013: The Bloody (and Still Forgotten) Origins of Labor Day
Hey everyone,
This is the essay that started it all. Okay, not “it all”. Because what does that even mean? But trying to get the following essay published is what made me start getting disenchanted with the freelance publishing world. Don’t get me wrong—there’s a lot to hate about the way we treat freelancers and the work they produce. But when I couldn’t get this essay about the bloody origins of US Labor Day placed anywhere, that was when I started to realize the community of bias in “journalism.” Not journalism proper, like AP or BBC, but all the publications that exist somewhere in a gray area between personal blogs and unbiased sources of news.
(For the record, most things published on the internet exist in this gray area. Everything I’ve ever written that wasn’t absolute fiction exists in this gray area.)
So, really, this essay is the piece that got me started thinking about creating Collected Rejections. It would take me another six months to name it and get it going, but this (and a piece about the previously-unsung health benefits of selfies, which is now all the rage) were the ideas I wanted to start publishing here.
There is a ‘way the wind blows’ mentality at every level of publishing. For worse (there’s no ‘for better’ option), most publications stick to one or two storylines. Even if they’re not reporting on politics or natural disasters, there’s a groupthink to publishing. That’s why you get a decades’ worth of novels about teenage girls having to save their country alone, and no one reporting on sexual assault in Hollywood for decades. Often, everyone just publishes what everyone else is publishing. Right now, that looks like variations on Trump is a Piece of Shit, Black Lives Matter, and Everything Is Terrible. Through today, very few mainstream outlets have been willing to think critically, write, and publish about the hypocrisy of Labor Day.
I published this essay last year, in 2019. I’m going to publish it again this year, with a few minor changes, right here. Not just because I think it’s good, or because I’m overwhelmed with work right now (though those are both true). But because it’s fucking important. And I’m going to republish this essay every goddamn year until Labor Day is a proper National Holiday.
The Forgotten (and Bloody) Origins of Labor Day
Summer is bookended by two holidays in the States: Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Memorial Day is celebrated on the last Monday of May every year. It’s an important time to recognize the sacrifices of the people who have fought in our military. There are parades, speeches, barbecues, and about a million extra American flags that probably get thrown in the trash directly after. (I’m sure there’s a problem re: littering there, but I’m going to breeze right past it today.)
Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday of September. There are few parades (if any), no speeches to write home about, and only the usual amount of American flags. It is mostly a day to remember that school is starting again, to drive home from your long weekend away, and to shop major sales. Few people can muster up a decent knowledge of what Labor Day is actually about. So, here’s what Labor Day is about y’all:
The year was 1882. September 5, to be exact. It started in New York City, as a lot of great things do, with a one-day strike and a parade. 10,000 American workers marched from City Hall to a picnic in a park uptown. They came from all trades—cigar makers, dressmakers, shoemakers, printers, and dozens of other tradespeople. It was a world where children as young as five worked in factories and work days were 7 days a week and often 12 hours long with few breaks. That day, the strikers were asking for something radical: 8 hour work days, and the end of forced convict labor.
(Please notice: They weren’t asking for much. They weren’t asking to end child labor. They weren’t asking for days off yet. They barely asked for raises. They just wanted to work only eight hours.)
They were well-dressed.
They were peaceful.
They were more or less ignored.
After a few more years of this, NYC actually did pass an ordinance in 1887 marking the first Monday of September a holiday: Labor Day. Some cities across the US followed. Anyone who copied New York, basically. That year, the parades were huge, the bars full of people celebrating, and factories were closed.
But despite the power of the Labor lobby, which was maybe the strongest in the world at the time, the holiday didn’t get much more attention outside of a few cities. That is until 1894, when the Pullman train strikes began in Chicago.
Those were a bloody fucking mess. They were not well-dressed, nor peaceful. They definitely could not be ignored.
The full details are complicated but anyone who remembers their early American labor history (or read The Jungle), knows a little about how factories worked then. Laborers often lived in company apartments, ate their meals in a company cafeteria, shopped for clothes and toiletries at the company store. They also paid for these things. Their costs of living came directly out of their paychecks, before they ever saw it. Paychecks could be a negative amount.
Pullman lowered wages but didn’t lower rents in the company apartments. Tens of thousands of people retaliated by walking off the job. Pullman retaliated again by bringing in the authorities, who shot live bullets at them. 30 strikers were killed and 57 wounded. They mourned, then kept striking. So the national guard was brought in. So then strikers destroyed Pullman cars. You get the picture.
In the chaos, the Labor movement used what was happening in Chicago to pressure the federal government for better worker’s rights. President Cleveland made Labor Day an official holiday, but that’s about all he did—it was lip service, more or less, because it didn’t address what laborers were actually asking for: Safe working conditions. Fair wages. Six-day workweeks. Eight-hour workdays.
Those things came later (mostly). Each one of them had to be fought for. Meanwhile, people kept having picnics on the first Monday in September and repeating the line that the US Department of Labor has on their website now: Labor Day is a celebration “dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.”
Labor Day was a holiday started by the working class, for the working class, but the working class isn’t who is celebrating.
The people with days off today are people who work in white-collar jobs. Office workers get today off. Government workers get today off.
You know who doesn’t get the day off? The modern-day working class: Service industry employees.
They’re still picking up discarded clothes in the chaos of Labor Day sales.
They’re still running back and forth from the kitchen, serving food and drinks.
They’re still cleaning hotel rooms and stadiums and malls.
Basically, the working class created a holiday for themselves that today the upper class gets to celebrate and the working class still has to work on.
I’d love to say I’m not begrudging you your day off, but I think I am a little bit. For six years, I was one of the people standing behind a counter brightly repeating, “Happy Labor Day!” to the people who came in to buy coffee. They told me about their three-day weekend boating or doing whatever, and I thought about the three days I had spent on my feet, wishing I had the spare money to afford parking at the beach.
I don’t want to take the three day weekend away from people. I want to give it to everyone. I want Labor Day to be an official National Holiday, which means most businesses are closed—not just the offices.
But the labor lobby in the US is weak. And as with everything else, people have to vote with their dollar.
Here’s the rub: Every boss I’ve ever had has told me that they’d love to give us Labor Day off, but people want coffee! What are we supposed to do, not serve them? We’ll lose money! They’ll go to the coffee shops that are open! That’s how you lose customers for life!
There’s like… 18 things wrong with the logic in there, but I’ll focus on one thing: Yes, people want coffee. They want someone else to make them their coffee. I get it! I worked in coffee for six years and I also think coffee made in a shop is often better than the coffee I can expertly make at home with a lot of the same equipment. People want to buy coffee.
So the people with the day off and the money to spend are the ones who hold all the power here. (They never stopped holding all the power.) If they stopped going to coffee shops (and bars and restaurants and amusement parks and putt-putt and whatever else) owners would stop being open. Owners would realize that they lose money by paying staff who aren’t selling anything to anyone on Labor Day.
This is the very basis of capitalist economics, the basic tenant that our country runs on: Supply and demand. If there is no demand for something, business owners will reduce the supply. If customers (demand) do not shop on Labor Day, owners would close shops (supply) and take the day off, like white-collar employees. Service workers would get the day off. Maybe, just maybe, they could get it as a paid day off.
The working class would finally get the holiday that is supposed to celebrate the working class.
It’s been 137 years since the first parade in New York asking for better hours. We’ve been celebrating the achievements of the working class for all 137 years since… or so we say. Because we’re celebrating at bars, making the working class work. We’re celebrating at the mall, making the working class work.
Someone is celebrating the achievements of the working class, but it isn’t the working class.
It’s worth examining closely our biases against and assumptions about the racial and ethnic makeup of the US working class here. Maybe we don’t give them the day off because we implicitly assume working class people are also not White. Maybe we don’t give them the day off because we implicitly assume working class people are also immigrants. Labor Day has become a day only for White, affluent US citizens. Why? Because their grandparents worked hard so their kids and grandkids could have better lives? Now this generation gets to benefit from it? If you shop on Labor Day, at least consider this while you stand in line to pay.
I will stay home on Labor Day and make my own coffee. Maybe I will go on a hike. I will not spend one single fucking dollar that day because this is the only power I have. I will be one less person demanding service on Labor Day. I will be one less person exploiting the desperation of the working class so I can have a nice day off.
Look—I can’t make you not spend money on Labor Day. Or Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. But I think it’s worth noting that twenty years ago, most businesses weren’t open those days and now they are, because sales. Because people will shop. Because the almighty dollar.
But next year, consider not shopping on Labor Day. Consider not going to restaurants. Consider not spending money. And consider telling your friends and family.
The people who are working today are the people this holiday is supposedly celebrating. So if you’re out and about, spending money and creating the demand for those people to be there, at least celebrate them by tipping well.
Okay, that’s my rant about Labor Day. No wonder no one wanted to publish it alongside their round-ups of the biggest and best Labor Day sales, huh?
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Happy Labor Day!
xx,
Valorie
Image by Jonas Ogrefoln.