![Title: Work pays America! Prosperity. Creator(s): Bock, Vera, artist Date Created/Published: [New York] : Federal Art Project, [between 1936 and 1941] Medium: 1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen, color. Summary: Poster for Works Progress Administration encouraging laborers to work for America, showing a farmer and a laborer. Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ds-04632 (digital file from original item) LC-USZC2-837 (color film copy slide) LC-USZ62-51257 (b&w film copy neg.) Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. Call Number: POS - WPA - NY .B635, no. 12 (C size) [P&P] Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print](http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ds/04600/04632r.jpg)
Work pays America! Prosperity. - Vera Bock
On May 1st in 1886 more than 200,000 workers across the United States started a three day strike and demonstration in favor of an 8 hour work week. The nationwide demonstrations would be fixed in the national memory by events in Chicago on May 3rd. Time Magazine described what would be called the Haymarket Affair in it’s 1938 May edition:
A few minutes after ten o’clock on the night of May 4, 1886, a storm began to blow up in Chicago. As the first drops of rain fell, a crowd in Haymarket Square, in the packing house district, began to break up. At eight o’clock there had been 3,000 persons on hand, listening to anarchists denounce the brutality of the police and demand the eight-hour day, but by ten there were only a few hundred. The mayor, who had waited around in expectation of trouble, went home, and went to bed. The last speaker was finishing his talk when a delegation of 180 policemen marched from the station a block away to break up what remained of the meeting. They stopped a short distance from the speaker’s wagon. As a captain ordered the meeting to disperse, and the speaker cried out that it was a peaceable gathering, a bomb exploded in the police ranks. It wounded 67 policemen, of whom seven died. The police opened fire, killing several men and wounding 200, and the Haymarket Tragedy became a part of U. S. history.
In the wake of the strike and the violence the 1889 Socialist International’s First Congress declared May 1st International Worker’s Day. Since then May Day has been associated throughout the world with the Labor Movement and worker’s rights.
The Labor movement has a rich history in the United States and in the Pacific Northwest. If you are interested in researching the history of the Labor movement the following are some excellent resources.
· Oregon and the Pacific Northwest
o University of Oregon Labor History Project
o University of Washington Pacific Northwest Labor History and Civil Rights Projects
o University of Washington Labor Archives
· National Resources
o NYU’s Labor History Guide (Thanks to librarian Kate Donovan for creating this excellent guide)
o The Library of Congress’ Labor History Guide
o Records for the Study of Labor and Business History in the National Archives at San Francisco
§ This is an good place to start when identifying federal resources related to Labor history
Happy May Day!
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