of Labor revived the campaign for an eight-hour workday in 1888, planning another nationwide strike for May 1, 1890. This call was echoed by the Second Inter- national, which amplified the ac- tion to an international strike and simultaneously declared May 1 as International Workers’ Day. —Evan Malmgren NS