Volume 18 , Issue 33

NW Okie's Journey

With Labor Day upon us, we look back at the history of Labor Day. And why Americans and Canadians celebrate Labor Day.



It was organized by Unions to honor workingmen, women and working children. Children as young as ten worked in dangerous jobs back in the late 19th century.

The Labor Movement
In The Railroad Telegrapher, out of Peoria, Illinois, 15 August 1894, Wednesday, page 32, we learn more about The Labor movement.

It has been well and truly said that the labor movement in its broadest terms was "the effort of men to live the lives of men," and thus to raise themselves as far as possible above the brutes. The systematic, organized struggle of the masses to obtain more leisure and better wages, in the United States, began in the early years of the present century, when the ordinary working day was fourteen hours and longer. The toiler who was forced to devote fourteen hours a day to labor must inevitably do so at the expense of mind, soul and body. When a few of the more thoughtful workingmen began to agitate for shorter hours they were promptly branded by the employing class and the newspapers of the period as "agitators," "demagogues," "calamity howlers," or words to that effect, and the persecution and ridiculing of those workingmen who took the lead in urging the toiler s to organize for their advancement was begun and had continued with unabated zeal tot he present day.

To go back to the beginning of the labor movement, it is recorded that the first strike on the American continent occurred din New York City in 1803, when a number of sailors quit work to enforce a demand for higher wages. The first labor organization in the United States was organized by the tailors. The hatters organized a union of their craft in the year 1819. The shipwrights and calkers organized during the year 1825. During the latter year the question of shorter hours and better wages came prominently to the front, and during the years that immediately followed, unions of different crafts sprung up in many cities and manufacturing centers. The Workingmen's Party, a political organization, appeared in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities in 1728, and the workingmen scored their first victory on political lines by electing one candidate, Ebenezer Ford, of New York, to the legislature in 1829.

From this small beginning has gradually developed the gigantic labor movement in the United States. Notwithstanding the combined efforts of all the parasites that lived off the fruits of labor's toil, organized effort, little by little, succeeded in effecting a reduction of the number of hours to toil to thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten and even to eight in some trades, gaining so man-hours a day from toil to enable workingmen to enjoy a better existence, "to live the lives of men." While struggling to have the hours reduced the need of better wages was not overlooked, and the gain in wages had been fully as great as in the matter of hours of labor.

Though beset on all sides by enemies, by scabs, non-union men, greedy employers and a subsidized press, besides having to contend with the stream of cheap labor that constantly pours into the United States from foreign countries, the struggles and sacrifices of organized labor had been in the highest sense beneficial to the interests of labor everywhere.

In 1834, labor had no representation in legislative bodies in this "land of the free and home of the brave." In 1894 in every legislative gathering - city, county, state and national - labor had its friends, not as many as there should be, but the number was growing. Labor did not, as of old, bear its woes in silence. It expressed its dissatisfaction with oppressive conditions, sometimes blindly and against its own best interests it was true, but after allowing for all mistakes the tendency was steadily upward. As for the blunders of organized labor, there never was a human institution that did not sometimes err.

A face toilers that have no organization vortex argument of certain journals and other enemies f organized labor who wish to sow the seeds of discord in the ranks of workingmen is that the man who joins a labor union surrenders his individuality and becomes a tool of "selfish labor leaders." Survey the field of labor, and do you find themes manhood and most independence among the toilers that had no organization to protect them in their wages and their jobs?

The workingman's "individuality" (if the term means anything at all) will not be endangered by good wages and reasonable hours of toil; on the contrary, the higher the wages the stronger the individuality every time. - Foremen's Advance Advocate.

Objects of Trade Unions
1. To elevate the position and maintain and protect the interests of the craft in general.

2. To establish and uphold a fair and equitable rate of wages, and fair working hours and to regulate all trade matters appertaining to the welfare of the members.

3. To influence the apprenticeship system in the direction of intelligence, competency and skill, in the interests alike of employers and employees.

4. To endeavor to replace strikes and their attendant bitterness and pecuniary loss by arbitration and conciliation in the settlement of all disputes concerning the wages and conditions of employment.

5. To relieve the deserving needy and sick, and provide for the decent burial of deceased members. - The People.

Happy Labor Day to All Workingmen and women!
Good Night! Good Luck! We are stronger together! "Love conquers Hate!"
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