Labor Day. What is it? Most people today think of Labor Day as the last long weekend of summer, a day to enjoy picnics and barbeques, the start of football season, the start of the new school year, or even a day off in celebration of their hard work all year long. What few realize is that the origin of Labor Day is rooted in scandal, civil unrest, violence, lawbreaking, racism and even death.
The idea of a Labor Day was conceived in Toronto, Canada years before it came to the United States. How did it happen?
The place was Hamilton, Canada and the time was 1869. Employees of various printing shops and newspapers were working twelve hour days. Dissatisfied with their hours, the workers petitioned the owners to reduce their work days to nine hours. When this was denied, they organized a strike, which was considered a “conspiracy” and illegal according to Canadian law at the time. On March 25, 1872, the workers didn’t show up to work and the police subsequently jailed the twenty-four members of the strike committee. On June 14, 1872 approximately 2,000 workers demonstrated and marched through Toronto to show their solidarity.
Sir John Macdonald
Enter Sir John Macdonald, the scandalous Canadian Prime Minister with a rapidly declining popularity. His political rival, George Brown, was the founder of The Globe, a reform newspaper, and a hated man by the workers in the printing industry. Macdonald saw the opportunity to distinguish himself from Brown and win over the workers of Canada by repealing the laws that made unionization and strikes illegal.
Prime Minister Macdonald spoke to a crowd at city hall in Ottawa promising to wipe the “barbarous laws” restricting Big Labor from the books. On June 14, 1872 he passed the Trade Union Act, which set free the imprisoned men when it legalized and protected union activity. Macdonald scratched the back of the unions, and in return they gave him enduring support… starting the trend that continues to exist today all throughout the world.
To celebrate their success, the Toronto Trades and Labour Council held similar demonstrations, parades and celebrations every spring thereafter which became known as labour festivals. It wasn’t until July 23, 1894, that Canadian Prime Minister John Thompson and his government made Labour Day and official holiday to be held in September.
How did the Canadian Labour Day become the American Labor Day?
One story goes that on July 22, 1882, Peter McGuire, the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was asked to speak at a labour festival in Toronto, Canada. He was so impressed with the exhibition that upon returning to the United States, he proposed a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” Another story goes that Matthew Maguire, a machinist and secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882.
Regardless, the Central Labor Union of New York (the original AFL-CIO), adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic. On September 5, 1882 the first Labor Day event was held. It wasn’t until 1884 that the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday and it was then that similar organizations in other cities were urged to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
By 1894, twenty-three states had adopted Labor Day as an official holiday, but it wasn’t until the Pullman Strike – the most violent and most famous railroad strikes in American history – that Labor Day would become a federal holiday.
One year prior in 1893, the United States suffered the worst economic depression in its history and would not be outdone until the Great Depression. It became known as the “Panic of 1893.” During this period, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages as demands for their train cars plummeted and the company’s revenue dropped. They simply did not have the revenue available to continue business as usual.
A delegation of workers complained about the reduction in wages and George Pullman, the owner of Pullman Palace Car Company, declined to speak with them. As a result, on May 11, 1894, approximately 3,000 employees of the company began an illegal “wildcat strike” (a strike by workers without the authorization of their trade union officials) in Pullman, Illinois in response to recent wage reductions.
By June 26, 1894, the strike spread to 125,000 American Railway Union members on twenty-nine railroads. The American Railway Union was a Whites-Only union led by future Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. This strike effectively shut down rail travel and some mail service in the United States. In retaliation, railroad companies began hiring replacement workers. Many black Americans worked in spite of the American Railway Union strike because they were continually locked out of the labor market year after year and would be until 1921.
On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a demonstration at Blue Island, Illinois which led to those in the crowd setting fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive. These actions emboldened strikers all across the nation from preventing transportation of goods by obstructing railroad tracks, threatening strikebreakers, and in many cases attacking them.
The out-of-control nature of the union members led to the appointment of a special federal attorney, Richard Olney, with the responsibility for dealing with the strike. Olney obtained an injunction barring union leaders from supporting the strike and demanding that the strikers cease their activities or face being fired. Debs and other leaders of the ARU ignored the injunction, and federal troops were called into action.
In the summer of 1894, Democrat President Grover Cleveland, declared the actions of the unions illegal because it had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the United States Marshals and approximately 12,000 United States Army troops to quash the strike. The union members and strike sympathizers fought back which resulted in subsequent deaths of workers and more outbreaks of violence. During the course of the strike, thirteen strikers were killed and fifty-seven were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage (approximately $9,136,000 in 2011 dollars). The leader of American Railway Union, Eugene Debs, served six months in jail for violating the court injunction. In this time, he read Karl Marx and eventually went on to be a major socialist figure in both the labor movement and in American politics.
After the Pullman Strike had ended, President Cleveland found himself on the losing end of a re-election campaign as would any President in the middle of an economic depression. So he took a page from Canadian Prime Minister Macdonald’s book, and attempted to win the favor of Big Labor through appeasement. Cleveland made organized labor a top priority and with the help of Congress passed legislation for a federal Labor Day holiday in just six days which President Cleveland promptly signed into law.
That’s the real story behind Labor Day. And if we forget that today is a day designed to celebrate organized labor, the better. So, please feel free to enjoy the last long weekend of summer, enjoy a day to enjoy picnics and barbeques, enjoy the start of football season, enjoy the start of the new school year, and enjoy your day off in celebration of your hard work all year long… and forget the scandals, civil unrest, violence, lawbreaking, racism and death behind Big Labor and the birth of Labor Day.
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I don’t want to forget what a disgrace the Union movement really is. Every patriotic American should be appalled and disgusted by the corruption that has been protected and even promoted by the democrat socialist in the US. The unions are the scourge of our country and should literally be outlawed. We all know that will not happen in the near furture as that is how the current ‘President’ bought his job. Thanks for the informative article Tim.