The growth of American industrial might in the 1870s and 1880s was paralleled by the emergence of unions representing the workers. Working conditions at the time were abysmal: little concern for safety existed in most factories, pay was low, benefits were nonexistent and the work day was often 10 to 12 hours, six days a week. The immediate focus of the unions was to achieve the eight-hour day. The national movement for the eight-hour day reached a crescendo in the mid-1880s. In 1885, there were 645 strikes nationwide at over 2,400 businesses in support of the eight-hour goal. In 1886, the year of the Haymarket riot, the number of strikes had more than doubled to 1,400, affecting over 11,000 businesses. On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally…show more content… The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. Reveal revisionist view of political corruption within the police Police members shot into the crowd of people standing near them protesting there, some shot were even policemen themselves. Were the goals of the Haymarket Riot completed with the arresting of eight people with political differences to Americans? Strikes by industrial workers were increasingly common in the United States in the 1880s for various reasons and created various motives for political platforms to run wild . The American labor movement during this time also included a radical faction of socialists, communists and anarchists who believed the capitalist system should be dismantled because it exploited workers {History.com}. Political agitation by labor activists in the campaign to limit the working day to eight hours a day for workers in factories became intense during periods of severe economic depression. On Saturday, May 1, 1886, a nationwide general strike in support of the eight-hour day was observed. In Chicago alone, 60,000 workers walked off their jobs. In a truly prescient headline, a Chicago labor newspaper…show more content… From this scapegoating, there is a question that arises: Was there a secret agenda throughout this Riot? In my mind, there was a secret agenda to stop a spread of communist and socialist views. In the aftermath of the indictments of the eight anarchists, a brutal martial law was imposed on Chicago. Anarchist and labor meeting halls were closed down. With that, hundreds of suspects were rounded up, interrogated, and held by police without charges being brought. Mayor Harrison even closed down Chicago's leading labor newspaper and banned public meetings {Truth.org}. For some people, the events led to a heightened anti-labor sentiment, while others believed the men had been convicted unfairly and viewed them as martyrs {U.S History.com}. It isn’t hard to argue if there was corruption since the police officers shot their own officers “unknowingly”. This Scare also created a man-made, mass hysteria roadblock to stop the trouble of the 8-hour day being passed.This bomb created more destruction after the actual bomb for these labor protests since the majority of the population viewed these riots as a threat to safety with the knowledge skewed by newspapers. The Haymarket Affair took on worldwide dimension in July 1889, when a delegate from the American Federation of Labor recommended at a labor conference in