Happy Labor Day!

[Elisabethsew 50]

Here's an interesting history of Labor Day. Have a safe and enjoyable Holiday!

The first Monday in September of each year has been observed as Labor Day for more than 100 years. It is a day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers: an annual tribute paid to all workers for their contributions in making the country a better place in which to live and work.

Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor, said that, “Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. 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.”

Labor Day was born as a result of events that adversely affected workers in the 1890’s. In 1893, the Pullman Company, a railroad sleeping car manufacturer, laid off hundreds of its workers as a result of the decline in orders for railroad sleeping cars caused by a nationwide depression. Workers who remained, received pay cuts while their house rents to the company remained consistent; therefore, take-home paychecks were slashed. Workers then walked off the job and demanded higher pay and lower rents. The American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, joined the cause of the striking workers and this led to a nationwide boycott, by railroad workers, of trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, looting, and burning of railroad cars soon followed and mobs of non-union workers joined in.

The strike immediately drew national attention. President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and sent 12,000 troops to break it. Violence broke out and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals opened fire on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago.

The strike failed and was declared over on August 3, 1894. Debs was imprisoned, the ARU was disbanded, and all Pullman employees from then on had to sign a pledge that they would never again unionize.

The labor movement had been clamoring for a national Labor Day for some time before the Pullman strike. The year 1894 was an election year, and workers were holding protests against President Cleveland. So, President Cleveland made it a political priority to appease workers. A bill proposing the first Monday of September as Labor Day, a national holiday, was rushed through both houses of Congress and signed by President Cleveland six days after the Pullman strike was broken by troops. President Cleveland was not reelected.

Gompers, in 1898, referred to Labor Day as, “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed…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.”

[LapBandit 5]

Thanks Elisabeth. Happy labor day to you too!