Why We Celebrate Labor Day

“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth” quote of author Pearl S. Buck

Can you imagine sending your five year old to work a 12 hour shift? Yet, in 1886, thousands of parents in Chicago didn’t have a choice. During the Second Industrial Revolution, what is called the Gilded Age, a man made about $1.50 a day. A child made 20 to 30 cents. Children were sent to factories because machines were built so small hands could reach where adult hands couldn’t. There were no child labor laws to stop it. How far we’ve come and yet do we really understand how all the changes happened, and all the benefits we received?

Because of these unfair work practices Chicagoans finally said, “Enough.” In 1886 they united to demand a simple thing, an eight hour workday. That protest led to two strikes:

First: The Haymarket Affair. On May 4, 1886, a bomb went off during a labor rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago. This followed days of strikes demanding an eight-hour workday. The event turned bloody and became tied to anarchists and socialists.

Second: The Pullman Palace Car Company strike in May, 1894. Federal troops broke up the Pullman strike with deadly results.

When President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into Law on June 28th, 1894, it was right after the Pullman Strike in Chicago. At this time the labor movement was furious with him. So six days after the strike he rushed to proclaim Labor Day as a federal holiday. His intention was to say he appreciated laborers, but he didn’t attach any new laws to it! No eight hour day law, nor a child labor law. These didn’t come about until 20-30 years later. Therefore, in 1894 the federal holiday was “We won’t fix the twelve hour day or help the kids in the factories, but we will give you a day off to celebrate work.”

President Cleveland didn’t invent the first Monday in September. That date was picked back in 1882, when New York was preparing for the first Labor Day parade. After the Haymarket affair in 1886 and Pullman strike in 1894, the government did not want a worker’s holiday on May 1st, which had become associated with labor protests and radicalism around the world. They needed a date that was safely distant between July 4th and Thanksgiving.

Because of the summer migrations many aspects of the city were touched. In the 1970s I had a job as a property manager in Chicago. As I would type out my leases, I noticed that most of the leases started on May 1st and ended on August 31st. I learned that was an old tradition going back to the 1800s. May 1st was known as moving day when farm families came to the city each spring looking for summer work. And August 31st is when they would leave.

It’s interesting how we take our holidays for granted. We don’t really realize what the struggles were to have them come about. People suffered for this day, and that part is never thought of. The truth for almost every holiday is we get the day off because someone else didn’t get a day off for years.

Now Labor Day is associated with parades, sports tournaments, barbecues, and sales. It’s the last weekend of summer. I can almost smell the fall coming on and the seasons changing. Kinda makes me sad. I love summer. It’s probably why I moved to Puerto Rico.