A History of Labor Day: A US Holiday
by RkgBiolgst38 (updated from issue 27!)
[editor's note: We dove into our achives and found this 1999 feature. Not surprisingly, the URLs used in the original research way back when Rkgbiolgst38 wrote this article have become unavailable, at least to my computer. We checked the sources then, and verified the accuracy of the story. For this year's update we have added some additional sources that seem to be available online for your exploration.]
"Labor Day differs in every essential from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor, "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day ... is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
For the 1st Article on History of see : www.netm.com/party/laborday.htm (the first paragraph is a quote!) Author Ted Watts UR L www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/watts.html I For the list of events : www.nitehawk.com/alleycat/labor.html copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1997 Allen H. Lutins. (Sadly these seem to be currently unavailable) However McNeil/Lehrer have a lovely section on Labor Day with many resources.
Our History of Labor Day (from the Department of Labor) and previous sources continues:
In America, Labor Day, which falls on the first Monday in September, has it’s creation in the labor movement. This day is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers and is a yearly national tribute to the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of America.
The observance and celebration of Labor Day was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday, as a street parade to exhibit to the public, "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.
This outline set the pattern for the future celebrations of Labor Day. In later years, speeches by prominent men and women were introduced, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The first Labor Day parade was not held on a Monday, but actually on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. It wasn’t until 1885 and 1886, that initial governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances. From these ordinances, developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first of these bills was introduced into the New York legislature, however, the first to become law was passed by Oregon on Feb. 2l, l887.
During that year, four more states -- Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York -- enacted the Labor Day holiday by passing legislation. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
Over the decades following the enactment of the holiday, the character of the Labor Day celebration underwent many changes, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades proved to be a problem. This change, however, proved to be more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression than anything else. Labor Day addresses given by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials, are afforded wide coverage in newspapers, radio and television.
Those first parades were, in reality, protest rallies for the adoption of the eight hour day, rather than the, often tame civic events they have evolved into. Participants had to give up a day's wages in order to partake in the event. The New York City Central Labor Union (CLU) even levied a fine on non-participants!
In 1882, the New York City CLU was a lodge of the still-secret Knights of Labor (KL), with a progressive tailor, Robert Blissert at its head. His right-hand man and Secretary of the CLU was Mathew Maguire, a machinist, who is sometimes noted as the original creative force behind labor day. The parade was timed to coincide with a national KL conference being held in New York.
By the 1890s, when KL had all but disappeared, and Samuel Gompers' American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the dominant labor organization. After which the folklore about the origins of labor's holiday began. Robert Blisset was no longer a labor activist. He was now a custom tailor in Manhattan. Mathew Maguire had moved to New Jersey, where he became very active in the Socialist Labor Party. P.J. McGuire became a member of the AFL Carpenters' hierarchy. Gompers simply re-wrote history to conform to the spirit of his new American Federation of Labor by crediting P.J. McGuire with the Labor Day Parade idea. Because the AFL was very non-political, the fact that Mathew Maguire had the effrontery to run as the Vice Presidential candidate on the National Socialist Labor Party ticket in1896 erased his chances of recognition as the father of Labor Day.
Research was originally taken from "The First Labor Day Parade"
Dates To Remember on Labor Day
By RkgBiolgst38
The dates and events that follow are significant in the history of labor in America. The events signify dramatic changes in labor over the last 100 years.
1806: The union of Philadelphia Journeymen Cordwainers was convicted of and bankrupted by charges of criminal conspiracy after a strike for higher wages, setting a precedent by which the U.S. government would combat unions for years to come.
Apr. 27, 1825: The first strike for the ten hour work-day by carpenters in Boston, MA.
July 3, 1835: Children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ went on strike for the 11 hour day/6 day week.
July 1851: Two railroad strikers shot dead and others injured by the state militia in Portgage, NY.
1860: Eight hundred women operatives and 4,000 workmen marched during a shoemaker's strike in Lynn, MA.
Jan. 13, 1874: The original Tompkins Square Riot.
Feb. 12, 1877: U.S. railroad workers began strikes to protest wage cuts.
June 21, 1877: Ten coal-mining activists ("Molly Maguires") were hanged in PA.
July 14, 1877: A general strike halted the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the United States. The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the nationwide strike. At the "Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago, federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killed 30 workers and wounded over 100.
Sept. 5, 1882: Thirty thousand workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in New York City.
1884: The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, forerunner of the AFL, passed a resolution stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886."
Late 1885/Early 1886: Hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power, poured into a fledgling labor organization, the Knights of Labor. Beginning on May 1, 1886, they took to the streets to demand the universal adoption of the eight hour day.
July 25, 1890: New York garment workers won the right to unionize after a seven-month strike. They secured agreements for a closed shop, and firing of all scabs.
July 6, 1892: The Homestead Strike. Pinkerton Guards, trying to pave the way for the introduction of scabs, opened fire on striking Carnegie mill steel- workers in Homestead, PA. Three Pinkertons surrendered; then, unarmed, they were set upon and beaten by a mob of townspeople, most of them women. Seven guards and eleven strikers and spectators were shot to death.
July 11, 1892: Striking miners in Coeur D'Alene, ID dynamited the Frisco Mill, leaving it in ruins.
July 5, 1893: During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The mobs raged on, burning and looting railroad cars and fighting police in the streets, until 10 July, when 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeeded in putting down the strike.
1894: Federal troops killed 34 American Railway Union members in the Chicago area attempting to break a strike, led by Eugene Debs, against the Pullman Company. Debs and several others were imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration
of the union.
Sept. 21, 1896: The state militia was sent to Leadville, CO to break a miner's strike.
Sept. 10, 1897: Nineteen unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff for refusing to disperse near Lattimer, PA.
1898: A portion of the Erdman Act, which would have made it a criminal offense for railroads to dismiss employees or discriminate against prospective employees based on their union activities, was declared invalid by the United States Supreme Court.
Oct. 12, 1898: Fourteen were killed, 25 wounded in violence resulting when Virden, IL mine owners attempted to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers.
Apr. 29, 1899: When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, ID, destroying it completely. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, TX with orders to round up thousands of miners and confine them in specially built "bullpens."
1899 and 1901: U.S. Army troops occupied the Coeur d'Alene mining region in ID
Oct. 12, 1902: 14 miners were killed and 22 wounded by scabherders at Pana, IL.
Nov. 23, 1903: Troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, CO to control rioting by striking coal miners.
Feb. 23, 1904: William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle began publishing articles on the menace of Japanese laborers, leading to a resolution of the California Legislature that action be taken against their immigration.
June 8, 1904: A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later.
1905: The Supreme Court held that a maximum hours law for bakery workers was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
1908: The Erdman Act was further weakened when Section 10 was declared unconstitutional. This section had made it illegal for railroad employers to fire employees for being involved in union activities (see 1898).
Nov. 22, 1909: The "Uprising of the 20,000." Female garment workers went on strike in NY; many were arrested. A judge told those arrested: "You are on strike against God."
Dec. 25, 1910: A dynamite bomb destroyed a portion of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles, where a bitter strike was in progress.
1911: The Supreme Court ordered the AFL to cease its promotion of a boycott against the Bucks Stove and Range Company. A contempt charge against union leaders (including AFL President Samuel Gompers) was dismissed on technical grounds.
Mar. 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, was consumed by fire. One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives. Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they
desperately attempted to escape through stairway exits locked as a precaution against "the interruption of work".
Dec. 2, 1911: A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview: "Oh, there ain't nothin' to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged. I goes up to `im and I says to `im, `My friend, by way of meaning no harm,' and then I gives it to `im -- biff! in the mug. Nothin' to it."
Feb. 24,1912: Women and children were beaten by police during a textile strike in Lawrence, MA.
Apr. 18, 1912: The National Guard was called out against striking West Virginia coal miners.
June 11, 191?: Police shot three maritime workers (one of whom was killed) who were striking against the United Fruit Company in New Orleans.
Jan. 5, 1914: The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine hour day to $5 for an eight hour day.
Apr. 20, 1914: The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company"guards," engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result.
Jan. 19, 1915: World famous labor leader Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad in Salt Lake City. He was convicted on trumped up murder charges, and was executed despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson. In a letter to Bill Haywood shortly before his death he penned the famous words, "Don't mourn - organize!" On this same day, twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, NJ.
July 22, 1916: A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more. Thomas J. Mooney, a labor organizer and Warren K. Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted, but were both pardoned in 1939.
Aug. 19, 1916: Strikebreakers hired by the Everett Mills owner Neil Jamison attacked and beat picketing strikers in Everett, WA. Local police watched and refused to intervene, claiming that the waterfront where the incident took place was Federal land and therefore outside their jurisdiction.
July 12, 1917: After seizing the local Western Union telegraph office in order to cut off outside communication, several thousand armed vigilantes forced 1,185 men in Bisbee, AZ into manure-laden boxcars and "deported" them to the New Mexico desert.
March 15, 1917: The Supreme Court approved the Eight-Hour Act under the threat of a national railway strike.
Aug. 1, 1917: IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched in Butte, MT.
Sept. 5, 1917: Federal agents raided the IWW headquarters in 48 cities.
June 3, 1918: A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional. A new law was enacted 24 February 1919, but this one too was declared unconstitutional (on 2 June 1924).
July 27, 1918: United Mine Workers organizer Ginger Goodwin was shot by a hired private policeman outside Cumberland, British Columbia.
Aug. 26, 1919: United Mine Worker organizer Fannie Sellins was gunned down by company guards in Brackenridge, PA.
Sept. 9, 1919: Looting, rioting and sporadic violence broke out in downtown Boston and South Boston for days after 1,117 Boston policemen declared a work stoppage due to their thwarted attempts to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge put down the strike by calling out the entire state militia.
Sept. 22, 1919: The "Great Steel Strike" began. Ultimately, 350,000 steel workers walked off their jobs to demand union recognition. The AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee called off the strike on 8 January 1920, their goals unmet.
Nov. 11, 1919: IWW organizer Wesley Everest was lynched after a Centralia, Washington IWW hall was attacked.
Dec. 22, 1919: Amid a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers (ultimately unsuccessful), approximately 250 "anarchists," "communists," and "labor agitators" were deported to Russia, marking the beginning of the so-called "Red Scare."
Jan. 2, 1920: The U.S. Bureau of Investigation began carrying out the nationwide Palmer Raids. Federal agents seized labor leaders and literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens were turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes.
May 19, 1920: The Battle of Matewan. Despite efforts by Matewan, West Virginia police chief (and former miner) Sid Hatfield and Mayor C. Testerman to protect miners from interference in their union drive, Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the local mining company and thirteen of the company's managers arrived to evict miners and their families from the Stone Mountain Mine camp. A gun battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of 7 detectives, Mayor Testerman, and 2 miners. Baldwin-Felts detectives assassinated Sid Hatfield 15 months later, sparking off an armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners at "The Battle of Blair Mountain."
1920 and 1921: Army troops were used to intervene against striking mineworkers in West VA.
June 2, 1924: A child labor amendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed; only 28 of the necessary 36 states ever ratified it.
June 22, 1922: Violence erupted during a coal-mine strike at Herrin, IL. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners.
June 14, 1924: A San Pedro, CA IWW hall was raided; a number of children were scalded when the hall was demolished.
May 25, 1925: Two company houses occupied by nonunion coal miners were blown up and destroyed by labor "racketeers" during a strike against the Glendale Gas and Coal Company in Wheeling, WV.
1926: Textile workers fought with police in Passaic, NJ.
Nov. 21,1927: Picketing miners were massacred in Columbine, CO.
Feb. 3, 1930: "Chicagorillas" -- labor racketeers -- shot and killed contractor William Healy, with whom the Chicago Marble Setters Union had been having difficulties.
Apr. 14, 1930: Over 100 farm workers were arrested for their unionizing activities in Imperial Valley, California. Eight were subsequently convicted of `criminal syndicalism.'
Oct. 10, 1933: 18,000 cotton workers went on strike in Pixley, CA. Four were killed before a pay-hike was finally won.
May 1934: Police stormed striking truck drivers in Minneapolis who were attempting to prevent truck movement in the market area.
Sept. 1 - 22, 1934: A strike in Woonsocket, RI, part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers.
Nov. 9, 1935: The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed to expand industrial unionism.
May 30, 1937: Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.
Oct. 24, 1940: The 40-hour workweek went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Dec. 28, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops.
1946: Workers in packinghouse nation-wide went on strike.
Apr. 1, 1946: A strike by 400,000 mine workers in the U.S. began.
Oct. 4, 1946: The U.S. Navy seized oil refineries in order to break a 20-state post-war strike.
June 20, 1947: The Taft-Hartley Labor Act, curbing strikes, was vetoed by President Truman. Congress overrode the veto.
Apr. 20, 1948: Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins.
Aug. 27, 1950: President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later.
Apr. 8, 1952: President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June.
Dec. 5, 1955: The two largest labor organizations in the U.S. merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million.
Apr. 5, 195?: Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face.
Apr. 1, 1963: The longest newspaper strike in U.S. history ended. The 9 major newspapers in New York City had ceased publication over 100 days before.
Jan. 5, 1970: Joseph A. Yablonski, unsuccessful reform candidate to unseat "Tough Tony" Boyle as President of the United Mine Workers, was murdered, along with his wife and daughter, in their Clarksville, Pennsylvania home by assassins acting on Boyle's orders. Boyle was later convicted of the killing. West Virginia miners went on strike the following day in protest.
Mar. 18, 1970: The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralyzed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later.
July 29, 1970: United Farm Workers forced California grape growers to sign an agreement after a five-year strike.
Aug. 3, 1981: Federal air traffic controllers began a nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, and were dismissed by President Reagan on 5 August.
Oct. 6, 1986: 1,700 female flight attendants won an 18-year lawsuit (which included $37 million in damages) against United Airlines, which had fired them for getting married.
Oct. 24, 1987: The 35-member executive council of the AFL-CIO decided unanimously to readmit the 1.6-million member Teamsters Union to its ranks. The scandal-ridden union had been expelled from the federation in 1957. President Jackie Presser was awaiting trial at the time, and the U.S. Justice Department was considering removal of the union's leadership because of possible links to organized crime.
1989: Miners in Virginia went on strike against Pittston Coal. While a month-long Soviet coal strike dominated U.S. news broadcasts, the year-long Pittston strike garnered almost no press coverage whatsoever.
2002: Baseball averts a threatened strike that some thought could have crippled baseball. Did the solution help? from ESPN.