Labor Day has conservative roots. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following [the 1886 Chicago Haymarket massacre and] the [1894] Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons.
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Cleveland was wary of the response to his actions. He signed Labor Day into law a mere six days after busting the strike.
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Labor Day marks our historic defeat, not our triumph.
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At the end of the nineteenth century, the American labor movement was among the most militant in the world. From the stockyards of Chicago to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, workplaces all over the country were in open revolt. Strikes were commonplace, often leading to violent confrontations between rebellious workers and private militias like the despised Pinkertons.
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In 1882, one conservative writer described his panic in the Atlantic Monthly, lamenting that “an American species of socialism is inevitable.”
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[T]oday, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory. But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being. That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.
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Attempts to undermine May Day didn’t stop with Grover Cleveland. In 1958, President Eisenhower established “Law Day,” designating May 1 as a day to celebrate the rule of law and its role in shaping American life. The holiday remains on the books to this day.
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Though it’s a welcome break from work for many of us, Labor Day is just another legacy of worker defeat. And today is hardly even a day of rest for millions of the most precarious and underpaid workers in the country. For millions of retail workers in the country, of whom only 5 percent are unionized and the median hourly wage is only $10, Labor Day is one of the toughest times of the year.
Jacobin
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
P.S. A slightly early Happy Birthday and Memorium to Eugene Debs
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