UNBIASED - Labor Day in the United States: Everything You Should Know About Labor Day's Origins and its History (Plus Fun Facts).
Episode Date: September 5, 2023In honor of Labor Day, let's learn about the holiday's origins and its history. In this episode, you'll learn about the riots and rallies that led to the creation of Labor Day (including the famous Ha...ymarket Riot), the first states to make Labor Day a state holiday, the Senator that introduced the federal legislation, the President that signed it into law, the origins of "not wearing white after Labor Day", the difference between Labor Day and May Day, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM,
an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League.
Yard after yard, down after down,
the sportsbook born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone
and celebrate every highlight reel play.
And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL,
BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day.
With a variety of exciting features,
BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron
and to embrace peak sports action.
Ready for another season of gridiron glory?
What are you waiting for?
Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long.
Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions.
Must be 19 years of age or older.
Ontario only.
Please gamble responsibly.
Gambling problem?
For free assistance,
call the Connex Ontario Helpline
at 1-866-531-2600.
BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement
with iGaming Ontario.
You are listening to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased
news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show.
Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy day after Labor Day. I hope you had
a great weekend. We are talking about Labor Day today. It's something that not many Americans are
familiar with as far as the history goes, the origins of the holiday. So I figured let's talk
about it. On top of that, you guys have loved when I've covered the Constitution and the Supreme
Court. So why not throw another educational episode in there when there's not much happening
in the news? Let's do it. I want to quickly remind you before we get into the episode to
please leave my show a review. You guys have been absolutely killing it. If you've left me a review
so far, thank you so much. It means the world to me. But if you haven't, it's really easy to do.
It takes two seconds. So enjoy this episode. If you love
it, please go ahead and do that and leave me a review. Second of all, the reminder that I love
to give every episode. Yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. So nothing in these episodes
is ever intended to be legal advice of any sort. That is my legal disclaimer. Without further ado,
let's get into today's episode about Labor Day.
If you've ever wondered what we are celebrating on Labor Day or how Labor Day came about,
you are not alone.
This is something that not many Americans are familiar with. A lot of people
think it has something to do with celebrating the workforce, which it does, but not many people are
familiar with how it started. When did it come about and the kind of unrest and protests and
displeasure that led to Labor Day? Nowadays, Labor Day has become more of an end of summer holiday.
People get together, they have barbecues. It's kind of one last summer weekend with your family
and friends, but originally it had much more meaning. Labor Day came about due to this fight
for better working conditions in the 1800s. In the late 1800s, we're at the height
of the industrial revolution in the United States. The average American is working 12-hour days,
some are working 16-hour days, and this is seven days a week. And that was just to live, by the
way. These people aren't working all these hours and making a killing, right? This is just to have the basic American lifestyle at the time.
Now, on top of this, there were also unsafe working conditions.
So we're talking unsanitary, unsafe as far as risk of injury, things like that.
So as the manufacturing industry is growing, so are labor unions.
So September 5th, 1882 was really the first celebration of what we know
today as Labor Day. The unions in New York City took unpaid time off to march from City Hall
to Union Square, and their objective was to celebrate union workers and show support for other unions outside of their own. This idea of this holiday
celebrating workers on the first Monday in September kind of caught on in other industrial
centers around the country, but it wasn't seamless. So the whole path to get to Labor Day becoming a
holiday certainly wasn't peaceful. There are three things happening
at this time in the late 1800s. One, there's this radical faction of the labor movement,
which includes socialists, communists, and anarchists, and they are wanting to bring
the capitalist system down. They think it's exploiting workers, and they want to do away
with it. Two, you have these labor
unions, which are going on strike, they're rallying, they're protesting. And this isn't
necessarily the radical factions, right? This is just labor unions generally, that are protesting
the working conditions that they're experiencing. Not only the physical working conditions, not only
the, you know, unsanitary aspect and the unsafe aspect, but also their wages.
They want to be paid more because they're working so much. And three, municipal ordinances are
starting to be passed in 1885 and 1886, recognizing Labor Day. It's not a holiday recognized by the
states yet, but this is going to soon change. But at the time, municipal ordinances
are starting to be passed. Now, I had said that at this time, labor unions are starting to
organize strikes, they're rallying, they're protesting. And during this time is when the
famous Haymarket Riot took place. Towards the end of this Haymarket Riot, which we'll talk more about
towards the end of this episode, but towards the end of the riot, one of the protesters actually threw a bomb at police,
and it ended up killing eight people. Seven of those were police officers, and no one was ever
identified as the one who threw the bomb. But in response to this bomb being thrown, police officers
opened fire into the crowd. And it's unclear, there may have even been protesters that opened fire at this point, but basically chaos ensues. By the end of it,
seven police officers are dead, one protester died, many, many are injured. And like I said,
they didn't have one individual that they knew for sure had thrown the bomb. So eight men end
up getting convicted for this Haymarket riot. And there was no real damning
evidence against them. And the trial was very controversial, not just in the United States,
but this trial actually garnered worldwide attention. Places like England, Ireland,
they were also focused on this trial. And one of the major thoughts at the time was that the jury
was biased in this trial and that the evidence presented against these eight men didn't necessarily link them to
the bombing, but due to the bias of the jury, these men end up getting convicted.
Seven of the eight men get the death sentence.
The eighth guy was sentenced to 15 years.
And the Haymarket riot and what took place after, including this trial,
led to some pretty significant division over the labor movement. So knowing that, and again,
as I said, we're going to touch on the Haymarket Riot towards the end of this episode. But during
this time, this is what's happening. You have these riots, you have these protests, you have
the municipal ordinances that are starting to get passed,
and this idea of a Labor Day holiday is really starting to gain steam.
Well, in February 1887, Oregon becomes the first state to pass a law
recognizing Labor Day as a state holiday.
That same year, four more states, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
and New York do the same. And by 1894, 23 more states had also joined in. So at this point,
more than half of the states are celebrating Labor Day as a state holiday. Now, also during this time,
the nation was experiencing a recession. And during the recession, George Pullman, who ran the Pullman Palace Car Place Company,
laid off hundreds of his employees, including union leaders, and cut wages for a lot of
the workers that were able to keep their jobs.
And some of these workers even had their wages cut by about 30%. So on May 11th, 1884, employees of the Pullman Palace Car
Place Company go on strike. A month later in June, specifically June 26th, the American Railroad
Union calls for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars. Now what this boycott did is it basically
halted all rail traffic and commerce across the country.
So the General Managers Association, which was a group that represented Chicago's railroad companies, goes to the federal government and says, we need your help.
We need to fix this. During this time, during the time that the strike is going on, Senator James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota introduces a bill to make Labor Day a federal legal holiday.
And the bill says the holiday is to be celebrated on the first Monday of September, and it passes
Congress, and it gets President Cleveland's signature on June 28, 1894.
So Labor Day is now officially a holiday from here on out. But that doesn't
stop the strike. So the strike is still going on in Chicago. And one day after Labor Day is created
under federal law, the leader of the American Railway Union is making a speech in Illinois.
And some of the attendees decide to light some buildings on fire.
They derailed a train that was attached to a United States mail train, and things are getting
out of control. The United States Attorney General at the time, Richard Olney, uses this incident to
get an injunction from a federal court in Chicago against the strike and its leaders.
The injunction is issued on July 2nd, and one day later on July 3rd, President Cleveland
sends federal troops to the city of Chicago to enforce this injunction and say, hey guys,
you gotta stop.
There's a court-ordered injunction.
Stop all of this behavior.
Illinois' governor takes an opposite stance on it. He says that this move to send in federal
troops is unconstitutional. He's strongly opposed to this. And again, we see division.
The federal troops get there, and things get even more out of hand. Railroad cars are being destroyed. More than 30
people are killed. Eventually, on July 20th, the federal troops are taken out of Chicago
and the Pullman strike officially ends in early August. After all of this, Labor Day is now
officially a holiday. And that was kind of the last major strike we saw in this labor
movement. So over time, back then, yes, Labor Day was meant to celebrate union workers, and it still
is. But back then, it had much more significance because the workers then were actually experiencing
the hardships that they had been fighting for. But as time went on and more and more employers
started giving their employees the day off to essentially celebrate them, it kind of lost its
meaning over time. And now Labor Day is more of this end of summer celebration with, we still have
the idea of the American workforce in the background. After all, it is called Labor Day. So I think
it's hard for a lot of us to forget what it actually means. But nowadays, it really has
turned into this end of summer, changing of the seasons kind of holiday. Something that's
interesting is that a lot of countries have a similar holiday called May Day, and it's celebrated
on May 1st. And for a while, Americans celebrated both May
Day and Labor Day. But eventually Labor Day was seen as the more kind of tempered holiday of the
two, the more moderate holiday. May Day was actually originally established by the International
Socialist Congress following the Haymarket Riot. And I had said that we were going to talk about
the Haymarket Riot a little bit more. Now is that time. So the Haymarket Riot started on May 1st,
1886. And the reason that it started on May 1st is because the organization that's now known as
the American Federation of Labor set that day, May 1st, 1886, as the day that workers
nationwide should go on strike and demand a shorter workday. And that's exactly what they did.
But this was a multi-day strike, and police eventually make their way in. Well, the protesters
see the police as this sort of armed forces of what they saw as the capitalist
masters, if you will.
So they see our country as this capitalist society, and these police are enforcing that
idea, and they're against that.
So that's when the violence broke out.
That's when the bomb is thrown and the chaos kind of ensues.
Following that, I mentioned that there was a lot
of division because of the riot itself, but also because of the trial that took place after.
During that aftermath, the International Socialist Conference marked May 1st as a labor holiday
worldwide to recognize and honor the Chicago workers that protested in the Haymarket
riot. And this holiday is what we now know as May Day or International Workers Day. But you also had
some people that were now opposed to working class unity. And on top of that, you had these
anti-communist attitudes that are emerging during the Cold War.
And these two things together led to the United States kind of suppressing
May Day's association with labor movements.
That's where May Day kind of lost its celebratory purpose in the United States.
And now we celebrate Labor Day along with Canada rather than May Day,
which a lot of countries still do recognize. Before we end this episode, I want to go over
some fun facts like I like to do. I did this with the Supreme Court and the Constitution,
and I kind of want to continue that because I know you guys like that. Number one is that Canada
is actually said to be the first country to host a day honoring
the labor movement.
In 1872, so nearly 10 years earlier than New York City's march, which was the United States'
first kind of march in support of a labor day, Canada held what they called the Nine
Hour Movement, which was meant to show support for
striking workers. So Canada was really the first to kind of host this Labor Day, if you will.
The second is that we're not sure who proposed Labor Day as a holiday in the United States.
Some say it was a man named Peter McGuire, and others say it was a man named Matthew McGuire. And they have
very similar names. They're not related. Their last names are actually slightly different. So
Peter is McGuire, and Matthew is Mugwire. Peter McGuire was the co-founder of the American
Federation of Labor. Matthew McGuire was the secretary of the Central Labor Union. And they both kind of set forth this idea for Labor Day to be a holiday in the United States.
But as I said, no one is sure who the idea, you know, first originated with.
The third fun fact is that it wasn't until 1916 that the eight-hour workday was established in the United States.
So we know now that Labor Day was established as a federal holiday in 1894.
And on the 22-year anniversary of that is when the United States enacted a law known as the
Adamson Act.
And that Adamson Act is what established the eight-hour workday in the United States. In 1968, President Johnson signed the Uniform Holiday
Bill into law, and that was meant to ensure that Labor Day would always land on a Monday,
and that law actually encompassed other holidays as well, but this law is what really kind of
solidified that Labor Day would always be on a Monday. The well-known expression, no white after
Labor Day, we've all heard it, we've all wondered, where does that come from? Why is that a thing?
And I'm pretty sure most of us do not abide by that rule, but let's talk about where it came from.
That expression actually comes from when the upper class back in the day would return from their
summer vacations and they would, you know,
pack away their white summer clothes until the following summer because in summer white was,
you know, white was the color that you wore. So those who were fortunate enough that, you know,
had this wardrobe that they could actually choose when they wanted to wear certain clothes,
they would put their white away after summer and they would take out their, you know, city clothes once they returned from their
vacation and that would be their wardrobe. And then when it warmed up again, they would take
out their white clothes again. And that was kind of seen as a way to differentiate class levels
because those in the lower class couldn't afford, you know, this wardrobe where they could just put
away white during certain
times of the year. So that was sort of a rule that was established by the upper class back in the day.
It doesn't really apply anymore. I mean, I don't really know anyone that abides by that rule,
but that is where the expression comes from. And as the final fun fact, Labor Day became a federal
holiday before we even had the Department of Labor
in the United States.
The Department of Labor was established on March 4th, 1913.
So it's roughly 19 years after Labor Day became a federal holiday.
So that is my episode on Labor Day.
I hope you guys learned a lot.
I know you guys love episodes like this.
So feel free to let me know your thoughts, share your thoughts with me. The best way to do that
is if you're a Spotify listener, down below it says, what did you think about this episode?
You can always let me know there. You can always write into me on Instagram or wherever,
wherever you follow me. So let me know what you think. And of course, don't forget to share this
episode with your friends, your family, your coworkers, whoever it is that you feel could also stand to learn something about Labor Day.
I will talk to you again on Friday when I return with a normal episode about what is happening
in the news. Have a great day, have a great week, and I will talk to you then. you