The creation of Labor Day in 1894 grew out of an unprecedented period of worker unrest that began in the 1870s and 1880s and came to a head during the catastrophic depression of the 1890s. Today the holiday has become—for most of us—a welcome three-day weekend offering time to celebrate the waning days of summer. But the origins of Labor Day were far from bucolic.
From the Civil War to the New Deal, the country went through a serious depression almost every decade, each lasting several years. The Panic of 1873 left about 3 million people out of work from a population of less than 40 million. By 1877, wages for many workers had fallen by more than half. Those of railroad brakemen dropped from $70 a month to $30. When the railroad owners announced another wage cut (while still paying a dividend to stockholders), the brakemen walked out. One hundred thousand railroad workers went on strike—which spread to 500,000 workers in all industries. States called out their militias. Some militias opened fire on workers, but others refused to do so, and one or two even joined the protesters. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops.
While workers gained little from the 1877 confrontations, they continued to strike and organize throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and many labor groups began to press for an eight-hour workday. Some strike scenes became battlefields as workers, managers, plant guards and troops faced off. At the Homestead Steel strike in Pittsburgh in 1892, a gunbattle broke out between strikers and armed fighters hired by the mill manager, leaving 11 dead and dozens wounded. And in the summer of 1894, during the Pullman Strike that stopped railroad traffic across most of the country, National Guard troops in Chicago opened fire on rioting workers, killing about 25 people and wounding more than 50.
In June 1894, while Pullman workers were still striking, Congress voted unanimously to establish Labor Day, setting aside the first Monday in September to mark its observance. It could be said that workers fought for an eight-hour day and a living wage, but what Congress gave them instead was a holiday named in their honor.
Today, workers of every trade and profession face many of the same pressures, along with new ones unique to our century. And the long and uncertain hours and low wages of the nation’s service workers seem starkly reminiscent of an earlier time. But that’s probably not what will be on the minds of most Harvard residents. As the New York Times remarked in a 2010 editorial, Labor Day has now expanded well beyond the concerns of organized labor: “What was once a ‘workingman’s’ holiday is now a respite for nearly everyone with a Monday job.”
That may be true for the readership of the Times, as well as the Press. But it’s also a time to remember the millions of workers for whom it’s no holiday at all.
