The labor day that wasn't
LABOR DAY has its origins in the worker-management strife stemming from the industrialization of the country after the Civil War, but it has never had the hard edge associated with International Workers Day, or May Day, celebrated in the rest of the world. Yet May Day became a labor holiday because of the suppression of a protest in the United States.
In the 1880s, American workers were trying to get their employers to adopt an eight-hour workday. In Chicago, a union alliance called a general strike for May 1, 1886, which generated intense opposition from business people and their allies in city government. Protests continued throughout the week, climaxed on May 6 by a peaceful rally in Haymarket Square. But then 200 police officers marched in to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb, and seven officers died. Seven labor leaders were eventually convicted of "conspiracy to murder" on flimsy evidence, and four were executed. "There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today," the anarchist August Spies said before he was hanged.
Protests to save the condemned men galvanized the international labor movement, which coalesced around May 1 as a day of protest, remembrance, and solidarity. In the United States, however, state legislatures took up an idea proposed by labor leaders a few years earlier that the first Monday in September be designated Labor Day. In 1894, Congress made it a holiday in the District of Columbia and US territories. The September Labor Day, with its barbecues and ball games, has been an American tradition ever since.
Some harbor the suspicion that legislators acted so quickly to prevent American unions from looking to the Haymarket model as a reminder of the need for militancy and unity. That may be so, but the date of a holiday isn't going to affect great social movements unless other factors are at work.
Despite many successes since the Haymarket violence (including the adoption of the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour week), American labor unions haven't shown the cohesion and aggressiveness of their counterparts in Europe. Perhaps this spared the United States the class divisions that facilitated the rise of communism and fascism during the first half of the 20th century. It also denied American workers the benefits of the social-welfare state that became the norm in Western Europe after 1945.
Today there'll be a few labor parades but it's mostly a time for a visit to the beach and a traffic jam after a long weekend. Perhaps a thought could be spared for the Haymarket protesters and their fallen leaders, who braved the wrath of their city leaders and employers to make life better for themselves and the generations of workers who would succeed them.
