May 5, 1886 – The Bay View Tragedy – Wisconsin Labor’s Bloodiest Day.

by Michael Matheron · February 25, 2011

“The ‘merry, merry month of May’ wasn’t so merry in Milwaukee that year.”

Wisconsin Then and Now, Volumes 5-7,

State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1958.

Burma is presented to Queen Victoria as a birthday gift, after the country is annexed into British India in November 1885. That month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, affirming the protection of corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment

May 1 – A general strike begins in the United States, which escalates into the Haymarket Riot and eventually wins the eight-hour workday in the U.S.

May 8 – Pharmacist Dr. John Stith Pemberton invents a carbonated beverage that would be named Coca-Cola.

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the AFL did build massive eight-hour strikes and demonstrations on May 1, 1886. It did so by cooperating with local leaders of the much larger Knights of Labor and by energetically organizing immigrant workers. The strikers “tramped” from workplace to workplace, spreading the demand. By May 3, perhaps 750,000 workers had struck or demonstrated.

“8 hour day agitation”

MILWAUKEE, WIS. Vol. 3, No. I.january, 1898. Subscription Price, 35c Pur Year.

Mobs—Lynching. XII

Bay View labor, militia fires, May 4, 1886. Seventy indicted June 1 and 5.

Milwaukee, Labor Riots, 1886 XXV

The labor troubles of 1886, which culminated in Chicago with the celebrated Haymarket bomb-throwing incident, was severely felt in Milwaukee. After several days of public demonstration and parading of the city by strikers from the city factories, the militia, ordered to the scene by Jeremiah M. Rusk, then governor of the state, shot into the crowds which had gathered at the Bay View Rolling mills, killing six persons and wounding others.

An eight-hour working day was demanded by factory and railway employees all over the country. There were two conflicting organizations, the Central Labor union and the Knights of Labor. The former was dominated by anarchists and socialists, who did not hesitate to declare their enmity toward all laws and their belief in the right to exterminate anyone whom they thought inimical to the performance of justice to the workingman. The Knights of Labor were not as an organization implicated in the strike or in the riotous demonstrations made by the strikers.. Although some of its members quit work, the leaders of the Knights counseled moderation. For several days following May 1 a mob of Polish workmen numbering from 300 to 1,000 paraded the streets, and, going to the various factories, prevailed upon their employees to quit work. The police were powerless to preserve order. At Bay View on the morning of May 4 the mob visited the Bay View Rolling mills and In the course of a conference with the superintendent over the question of reducing the hours of work to eight the militia companies fired a volley into, the air, which had the desired effect of dispersing the mob. On the next day, the mob still persisting in congregating at the rolling mills, Maj. George P. Traeumer gave orders to shoot to kill, and the result was that six men were killed and a number wounded, some of whom were not connected with the mob in any way.

. Paul Grottkau, the leader of the Central Labor union and the thief instigator of the strikes in Milwaukee by which 15,000 workmen had left their places of employment, was arrested and with others was tried and received a short sentence in the House of Correction. Gov. Rusk received a great deal of credit for his prompt action in calling out the militia and thus summarily putting down the threatened labor riots.