1894: Labor Day Created After US Soldiers Kill Strikers

These days Labor Day is a holiday to celebrate the last gasp of summer in most of the United States with picnics, barbecues and political speeches in parks everywhere.  Years ago, school was about to begin, not as now with school  already well underway, but things change.    Political speeches used to be confined to congressmen home on vacation stumping for re-election.  Now, they’re trying their best to defend Washington’s spending policy.  It’s hard to campaign when you’re on the defensive.  They keep hearing the old Kin Hubbard saying, “Ever so often an innocent man gets sent to congress.”

Labor Day is actually a Canadian holiday started back in 1892 and noted by a U.S. labor leader at the time and brought back to this country.    It was first celebrated in New York City in September of that year but with little fanfare.   Bankers and postal workers still had to show up on the job as did federal employees.  No Monday off with pay back then, much to the chagrin of my liberal friends, I’m sure.
                                            
                                             Striking Pullman employees face off agains U.S. soldiers in Chicago
                                             image via wikipedia

It wasn’t until 1894 when Eugene Debs, head of the Railroad Union, called a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company because of a reduction in wages. that things came to a head.  Before it was over 250,000 workers had left their jobs in 27 states in the first major union uprising in the country.    President Grover Cleveland called out  U.S. Marshalls and 12,000 U.S. army troops to quell the strike and violence flared.  Before it ended 13 strikers were killed and 57 more were hurt.  Cleveland said he took the action because the strike was impeding mail delivery.  Strikers inficted more than $7 million dollars worth of damage adjusted for inflation.

There was such a public outcry against the killing of workers by U.S. soldiers that Cleveland lost his bid for a second term as president.  It only took congress six days to unanimously approve the first Monday in September as Labor Day in the United States.

The most serious charges against Debs were dropped (his lawyer was Clarence Darrow) but he did serve six months for failure to obey a court order.  During that time he read Mein Kampf and became the nation’s most prominent socialist, running unsuccessfully for president five times.

Pullman was so unpopular with laborers his body was entombed in a lead casket and buried under tons of concrete in the fear labor sympathizers would desecrate his body.