Before Leisurely Picnics And Parades, Labor Day Was Born Out Of Strife

Authored by Jeff Louderbeck via The Epoch Times,

Marking the unofficial end of summer, Labor Day has long been highlighted by parades, backyard barbecues, and leisurely pursuits. However, the national holiday’s origins reflect a darker time for workers and include unrest over oppressive working conditions and a strike that turned violent.

During the Industrial Revolution, after the Civil War, many workers toiled for at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, on railroads and in factories, mines, and mills just to make ends meet.

While the hours were grueling, the working conditions made their days even worse, which ultimately led to the growth of labor unions.

Appealing for shorter workweeks and better conditions, the labor movement arose and escalated in the 1860s and 1870s.

Like Independence Day, Labor Day is a time when many small towns and big cities host celebratory parades. In the late 19th century, activists from the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor spearheaded what is known as the first Labor Day event, when about 10,000 workers marched through the streets of New York City on Sept. 5, 1882.

Organizers proclaimed it “a general holiday for the workingmen of this city.” The parade became an annual event, and in 1884, it was set for the first Monday in September, according to the New-York Historical Society.

Between 1887 and 1894, Labor Day became an official holiday in several states. The day varied among the first day of September, the first Monday of September, and the first Saturday of September.

Oregon was the first state to designate a Labor Day holiday in 1887. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York followed the next year.

In 1893, Sen. James Kyle of South Dakota introduced a bill to declare Labor Day a federal holiday. The bill languished without discussion in the Senate until June 26, 1894, when Congress passed it. President Grover Cleveland signed the legislation on June 28, 1894, and the first nationwide Labor Day was celebrated on the first Monday of September that year.

President Grover Cleveland (1837–1908), the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Courtesy of the National Archives/Newsmakers/Getty Images/TNS

Although Kyle is credited with presenting the legislation, it is uncertain who first suggested making Labor Day a national holiday.

Some records point to Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, according to the Department of Labor. In 1882, he reportedly recommended establishing a day for a “general holiday for the laboring classes” to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Others believe that machinist Matthew Maguire, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday.

Maguire eventually served as secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, New Jersey. He proposed the holiday in 1882 when he was secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York, the Department of Labor reported.

Response to the new holiday was positive.

Parades across the country drew large crowds. At the first official Labor Day parade in Chicago, Lawrence McGann, chairman of the House Labor Committee, told 30,000 revelers, “Let us each Labor Day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement [sic], and the laws will be changed,” according to the Office of the Historian for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Haymarket Riot

Another labor-centered holiday, May Day, was created in the aftermath of the Haymarket Riot in May 1886. Workers flooded Chicago’s streets to demand an eight-hour workday. Scuffles between police and workers ensued over several days. Police ordered the crowd to disperse, and a bomb detonated on May 4.

At an international gathering of socialists in Paris in 1889, May Day was declared a holiday honoring workers’ rights. Cleveland feared that May Day would become “a memorial to the Haymarket radicals.” He encouraged state legislatures to celebrate a labor-centric holiday in September instead and eventually signed the federal holiday at the same time that tension arose in a company town outside of Chicago.

Employees of the railway sleeping car titan George Pullman went on strike on May 11, 1893.

Pullman, Illinois, was founded by Pullman in 1880 and designed to serve as a utopian community for workers.

Residents worked for the Pullman Palace Car Company. Their paychecks were drawn from the Pullman bank, and their rent was set by Pullman and automatically deducted from their paychecks.

In 1893, there was a nationwide depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined. Pullman laid off hundreds of employees. Workers who remained saw their wages cut while rents remained consistent.

Employees walked out, demanding higher pay and lower rents.

Led by Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1920, the American Railway Union aided the striking workers. Railroad employees across the country boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Burning, pillaging, and rioting of railroad cars followed. Mobs of nonunion workers participated.

Faced with a national crisis, Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and sent federal troops to end the unrest on July 3, days after signing the Labor Day legislation.

Troops fired into a crowd of protesters on July 7, killing as many as 12 people.

The strike ended on Aug. 3, 1894.

Even with the creation of Labor Day, it wasn’t until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that the United States established a minimum wage, mandated a shorter workweek, and limited child labor.

‘The Father of Labor Day’

Kyle is regarded as the father of the formal celebration.

Kyle was born at his family’s farm in Cedarville, Ohio, in 1854, and his family moved to Illinois when he was 11. He eventually made his way to South Dakota and entered politics in 1890 shortly after his new home became a state.

First elected to the state senate, he soon became a U.S. senator. During his time in office, Kyle was chairman of the Great Industrial Commission, which was tasked with investigating questions regarding immigration, labor, agriculture, manufacturing, and business.

Kyle was also chairman of the Education and Labor Committee and introduced the bill that Cleveland signed into law establishing Labor Day.

Cedarville calls itself “the home of Labor Day.” Signs at the entry points of the rural village recognize Kyle as “the father of Labor Day.”

Grover Cleveland

Cleveland was the first president to leave the White House and return for a second, nonconsecutive term, a feat that President Donald Trump matched.

First elected president in 1884, Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888 but was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison. He and his wife moved to New York, where he became a father and told a colleague that he “had entered the real world” for the first time.

Life as a private citizen proved unfulfilling for Cleveland. He saw an opportunity to defeat Harrison in a rematch because the president had grown unpopular. Cleveland won his party’s nomination and defeated Harrison in the rematch.

After Cleveland signed the legislation that established a national Labor Day holiday and summoned troops to Chicago to enforce the injunction against a railroad workers’ strike, he said, “If it takes the entire Army and Navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered.”