The men behind Labor Day and how the first Monday in September became a national holiday
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IDAHO FALLS – Labor Day weekend typically marks the unofficial end of summer.
School is back in session, soaring summer temperatures begin to gradually cool down and many use the three-day weekend to bookend their summer vacation with a final hurrah to tide them over until Halloween.
Labor Day falls on the first Monday of September every year and 2022 marks 128 years since it became a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894. Most people have celebrated it ever since without giving it a second thought.
Here’s the story of how it became a federal holiday and why we celebrate it.
How Labor day began and who came up with it
Today, the average person works eight hours a day, five days a week. Most companies have a minimum age and wage requirement and there are employee benefits, like sick days, paid time off and worker’s compensation. All of these things came about with the creation of Labor Day.
At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, History.com reports the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks to squeeze out a basic living.
“Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages,” the website says.
Meager wages and unsafe working conditions led to the organization of labor unions and strikes protesting poor working conditions, many of which became violent. Several people and policemen were killed during a riot on Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886. Someone reportedly threw a bomb at police and multiple people were killed.
It isn’t entirely clear who came up with the idea for Labor Day, but there are three names that are often associated with it — Peter McGuire, Matthew Maguire and Eugene Debbs.
McGuire grew up in New York City and was the son of Irish immigrants, according to the American Federation of Labor. He helped form the Socialist Democratic party in 1874 and eight years later, on September 5, 1882, led a group of 10,000 workers in a New York City parade from City Hall to Union Square.
The purpose of it was to honor the efforts of American workers. Workers and their families gathered in Reservoir Park immediately following for a picnic, concert and speeches, America’s Library reports.
“There was no particular significance to the date, and McGuire said that it was chosen because it fell roughly halfway between the Fourth of July holiday and Thanksgiving,” Brittanica.com says.
Matthew Maguire, a machinist known for his socialist views and one of the organizers of the Central Labor Union in New York, led similar strikes throughout the 1870s. He apparently sent out the invitations for the parade McGuire organized in New York City.
His grandson, Matthew Feeney, tells Jerseyhistory.org Maguire and his wife “rode in the first carriage at the head of the parade. The Maguires shared the carriage with Henry Ward Beecher, the famous social reformer, abolitionist preacher and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the anti-slavery book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The parade garnered widespread support. As the Department of Labor reports, Oregon became the first state to adopt a holiday for the American worker in 1887. Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey followed soon after, establishing the first Monday in September as an annual holiday.
Over the next 12 years, 23 more states signed on to the idea. Ultimately, it was the efforts of another radical revolutionary, Eugene V. Debs, that was directly responsible for the creation of federal labor laws protecting workers and getting a bill establishing a national holiday passed by U.S. Congress.
Debs organized the Pullman strike in Chicago on May 11, 1894. Wage cuts and the firing of union representatives from the Pullman Palace Railway company prompted the strike. It called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, History.com reports.
The protest crippled railroad traffic nationwide and the federal government sent military troops to Chicago in response. A string of riots ensued that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers.
“The strike brought the economy to a standstill and spurred President Cleveland to make Labor Day a national holiday,” according to an article from PBS.org.
Regardless of one’s views on the turbulent political history behind Labor day, there’s no doubt that its creation has forever changed the working conditions for millions of Americans. It remains, as the Department of Labor says, an annual day to recognize “the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.”
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