He May 1, 1886in what became known as the Haymarket Riot, Workers flooded the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour workday. The demonstrations lasted several days, punctuated by clashes between workers and the police. On May 4, after police ordered the crowd to disperse, a bomb exploded. Seven police officers and up to eight civilians died. The author was never identified.
In 1889an international meeting of socialists held in Paris officially declared May 1 celebration in honor of the rights from the workers.
Although it gained traction internationally (and was supported by some American unions), historian Charles Tilly writes that American President Grover Cleveland He feared that May 1 “would become a monument to the Haymarket radicals.” He lobbied state legislatures to choose the September date instead. In 1894about half of the American states had adopted Labor Day.
It would take another confrontation in the American Midwest for the Labor Day became federal holiday. On May 11, 1894, the workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car manufacturer near Chicago, went on strike to protest their low wages and 16-hour work days. On June 22, members of the powerful American Railway Union (ARU) joined their fight by refusing to move Pullman cars from one train to another, paralyzing rail traffic across the country.
In Washington DC, politicians tried to placate the labor movement. At the time, federal legislation to designate Labor Day as a holiday had been languishing in Congress for 10 months after U.S. Senator James Kyle, a populist from South Dakota, had introduced it in August 1893.
To appease the strikers and their supporters, the Senate quickly passed the bill on June 22, the same day the ARU joined the Pullman strike. The bill was approved by the House four days later and President Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894..
Although the holiday is often described as a conciliatory gesture in a time of crisis, Cleveland was not exactly an ally of the Pullman strikers. On July 3, just days after signing the law, he ordered federal troops to Chicago to end the boycott. Angry strikers began to riot, and on July 7, National Guardsmen shot into a mob, killing 30 people.
Despite his bloody consequences, the creation of the Labor Day holiday caused a sensation. In Canada, Prime Minister John Thompson also faced the growing pressure from the labor movement. On July 23, 1894 (less than a month after the passage of the American law) Thompson followed Cleveland’s example and designated the first Monday in September as official holiday for the workers.
But the holiday did not improve the conditions of the people it was intended to honor, and it was little more than political talk. As the U.S. House Labor Committee said in its 1894 report on the legislation: “As long as the laborer can feel that he occupies an honorable and useful place in the body politic, he will be a loyal and faithful citizen.” .
It would be another 44 years before the United States established a minimum wage, imposed a shorter work week, and limited child labor with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Whatever the intentions, the creation of a holiday dedicated exclusively to workers was, however, a important achievement for the labor movement.
“Labor Day marks a new era in the annals of the history of humanity”, wrote Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, in the New York Times in 1910. “Among all the holidays of the year… there is none that stands out so much for the social advancement of the common people as the first Monday of September”.