Haymarket Riot (1886)
The Haymarket Riot was a clash between police and a mob of labor activists and anarchists on May 4, 1886, in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The Haymarket Riot took place in the context of a number of developments that were transforming the United States in the late nineteenth century. One was urbanization. The United States had been largely a rural nation when the Industrial Revolution began, but from 1870 to 1900 the number of cities with a population greater than 100,000 more than doubled. Chicago itself had been so small that it was not included in the 1830 census. Sixty years later it was the second-largest city in the nation.
Also playing a role in the Haymarket Riot was rapid industrialization, which sparked conflict between capital and labor. Wealthy entrepreneurs, stockholders, and industrialists had little sympathy for the unskilled factory labor that had migrated to the cities to find work. Meanwhile, the burgeoning middle class was suspicious of the labor...
