It is to stimulate the study of the essential and distinct features of A. F. of L. craft unionism, and as a contribution towards that study that this pamphlet is offered to the working class.
The workers who are more or less familiar with the Labor and Socialist Movement in this country and especially in European countries, often wonder why most American workingmen celebrate “Labor Day” on the first Monday of September instead of May Day, on the first of May.
We shall endeavor, in this pamphlet, to give a sketch of the difference in the character and effect of these two holidays of Labor.
Except that both these holidays are dedicated to Labor and are primarily participated in by working people, there is nothing in common between them. In fact, they contradict and stand in opposition to each other, the same as the organized International Socialist and Labor Movement, which established the May Day, contradicts in all essentials and stands in opposition to the American Federation of Labor,—the organization under whose auspices the American Labor Day is celebrated.
May Day was created by a resolution adopted, upon the initiative of American Socialists, at the International Socialist Congress held in Paris, France, in July, 1889. The resolution had for its prime object to get the workingmen of all countries, races, climes and nationalities, speaking all the innumerable languages of the earth, to celebrate on the same fixed day their own holiday, and thus graphically to demonstrate to the world that, in spite of all the differences in language, nationality, etc., they are all members of the same class, the proletariat,—the propertyless wage-earning class—that their interests are the same and, like members of the same family, they stand for the Workers’ Brotherhood, International Solidarity and Universal Peace.
May Day was thus created by the workingmen themselves, in defiance of the capitalist class and its governments, and up to the present time the working people in many countries are compelled on the First of May to fight for their holiday at the sacrifice of their jobs, liberty, blood, and even life. When the police and cossacks of different countries appear on the scene on May Day it is always for the purpose of clubbing, maiming, arresting, and killing working people; for the police and cossacks recognize that May Day is the drilling day for the Social Revolution.