The History Of Labor Day

Labor Day became on official holiday in the summer of 1894 but had been proposed by the emerging trade and labor unions since the early 1880s. In 1887, Oregon was the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday and, by 1884, 30 other states had followed through. But the real impetus for the national holiday actually was the result of the violent crushing of the Pullman strike in Chicago by the US Army and US Marshals. The strike was a nationwide strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) that basically shut down all freight and passenger rail traffic west of Detroit. The strike began as a wildcat strike against the Pullman Company which made railway cars in the factory town of Pullman, just outside of Chicago. As a factory town, the Pullman Company maintained strict control, setting rent, water, and gas rates for the workers living there and refusing to allow them to buy homes. But the strike was really precipitated by a reduction in wages paid to the workers due the economic downturn that began in 1893. The Pullman workers had not yet formed a union, but as the strike went on, the ARU signed up many of the striking Pullman workers. When the Pullman Company refused to recognize the ARU, it called on its members to stop running any train that carried a Pullman car on June 26, 1894. And that basically shut down all rail traffic beyond the Midwest.

President Grover Cleveland put his Attorney General in charge of handling the strike. The AG was a railroad attorney who was actually getting paid more via a retainer from one of the railroads than he was as Attorney General. He got a federal injunction against the strike and then President Cleveland used his legal right to make the sure the mail was delivered, arguing that the strike was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. He called out the military and the strike was brutally suppressed city by city and town by town. By the end of the strike, 30 workers were dead and nearly 60 wounded and there was over $80 million in property damage.

Although the public largely supported Cleveland’s actions, it was clear that something needed to be done to appease workers and unions. So, six days after the strike had been suppressed, Congress voted to make Labor Day a national holiday. Of course, the logical date for the holiday would be on May 1 which was already recognized as International Workers Day. But it was determined that using that date would encourage socialists and anarchists. So Labor Day became the first Monday in September. Labor Day is then more than a celebration of the American worker; it is also a memorial to all those who fought and died to improve the lives and conditions for those workers.