The story of the the long road to labor day has many chapters. Many of those chapters have a Route 66 connection. They are written in a quiet cemetery in southern Illinois. And they are written on a stone monument in Virden, Illinois that commemorates sacrifices made in a bloody confrontation with company guards.
The long road to the Labor Day holiday has many chapters linked to the White House and presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.
The history behind the holiday is relevant. Simply put, Labor Day is more than a three-day weekend. When we forget the reason for the holiday and the often bloody battle to make it a reality, we risk loosing something very importnat.
A most unusual holiday
There are holidays like the Fourth of July that come with fireworks. There are holidays that blend the traditions of immmigrants into a uniquely American celebration.
And then there is Labor Day. It is a holiday that has come to symbolize the end of summer. For millions of Americans that means hamburgers on the grill, one last summer road trip, mattress sales, crowded highways, and the countdown to football season.
Americans have always possessed a remarkable talent for turning almost any occasion into an excuse for a picnic or celebration.
But Labor Day has a story. This holiday is unlike any other.
Am American Story
Like so many American stories, it is filled with contradictions, courage, tragedy, political battles, and larger-than-life characters. And it is a story of ordinary people who provided vision, inspiration, and leadership.
Links to a fascinating chapter in this story, and to one of those ordinary people that became extraordinary, follow Route 66 through the Illinois countryside to the small rural community of Mt. Olive. There, among the graves of the historic Union Miners Cemetery, stands a monument to American labor history. It towers over the final resting place of Mary Harris Jones, know to the coal miners of southern Illinois as Mother Jones.
Just off Route 66 in Virden, Illinois is another monument to the American labor movement. It commemorates the bloody event known to history as the Battle of Virden. But it is also known as the Virden Massacre.
From Illinois to The White House
The story of the labor movement of the 19th century that led to the establishment of Labor Day as a federal holiday leads from Illinois to the White House. It leads to the story of a man that was an unlikely hero of the early 20th century progressive movement, President Theodore Roosevelt.
Born into a family of wealth and privilege Roosevelt was insulated from the world of crushing poverty experienced by many Americans, especially in the cities. Elected in 1881 to the New York State Assembly, Roosevelt represented Manhattan’s 21st District.
During a debate to ban tenement cigar manufacturing Roosevelt stood firm against passage. That changed and he reversed his position after labor activist Samuel Gompers guided him through New York City’s impoverished slums. Witnessing the appalling living and working conditions did more than reshape his political philosophy. It set him on the course toward becoming a national leader in the progressive movement.
Before Labor Day Was a Holiday
The Labor Day we celebrate and take for granted today is rooted in the societal upheaval fueled by industrial development in the late 19th and early 20th century. Railroads, steel mills, factories, mines, and the dawn of the auto industry transformed cities. Enormous fortunes were being made and the gulf between the rich and poor was growing exponentially.
Long hours were common. Workplace safety regulations were often minimal or nonexistent. Industrial accidents could leave workers crippled or dead with little or protection for their families. Wages, company stores and company towns often locked coal miners into a doom loop that was impossible to escape. Children worked in factories, mines, mills, fields, and workshops.
The United States was becoming an industrial giant. While some people enjoyed unprecendeted wealth, immigrants and most citizens lived in squalor as well as crippling poverty.
Dawn of A New Era
In desperation workers began organizing. They sought better wages and work conditions, shorter hours, and safer workplaces. It was a movement fueled by coal miners, steel workers, conservatives, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and religious activists. But the core were people who simply wanted enough money to feed their families, dignity, and a life that gave more work until death.
The first recognized Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on September 5, 1882. Workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union. A growing awareness about the importance of recognizing the importance of the common laborer, miner or factory worker spread quickly.
States established a Labor Day holiday. By the 1890s Labor Day celebrations contributed to the growth as well as acceptance of the labor movement. They also fueled resentment and hostility from factory owners, railroad and oil tycoons, an politicians that saw the rise of democratic socialism as a threat and national crisis.
It was a tinder box. The spark that set it ablaze took place in 1894.
The Pullman Strike and a National Holiday
The Pullman Strike of 1894 is a milestone in the history of the American labor movement. The initial strike began at the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago. It quickly spread when the American Railway Union supported a boycott of Pullman cars. As a result, crucial nationwide railroad traffic was disrupted.
Company property was destroyed, workers were killed, and there was a looming fear that sympathetic strikes would cripple the country. The federal government was forced to intervene and President Grover Cleveland used court injunctions and federal troops to crush the strike. Deep bitterness and simmering resentment between organized labor and the federal government would have ramifications in the 20th century.
In the hopes of defusing the situation, Congress established Labor Day as a federal holiday. President Cleveland signed the legislation on June 28, 1894. That made the first Monday in September the national holiday honoring American workers.
Inspiration and Contradiction
In retrospect establishment of the holiday is somewhat ironic. The president whose administration had used federal troops during a major labor conflict signed into law a holiday celebrating labor.
But that contradiction is part of the American story. Progress has often come not because everyone agreed. But because conflict made it impossible to ignore problems.
Inspiration is also a part of the American story. We see it in Theodore Roosevelt, Mother Jones, and Samuel Gompers.
Mt. Olive: Where Labor History Is Written in Stone
The Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois, is a tangible link to the story of Labor Day.
This is no ordinary cemetery. To the best of my knowledge this is the only union-owned cemetery in the United States. And its history is inseparable from the bloody struggle that erupted in the Illinois coalfields during the 1890s.
The cemetery was established in 1899 after controversy surrounding the burial of miners killed in the Battle of Virden. Supporters wanted to honor them. Others did not want their graves to become a shrine to organized labor. So the miners and their supporters created a place of their own.
The Union Miners Cemetery became a sacred landscape in the history of American labor. It was and is a place where the struggle for labor rights and economic justice is remembered in granite, bronze, and earth.
The Battle of Virden: A Bloody Day in Illinois
On October 12, 1898, the conflict between mine operators and union miners exploded into violence at Virden, Illinois. This was a period of intense struggle over union recognition, work conditions, and wages in the Illinois coalfields.
The mine owners in southern Illinois had resisted agreements that had been reached elsewhere in the coal industry. To break the growing miners strike, plans were made to bring in nonunion workers. The incendiary atmosphere was aggrated when the owners brought in non uion African American miners from the south.
According to some historical accounts, these miners did not know that they were being transported into the middle of a bitter labor confrontation. That changed when armed guards accompanied the trains to Virden.
A National Tragedy
The Battle of Virden was a national tragedy that cannot be reduced to a simple story. The replacement miners were working men. They were caught in a conflict created by powerful economic forces, racial tensions, labor disputes, and the use of armed guards.
When the confrontation erupted, the result was horrific. A brief but intense gun battle left 13 people dead. This made the Battle of Virden one of the bloodiest episodes in Illinois labor history.
For the miners of nearby Mt. Olive, the dead became martyrs to the cause of unionization. Their memory played a pivotal role in the future development of organized labor in Illinois. And their graves would eventually help bring Mother Jones to Mt. Olive.
A Monument and a Memory That Refused to Disappear
Today, visitors to Virden can find a monument commemorating the Battle of Virden on the town square. It stands as a reminder of something Americans often forgets. The rights and protections that many of us now take for granted were often born in extraordinary conflict.
The memorial commemorating the Battle of Virden was erected in the twenty-first century. The fact that the event remained controversial for generations says something about the power of history. It also illustrates the difficulty of reconciling competing memories of the past. History is rarely as comfortable as nostalgia.
But that is precisely why historic places matter.
Theodore Roosevelt and the Coal Strike That Changed the Presidency
In 1902 coal was the lifeblood of America. Railroads, industry, baleries, and home heating was wholly dependent on coal.
Miners that wanted better wages and working conditions, shorter hours, and recognition of their union saw this dependence as a point of leverage. And so the coal miners in Pennsylvania went on strike. Mine owners refused to negotiate.
Weeks passed, the strike spread to other coal fields. A national crisis was looming as a winter coal shortage was imminent.
Previously presidents had often used federal power to crush strikes. The progressive thinking President Theodore Roosevelt took a different approach.
A Display of Leaderhsip
First, Roosevelt invited representatives of both labor and management to meet. It was made clear that he was not simply interested in protecting the miners. Nor was he interested in protecting the mine owners.
He believed the federal government had a responsibility to protect all facets of the public interest. That was revolutionary thinkng that angered business and industrail leaders.
The arbitration Roosevelt forced mine owners to accept provided miners with a wage increase and a reduction in the workday. But the settlement did not give labor everything it wanted. However, it did mark an important turning point in the relationship between the federal government, labor, and industry.
The 1902 coal strike became one of the foundations of Roosevelt’s famous philosophy about “The Square Deal.”
Was Theodore Roosevelt a Socialist?
Modern political labels, devisive campaigns, and rhetoric can create more confusion than understanding. Theodore Roosevelt was unquestionably a progressive.
He believed that enormous corporations and concentrations of wealth could threaten democracy and he believed government had a responsibility to regulate abuses. That philosophy led him to challenge monopolies, support conservation, and advocate for consumer protections.
Roosevelt was an ardent believer that government should act as a referee when powerful economic interests threatened the public good. So, was Theodore Roosevelt a socialist?
The answer is know. At least not in the modern politcal sense of the word.
President Roosevelt
Roosevelt did not advocate for the permanent abolition of private ownership or the replacement of capitalism with socialism. Instead his philosophy was that to preserve capitalism there was a need to reform its excesses.
He believed in private enterprise and property rights. But he also believed that property rights carried responsibilities and that unchecked corporate power could become just as dangerous to liberty as an overreaching government.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library describes his approach during the coal strike as an effort to protect the public interest. It was not embrace of government control of industry. That distinction is important.
Mother Jones and Theodore Roosevelt both recognized something fundamental. Industrialization had transformed America and American society faster than its institutions could evolve. They also realized that America needed to decide what responsibility government, business, and workers had to one another.
The Children in the Mills and Mines
Perhaps no chapter in the history of labor reform is more difficult to confront than the history of child labor. At the beginning of the twentieth century, children worked throughout the American economy. The 1900 census recorded approximately two million children working in mines, mills, factories, fields, stores, and on city streets.
For struggling families, the wages earned by children were crucial for survival. Against this reality reformers argued that childhood should not be sacrificed to industrial production.
Organizations such as the National Child Labor Committee helped bring the issue before the American public. Photographer Lewis Hine documented children working in mines and factories. He created images that shocked Americans.
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 restricted interstate commerce involving goods produced by child labor. But the Supreme Court struck the law down as unconstitutional. Child labor decreased in the years that followed. Still, it was not unitl 1938 with passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that restrictions on child labor was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.
Labor Day and the American Experiment
So, while we grill those burgers and suffer through advertisements from the local appliance store this Labor Day holiday set aside a few minutes for relection.
America was built and made great by entrepreneurs and investors. But key to the building of a modern America was miners, railroad workers, farmers, factory workers, carpenters, mechanics, waitresses, truck drivers, and small-business employees.
America needed the people willing to take risks and build businesses. The country also needed the people willing to do the work. That is the partnership upon which prosperity is built.
Businesses create jobs, develop products, take risks, and build communities. Workers bring skill, experience, creativity, and labor to those enterprises. When either side becomes too powerful—and when the other side has no voice—problems follow. The challenge, then and now, is finding the balance.
Thank you. Shared adventures are the best adventures.