Arts
Organized labor’s campaign for a ten-hour workday gained momentum in the 1870s and 1880s. The often-violent response to union demands in places like Chicago and Milwaukee served to make the public more open to union ideas. The Northwoods was slow to accept the inevitable, but by 1892 the push for a ten-hour workday hit Rhinelander. In Wisconsin, organized labor’s campaign for the ten-hour workday culminated in Milwaukee when on May 1, 1886, workers went on strike and shut down industry across the city for five days. Employees in only one business, the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View, resisted the call. On May 5 demonstrators gathered outside the foundry to demand that the workers inside join the strike. Governor Jeremiah Rusk called out troops and had them open fire on the demonstrators. At what is now known as the Bay View Massacre, seven unarmed people were killed and many more seriously wounded. At the time, the press hailed Rusk as a national hero,