In the United States, we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. School started after Labor Day, so I grew up thinking that date was a holdover from our idyllic agrarian past. The farm kids would be done with spring and summer planting, so they’d be rewarded for their work by spending a few months in their one-room schoolhouses before going back to the fields to harvest pumpkins in time for Halloween. Not wearing white after Labor Day was a sign of how you had to get back to work. Note: I attended California public schools.
This reasoning was, of course, complete garbage. The first national Labor Day holiday was proposed in 1882 by either Matthew Maguire, the secretary of the Central Labor Union of New York, or Peter McGuire, of the American Federation of Labor. Maguire was a machinist, and McGuire was a carpenter. Their reasoning had nothing to do with farming, and everything to do with a movement that demanded and fought for the things we take for granted today, like weekends.
The rise of the Industrial Revolution meant people didn’t have to spend all their time making their own soap and nails and cloth. The price of commonplace tools and materials could be within reach of everyday people, who would have free time to ride around on their penny-farthing bicycles and groom their lustrous facial hair. It also meant that the poor schlubs churning out stuff could become easily replaceable. It’s one thing to be a blacksmith who has had a long apprenticeship in learning everything there is to know about forges, smelters, and hammers in order to make the finest nails around. It’s quite another to be an assembly line drone who only has to pull a lever every five seconds to make molten steel pour into the nail-shaped mold in front of him. The former takes skill, time, and craft; the later requires a functional hand, the ability to follow instructions, and the reflexes to avoid spatters of white-hot metal.
In considering societal changes, it’s important to think about the Law of Unintended Consequences, especially when one is busy disrupting a long-held way of life. For instance, before the end of the 18th Century, cotton had to be cleaned by hand, usually by human beings who had been stolen from Africa and put to work in the fields. Along comes Eli Whitney with his cotton gin, and it’s suddenly a whole lot faster and easier to clean cotton. Hey, you know what we should do to become rich? Plant more cotton! How are we going to do that? Why, we’re going to steal even more human beings from Africa and put them to work in our fields! DISTRUPTION, BRO.
We can see plenty of Unintended Consequences with the rise of Industrial America. More people left the back-breaking farming life to go to the cities and make big bucks in factories, blissfully of unaware of how those factories were trying to kill them at every turn. Whether it was from industrial accidents or the debilitating grind of a twelve-hour work day, the American Dream was a nightmare if you worked in a factory. It was awesome if you owned a factory, as you and your fellow captains of industry would give each other the 19th-Century equivalent of the fist bump as your workers were hurt or killed by the score. After all, with all the farm kids, European immigrants, and freed slaves undercutting each other for the paltry wages you offered (in 1887, this was around a dollar a day for ten hours of work a day, six days a week), there would always be a steady stream of people willing to die for your bottom line.
By the 1870s, some people had had enough and started to organize. Labor and trade unions began to organize and demand better pay, better working conditions, and a better life (ie one that did not involve working ten hours a day, six days a week). Strikes and marches became commonplace, as did strike-breakers and march-crushers.
In Canada, one of those marches became the inspiration for North America’s Labor Day. In December of 1872, the Toronto Trades Association called for its twenty-seven member unions to parade in support of the Toronto Typographical Union, who had been on strike for a fifty-eight-hour work week (down from their seventy-two hour week). While the parade was considered a success, everyone realized that marching through Toronto in the middle of winter was a whole lot of not fun. The next parade was proposed for September and became an annual tradition, one witnessed by Peter McGuire, who followed the American tradition of taking good ideas from Canada.
Then came the Haymarket Affair. On May 4, 1886 in Chicago, a peaceful demonstration for an eight-hour day was shattered by a dynamite bomb that killed seven police and four civilians and injured more than a hundred. The subsequent trial was considered a great miscarriage of justice, and eight of the seven men convicted (though none of them were accused of actually throwing the bomb) were sentenced to death. Of that seven, two had their sentences commuted, one committed suicide by chewing on a blasting cap smuggled to his cell, and four were hung. Before he dropped, August Spies, the lead defendant, shouted, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."
Haymarket galvanized not only the American labor movement, but the international movement. May 1, 1886 became the date of labor protests around the world as people commemorated the Haymarket Affair. By 1891, May 1 had become International Workers Day. People paraded and brought up their grievances, which the captains of industry met with disdain. Also, with guns and clubs.
Which brings us to why we don’t celebrate Labor Day on May 1. On May 11, 1894, the workers of the Pullman Company went on a wildcat strike to protest a reduction in wages. The Pullman Company owned Pullman, Illinois, a prototypical company town. The Pullman Company owned the houses, the stores, and, effectively, the people, since everyone who lived in Pullman was a Pullman employee or a dependent. When the rents went up, the wages didn’t, and the workers had had enough. They started blocking trains coming out of the factories. When that didn’t work, the American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman products, which would be like having every trucker today refuse to haul a cargo container built by Maersk. At the peak of the boycott, a quarter of a million railway workers had walked off the job, jamming up most rail lines west of Detroit. President Grover Cleveland ordered the Army to get them to knock it off, and the ensuing violence killed thirty people and crushed the ARU. Oh, and the wages still didn’t go up.
However, six days after the strike ended, Congress, rather than pass legislation that would have ended company towns, the horrible working conditions of the time, or anything useful, made Labor Day a federal holiday. Of course, they made sure it happened in September rather than May 1. Worker solidarity was fine for those dirty European socialists, but not for Americans. No, sir. Cigars were passed all around, because the federal government had solved The Labor Problem. Forever.
As Labor Day approaches and you put your white clothes into storage, take a look at the people marching in the streets. They will be demanding living wages, health insurance, and sane working conditions. They will likely be met, not by Pinkerton detectives and bayonets, but with a marked indifference. Union membership and power is at their lowest, and most employees are at the mercy of their employers. If you mention anything like workers’ rights, you’re likely to be labeled a communist, which, is to say, un-American.
This reasoning, of course, is pure garbage. In the words of the great American labor theorist Richard Scarry, everyone is a worker. Whether you write press releases or pack boxes for Amazon, you’re a worker. Even if we get to the Star Trek future, someone’s going to have to maintain the replicators (not to mention the Enterprise’s toilets. Pity the poor Starfleet Plumber’s Mate, Third Class). Hell, even if we all manage to upload ourselves into a Banksian Culture, that’s going to require code, and do you really want some AI in charge of your brain? Of course not. Do you have any idea how much they cost?
When you get ready for your Labor Day cookout, take some time to think of the people who fought, bled, and died so you could. Some of them are out there still. Some of you might be there yourselves. I hope I will, too, but I’m on deadline.
Adam Rakunas is the author of Windswept, the science fiction screwball noir you didn't know you needed, now out from Angry Robot Books. He wears white whenever he damn well pleases.