Celebrating the contributions of the labor force, and how today’s Labor Day holiday came about
Around the middle of August 1890, a Nashua Daily Telegraph editorialist eased himself into his creaky, oak chair trimmed in leather, cranked a sheet of paper between the rollers of his trusty Underwood and began clicking and clacking away about the current events of the day.
After only brief consideration, the veteran editor selected his subject based on its timeliness, as well as its importance to his readers, who ranged from the semi-literate assembly-line workers and English-as-a-second-language mill girls to City Hall’s perennial inhabitants and their business-savvy friends.
The time had come, my ancestral knight of the (then manual) keyboard declared, to inject some life into what he called the “feebly heard,” and only “at long intervals,” demand among the working-class masses for an official holiday to not only give them one more precious day of rest and recreation per year, but more importantly, to celebrate the vital contributions of America’s labor force, and recognize each individual laborer for doing their part for the greater good.
That editorial appears to be the first occasion on which the Telegraph editorialists delved into the subject of Labor Day in any kind of depth since the idea of making it an official national holiday began gaining traction around 1880.
By the time the Telegraph weighed in on the subject in that 1890 editorial, workers, especially union members and their leaders, had been organizing and observing Labor Day, albeit “unofficially,” for nearly a decade.
To call the Labor Day movement popular would be quite the understatement, and any worker or union boss who may have feared a poor turnout at that first organized observance soon replaced his frown with a big smile.
It took place on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, the first and only time Labor Day, unofficial or official, was observed on a Tuesday.
Historical accounts tell us that an estimated 10,000 workers gathered at City Hall in New York City that morning, where they lined up and marched in solidarity to Union Square.
There, perhaps standing or sitting in the shadow of artist Henry Kirke Brown’s famous equestrian statue of president George Washington, participants celebrated with a picnic, band concerts and speeches, presumably headlined by honchos of the chief organizers – the Central Labor Union, an early New York-New Jersey trade union that was eventually absorbed by the giant American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations – the AFL-CIO.
Interestingly, at least 20 states – including New Hampshire – had passed legislation making Labor Day an official state holiday before Congress declared it a national holiday in 1894.
Locally, New Hampshire was one of 10 states that passed Labor Day legislation in 1891. The first to do so was Oregon, in February 1887; later that year Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Colorado passed similar legislation.
Here in Nashua, meanwhile, the Telegraph’s earliest mentions of Labor Day appear to have begun on two successive days’ papers in 1887 – in which the writer seized the opportunity to take a couple of shots at certain types of people he evidently held in contempt.
Both items were brief; the first reported “the weather being exceedingly fine” helped to “make it the grandes holiday of the year.
“In fact, it was a happy day to all people except Socialists, who, being warned that red flags would not be tolerated, sulked in their houses.”
The second brief, which ran the day after Labor Day 1887, noted the holiday “had its trials to Boston laboring men as well as joy … the trials came as the result of intoxicating drink.”
Citing the 149 arrests for drunkenness, the writer said the judge “fined these unfortunate people,” then wondered, rhetorically, “When will men learn that their one great enemy is rum?”
A look through the archives indicates not much at all happened here in Nashua on Labor Day 1891, the year New Hampshire made it a state holiday.
But that wasn’t the case the following year, when a Telegraph reporter, on the Friday before Labor Day, went out on foot and made the rounds, visiting businesses ranging from retail shopkeepers and similar small businesses to factories and specialty manufacturing plants to see if they planned to close the next Monday in recognition of Labor Day.
The tally is a fairly humorous study in ambivalence.
“We will do whatever the rest do … we would much sooner not lose the day (but) if the rest do we will close,” a spokesman for Brackett’s shoe shop replied.
At Moody, Estabrook & Anderson -the giant shoe factory that later became Batesville Casket and is now Palm Square apartments – “we haven’t heard much about it, but if the others will close we will too.”
Nashua Boot & Shoe company “said the same.”
The Nashua Card & Glazed Paper Company (later, Nashua Corporation) said that whether to close “is just what we are trying to find out.”
At Cross & Tolles lumber company, the sentiment was “we are afraid we shall have to run that day … but if some of the others for whom we manufacture boxes close, then we will too.”
Those at the Iron & Brass Company “hadn’t considered the matter very much … .”
Likewise, the Soapstone Company “had not decided, but in all probability they will close.”
The spokesman for the White Mountain Freezer company said a decision had not yet been made, “but we will probably do as the rest do.”
The Iron & Steel foundry respondent was brief. “We think so.”
“I don’t know,” replied a Miss Loveland, a clerk at Smith’s Book Store. But they had to open in the morning, at least, “on account of the newspapers,” a hint that Smith’s probably printed the daily and weekly Telegraphs and the Nashua Daily Press, a short-lived, rather anemic Telegraph competitor.
Julius Wolfman, the French Hill grocer, said “I do not know why they should not” close.
The respondent at downtown clothier Greenwood & Whitmarsh was succinct. “Don’t know,” he replied.
George Bagley, the Main Street printer, said he “will close if the rest do.”
Bagley’s next door neighbor, harness maker I. O. Woodward admitted he “forgot all about it,” but said “if the rest do, we will (close) too.”
The Telegraph reporter wrote that after canvassing the business community both on foot and over the telephone, he felt “the dry goods and furniture men” were leading by example by agreeing to close on Labor Day.
Someone drafted an “agreement,” the Telegraph reported, and the “pro-closure” folks went around soliciting signatures urging their fellow businessmen to join the movement.
From this vantage point, there’s only one downside to the success of the Labor Day holiday movement: If we had no Labor Day, there would be no end to summer.
Happy Labor Day to all, with a grateful tip of the hat to all our hard-working men and women of America’s labor force.
Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.