One Day In May

The tensions were rising
 And something had to give
 A fourteen-hour working day
 Was just no way to live
 The CLU, the Knights and the IWPA
 Reformers and the unionists
 Walked out one Saturday
 They wanted safe conditions
 For all of working men
 Benefits, eight-hour days
 And pay for working ten
 Some came again on Monday
 To show their discontent
 At McCormick's Reaper Plant
 It's where the violence went
 One day in May
 The strikers were a-hecklin'
 Their replacements good and loud
 A fight broke out - the cops arrived
 Killed two amongst the crowd
 The anarchists were angry
 And they called for everyone
 To gather the next day
 And protest what the law had done
 A rally would be held at night
 The place they were to meet
 Was down at the Haymarket Square
 Up on West Randolph Street
 They came out by the thousands
 And when everything seemed calm
 The police showed up to break it up
 Then someone threw the bomb
 One day in May
 The cops were scared - they drew their guns
 And fired wildly
 Bullets riddled bodies
 As far as the eye could see
 The dead and the dying
 Were stretched upon the floor
 This tragedy of bombs and blood
 Was still to bleed some more
 The papers and politicians
 Had got it in their heads
 To locate all the radicals
 And drag them from their beds
 Without good rhyme or reason
 As to what they did or why
 Eight men were arrested
 Seven were to die
 Four stepped to the scaffold
 At the jail in County Cook
 The men were hung
 And suicide was what the fifth man took
 The rest were given pardons
 Allowed to walk away
 But the blood had spilled in tons
 One day in May
 One day in May
 When all was done and said
 Books and demonstrations
 And statues for the dead
 One day in May
 When all was said and done
 Some thought that there was justice
 But the rest knew there was none
 One day in May
 The spirit never dies
 For Engel, Ling and Parsons
 For Fischer and for Spies
 One day in May
 Never to forget
 The drama and the tragedy
 The struggle and regret
 One day in May