This Day In History: US Appeases The Commies

Every first Monday of September we as a nation come together and celebrate Labor Day. These days however, my anecdotal experience tells me that not many people really remember how Labor Day got its start so we’ll take a quick trip down memory lane!

Back in the Gilded Age of our history (that is post Reconstruction or 1877-1893) we saw massive industrial growth and expansion. T’was the fastest era of economic expansion ever in American history. This growth happened on the backs of masses, who suffered abusive working conditions, unsafe work environments, zero worker protections, substandard wages, and no institutional system in place to try and find redress for their grievances. This was the era that anarchists, communists, and labor unions first began agitating in the country for things like non 14-hour work days, pensions, fair and living wages, work environments that didn’t kill laborers as a routine cost of doing business and the such.

When these groups would strike or protest it almost universally turned violent with the police or the military cracking down hard on the dissenters. One such incident was the Haymarket affair which occurred on Tuesday May 4, 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago. During the rally to support striking workers person since unknown threw a dynamite bomb at the police. The police retaliated by firing into the crowd at random, though managed to kill several other officers in friendly fire. An unknown number protestors were also killed in the fire and ensuing chaos. The event was the genesis for the internationally observed May Day which in every other country is our Labor Day.

So why is our May Day called Labor Day and in September? Well in another bloody strike called the Pullman Strike, the US military and US Marshalls violently cracked down on railway workers who were striking. The entire affair was a black eye for then president Cleveland and fearing further agitations rammed legislation through Congress that created Labor Day as a federal holiday a mere six days after the strike was broken up. Cleveland, fearing that tying Labor Day to the internationally recognized May Day, or the International Worker’s Day, would embolden the Communist, Syndicalist, and Anarchist movements who normally didn’t work together had started to do so to commemorate the Haymarket Affair. So Cleveland instead made the first Monday of every September Labor Day in the US.

The great irony of all of this though? These days Labor Day has turned into a capitalist extravaganza and an important event for retailers who host large Labor Day sales. Since these retailers throw big sales on Labor Day they need to keep their staffs on shift for the day. As such, the one day of the year we’ve decided to give to the working class, the shift workers in retail and food service and the factory workers and such can’t even be enjoyed by the working class since they have to work to man the storefronts for the sales. Meanwhile the capitalist class gets another federal holiday to enjoy.

Happy Labor Day!