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The Origins of Labor Day

George Washington did not chop down the cherry tree, St. Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland, Toads do not cause warts. And a Carpenter named Peter McGuire was not the father of Labor Day.

The first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City with parades, picnics and speakers on September 5 1882.

It was sponsored by the New York Central Labor Union.

The secretary of the New York Central Labor Union was a machinist named Matthew Maguire.

From the beginning the Labor Day parade and picnic was the idea of Matthew Maguire the machinist.

The resolution proclaiming the 5th of September, 1882, as a "general holiday for the working men of this city" was promulgated by Matthew Maguire the machinist.

The invitations were sent out several weeks earlier over the name of Matthew Maguire the machinist.

On this first Labor Day, 1882 Peter McGuire, the carpenter, was not even a member of the Central Labor Union. Peter McGuire, the carpenter, was but one of many speakers. But apparently he had a good time at Matthew Maguire's parade and picnic. Because a few weeks later he proposed "A harvest festival of universal rejoicing for organized labor" in an article for a local union publication. And fifteen years later he anointed himself "The father of Labor Day."

This misrepresentation of the facts stood unchallenged for more than three-quarters of a century because Matthew Maguire, the machinist, was a quiet and modest man. He never boasted of his own role in proposing and planning that first Labor Day. But the McGuire myth was finally exploded by a retired machinist named Pearlman. Digging through old newspapers, union archives and labor records from New York to Seattle, he has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that at the original celebration of Labor Day a carpenter named Peter McGuire was nothing more than one of many invited guests of the man who proposed and planned it all--a machinist named Matthew Maguire.

Matt Maguire held Due Book No. 217 in the IAM.


Some More History on The Origins of Labor Day

The observance of Labor Day began over 100 years ago. Conceived by America's labor
unions as a testament to their cause, the legislation sanctioning the holiday was
shepherded through Congress amid labor unrest and signed by President Grover
Cleveland as a reluctant election-year compromise. 

Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president
of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as
a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of
nearby Chicago. 

The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and
craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where
Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would
lodge while in town. 

Its residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman
bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly
paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more
than a decade. 

But in 1893, the Pullman company was caught in the nationwide economic depression.
Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off
hundreds of employees. Those who remained endured wage cuts, even while rents in
Pullman remained consistent. Take-home paychecks plummeted. 

And so the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The
American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the
striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying
Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of
non-union workers joined in. 

The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with
nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal
crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men
were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago,
but the strike was doomed. 

On August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over. Debs went to prison, his ARU was
disbanded, and Pullman employees henceforth signed a pledge that they would never
again unionize. Aside from the already existing American Federation of Labor and the
various railroad brotherhoods, industrial workers' unions were effectively stamped out
and remained so until the Great Depression. 

It was not the last time Debs would find himself behind bars, either. Campaigning
from his jail cell, Debs would later win almost a million votes for the Socialist ticket in
the 1920 presidential race. 

In an attempt to appease the nation's workers, Labor Day is born 

The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time. In September
1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around
Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland's
harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation's workers a top political priority.
In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both
houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days after
his troops had broken the Pullman strike. 

1894 was an election year. President Cleveland seized the chance at conciliation, and
Labor Day was born. He was not reelected. 

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called it "the day
for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their
wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their
tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching
phalanx and feel the stronger for it." 

Labor Day: a goodbye to summer 

Almost a century since Gompers spoke those words, though, Labor Day is seen as the
last long weekend of summer rather than a day for political organizing. In 1995, less
than 15 percent of American workers belonged to unions, down from a high in the
1950's of nearly 50 percent, though nearly all have benefited from the victories of the
Labor movement. 

And everyone who can takes a vacation on the first Monday of September. Friends and
families gather, and clog the highways, and the picnic grounds, and their own
backyards -- and bid farewell to summer. 

 


Comments or Suggestions? E-mail the Communications Officer
of Siouxland Lodge 1426 IAMAW
Greg Enright