How Labor Day Began

While most of us in 2019 expect to work 8 hours a day five days a week,  that was not the case in the late 1800's.  

"At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages.

People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.


As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions, which had first appeared in the late 18th century, grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay."  https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day-1

On September 5th 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, forming the first Labor Day parade in the history of the United States. (See newspaper article below)

"Today's demonstration is officially declared  as intended to inspire the working people with a friendly feeling for one another, so that by concert of action they may at some future day be dis-enthralled from the yoke of capital." Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, New York)05 Sep 1882, 

"The idea of a “workingmen’s holiday,” celebrated on the first Monday in September, caught on in other industrial centers across the country, and many states passed legislation recognizing it. " https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day-1

"On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The Haymarket Riot was viewed a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for such rights as the eight-hour workday. At the same time, the men convicted in connection with the riot were viewed by many in the labor movement as martyrs." https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/haymarket-riot

Labor Day would not become an official holiday until a watershed moment in American labor history brought workers’ rights squarely into the public’s view.

That watershed moment refers to the Pullman car strikes in May of 1894, when in the wake of the depression wages were slashed.  Union representatives called for a complete boycott of all Pullman cars. Switchmen refused to attach Pullman cars to trains.  More than 100,000 workers on 29 railroads were involved in the strike. To break the Pullman strike, the federal government sent in US Marshalls and Army troops, spurring riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers.

"More than a century later, the true founder of Labor Day has yet to be identified. Many credit Peter J. McGuire, cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, while others have suggested that Matthew Maguire, a secretary of the Central Labor Union, first proposed the holiday.  "  https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day-1  

No matter who proposed the idea, in the wake of the Pullman strike, Congress quickly passed an act making Labor Day a legal holiday, and on June 28 1894, President Grover signed it into law. 

For many of us, this holiday now signifies the end of summer, just another holiday, in addition to breaks, holidays, vacations, and sanitary working conditions that are more than most workers could even dream of in the 1880s.  

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Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, New York)05 Sep 1882

The Topeka Daily Press

TOPEKA, KANSAS

Monday, September 3, 1894