Troops fire on a workers' May Day…
May 1891 CE
The nine dead include eight demonstrators under twenty-one years old, among whom a young worker who will remain a symbol, Marie Blondeau.
The shooting evokes strong emotions in France.
It is regarded today as one of the founding events of the French Section of the Workers' International.
Jean Jaurès will visit Fourmies afterwards to make a speech here, while Georges Clemenceau will declare in front of the French Parliament that "it is the Fourth state which rose".
Fourmies, located near the Border with Belgium, had been a small town of two thousand people at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it has had an important industrial growth because of the textile industry.
In 1891, it has thirty-seven silk and wool mills, and fifteen thousand people, in majority factory workers.
In the factories, workers work for twelve hours a day, and six days a week.
Their salaries are particularly low.
Starting in 1885, the textile industry in the Nord had begun to experience difficulties.
These difficulties have had direct repercussions on workers, with unemployment and salary reductions when food and lodging expenses are rising.
The right to strike has been allowed in France since the Ollivier law of May 265, 1864, but trade unions have been allowed only since the Waldeck-Rousseau law of March 21, 1884.
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