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Haymarket
The eight-hour day was the labour movement's central demand in the 1880s; ten to twelve hours was the norm in American industry. Who threw the bomb has never been established. The trial rested on the defendants' opinions rather than their acts, and the governor of Illinois pardoned the survivors in 1893 in terms that repudiated the whole case. The irony is lasting: the event made the first of May the workers' holiday worldwide, while the United States placed its own Labor Day in September precisely to avoid the association.
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