Here's another good labor day article from the Denver Post. Once you get
past the local color, I think you'll notice the sad similarities to your
own locality.
Martin Ryder
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ed quillen
Time to give up on Labor Day?
By Ed Quillen, Special to the Denver Post
Perhaps it's time to change the name of the state and federal
holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. For more than a
century, it has been known as Labor Day, and it was created to honor "the
contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being
of our country."
It was once celebrated with parades of union workers, but so
far, I haven't found any mention of a Labor Day labor parade in Colorado
this year. Denver is busy this weekend with a Broncos preseason game, the
annual tear-gassing of the crowds at the CU-CSU game, three days of
downtown auto racing and A Taste of Colorado - but no Labor Day Parade.
Up here in the mountains, there are scores of festivals
designed to garner a few more tourist dollars before the cold sets in, but
the only one that mentioned a parade was in Ridgway, and it's a "cowboy
parade," not an exhibition of the solidarity of the working class.
Just to be sure I hadn't missed something in my search for
a traditional Labor Day celebration, I called the Colorado office of
the AFL-CIO. I got a recorded message that the office was moving and
would not be open again until Sept. 8.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Day was
first celebrated in 1882 in New York City, and by 1885 it had spread to
most American industrial centers.
With its mines, railroads and smelters, Colorado was more
industrial than pastoral in the 1880s. Oregon was the first state to
make Labor Day a state holiday, on Feb. 21, 1887, but Colorado was second,
enacting the official holiday on March 25, 1887. The first official
celebration came that September in Denver with a parade and all-day picnic
at Argo Park at 47th and Logan.
There were several reasons unions pushed for the holiday.
One was to get a day off with pay. That day off could be used to build
solidarity at a picnic. And the parade to the picnic grounds could
demonstrate labor's strength so that politicians would support the labor
agenda.
Colorado's labor leaders wanted the state to outlaw child
labor, which persisted until the 1910s. They advocated a law that would
force companies to pay in cash, rather than in scrip that was good only
at the company store. They agitated for the eight-hour day, which came
only after a long and bloody struggle - and a meaningless one, since
it's nearly impossible now to support a family on one eight-hour-a-day
job.
We have a rich and violent labor history in Colorado,
complete with terrorist bombings, concentration camps, kangaroo courts and
massacres. It has an engaging cast with agitators Mother Jones and Big
Bill Haywood, capitalists John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Jay Gould, along
with mad-bomber Harry Orchard and enlightened coal-mine owner Josephine
Roche, to name a few. We had spineless governors like Elias Ammons and
brave ones like Davis H. Waite, and we had socialists holding state
office.
Despite all this, it is a history that is generally
ignored. Martha and I make a habit of visiting small-town museums. They're
full of lore about the first gold strike, cattle ranch, railroad arrival
or irrigation ditch. But in only one have we found more than passing
mention of the major union in Colorado's history: the Western Federation
of Miners.
Appropriately, that museum is in Victor - the working-class
neighbor of glittering Cripple Creek, six miles away. A century ago,
Victor was a stronghold of the WFM, which had organized local gold mines
to keep a $3 wage for an eight-hour day.
On that account, Victor was also a target of our state
militia - no matter what the state or federal constitution says about
"freedom of the press," its newspaper was shut down by the militia during
the strike of 1903-04.
Or, as militia Maj. Thomas McClelland put it, "To hell with
the constitution! We are not following the constitution."
The WFM protested those outrages by issuing a poster, which
asked, "Is Colorado in America?" Below that was a U.S. flag with some
commentary in the stripes, such as "Free speech denied in Colorado!" and
"Corporations corrupt and control administration in Colorado!"
Colorado's leaders did not respond by investigating these
allegations and then correcting any problems. Instead, two officers of
the WFM - Haywood and Charles Moyer - were arrested for "desecrating the
American flag."
That's a very small part of a long and lively story, one
worthy of contemplation if Labor Day lived up to its name in Colorado. As
it is, we ought to be honest and change it to the End of Summer Tourist
Season Festival, since that's what we actually celebrate.
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Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper
editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday in the Denver PostA.
Martin Ryder
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