Labor Day
Labor Day is an annual federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September, celebrating the contributions of workers across the United States. Its origins trace back to the late 19th century, when industrial workers faced long hours, low pay, and challenging working conditions, prompting efforts to organize for improved labor rights. The idea for Labor Day was proposed by Peter J. McGuire at a meeting of the New York Central Labor Union in 1882, with the first celebration occurring that same year in New York City. By 1894, Labor Day was federally recognized, originally intended to honor workers while also highlighting their struggles.
Throughout its history, Labor Day has been used as a platform for labor organizations to advocate for workers' rights and raise awareness of their issues. While its original focus on activism has lessened over time, the holiday remains a significant occasion for labor leaders to address contemporary labor concerns. Additionally, while many countries celebrate a similar labor holiday on May 1, Labor Day in the U.S. has established its own unique identity within the context of American labor history.
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Labor Day
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Industrial workers have played a major role in the emergence of the United States as a world power. Labor has contributed to the general prosperity and has buttressed the nation in times of hardship as well as prosperity. Labor Day, an annual celebration that takes place on the first Monday in September, is a national federal holiday. It is also observed in the Virgin Islands and other American territories and possessions including the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Unfortunately, employers and the government did not always acknowledge the great contributions of workers, nor did they always even recognize the difficulties they faced. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, most workers toiled long hours for low pay and under difficult conditions. They lacked any real strength with respect to their employers, and were almost totally without the organizational structures that could improve their bargaining position. Efforts to organize the nation's vast work force began to be more meaningful in the decades following the Civil War.
Many of the nation's workers joined the spreading labor union movement. Their struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, and shorter hours was long and arduous. Utilizing such weapons as spontaneous work stoppages, strikes, picketing, and boycotts, they called attention to the harsh conditions under which they lived and worked. Although the unions grew in number and strength, they had only limited success in redressing the grievances of their members.
According to a long-accepted version of events, it was at a meeting of an early labor organization in 1882 that Peter J. McGuire, the founder and general secretary of the new Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, first proposed the idea of setting aside a day to honor labor. McGuire, with other labor leaders, had been influential the previous year in establishing the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which was to be reorganized in 1886 as the American Federation of Labor, now part of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Associations [AFL-CIO]). The son of Irish immigrants, McGuire had himself known the extreme poverty that oppressed many laborers in the years following the Civil War. Forced to leave school and go to work at the age of eleven, he had held an assortment of low-paying jobs and, according to his later recollection, “was everything but a sword swallower. And sometimes I was so hungry, a sword (with mustard, of course) would have tasted fine.”
McGuire's youthful experiences gave him a deep respect for workers and made him determined to improve their condition. He believed that a day should be set aside to honor laborers and to bring their plight to public attention. At a meeting of the New York Central Labor Union on May 8, 1882, he made his idea known. McGuire suggested that the labor holiday be celebrated on the first Monday in September because, in his words, “it would come at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays.”
The union enthusiastically approved McGuire's idea, and on September 5, 1882, the first Labor Day observance took place in New York City. The celebration was on a Tuesday, but the change to Monday was made within two years. Although the 1882 observance was confined to New York City, the idea of setting aside a day to honor laborers quickly gained popularity. In 1884, when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions gave its endorsement to the idea of an annual Labor Day, the occasion was scheduled for the first Monday in September. On that day, parades of workers took place in cities throughout the northeast. Enthusiasm for the new holiday spread rapidly, and the idea was also endorsed by the Knights of Labor organization. By 1895 Labor Day events were taking place in localities across the nation.
On February 21, 1887, Oregon became the first state to recognize Labor Day as a legal holiday. The Oregon statute set the first Saturday in June for the labor observance, and this law remained in force until 1893, when the state's lawmakers moved the date of Labor Day to the first Monday in September. In the meantime other state legislatures also approved statutes establishing the first Monday in September as Labor Day: Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York did so in 1887, and by 1893 the lawmakers of more than 20 other states had legalized the holiday.
In 1893 a bill establishing Labor Day as a federal holiday was introduced in the United States Congress. Both houses gave it their unanimous approval in 1894. On June 28 of that year, President Grover Cleveland signed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday for federal employees and in the District of Columbia. All of the remaining states and Puerto Rico eventually legalized the day.
Having won legal recognition of Labor Day, workers in the 1890s and early 20th century used the holiday to dramatize their grievances. The large Labor Day parades, which took place in many cities across the nation, proved to be particularly effective. In 1898 Samuel Gompers, the pioneer who served for more than a quarter century as president of the American Federation of Labor, said of the holiday:
It is regarded as the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs might be discussed, placed upon a higher plane of thought and feeling; that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it; meet at their parks, groves and grounds, and by appropriate speech, counsel with, and pledge to, each other that the coming year shall witness greater effort than the preceding in the grand struggle to make mankind free, true and noble.
The emphasis on Labor Day as an opportunity for bringing workers' problems to public attention has diminished over time, along with the militant tone of some of the earlier observances. Labor organizations still take special note of the holiday, however, and labor leaders usually issue special Labor Day statements.
Many other nations have also set aside days to honor working men and women. However, in most countries it is the traditional May Day (May 1) that is marked as labor's holiday.
Bibliography
Eidlin, Barry. Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada. Cambridge UP, 2018.
Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American Labor Movement. Routledge, 2017.
Glass, Fred B. From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement. U of California P, 2016.
Greenberg, Brian. The Dawning of American Labor: The New Republic to the Industrial Age. Wiley Blackwell, 2018.
"History of Labor Day." United States Department of Labor, www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history. Accessed 21 June 2018.