Labor Day Established

United States 1882

Synopsis

Labor Day, a national holiday in the United States, takes place on the first Monday in September. The holiday honors the dignity of labor and celebrates the gains made by working people in their struggles for a better life. Although there have been controversies over the origins of the day, there is general agreement that it crystallized in the early 1880s and was embraced and celebrated by diverse forces in the labor movement. By the 1890s it had been recognized by a proliferating number of municipalities and states before being recognized by the federal government. Although it is a day of relaxation for many (as part of a "long weekend" that often allows for one final summer vacation), it has also been an annual "festival of rejoicing," according to Peter J. McGuire, a labor activist and founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), "to honor labor coming into its own." Labor Day was initiated by working people dedicated to uplifting their toiling brothers and sisters and "leading them to better conditions."

Timeline

• 1862: Though Great Britain depends on cotton from the American South, it is more dependent on grain from the North, and therefore refuses to recognize the Confederacy.
• 1867: Karl Marx publishes the first volume of Das Kapital.
• 1872: The title of Claude Monet's painting Impression: Sunrise gives a name to a new movement in art.
• 1878: Russo-Turkish War, begun in 1877, ends with the defeat of Turkey, which ceases to be an important power in Europe. The Treaty of San Stefano concluding the war is revised by the Congress of Berlin, which realigns the balance of power in southeastern Europe.
• 1882: Agitation against English rule spreads throughout Ireland, culminating with the assassination of chief secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and permanent undersecretary Thomas Burke in Dublin's Phoenix Park. The leader of the nationalist movement is Charles Stewart Parnell, but the use of assassination and terrorism—which Parnell himself has disavowed—makes clear the fact that he does not control all nationalist groups.
• 1882: British forces invade, and take control of, Egypt.
• 1882: Germany, Austria, and Italy form the Triple Alliance, which provides that if any of the three is attacked by France in the next five years, the others will come to its aid.
• 1882: John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust, first major industrial monopoly, is established.
• 1882: German bacteriologist Robert Koch isolates the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.
• 1884: Due to isolationist policies, Japan's government had prohibited emigration, but this year it finally lifts the ban and allows citizens to immigrate to Hawaii, where many—having escaped the country illegally—already work as temporary laborers. Thereafter, Japanese will increasingly replace Chinese as workers in the United States, where a treaty limits Chinese immigration.
• 1888: Serbian-born American electrical engineer Nikola Tesla develops a practical system for generating and transmitting alternating current (AC), which will ultimately—and after an extremely acrimonious battle—replace Thomas Edison's direct current (DC) in most homes and businesses.
• 1891: French troops open fire on workers during a 1 May demonstration at Fourmies, where employees of the Sans Pareille factory are striking for an eight-hour day. Nine people are killed—two of them children—and sixty more are injured.

Event and Its Context

In the early 1960s, when unions in the United States generally seemed powerful, conservative, and self-satisfied, a liberal academic cynically commented that Labor Day "has lost practically all its significance, being no more than a holiday for everyone: a day of non-labor." In fact, the meaning of the day has varied from one time and place to another. In the early years of the twenty-first century, it remains a day of massive parades and picnics sponsored by the labor movement of certain U.S. cities. Just as there may be differences on the contemporary relevance of this holiday, the origins of Labor Day constitute the subject of scholarly wrangles.

Disputed History

Peter J. McGuire of the Carpenters Union has long been credited as being "the father of Labor Day," but more recently claims for that title have been made for Matthew Maguire of the Machinists. It has also been argued that both were involved, as both were members of the same Socialist Labor Party club that had decided to bring the motion to the New York Central Labor Union. This effort resulted in the great Labor Day parade, rally, and picnic in New York City on 5 September 1882.

The controversies do not end there. Typographical Union leader A. C. Cameron introduced an 1884 resolution into the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (predecessor of the American Federation of Labor) calling for Labor Day to be made a national holiday. The Knights of Labor—a much larger organization at that time—passed a similar resolution in the same year, and the AFL's "ownership" was challenged by Terence V. Powderly, leader of the Knights, who argued that the idea was a product of his organization. Some scholars agree, although it has been suggested that the concept of Labor Day was advanced by Powderly's left-wing opponents clustered in the Knights' District Assembly 49, in the secret "Home Club" led by French-born socialist-anarchist Victor Drury (with whom Matthew Maguire was presumably associated).

To add to the confusion, other historians argue that the New York event was not the first Labor Day. The honor has been awarded to Providence, Rhode Island and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Three Early Celebrations

On Wednesday, 23 August 1882—in what has been called "a dress rehearsal for New York's monster parade"—about 10,000 people converged in Providence for a parade involving about a thousand members of various craft unions and the massed strength of the Knights of Labor headed by a 25-piece band. This was accompanied by a rally (speakers included outof-town guests Peter J. McGuire, Victor Drury, Robert Blissert of New York City's Central Labor Union, and prolabor journalist Louis F. Post). A picnic and baseball game took place after the parade.

A similar event had transpired two months earlier in Pittsburgh (on Saturday, 17 June 1882), under the auspices of Pittsburgh District Assembly 3 of the Knights of Labor, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and other trade unions. The Knights called it "a peaceable protest against the evils that exist against the many by and through the power of wealth possessed by the few." It is estimated that more than 100,000 people turned out for the parade, led by National Labor Tribune editor Thomas Armstrong, Andrew Burtt and Isaac Cline of the Glass Blowers Union, David R. Jones of the Mine-workers Union, John McLuckie who was a leader of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (and would soon be elected mayor of Homestead), Alexander C. Rankin local grandmaster of the Knights of Labor, and Thomas "Beeswax" Taylor who was famous for writing the anthem "Storm the Fort, Ye Knights of Labor."

The first Labor Day celebration in New York City, on Tuesday, 5 September 1882, however, had the greatest national impact. The size of the parade itself has been estimated from 10,000 to 30,000, with many more observing and joining in the picnic, the amusements in the park, the dancing and the fire-works that were also part of the labor festival. The multiethnic nature of the event (and of the working class) was reflected in the American, Irish, German, French flags being flown, as well as the prominent participation in the march of the all-black Wendell Phillips Labor Club. An estimated fifty labor figures on the reviewing stand at Union Square watched as workers carried banners proclaiming: "Labor Creates All Wealth," "We Must Crush Monopolies Lest They Crush Us," "A Fair Day's Pay for a Fair Day's Work," "Eight Hours of Work, Eight Hours of Rest, and Eight Hours for What We Will," and "Labor Will Be United."

Explaining the Origins of Labor Day

The German-American labor veteran and socialist Friedrich Sorge offered a general explanation that helps cut across much of the controversy. Sorge indicated that the origin of the holiday related to the need of German-speaking workers to compensate for the lack of holidays and Sunday observations with excursion to the countryside. At the end of the 1860s, the German trade associations and the First International transformed these outings into organized labor holidays by devoting part of the day to propagandizing for the labor press and organizations. Sorge also indicated that the English-speaking workers of the time were in the habit of staging large parades to support various causes, particularly the eight-hour movement: "In the 1880s both celebrations, the English speaking and the German speaking, were merged into one holiday during which the morning was devoted to the parade and the afternoon to entertainment."

In 1885 the New York Central Labor Union adopted a resolution that called for a special holiday that would stand as "a labor demonstration on the first Monday of each September," and invited "all central bodies of workers in the entire United States to join with us to carry out the present resolution in spirit and achievement."

An Official Holiday

By 1887 five states and many municipalities officially recognized Labor Day, and by 1894 the number had jumped to 23 states. In that year, Senator James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota's Populist Party and Amos J. Cummings, a prolabor Democrat from New York, introduced legislation to make the first Monday in September a legal holiday in Washington, D.C., in all U.S. territories, and for all federal employees. President Grover Cleveland—a probusiness Democrat who had just helped to crush the Pullman strike and was seeking to appear more attractive to working-class voters—signed the bill into law and made Labor Day a national holiday.

Key Players

Armstrong, Thomas A. (1840-1887): Armstrong was a major figure in the Pittsburgh labor movement, as a leader of the National Typographical Union, a founder of the National Labor Union, and member of the Knights of Labor. In 1874 he helped found the National Labor Tribune, serving as its editor until his death. In the wake of the 1877 rail strike he broke with the Republican Party and became a leading member of the Greenback Labor Party, running as its candidate for governor in 1882.

Blissert, Robert (1843-1899): Moving to the United States after participating in the London Tailor's Strike, Blissert, a socialist and Irish nationalist, became a prominent member of the International Workingmen's Association (First International) and the Knights of Labor. He was a founder and leader of the New York Central Labor Union.

Cameron, Andrew C. (1834-1890): Scottish-born son of a printer, in the United States Cameron played a central role in the National Typographical Union in Chicago. He was editor of the Workingmen's Advocate from 1860 to 1880 and then edited other trade journals.

Drury, Victor (1825-1918): A painter, writer, poet, and participant in the Paris uprising of 1848, Drury became a member of the First International in 1864. Coming to the United States in 1867, and influenced by a variety of socialist and anarchist thinkers, his political affiliations evolved from the Workingmen's Party and the Socialist Labor Party to the International Working Peoples Association. He also became influential in the Knights of Labor General Assembly 49, which in turn was dominated by the "Home Club," a secret radical faction of which Drury was a central member during the 1880s.

Maguire, Matthew (1850-1898): Maguire was a machinist and a leader of the Machinists and Blacksmith's International Union who lived at various times in New York, Brooklyn, and Patterson, New Jersey. He was active in the Knights of Labor and in the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). He was elected to the Patterson Board of Aldermen on the SLP ticket. In 1896 he was the SLP candidate for vice president of the United States.

McGuire, Peter J. (1852-1906): McGuire was an American-born worker whose initial involvement in socialist politics was as a member of the First International. McGuire left the SLP in the 1880s to become a founder and general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a founder of the AFL. He is often credited for being involved in the creation both of Labor Day (1882) and May Day (1886), although—as with Samuel Gompers—his socialist commitments faded with the passage of time.

Powderly, Terence V. (1849-1924): A member of the Machinists and Blacksmith's International Union, Powderly became the national grand master workman of the Knights of Labor in 1879. He developed a reputation as a labor moderate who preferred arbitration to confrontation between workers and employers and favored a variety of reforms and electoral remedies. Powderly was elected mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1878 as a candidate of the Greenback Labor Party. After losing his position in the Knights of Labor in 1893, he concentrated his efforts in the Republican Party and in 1897 was appointed U.S. Commissioner General of Immigration.

See also: Eight-hour Day Movement; Knights of Labor.

Bibliography

Books

Filler, Louis. A Dictionary of American Social Reform. New York: Philosophical Library, 1963.

Fink, Gary, ed. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Foner, Philip. History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 2. New York: International Publishers, 1955.

Kaufman, Stuart B., ed. The Samuel Gompers Papers,Volume 1: 1850-86. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Molloy, Scott. "Rhode Island Hosted America's First Labor Day Parade." In A History of Rhode Island Working People, edited by Paul Buhle, Scott Molloy, and Gail Sansbury. Providence, RI: Regine Printing Co., 1983.

Sorge, Friedrich A. Labor Movement in the United States.Edited by Philip S. Foner and Brewster Chamberlin. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.

Weir, Robert E. Beyond Labor's Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1996.

Periodicals

Erlich, Mark. "Peter J. McGuire's Trade Unionism:Socialism of a Trades Union Kind?" Labor History 24, no. 2 (spring 1983).

Grossman, Jonathan. "Who Was the Father of Labor Day?"Monthly Labor Review (September 1972).

Richards, Miles. "Thomas A. Armstrong, A Forgotten Advocate of Labor." Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 67 (October 1984).

Weir, Robert. "'Here's to the Men Who Lose!': The Hidden Career of Victor Drury." Labor History 36, no. 4 (fall 1995).

Other

Montgomery, David. "Labor Day and May Day." Humanities and Social Sciences Online, H-Net Labor History.September 6, 1995 [cited 16 July 2002]. <http://hnet.msu.edu>

—Paul Le Blanc