Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, The Fourth Estate (1898 1901), oil on canvas, cm. 283 x 550. Milan
First of May. The long march that changed pace
It is a two-century long march that the workers who fought for the respect of work and their dignity took on. It began during the American industrial revolution, starting in 1866, the year in which the first eight-hour working day law was approved in the state of Illinois, which came into effect on May 1 of the following year. This law is at the basis of the most important, and at times dramatic, workers’ demonstrations and conquests, since 1886. That year, on May 1, on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of its entry into force, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions decides to make it coincide with the deadline day to extend this law throughout the American territory, under penalty abstention from work, with an indefinite general strike. The workers of Chicago join the initiative, in particular those of the McCormick reaper factory. The police, called to repress the gathering, fired on the unarmed demonstrators, killing two and wounding many others. To protest the brutality of the police, local anarchists organize a counter-demonstration to be held in Haymarket Square, the square that normally hosts the agricultural machinery market. In the streets of the city an urban warfare is unleashed which culminatesa few days later, with the launch – by the barricaded workers – of a bomb made of dynamite which kills 6 policemen and injures over fifty people.
The reaction of law enforcement is the same bloody; not very dissimilar from that which in Milan, on 8 May 1898, General Bava Beccaris unleashed against an unarmed and peaceful mass of men, women, old people and children, guilty of having dared to protest against the doubling of grain (from 35 to 60 cents per kg), and consequently of bread, decided by the Kingdom of Italy.
In either case, the number of victims has never been established. In Milan it is estimated there were 80, mostly women and children. Hundreds injured, thousands arrested. For that massacre Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris receives the Cross of Grand Officer of the Military Order of Savoyaccompanied by a congratulatory telegram from King Umberto I. For the large masses of workers, however, Bava Beccaris becomes “the butcher of Milan”, the man who with lead, instead of work and bread, fed the hungry .