American History of the Labor Day Holiday

Labor Day. It's the last big blow-out for all of us workers that are out there in the labor force before the larger holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are upon us. While most of us are already talking about what we are going to be doing for the long weekend, have we ever really looked at what Labor Day exactly is and what it stands for? Many of us, although we may be educated, have never really looked at this holiday and wondered what it often meant for us to be celebrating a simple thing such as going to work every day and then coming home. It seems simple enough, right? But, for those of us who have often wondered what it is to truly be a worker in the labor force, it is a holiday that is simply just looked upon as another holiday that the government granted to us so we could lounge around the house or maybe get some of that extra yard work done that we have been putting off before the autumn months hit.

There are a great many theories that have been deduced as to who fought for the creation of Labor Day and who founded the idea, but before we get into that, we have to look at to how the idea was even established in the first place, and our first destination is not just to where, but to when, as well. We all know how hard things were for the labor force during the time of the Industrial Revolution. We have read of the sweatshops, workhouses, twelve hours a day of working, seven days a week. All of it for low pay, and the kids would have to even work in order for families to survive. In New York City, the very first Labor Day parade happened in Union Station, where workers decided they wanted to celebrate themselves in the labor force and to be recognized by the public as well as their employers for what they did for America every day as they worked in factories, shops, stockyards and such. But, the labor force was not always recognized for what they did, and there were times that this would lead to chaos, and also bloodshed. This holiday had met with great adversity in the beginning and also great opposistion from our own government during those times, who had a major foothold within the labor force as well as the ability to put pressure on the unions if needed.

The greatest revolutionary for workers at the time was a man known as Eugene V. Debs, a union leader of the American Railroad Union, who was not just a union leader, but also a prominent Socialist, and later became part of the American Democratic Socialist Party, where he ran for President five times in 1900,1904,1908,and 1912, with his last being ran from behind prison bars after being arrested for being a pacifist and his pacifist beliefs in 1920, where he received one million votes while incarcerated! On June 26th, 1894, The American Railroad Union had decided to boycott rail cars from the Pullman Palace Car Company, which eventually led the workers to go on strike. In the days after, 50,000 rail workers also ended up striking to protest such things as salary, equal treatment and so forth, leading to all railway services in Chicago to come to a virtual stop. As the strike continued, it was decided by our government and the current president, Grover Cleveland, that military troops were to be dispatched to Chicago to break the strike, which led to, unfortunately, bloodshed and riots. After Debs and three colleagues were arrested, they were sentenced to six months in prison for breaking an injunction. This however, was not the only time that he had been arrested. In Juy of 1894, Debs had been accused on conspiracy to commit murder during another strike that had involved the Great Northern Railroad. However, the charges didn't stay, and he was then sometime later sentenced to six months for contempt of court. Later, during WWi and after his political campaigns in which he lost every time, it was then that he eneded up in prison once again, which had been commuted in 1921. Debs died shortly after in 1926.

While Debs may have been a compelling figure in the shaping of equal rights in the labor force, he wasn't exactly the creator of it. In 1882, a machinist named Matthew Maguire, who may be thought to have been the first originator of the idea for Labor Day, who was also the General Secretary of the Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, NJ. However, our own Department of Labor states that it was another Maguire, one by the name of Peter J, who was the General Secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, as well as later, the co-founder of the American Federation Of Labor. But, there is also the Central Labor Union, who was said to have proposed the holiday in New York in 1882, and recognized the holiday themselves without so much as a word from our government.

It was soon after that other states began to recognize the holiday and its observance. The first, Oregon, just shortly after New York, started observing the holiday in 1887. Then, Massachussetts, New Jersey, and others began to follow suit, following New York's example and celebrating the work force and all that they do for our country. It wasn't until 1894 the the United States government declared the first Monday of September as what we call now Labor Day, as well as a legal holiday, which happened finally in 1894.

So, as we sit at home and watch football or go to the park for a cookout, let us all take a moment to really think about what it means to be a worker. It is true that not much has changed, with the long hours of overtime, bumper-to-bumper traffic and more demands from our bosses, but let us not forget what had to be done in order for us to get this holiday. Though we may not know it, we have been fighting for all kinds of reasons in this country other than war. We have fought for freedom, civil rights, equality, a fair wage for a fair day's work, employee rights, the rights of freedom of the press, religion, assembly, and expression. It is because of fights like these that we are able to live as we do, and fighting for our rights as workers and the right to be recognized for what we do should not be any different, don't you think?