For most of us, Labor Day simply means the three-day weekend that officially ends summer, when we say goodbye to the barbecue and bikini and prepare to dig in for another winter. However enjoyable this closing salute to the season may be, it has little to do with the holiday established more than a century ago.
Labor Day actually originated as a byproduct of the American Labor movement. During the early 19th century, workers were at the mercy of management, suffering terrible conditions in the decades before the eight-hour workday, worker’s compensation, child labor laws, health insurance and OSHA. While large corporations and wealthy industrialists hated and feared labor unions, and many groups still oppose them, these organizations can be credited with the favorable conditions American workers enjoy today.
A Labor Day parade in downtown Denver, circa 1910.
The plan to dedicate an entire day to the workingman took root in 1882 at a meeting of the New York Central Labor Union. Two different men, both with the same last name, have been credited with its creation.
The first, Peter J. McGuire, a dynamic leader in the Knights of Labor, was general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor. A persuasive personality, McGuire was the 10th son of an Irish-American family, who began working as a carpenter at age 11. According to some sources, he suggested a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
Other research implies that Matthew Maguire, a machinist and later secretary of Local 344 of the International Association, first proposed the holiday. At the time Maguire served as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.
Labor leaders took to the idea, envisioning a festive day with a parade through the streets of New York City. They chose the first Monday in September, when the weather would generally cooperate. The first Labor Day celebration, held Sept. 5, 1882, saw 20,000 workers led by a brass band marching around Union Square and carrying banners that read “Labor Creates All Wealth,” and “Eight Hours For Work, Eight Hours For Rest, Eight Hours For Recreation.” Much to the annoyance of employers who had forbidden workers to leave their jobs, the event was so successful that the Knights of Labor passed a resolution making Labor Day an annual celebration.
The first government recognition of Labor Day came through municipal ordinances in New York in 1885 and 1886. Oregon passed the first state law on Feb. 21, 1887, followed that same year by four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. By 1894, a total of 28 states had adopted the holiday. On June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday. Since it was an election year, President Grover Cleveland, a longtime foe of labor unions, reluctantly signed the bill. (He lost the election anyway.)
Colorado, the first state after Oregon to acknowledge Labor Day as a state holiday, became a leader in labor developments. In 1887, the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “The state has more workmen in labor organizations, in proportion to its population, than any other state in the union.”
The coming of the railroads to Colorado around 1870 quadrupled the state’s population, and more people meant more labor organization. Many of these newcomers were immigrants, brought to the country to assure management a steady stream of cheap, disposable workers. Colorado’s boom/bust cycle produced periods of widespread unemployment in the 1870s and 1890s, with accompanying labor unrest in the coalfields and gold and silver mines. In the 1890s, the Populist Party spearheaded reform legislation that gave women the vote and initiated child labor laws.
Colorado’s boom/bust cycle produced periods of widespread unemployment in the 1870s and 1890s, with accompanying labor unrest in the coalfields and gold and silver mines.
In the 1890s, the Populist Party spearheaded reform legislation that gave women the vote and initiated child labor laws, but for the miners, change came too slowly. Work in the mines was tedious and often deadly, with frequent cave-ins, explosions and other accidents. The man who lost an eye or a limb (or even his life) in the course of a day’s work received no compensation.
By the early 1900s, the state was reeling from bitter strikes in hard rock mines of Cripple Creek, Victor, Telluride and Cañon City, and constant upheavals in the northern and southern coalfields. Unions were dealt a severe blow after the Cripple Creek Strike of 1903-04, when Gov. James Peabody tossed hundreds of workers out of the state.
The crisis came in 1914 with the Ludlow Massacre, when the state militia (composed of company employees and hired mercenaries) fired on a tent colony of striking coal miners in southern Colorado. More than 100 people died in the spring of 1914, sparking a national outrage that would eventually lead to acceptance of the unions and improved working conditions. In 1927 Colorado coal miners struck again, led by organizers from the International Workers of the World. This time they were more successful, gaining a dollar a day increase when wages in other U.S. coalfields were dropping.
Between 1934 and 1944, millions of Americans began to organize under the national Labor Relations Act and other New Deal Legislation. The 1950s saw a merger of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization as labor unisons reached their zenith of power. Today only 13 percent of American workers belonged to labor unions, down from a 1950s high of nearly 50 percent. During the past 20 years, management and labor have been inclined to explore alternative methods of resolving differences, with varying degrees of success. Current economic woes, however, have produced a less secure workforce that may some day look again to labor unions for support and solutions.
