Labor
The History Of Labor Day
Mark Lewis 08.30.07, 12:00 PM ET
Most of the world marks Labor Day on May 1 with parades and rallies.
Americans celebrate it in early September, by heading to the beach or
firing up the grill. Why the discrepancy? Here's a hint: The answer
would have been a great disappointment to Frederick Engels.
Engels, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, had high hopes for
May Day, which originated in the United States. When the socialist-
dominated organization known as the Second International jumped on
the American bandwagon and adopted May 1 as International Labor Day,
Engels confidently expected the proletariats of Europe and America to
merge into one mighty labor movement and sweep capitalism into the
dustbin of history.
Things didn't work out that way, of course, and the divergent Labor
Day celebrations are part of the story.
May Day's origins can be traced to Chicago, where the Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions, under its leader Samuel Gompers,
mounted a general strike on May 1, 1886, as part of its push for an
eight-hour work day. On May 4, during a related labor rally in
Haymarket Square, someone threw a bomb, which killed a policeman and
touched off a deadly mêlée. As a result, four radical labor leaders
were eventually hanged on dubious charges.
In 1888, Gompers's union reorganized itself as the American
Federation of Labor, and revived its push for the eight-hour day.
Gompers laid plans for a strike to begin on May 1, 1890--the fourth
anniversary of the walkout that had led to the Haymarket affair.
Meanwhile, in Paris, a group of labor leaders were meeting to
establish the Second International. To these Europeans, the executed
Chicago radicals were revered martyrs. In an act of solidarity, the
Second International set May 1, 1890, as a day of protest.
Engels was thrilled. "As I write these lines, the proletariat of
Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is organized
for the first time as one army," he wrote on the first May Day. "The
spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and
landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all
lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it
with his own eyes!"
The first May Day was deemed a success, so the Second International
adopted it as an annual event. And for a few years, it seemed as
though May 1 might be on the way to becoming a rallying point for
socialists in America, as it was elsewhere. The Panic of 1893 touched
off a national wave of bankruptcies that plunged the nation into a
deep depression--and depressions generally push workers toward
radical solutions. Things came to a boil with the Pullman Strike,
which erupted in Chicago in May 1894. The striking Pullman Palace Car
Co. workers quickly won the support of the American Railway Union,
led by Gompers's rival Eugene V. Debs. Railroad traffic in much of
the country was paralyzed.
President Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, was determined
to squash the strike. But he did not want to alienate the American
Federation of Labor, which was not yet involved in the Pullman
dispute. Moreover, 1894 was a midterm election year, and the
Democratic Party could ill afford to be seen as an enemy of labor.
Cleveland and the Democrats hit upon a possible solution: They would
proclaim a national Labor Day to honor the worker. But not on May 1--
that date was tainted by its association with socialists and
anarchists. Fortunately, an alternative was at hand.
Back in September 1882, certain unions had begun to celebrate a Labor
Day in New York City. By 1894, this event was an annual late-summer
tradition in New York and had been adopted by numerous states, but it
was not a national holiday. Nor was it associated with the radicals
who ran the Second International, and who liked to run riot on May Day.
On the contrary, the September date was closely associated with
Gompers, who was campaigning to have it declared a national holiday.
Gompers opposed the socialists and was guiding the AFL toward a
narrower and less-radical agenda. Gratefully, Cleveland seized upon
the relatively innocuous September holiday as a way to reward labor
without endorsing radicalism. On June 28, 1894, he signed an act of
Congress establishing Labor Day as a federal holiday on the first
Monday of September. (He made a point of sending the signing pen to
Gompers as a souvenir.) Less than a week later, the president sent
federal troops to Chicago. Gompers refused to support the strike,
which soon collapsed.
With his union in ruins, Debs went into politics, but his Socialist
Party ultimately failed to catch on as America's party of the left.
Organized labor did not regain its momentum until the 1930s--and by
that point, Gompers's September holiday had been institutionalized as
America's Labor Day. May Day, meanwhile, had become the occasion for
big annual parades in Moscow's Red Square, which did not improve that
holiday's reputation in the United States.
May Day today is well established in most of the world as
International Labor Day. May 1 also remains a traditional date on
which leftists and anarchists of various stripes take to the streets
to demonstrate their scorn for capitalism. But America, which has
proved impervious to socialism, still celebrates Labor Day in
September--and not by marching. AFL officials in New York long ago
gave up holding their annual parade on Labor Day itself, because it
could not compete with the prospect of a three-day weekend. The
parade in recent years has been held on the following Saturday, and
even so has been sparsely attended. This year, it has been canceled
altogether.
Only 12% of the U.S. workforce belongs to a union these days, down
from a peak of 33.2% in 1955. But whether they belong to a union or
not, most Americans still have to work, so they appreciate a day off--
and they prefer to spend it by relaxing, rather than storming the
barricades.
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