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| Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and
economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers
have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.
In the spring of 1872, Peter McGuire, credited with founding Labor Day, and 100,000 other workers went on strike and marched through the streets of New York, demanding a decrease in the long working day. Taking part in this event convinced Mr. McGuire that an organized labor movement was necessary to secure the future of workers' rights. He spent the next year speaking to crowds of workers and unemployed people, lobbying the city government for jobs and relief money. The city government ignored his demands and even labeled Peter a "disturber of the public peace." Unable to find a job himself, he continued to speak to workers up and down the eastern coast. In 1881, after moving to St. Louis, Missouri, Peter began to organize the carpenters together. He is credited with organizing a convention of carpenters in Chicago, and where the national union of carpenters was founded. He became General Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. This idea of organizing workers according to their trades began to spread around the country. Factory workers, dock workers and toolmakers all demanded their rights to an eight-hour workday, a secure job and a future in their trades. With this, the demands began to be met. A holiday was planned for workers on the first Monday in September, halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day. On September 5, 1882 the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City. Twenty thousand workers marched in a parade up Broadway. They carried banners that read "Labor Creates All Wealth," and "Eight Hours For Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for Recreation!" After the parade there were picnics all around the city. Workers and celebrants ate Irish stew, homemade bread and apple pie. At night, fireworks were set off. Within the next few years, the idea spread from coast to coast, and all states celebrated Labor Day. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland found himself in an election year with an unhappy voters. The previous year, he sent 12, 000 Federal troops to stop a strike at the Pullman company in Chicago which was interrupting mail trains. Violence erupted and two men were killed by U.S. deputy marshals. Though work resumed at Pullman, there were protests against Cleveland's use of troops to stop this strike. Congress, as a thoughful gesture, passed legislation making the first Monday in September a national holiday honoring labor. President Cleveland quickly signed the bill into law and Labor Day was thus established.
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"Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car
company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and
political) seductions of nearby Chicago.
The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for
the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman
would lodge while in town.
Its residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by
Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and
sucessfully for more than a decade. But in 1893, the Pullman company was caught in the nationwide economic
depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off hundreds of employees.
Those who remained endured wage cuts, even while rents in Pullman remained consistent. Take-home paychecks
plummeted. And so the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway Union,
led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation
boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union
workers joined in.
The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and
interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence
erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the
strike was doomed. On August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over. Debs went to prison, his ARU was disbanded,
and Pullman employees henceforth signed a pledge that they would never again unionize. Aside from the already existing
American Federation of Labor and the various railroad brotherhoods, industrial workers' unions were effectively stamped
out and remained so until the Great Depression. " |
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Labor Day is the last "hurrah" of summer. In 1995, less than 15 percent of American workers belonged to unions,
down from a high in the 1950's of nearly 50 percent, though nearly all have benefited from the victories of the
Labor movement. And everyone who can takes a vacation on the first Monday of September. Friends and familes
gather, and clog the highways, and the picnic grounds, and their own backyards -- and bid farewll to summer.
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The History Channel, Encarta Encyclopedia and Groliers Encyclopedia. |