If you’re like me, and most Americans for that matter, Labor Day doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to you. It’s the symbolic end of summer, a “final” weekend for fairs and festivals and picnics and the like. But this year I have been thinking about what Labor Day really means. Perhaps it’s all this talk about jobs, and the headlines from the Republican National Convention about job creation. So as we begin our long weekend, here is a little primer on Labor Day.
The year was 1894. The country was in a recession, dating back to the previous year, and what was to be known as the Panic of 1893. This panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures. Call it a bubble. There was also a run on the gold supply.
The Panic of ’93 was the worst economic depression the United States had ever experienced at the time. George Pullman, the owner of the Pullman Palace Car Co., a manufacturer of railroad cars, streetcars and trolley buses in the mid-to-late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, decided to up his bottom line by cutting wages he paid his workers for their 16-hour workdays.
He also owned the nation’s first planned community, or company town, Pullman, Illinois, and he held fast on the prices he charged workers for rent and goods. Somewhat ironically, Pullman decided to develop this “model community, a total environment, superior to that available to the working class elsewhere,” in large part to avoid strikes, attract the most skilled workers and attain greater productivity.
Pullman developed the sleeping car that carried his name on the nation’s rail lines through to the 1980s. Pullman did not just manufacture the cars though; it also operated them on most of the railroads in the United States, paying the railroads to attach the cars to trains.
Anyway, the 3,000 or 4,000 workers in Pullman said enough was enough and started a wildcat strike. That action in turn pulled in the American Railway Union, the nation’s first industry-wide union.
On June 26, 1894, they began a nationwide boycott, with union members refusing to run trains with Pullman cars. Within days, 125,000 railroad workers for 29 different railroad companies had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars.
On June 26, 1894, they began a nationwide boycott, with union members refusing to run trains with Pullman cars. Within days, 125,000 railroad workers for 29 different railroad companies had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars.
On June 29, the railway union hosted a gathering to obtain support for the strike from fellow railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive.
Elsewhere in the United States, sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks or threatening and attacking strikebreakers.
Pullman management hired replacement workers and tension – and conflicts – escalated. President Grover Cleveland ordered the strike to be broken up by federal marshals and some 12,000 U.S. Army troops, on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of the mail, violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and represented a threat to public safety.
During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed, 57 were wounded, and 6,000 rail workers committed property damage totaling millions in today’s dollars. This image to the right depicts the standoff in Pullman, Illinois.
So what did Congress do in response to this? Apparently concerned about a popular backlash, in just six days they came up with the idea of Labor Day; a national holiday to honor workers.
“Communities will host street parades to show the strength and esprit de corps of labor followed by a festival for workers and their families.”
There you have it. The story of the birth of Labor Day.
And if you’re ever in Chicago, and find yourself with a little extra time, historic Pullman is just 12 miles directly south of the Chicago loop. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places and the homes of the former Pullman workers have in many cases been restored and are being lived in by new families today. The hotel has been restored and re-opened, the streets are in their original layout, and you can get a real sense of what life would have been like in the country’s first company town over a century ago.
