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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 pre-season 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 that 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 getting $3 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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