Labor Day Insights

Labor Day is special.

It’s the end of summer, for all practical purposes.

It’s the last long week before Thanksgiving.

It’s time at the lake — picnicking and boating.

It’s special sales at the mall.

It’s All the Above.

But it’s much, much more.

The First Monday in September became an official national holiday when U. S. President Grover Cleveland pressed Congress to rush through a bill in June 1894, establishing Labor Day.

The first official Labor Day parades marched on September 3 of that year.

Behind the pleasant, family-style last lazy day of summer lurks a dark blot in U. S. history. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, working conditions in the factories soon became abominable:  
• Workers put in twelve hours a day in the factories, often seven days a week, with no established minimum wage.  

• With no child labor laws, children as young as five and six years old toiled in the sweat shops.

• Corporations provided slum-type housing for employees and deducted rent from the meagre paychecks.

Desperate, despicable conditions continued in the early decades of the twentieth century causing Carl Sandburg to give a poet’s eye report on the lives of many in Chicago.  In his poem, “Jack,” the title character “was a swarthy, swaggering son of a gun” who “worked thirty years on the railroad ten hours a day” and then died in the poorhouse.

Sandburg describes the “Ice Handler” who broke the noses of two scabs who loosened the nuts on the wheels of six ice wagons, causing the wheels to come off and the ice to melt before it could be delivered.

In “They Will Say” the poet says the worst thing people will ever say about Chicago is that they 

“took little children away from the sun and the dew” and “put them between walls” to “die empty-hearted” for little pay.  

“Mill Doors” tells much the same story.  He says good-by to the young as he says, “You never come back.” They go in “hopeless open doors .  .  . for—how many cents a day?”

His “Muckers” shows twenty men who watch workmen in the muck whose boots slosh in “suckholes” as they dig to prepare to install new gas mains.  Ten of the twenty onlookers say, “It’s a hell of a job.” The other ten say they wish they had the job.

The title character, “Anna Imroth,” was a young factory girl working upstairs with others like her when a fire broke out.  All her work companions jumped to safety, but Anna died.  Sandburg quotes  the oft-heard pious but unthinking statement, “It is the hand of God.” But then he adds “.  .  . and the lack of fire escapes.”

To combat intolerable conditions such as Sandburg described, workers formed unions and began making demands of the companies.  When those fortunate enough to have existing jobs struck for higher pay and better working conditions, corporation officials turned deaf ears, and violence often erupted. Both sides initiated violence.  

When Pullman workers went on strike in May 1894, the larger, broader American Railroad Union called for a supporting boycott. One hundred and fifty thousand railway workers in twenty-seven  states joined the strike, refusing to operate Pullman rail cars.  This stoppage prompted President Cleveland to call for the holiday as a token appeasement of the strikers.  

Six days after the first Labor Day, however, with passenger service and mail train service virtually at a standstill, railway leaders pressured Cleveland to take action.  In response, he invoked the Sherman Antitrust Act,  declaring the stoppage a federal crime. He sent in twelve thousand federal troops to break the strike.  Fighting and riots went on for days. Strikers overturned and burned railcars. Troops responded with violence, killing as many as thirty workers before the strikes ended and train service was restored. 

In my comparatively luxurious living, I may tend to sniff at Sandburg’s descriptions, considering them exaggerations or, at least, remnants of the unpleasant past.  I may tend to condemn what I consider excesses of union protests and think unions no longer useful or necessary. But before I write off unions, I need to remember how their efforts brought shorter hours and improved pay, paving the way for greater improvements with Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and other laws that make life better for many additional citizens.

When I read or re-read a little history, this day off at summer’s end looks a bit different.

Hearing from Lots of Friends

More than one-hundred-sixty friends and family members sent me birthday well wishes.

You might say I asked them to do this, and I suppose you would be right:

I put my picture up on Facebook and announced it was my birthday.  Otherwise, I could have counted the number of birthday greetings on my fingers and toes (without actually going to my toes).  And that was a wonderful number in itself.

But back to Facebook.  About half those responses were “Likes.” It was fun to read through the list of those who checked the “Like” icon. Clicking “Like” — you should pardon the expression — might be likened to driving by and honking or waving but not stopping to say “Hello.” With this gesture, the “Likes” told me they saw my — shall I say — likeness and let me know they know I’m still alive after eighty-two years.

Beyond the “Likes,” an additional eighty or so took the trouble to say a few words or write a sentence.  

A few wrote paragraphs.  

Some put up art work with candles and cakes and posters and balloons.  

One of my most outrageously creative former Anderson University students sent a wild video-to-end-all-videos, with explosions, fires, cakes, and an echo-chamber voice calling my name and wishing me “Happy Birthday.”

The list of “Likers” and “Writers” included nephews and nieces, great nieces, a fellow minister or two, colleagues from journalism graduate school, fellow members of community volunteer boards, a neighbor, fellow church members, my barber, fellow emeritus professors, members of Lifelong Learning classes I’ve taught at Anderson University, just plain friends, and a whole raft of former students at AU.

International greetings came from a father in Germany and his son in an internship in China.  The son lived with a family next door to us a year or so back as an exchange student.

Stateside, I heard from Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Maryland, Colorado, Iowa, and Mississippi.

It’s hard to grasp that I heard from one hundred sixty-plus people on my birthday, even though these responses came after I posted my mug shot.  Most of those folks, I count as personal friends.  Not all intimate friends, but friends all the same.  A few on the list, I hardly remember.  After all, I turned eighty-two the day I put up my picture. :0)

I consider a post from Ivan Liechty, one of my former students from Anderson College (now Anderson University), especially significant for any day of the year.  Ivan gave me permission to quote his post which follows:

“Happy Birthday! Thank you for your mentorship when I was at AC; even though I took a turn in the wrong direction for a little while, I did come back to a better life and am so thankful for everything. 

“By the way, Inherit the Wind [a play I recommended that he read] is still one of my favorite books and movies (the Spencer Tracy version). I commonly tell people that nobody is all good and nobody is all bad and that as soon as our statues get a crack on them we are too quick to want to tear the entire thing down (paraphrasing). That book has taught me to always look at the motivation behind someone's actions and even if I disagree, frustrated or angered, as long as their actions are not malicious in intent then everything can be worked out and forgiven... At the same time I hope that my misgivings and misunderstandings are never caused by malicious intent on my part.”

Inherit the Wind is a drama based on the so-called Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.  A high school biology teacher, John Scopes, was on trial for teaching evolution, which was against the law in Tennessee. The trial attracted international attention in part because two famous lawyers headed the legal teams: Clarence Darrow, for the defense, and a former secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution.

This is a dramatization, written several decades after the trial, and not a transcript of the proceedings. But in the courtroom scene, Henry Drummond, the character representing Clarence Darrow, says he is trying to establish that everyone — including the judge — has the right to think.  The judge says the right to think is not on trial.  Drummond-Darrow insists it is “very much on trial” and “fearfully in danger” in what is happening as witnesses are interrogated by the prosecution.

The playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, may have been looking beyond 1925 when they put those lines in about the right to think being on trial.  Several states in the Deep South, including Tennessee where the Monkey Trial took place, keep on passing anti-evolution laws.

My point in having students read this play and other provocative material was to try to get them to think new thoughts.  I am haunted by the memory of a request from a young man who came to my office many years ago: “Mr. Webb, can you tell me some books it will be safe for me to read?”

I don’t know what I said in response to that request.  I probably sputtered and stuttered and stammered.  I had never been asked that before and have never been asked it since. 

As I hear from my students — on my birthday and other days — my hope continues to be renewed that I succeeded at times in my efforts to get them to think along lines that may not always be safe.