Men of labor, so long as you acknowledge the gracious kicks of your oppressors with words of gratitude, so long you are faithful dogs. Have your skulls been penetrated by a ray of light, or does hunger drive you to shake off your servile nature, that you offend your extortioners? They are enraged, and will attempt, through hired murderers, to do away with you like mad dogs.
When the eventful day—May 1—arrived, the Arbeiter-Zeitung became more menacing than ever, and the following appeared:
Bravely forward! The conflict has begun. An army of wage-laborers are idle. Capitalism conceals its tiger claws behind the ramparts of order. Workmen, let your watchword be: No compromise! Cowards to the rear! Men to the front!
The die is cast. The first of May has come. For twenty years the working people have been begging extortioners to introduce the eight-hour system, but have been put off with promises. Two years ago they resolved that the eight-hour system should be introduced in the United States on the first day of May, 1886. The reasonableness of this demand was conceded on all hands. Everybody, apparently, was in favor of shortening the hours; but, as the time approached, a change became apparent. That which was in theory modest and reasonable, became insolent and unreasonable. It became apparent at last that the eight-hour hymn had only been struck up to keep the labor dunces from Socialism.
BANNERS OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION—IV.
From Photographs.
That the laborers might energetically insist upon the eight-hour movement, never occurred to the employer. And it is proposed again to put them off with promises. We are not afraid of the masses of laborers, but of their pretended leaders. Workmen, insist upon the eight-hour movement. “To all appearances it will not pass off smoothly.” The extortioners are determined to bring their laborers back to servitude by starvation. It is a question whether the workmen will submit, or will impart to their would-be murderers an appreciation of modern views. We hope the latter.
In the same issue of the Arbeiter-Zeitung also appeared the following, in a conspicuous place: