HISTORY107 - Labor Day

The history of Labor Day has been on my future blog list for a long time.  Checking my list and the calendar, I decided it would be a timely subject for this blog.

 

After a short introduction, I will cover the origins of Labor Day, how it was distinguished from May Day, the evolution of labor practices, and end with how Labor Day is celebrated today.

I will list my principal sources at the end.

 

Introduction

Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States, celebrated on the first Monday of September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States.

The roots of Labor Day date back to the decades following the Civil War when workers took part in strikes and rallies to demand shorter workdays and better working conditions.

In the late nineteenth century, labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.  Labor Day was declared a national holiday in 1894.

Labor Day weekend also symbolizes the end of summer for many Americans, and is celebrated with parties, street parades and athletic events.

 

Origins

Labor Environment.  Calls for shorter workdays and better conditions came from worker strikes and rallies in the decades after the Civil War. 

In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks to eke out a basic living.  Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as five or six toiled in mills, factories, and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages.  People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities, and breaks.

Typical factory working conditions in the U.S. in the late 1800s.

As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions emerged, grew more prominent and vocal, and started organizing strikes and rallies to protest exploitive working conditions and to renegotiate hours and pay.

It was in this context that American workers held the first Labor Day parade in New York City in 1882.

The First Labor Day.  Alternative accounts of that first parade’s origin exist.  Descendants of two men with similar last names claim that their great-grandfather was the true father of the event.

According to one early history of Labor Day, the parade event originated in connection with a meeting of the Knights of Labor, the first important national labor organization in the United States, founded in 1869.  A public parade of various labor organizations was held on September 5, 1882 under the auspices of the Central Labor Union (CLU) of New York.  Secretary of the CLU, Matthew Maguire, is credited for first proposing that a national Labor Day holiday subsequently be held on the first Monday of each September in the aftermath of this successful public demonstration.

An alternative theory maintains that the idea of Labor Day was the brainchild of Peter J. McGuire, a vice president of the American Federation of Labor (national group of labor unions), who made a proposition to the fledgling Central Labor Union in New York City that a day be set aside for a "general holiday for the laboring classes.”  McGuire further recommended that the event should begin with a street parade as a public demonstration of organized labor's solidarity and strength, with the march followed by a picnic, to which participating local unions could sell tickets as a fundraiser.  He suggested the first Monday in September as an ideal date for such a public celebration, owing to good weather, and the date's place on the calendar, sitting midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving public holidays.

Contenders for founder of Labor Day: Mathew Maguire (left) and Peter J. McGuire (right).

On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history.  Labor union marchers included bricklayers, jewelers, typographers, dress and cloak makers, shoemakers, cigar makers, and many other tradespeople who marched with their locals. The day culminated in picnics, speeches, fireworks, and dancing.

Because Labor Day wasn’t yet an official holiday, many of the attendees risked their jobs by participating in the one-day strike.  On the signs they carried, workers called for “Less Work and More Pay,” an eight-hour workday, and a prohibition on the use of convict labor.  They were met with cheers.

Both Maguire and McGuire attended this country’s first Labor Day parade.

Ten thousand union members paraded in New York City on the first Labor Day, September 5, 1882.

Legal Holiday.  The popularity of the parade and celebration spread across the country.  The American labor movement was among the strongest in the world at the time, and in the years that followed, municipalities and states adopted legislation to recognize Labor Day. 

In 1887, Oregon became the first state of the United States to make Labor Day an official public holiday.  By 1894, 24 U.S. states were already officially celebrating Labor Day.  In that year, Congress passed a bill recognizing the first Monday of September as Labor Day and making it an official federal holiday. 

President Grover Cleveland signed the bill into law on June 28, 1894.  The federal law, however, only made it a holiday for federal workers.  As late as the 1930s, unions were encouraging workers to strike to make sure they got the day off.  All U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories have subsequently made Labor Day a statutory holiday.  

 

Labor Day versus May Day

A September Labor Day wasn’t the only workingman’s holiday on the table. 

The date of May 1 (an ancient European folk holiday known as May Day) emerged in 1886 as an alternative holiday for the celebration of labor.  The date had its origins at the 1885 convention of the American Federation of Labor, which passed a resolution calling for adoption of the eight-hour day effective May 1, 1886.  While negotiation was envisioned for achievement of the shortened work day, use of a strike to enforce this demand was recognized, with May 1 advocated as a date for coordinated strike action. 

What is known as the Haymarket Riot, or Haymarket Incident, began in Chicago on May 1, 1886. Thousands of workers took to the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour workday. The demonstration lasted for days.  A bomb was set off on May 4, killing seven police officers and eight civilians.  This watershed moment in American labor history brought workers’ rights squarely into the public’s view. 

Engraving of 1886 Haymarket riot.

Another event starting in the month of May, contributed to the radical reputation of a proposed May celebration of labor.  In Chicago, on May 11, 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company, manufacturer of railroad cars, went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives.  On June 26, the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, crippling railroad traffic nationwide.  To break the Pullman strike, the federal government dispatched troops to Chicago, unleashing a wave of riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers. 

The Pullman strike riot resulted in the deaths of a dozen workers.

There was disagreement among labor unions at this time about when a holiday celebrating workers should be, with some advocating for continued emphasis of the September march-and-picnic date, while others sought the designation of the more politically charged date of May 1. 

It was in the wake of this massive unrest, and to repair ties with American workers, the U.S. Congress passed the act making Labor Day a September holiday.

Note:  Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration.  In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative, formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through the law that he signed in 1894.

In the years that followed, May Day became an occasion for protesting the arrests of socialists, anarchists, and unionists.  As the September Labor Day was recognized by more and more states, it came to be the dominant labor holiday in the United States.

 

Evolution of Labor Practices

The September Labor Day holiday was thought to be a conciliatory gesture to labor and became the less radical alternative to May Day.  Company owners began to accept workers’ demands for better treatment as time passed.

Henry Ford more than doubled wages to $5 a day in 1914.  He cut workers’ hours per day from nine to eight in 1926.  Rivals realized he might be onto something when his profits doubled in two years.

During the New Deal, the 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act limited child labor, set a minimum wage, and mandated a shorter workweek with overtime pay for longer shifts.  The average workweek had shrunk to five eight-hour days by the 1940s.

President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Fair Labor Standards Act that established a minimum wage, overtime, and child labor standards in the United States.

There were negative aspects of the evolution of labor practices too.  Deep political divisions shaped the American labor movement as it developed in the 20^th century.  Many early labor organizers and agitators were anarchists, communists, and socialists, who saw the potential of collective worker action to create a more just society.  Eugene V. Debs helped found the American Railway Union and the Industrial Workers of the World and ran unsuccessfully for president five times on the Socialist Party ticket.  Prominent labor activists included anarchist Lucy Parsons, socialist Big Bill Haywood, and communist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

Union leaders were often arrested on political grounds after major strikes and demonstrations.  Scores of foreign-born radicals and labor organizers were rounded up by the police in Chicago and elsewhere after the Haymarket Incident.  They were among many people who were unjustly persecuted to tamp down the growing labor movement and rid it of radical leaders.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics provided a large-scale demonstration of what living under socialism and communism was like beginning in the 1920s.  Communists gained control of China and the People’s Republic was founded in 1949.

Anti-communist persecution was common in the U.S. after World War II, with Western and communist nations locked in a Cold War.  The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act required union officials to swear that they had no communist affiliations and it encouraged unions to expel radicals.  The U.S. Supreme Court found this provision of the act unconstitutional in 1965.

 

Labor Day Today

Today, Labor Day is celebrated in cities and towns across the United States with parades, picnics, barbecues, fireworks, and other public gatherings, especially over the long Labor Day weekend.  Labor Day is called the "unofficial end of summer” because it marks the end of the U.S. culture's nominal summer season. 

 

There are numerous events and activities organized in major cities.  For example, New York offers the Labor Day Carnival, and fireworks over Coney Island.  In Washington D.C., one popular event is the Labor Day Concert at the U.S. Capitol, featuring the National Symphony Orchestra with free attendance. 

Labor leaders who focus on bread-and-butter issues rather than on broad social change continue to dominate the AFL-CIO and other unions.  Unions also attempt to help their members by endorsing political candidates, supporting political action committees, and taking stands on civil rights and worker safety issues.  Union membership is on the rise after decades of decline, driven in part by the impact of the pandemic on workers, as well as a tight labor market in 2022. 

 

 

American labor has raised the nation’s standard of living and contributed to the greatest production the world has ever known.  It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pays tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership - the American worker.

 

 

Sources

My primary sources include: “Labor Day,” en.wikipedia.org; “History of Labor Day,” dol.gov; “Labor Day 2004,” history.com; “The History of Labor Day,” investopedia.com; “A History of Labor Day,” nytimes.com; plus, numerous other online sources.