The Labour Day, Canada
& the U.S.A.
September 6, 2010
The Labour Day holiday in Canada, as in the U.S., celebrates worker solidarity. Most workers, public or private, are entitled to take statutory holidays off with regular pay. Some businesses remain open on holidays, such as medical clinics and some stores, restaurants, and tourist attractions.
In a time when the news of labour “strife” is dominated by disputes between millionaire athletes and billionaire owners, history provides a useful perspective on a time when working people had to fight to work less than 12 hours a day. The “Nine-Hour Movement” began in Hamilton, Ontario, and then spread to Toronto where its demands were taken up by the Toronto Printer’s Union.
In 1869 the union sent a petition to their employers requesting a weekly reduction in hours per week to 58, placing itself in the forefront of the industrialized world in the fight for shorter hours. Their request was refused outright by the owners of the printing shops, most vehemently by George Brown of the Globe.
By 1872 the union’s stand had hardened from a request to a demand and a threat to strike. The employers called the demand for a shorter workweek “foolish”, “absurd” and “unreasonable.” As a result, on March 25, 1872 the printers went on strike.
On April 14 a demonstration was held to show solidarity among the workers of Toronto. A parade of some 2000 workers marched through the city, headed by two marching bands. By the time that the parade reached Queen’s Park, the sympathetic crowd had grown to 10,000.
The employers fought the strikers by bringing in replacement workers from small towns. George Brown launched a counterattack by launching a legal action against the union for “conspiracy.” Brown’s action revealed the astonishing fact that according to the laws of Canada union activity was indeed considered a criminal offense. Under the law, which dated back to 1792, police arrested and jailed the 24 members of the strike committee.
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As history tells it, however, Brown had overplayed his hand. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald had been watching the Nine-Hour Movement with curious interest, “his big nose sensitively keen,” wrote historian Donald Creighton, “like an animal’s for any scent of profit or danger.” The scent of profit came from the fact that Macdonald’s old Liberal rival George Brown had made himself a hated man among the workers of Canada.
Macdonald was quick to capitalize. In Ottawa, he spoke to a crowd at city hall, promising to wipe the “barbarous laws” restricting labour from the books. Macdonald then came to the rescue of the imprisoned men and on June 14 passed a Trade Union Act, which legalized and protected union activity. Macdonald’s move not only embarrassed his rival Brown but also earned him the enduring support of the working class.
For the strikers themselves, the short-term effects were very damaging. Many lost their jobs and were forced to leave Toronto. The long-term effects, however, were positive. After 1872 almost all union demands included the 54-hour week. Thus the Toronto printers were pioneers of the shorter workweek in North America. The movement did not reach places such as Chicago or New York until the turn of the century.
The fight of the Toronto printers had a second, lasting legacy. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers’ strike led to an annual celebration. In 1882 American labour leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labour festivals in Toronto. Inspired, he returned to New York and organized the first American “labour day” on September 5 of the same year. Throughout the 1880s pressure built in Canada to declare a national labour holiday and on July 23, 1894 the government of Sir John Thompson passed a law making Labour Day official. A huge Labour Day parade took place in Winnipeg that year. It stretched some 5 kilometres. The tradition of a Labour Day celebration quickly spread across Canada and the continent. It had all begun in Toronto with the brave stand of the printers’ union.
James Marsh is editor in chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia.
In 2010, Labour Day falls relatively late, on Monday, September 6th, 2010. Some schools in Canada may thus be starting school before the Labour Day Weekend, instead of the Tuesday after the Labour Day holiday, which has been the tradition.
CANADA
What Happens on Labour Day?
- Lots of people head up north to cottages or campsites.
- Parades
- Fireworks
- See Labour Day Toronto Events
Source: http://gocanada.about.com
U.S.A.
The First Labor Day
Labor Day parade,in St., Buffalo, N.Y., ca. 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920
On September 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America’s first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall, past reviewing stands in Union Square, and then uptown to 42nd Street, the workers and their families gathered in Wendel’s Elm Park for a picnic, concert, and speeches. This first Labor Day celebration was eagerly organized and executed by New York’s Central Labor Union, an umbrella group made up of representatives from many local unions. Debate continues to this day as to who originated the idea of a workers’ holiday, but it definitely emerged from the ranks of organized labor at a time when they wanted to demonstrate the strength of their burgeoning movement and inspire improvements in their working conditions.
Miners with Their Children, at the Labor Day Celebration, Silverton, Colorado,
Russell Lee, photographer, September 1940.
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1933-1945
The FSA/OWI collection has more than 60 photographs documenting Silverton, Colorado’s 1940 Labor Day celebration. To see this mining community’s parade and other festivities, search on Silverton.
New York’s Labor Day celebrations inspired similar events across the country. Oregon became the first state to grant legal status to the holiday in 1887; other states soon followed. In 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day a national holiday.
For many decades, Labor Day was viewed by workers not only as a means to celebrate their accomplishments, but also as a day to air their grievances and discuss strategies for securing better working conditions and salaries. Nowadays, Labor Day is associated less with union activities and protest marches and more with leisure. For many, the holiday is a time for family picnics, sporting events, and summer’s last hurrah.
- Read about other significant days in the history of labor. Search the Today in History Archive on labor to find features such as the history of the eight-hour workday.
- For images and documents pertaining to labor unions, search across the American Memory collections on the term labor union.
- American Memory contains an extensive array of materials related to parades and processions. Search the collections of photographs and prints using the keyword parades, or the name of a specific parade. The collections of motion pictures also document many different kinds of parades including a small Massachusetts town’s celebration of Labor Day.
The Outlaw Jesse James
Part of Briggs Avenue Looking South:
Park River, Dakota Territory,
[188-?].
The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F. A. Pazandak Photograph Collections
The infamous Jesse James was born on September 5, 1847. At seventeen, James left his native Missouri to fight as a Confederate guerilla in the Civil War. After the war, he returned to his home state and led one of history’s most notorious outlaw gangs. With his older brother Frank and several other ex-Confederates, including Cole Younger and his brothers, the James gang robbed their way across the Western frontier targeting banks, trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang escaped with thousands of dollars.
Despite their criminal and, often, violent acts, James and his partners were much adored. Journalists, eager to entertain Easterners with tales of the Wild West, exaggerated and romanticized the gang’s heists, often casting James as a contemporary Robin Hood. While James did harass railroad executives who unjustly seized private land for the railways, modern biographers note that he did so for personal gain—his humanitarian acts were more fiction than fact.
Jesse James’ outlaw days ended abruptly in 1882 when fellow gang member Robert Ford fired a bullet into the back of his head. Ford hoped to claim the $10,000 offered for James’ capture but received only a fraction of the reward. He did, however, secure himself a place in Western outlaw lore that lives on in literature, song, and film.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON, MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND COWARD WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE Jesse James’s epitaph, selected by his mother, Zerelda James
- Listen to one of many songs written about Jesse James. Search on Jesse James in these two collections of field recordings: Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 and in Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.
- View The Great Train Robbery, the 1903 film classic inspired by Western outlaws. It is just one of several hundred early films available in Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of Tthe Edison Companie.
- For personal accounts of Jesse James’ activities, search on Jesse James in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940. Of particular interest are the interviews with “James McGuire,” who grew up with the James boys, and “L. A. Sherman,” who had a memorable encounter with Jesse James in a Quincy, Illinois, mess hall.
US.Gov: All Details…. http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Labor_Day.shtml
