the haymarket

I see where the libertarian party has chosen a nominee.  He appears to be a more thorough libertarian than those right wing guys who claim to be libertarians who just embrace the pro-business side.  He also favors legalizing marijuana and is pro abortion and against getting into those foreign wars.

I'll be rooting for the libertarians because I think they will take more votes from the reps than the dems.  They haven't begun begun to run any kind of campaign yet so we'll see how they do.  I believe they have to get like ten percent in a certain number of polls before they can get into the debates which would be sure.  Personally I would rather they didn't get into the debates because I think Trump would be hurt more by a mano a mano debate where he could be more easily pinned down than with a more free-wheeling three-way debate.  You'll notice that Trump backed out of the debate with Bernie.

I'm reading a book about the Haymarket riots right now.  Death in the Haymarket, James Green.  He starts his story just after the civil war tracing the growth of the, I don't know what to call them, progressives, radicals, there were a lot of different factions, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists, various flavors of labor activists.  I think the tendency we have now is to lump them all together, but they saw themselves as independent parties and weren't above fighting with each other.
This period interests me because it was at a time in the history of America, the gilded age when there was great economic inequality like there is today.  Somehow we got to a more equal distribution of wealth from there and I wonder how that was, and if we could do that again, but a lot of things are different now.

Right now the book is at May 1st 1886 when there is a big industry-wide strike for the eight hour day.  The city is being shut down and things appear to be going well for the progressives.  There is a bit of a split though.  The better paid workers are asking for eight hours of pay for eight hours of work, but the less skilled and the less paid are asking for ten hours of pay for eight hours of work.  The eight for eight guys don't like this because they are afraid it will scuttle their movement.

I think maybe it did because my tenuous knowledge of this time is that it was only when the democrats took the issue of the eight hour day from the radicals that it became law.

And most of these guys, the more radical ones are foreigners, Irish, Czechs, Poles, and mostly Germans, they have their own militias and they are talking tough, particularly they are singing the praises of dynamite.  So far it is all talk, no bombs are thrown, no shots are fired at policemen, the only fatalities of the strikes are the strikers.  But you can see where the plutocrats are getting nervous.