In the late 19th century, working class Americans – often immigrant families – had no “weekend” because they worked six or seven days a week, 10-12 hours a day. No paid vacations. No sick leave. Very few breaks each day.
On Monday 04 September 1882, The New York Times ran a small blurb on page 8-of-8.
WORKING MEN’S PARADE AND PICNIC.The Central Labor Union met yesterday afternoon at Clarendon Hall. The Committee on Arrangements for the working men’s parade and picnic to-morrow reported that they had all the money needed to defray expenses, and would probably have a surplus…
The organizers of this “Demonstration of Labor, Mammoth Festival, Parade and Pic-Nic”:
- the New York Central Labor Union (CLU), which represented unions of skilled workers, and
- the Knights of Labor, which saw the “economic changes of industrial capitalism” as exploitive and contrary to the “republican ideals of the American Revolution.”
These organizers were trying to unify union workers and shorten both the work week and day..
Trades represented in the parade included bricklayers, cigar-makers, jewelers, longshoremen, piano-makers, shoemakers and typographers.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor:
On the morning of September 5, 1882, a crowd of spectators filled the sidewalks of lower Manhattan near city hall and along Broadway. They had come early, well before the Labor Day parade marchers, to claim the best vantage points from which to view the first Labor Day parade. A newspaper account of the day described “…men on horseback, men wearing regalia, men with society aprons, and men with flags, musical instruments, badges, and all the other paraphernalia of a procession.”
The police, wary that a riot would break out, were out in force that morning as well. By 9 a.m., columns of police and club-wielding officers on horseback surrounded city hall (emphasis added).
The march up Fifth Avenue “symbolized the economic antipodes of the times. Hundreds of men who labored ten to twelve hours, six days a week, for the standard daily wage of two dollars, tramped through the most ostentatious corridor of wealth and power in America.”
And New Yorkers turned out to watch. From The Sun (gushing):
As far ahead as one could see and as far down the side streets as forms and faces could be distinguished, the windows and roofs and even the lamp posts and awning frames were occupied by persons anxious to get a good view of the first parade in New York of workingmen of all trades united in one organization.
How many marched? Who knows?
The Sun estimated 12,000 men; the Irish World, at between 15,000 and 20,000; The Savannah Morning News and the Portland [ME] Daily Express, 20,000. McCabe, on the other hand, estimated “nearly 4,000 men.”
Each risked losing his job.
Papers reported signs carried by workers:
- “All men were born alike and equal”
- “Close the stores at 6 p.m.”
- “Eight hours for a legal day’s work”
- “Labor built this Republic, labor shall rule it”
- “Labor pays all taxes”
- “No man can make land hence no individual should own it”
- “The true remedy is organization and the ballot”
Some of those signs would not be out of place in a Labor Day parade today, 140 years later, if we still had labor-focused parades.
The parade ended with a picnic at at Elm Park. According to McCabe, there were 2,500 people in the park by 2:00 pm (he arrived about 1:00 pm) and 25,000 by 7:00 pm. The Sun estimated 20,000-50,000.
The Washington, D.C. Evening Critic called the parade “one of the largest processions ever seen in New York.”
The following day, the Savannah Morning News called the event a “Monster Parade” on its front page. (It did not make the front page of most New York papers.) The New York Tribune dissed the parade and called the labor organizers “demagogues… It is a pity that workingmen allow themselves to be so cheapened.”
News of the parade ran in papers as far away as Dallas, Texas; the Dakota Territory; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Washington, D.C. Evening Critic called the parade “one of the largest processions ever seen in New York.”
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com