On this day, May 1, in 1886

80,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago demanding an eight-hour workday. In the following days the strikers around the country quadrupled, and police responded with violence, beating and arresting many protesters. Days later at a peaceful protest meeting in Chicago, the police accused strikers of throwing a bomb at them and opened fire into the crowd, killing many. This incident, possibly a setup to justify the police attack, leads eight strikers to be sentenced to death, despite the fact that no evidence proved their involvement. Governments sure will go a long way to protect capitalism.