Our Amiable Holiday: Working class, employing class share joint drive for prosperity

By JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN

Bridge News

NEW YORK --Labor Day may be the mildest holiday Americans celebrate, yet it was born in the turmoil and class warfare of the late 19th century --a time of brutal strikes and unfettered capitalism.

The great 19th century industrialists nearly to a man agreed with Andrew Carnegie's cold division of human beings: "The one is master and depends on profits. The other is servant and depends on salary."

No chief executive would make such a remark --and stay employed -- today. Labor is no longer servitude.

The nation's remarkable journey from class hostility to the greatest prosperity any working society has ever known is what we celebrate on Monday.

Yet the American journey, as viewed through the holiday's prism, is very different from the European journey. Most of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1. In the United States and Canada, we celebrate on the first Monday in September.

Natural long weekend

Ours is by design the more benign and less militant practice. For one thing, the shrewd selection of Monday meant a natural long weekend --benefiting all workers --when the concept of a long weekend was only dimly understood.

Europe's May Day-Labor Day observance was announced in 1889 by the first Paris Congress of the Second Socialist International. The Socialists planned to have workers enforce the May 1 holiday whenever it occurred, whether on a weekend or during the work week.

Disruption was to be part of the holiday, and there was no notion that anyone but workers would participate --certainly not owners or capitalists.

The North American version was both slightly older and substantially friendlier. It was first proposed by the nascent industrial organization, the Knights of Labor, which began agitating for a labor day in 1882, marching through the streets of New York City.

The demand for a universal labor day swept across the country, often in the wake of labor unrest. In 1887, Oregon became the first state to pass legislation recognizing the day. Colorado, New Jersey and New York followed.

In 1894, the U.S. Congress made it a legal, national holiday.

Meanwhile, England had held its first labor day celebration in 1892 in London's Hyde Park. Police and workers clashed, as they often would through the years.

Observed by all

Ours, in contrast, was established as a universal holiday, declared by government and observed by all classes and the vast majority of businesses. Rather than clashes between cops and workers, we hold picnics, parades, baseball games --and give a few mild speeches.

From the sweetness of the activities, one would never know this was a holiday born in violence.

Is this good? Or has the American labor movement simply let itself be co-opted as its European brethren marched to the barricades?

The early American labor movement held a vision comparable to Carnegie's division of mankind. Said the constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common."

Yet within the century-long history of this holiday, the country has moved from the viciousness of the Homestead Strike against the Carnegie Steel Co. in 1892 to its opposite in the recent United Parcel Service strike.

In the Homestead Strike, many workers were murdered --and the nation pretty much sympathized with management. Contrast that with the UPS strike, in which New York businesses sent down coffee and soda to the strikers, their friendly deliverers, on the picket lines.

Actually like one another

The working class and the employing class now have a great deal in common --a joint drive for prosperity. They actually like one another.

Karl Marx, of all people, understood this when he wrote to Abraham Lincoln: "The working men of Europe feel instinctively that the Star- Spangled Banner carries the destiny of their class."

So as we unfurl the flag, eat our hot dogs and cheer our teams, we salute American labor and its extraordinary achievements.

We also recognize that the labor movement's great days may be behind it. Less than 10 percent of the American private-sector work force is unionized, down from 35 percent 30 years ago.

Even as we celebrate labor's achievements, we recognize its decline and uncertain future as it faces the enormous difficulties of organizing office and service workers into the union structure that once did so well for industrial workers.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services