LABOR DAY

Labor Day originated in the organizing efforts of labor unions after the Civil War, and became a battleground in the struggle between pragmatic unionists, who accepted capitalism, and radical unionists, who opposed it. On 5 September 1882, New York's Central Labor Union (CLU), a socialist-leaning federation, sponsored a labor festival to coincide with the Knights of Labor's annual conference in New York City. Among the main organizers were machinist Mathew Maguire, tailor Robert Blissert, and carpenter Peter J. McGuire. Their goals included recruiting unaffiliated workers, legitimizing unions, and demonstrating to employers, politicians, and the public the importance and power of industrial labor.

The first Labor Day featured a procession of ten to twenty thousand union members, many wearing the uniforms of their trades, such as the leather aprons and work clothes of the machinists. Socialists sported red badges or ribbons to denote their politics. Some unions demonstrated their crafts; for example, cigar makers rolled cigars. Marchers carried banners expressing support for the eight-hour movement and labor candidates, opposing child labor, and proclaiming the power of unions. Knights of Labor officers, including national leader Terence Powderly, reviewed the parade. Afterward, workers heard oratory by union leaders and sympathetic journalists, picnicked with their families, drank German beer, watched fireworks, and danced to union bands.

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The CLU repeated the festival in 1883, and, in 1884, it decided to make the event an annual holiday, setting the date as the first Monday in September, which gave workers a rare two-day weekend (few had Saturdays off at that time). The Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Assemblies (predecessor of the American Federation of Labor) both endorsed the CLU's holiday in 1884, and more than 400 cities celebrated Labor Day by 1889. Despite the hostile climate toward organized labor, the holiday won rapid government approval. Oregon recognized Labor Day in 1887, and thirty other states had done so by the time Congress made it a federal holiday in 1894. By legalizing Labor Day, the government acknowledged the essential role of industrial labor (and the power of the labor vote), but the legislation did not force private employers to grant their workers a paid holiday. As the Chicago Daily Socialist noted in 1909, "All admit that when a man knocks off work on La bor Day his time is also knocked off the time sheet."

By the end of the century local and state politicians were actively courting the labor vote on Labor Day. Even national politicians put in appearances. In 1900, both Republican vice presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt and Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan reviewed Chicago's Labor Day parade and spoke at the picnic that followed.

The Meaning of Labor Day

From the start, Labor Day reflected the desires of both union leaders and the rank and file by combining ideology and recreation. The centerpiece was the parade of union workers. The massed workers visually demonstrated labor's strength and solidarity. So important did they consider the procession that many unions fined members for not marching. After the parade, labor leaders declaimed on union concerns. Finally, food, dancing, and recreational activities catered to workers' craving for entertainment.

The tensions between pragmatic and radical unions also shaped early Labor Day celebrations. Socialists asserted that legalization of the holiday had undermined its effectiveness as a demonstration of class solidarity, while pragmatic unionists downplayed class rhetoric in favor of patriotism. Unions affiliated with the pragmatic American Federation of Labor (AFL) dominated Labor Day exercises by the 1890s. Their celebrations proclaimed labor's partnership with capital and the Americanism of union members. They featured profuse displays of the American flag and banned both foreign and red flags. Some radical unions withdrew from AFL exercises to protest this message. Socialists in Chicago, for instance, held alternative exercises on the Sunday before Labor Day.

Changing Practices and Meaning

Whether pragmatists or socialists, union leaders fought to keep Labor Day focused on the concerns of organized labor, but they increasingly ran up against their members' preferences for recreation. Businesses fed these desires, offering holiday excursions, sporting events, and movies. Many unions responded by shifting the Labor Day balance more toward amusement, dispensing with oratory and even dropping the procession, replacing them with baseball games, bicycle races, boxing matches, and other games.

Because of its connection to organized labor, Labor Day waxed and waned with union fortunes in the twentieth century. During strikes and major organizing drives, unions rallied the troops for parades and celebrations. Unions and Labor Day declined in the reactionary 1920s but revived during the Great Depression. Under the organizing efforts of the left-leaning Committee on Industrial Organization (later Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO]) and abetted by the Wagner Act, which finally lent government support to unions, union membership soared, and Labor Day gained increased prominence. Celebrations in the war years showcased labor's Americanism and support for the war, but in the repressive Cold War climate, labor militancy and Labor Day declined again. The normalization of the five-day workweek had made the holiday a three-day weekend, and the very successes of organized labor allowed prosperous working-class families to take holiday trips rather than attend union festivities. The long decline of organized labor, set in motion by the industrial crises of the 1970s, sealed Labor Day's ultimate transformation into the unofficial end of summer vacation, marked by holiday trips and back-to-school sales.

In 2004, Labor Day was celebrated in all fifty states and Puerto Rico. It lacked the stature of other national holidays, however, largely because it was deeply entwined with organized labor, and Americans were historically ambivalent, when not downright hostile, toward unions. Nevertheless, Labor Day retained the power to rally union members. In 1982, unions in New York commemorated the holiday's centennial in the spirit of the original festival by protesting President Ronald Reagan's labor policies. And in the early twenty-first century, union strongholds in areas such as Buffalo, New York, revived Labor Day parades, but they faced an uphill battle in the antiunion climate of the time.

See also: Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Patriotism and Leisure, Thanksgiving

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dennis, Matthew. Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Grossman, Jonathan. "Who Is the Father of Labor Day?" Labor History 14 (Fall 1973): 612–623.

Kazin, Michael, and Steven J. Ross. "America's Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers' Celebration." Journal of American History 78 (March 1992): 1294–1323.

Litwicki, Ellen M. America's Public Holidays, 1865–1920. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.

Watts, Theodore F. The First Labor Day Parade, Tuesday, September 5, 1882: Media Mirrors to Labor's Icons. Silver Spring, Md.: Phoenix Rising, 1983.

Ellen M. Litwicki