Labor Day 2019 On September 2, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor celebrates and honors the greatest worker in the world – the American worker. Labor Day 2019 is the 125th anniversary of Labor Day being celebrated as a national holiday. Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed in 1885 and 1886. From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During 1887, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York – created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories. More than a century after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers. Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday. The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement. Texas’ first labor unions organized just few years after the arrival of the Anglo pioneers. When the Texas Typographical Association was founded in April, 1838, it invited all printers in the Republic of Texas to join. The union staged Texas’ first strike that autumn and won a 25 per cent wage increase. But there was little evidence of unionism for another generation – until Galveston’s printers and carpenters formed locals on the eve of the Civil War. Galveston Carpenters Local 7, established in 1860, is the oldest local union in the United States which has never undergone reorganization. Texas’ early unions were formed among highly skilled or strategically located workers who had some leverage with employers because of a general shortage of skilled workers in Texas in the mid-19th century. Yet gains in wages, benefits and hours were sporadic and localized, and the only legislative advances were the passage of mechanics’ lien laws in 1839, 1844, and 1875. Most workers continued to think that they would become farmers or merchants someday. Most also tended to belong to ethnic workingmen’s associations which were not true unions. But the identification of many workingmen’s associations with the German community, which was largely anti-slavery, caused many Texans to regard unions as dreaded Yankee innovations. Many Texans also regarded labor as just a commodity, ranking no higher than property or supplies. When a tallow tank in a Houston beef packing plant exploded, three men were scalded, at least one fatally. The blast also damaged a great deal of machinery. But a Galveston News writer noted, September 9, 1870, that the “sympathies of the whole people of Houston are with the enterprising proprietors.” During the 1870s, Texas underwent rapid urbanization and industrialization. Texas workers had 10- and 11-hour working days, six- and seven-days weeks, subsistence wages, no benefits, and abysmal working conditions. It is not surprising that in Texas, as in the nation, the late 19th century was marked by labormanagement unrest. The labor movement in many states and localities has its own distinctive features, and some aspects of Texas unionism seem almost unique in the nation’s labor annals. Black and white workers in Galveston usually competed for jobs until they jointly persuaded most city employers to pay $2.00 a day in 1877. They joined together again in an 1885 dock strike to force shippers to agree to an equitable division of labor for both races. The character of the Labor Day celebration has changed in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics, and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television. The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pays tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership – the American worker.
