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.