(E)Internal Power Struggle
This is the third (and final, and longest) part of a multi-part series on Labor Day in the United States. Click here for Part I and Part II.
Every human being hates having their authority challenged. Every single one. From your toddler to your grandfather. Rich, Poor, Monarchs, Aristocrats, Industrialists, Socialists, even Capitalists. But depending on your strength relative to your neighbors, you may or may not have the ability to keep others from challenging your authority or imposing your authority on them.
Like it or not, America was founded by wealthy landowners. Enlightened, yes, and certainly egalitarian relative to other contemporary aristocrats at the time, but by no means did they support universal access to power. In fact, their whole shtick was all about limiting access to mega power. Hence checks and balances. But as LOTR fans know, the race of Men above all else desires Power. And as Fredrick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Naturally, then, the American government and American society continued much in the way that it always had, namely that those who had wealth and influence maintained and did their best to expand them, and those who didn’t have them generally continued to not have any. Now, was America more free and open for opportunity than other countries at the time? Absolutely! Did the government formally accept that every man had an intrinsic right to freedom? Sort of! (Which was better than everyone else.) The point is this class distinction of “haves” and “have-nots” and everyone in between is not an American distinction, it’s a human one. And in America, many humans found the freedom to be human.
An Aristocracy of Industrialists
So then, in the 1800s, America was still functionally run by an aristocracy not of hereditary nobility but of wealth and influence. (This is still the case today, BTW, based on how many of our elected officials in Washington are millionaires or 1%ers.) This is simply how things work. It’s how things have always been.
This aristocracy was, then, closely tied with the Industrialists (your boss from the last episode) from whom all of this new mechanized wealth was rolling in. Therefore, it’s in their best interests to make sure all the machines are running at maximum capacity. Again, there’s nothing intrinsically insidious here. It’s just human nature.
Plus, remember what else America celebrates? Expansionism. Manifest Destiny. All of these ideals of exploring and consuming more and more. This is labelled “prosperity” and it’s deeply embedded into the American psyche. Prosperity through progress, innovation, expansion, and industry. Prosperity through hard work and seizing opportunity. Sound familiar?
So to be Anti-Industrialist at this time (and still today in some places) is to be Anti-America. To do anything less than push forward and keep the gas stomped to the floor is to be a traitor.
But again, how long can you rev the engine at full throttle before something breaks?
Clanging under the Hood
In the 1800’s, people start to break. Workers pushed to their limits are beginning to realize that this is not the way things are supposed to be. They live in squalor: overcrowded tenement buildings, filthy air, polluted water, remarkably dangerous 12+ hour shifts, time only to work and sleep. There are certainly none of these nanny state entitlements like “sick time” or “workers comp” or “safety regulations.” Their lives are no better for all of their work and their sweat and their blood, but the lives of their masters are ever-expanding. It seems as though this American dream doesn’t apply to them, just to the classes above them.
Remember, these people are not Un-American. Most of them are loyal patriots who only want what was promised to them – Prosperity through hard work. But it’s not coming to them, it’s not coming to you. And it seems as though it’s being actively denied to you, hoarded by those who have it already. But what can you do about it? You have no money, no influence, no Power.
Your only hope is to join with others like you. If enough of you band together, you’d collectively represent enough of an entity to be taken notice of. You’d have a chance to be listened to, to make Douglass’s Demand for Power to concede.
You therefore join a group of these other workers. You… unify together, yeah, that’s it! A union of laborer! A Labor Union!
And for those who were in the driver’s seat of the country, those who were pushing the gas down all the way, these formations were the first sign that something was going on with the engine.
Resistance Forms
This formation, though, is just as natural to humanity as those having power trying to keep hold of it. This is not in and of itself something evil that lazy, greedy poor people do to get out of their responsibilities. It’s a mechanism used from time immemorial by folks who can or will no longer submit to the control that’s placed upon them.
These groups begin to form all over the world. In other countries where the society had historically been even more autocratic, where oppression and the legacy of “haves” and “have-nots” had been even more severe, the concept of actively giving Power to the People, to the common worker, develops. This idea turns into Socialism, and eventually into Communism, and it spreads like an “intellectual contagion” throughout Europe and South America. And why wouldn’t it? Nations of brutally under-empowered people who literally had nothing to lose and everything to gain embraced it with open arms.
And wouldn’t you do the same in their shoes? Again, imagine if you had nothing and no hope for anything except for a miserable life. Then someone came along and told you that you and your family deserved prosperity, and that the only reason you didn’t have it was because it was being withheld from you by your wealth-mongering employer. And all you needed to do to get this prosperity which you and your family deserved was to join your friends, your fellow workers, and do something about it, wouldn’t that sound like a good deal? Wouldn’t you be moved to join them?
So we can see that the advent of Socialism is largely just a reaction to a Capitalism and an Industrialism that was oppressive to the individual laborers, and these laborers really had no choice but to band together to form a Power Bloc to protect themselves. Where it went from there is another story, though it shouldn’t take much to remember what happens to people (ALL people) when they get a taste of Power.
Resistance to the Resistance
Now then, back to 1800s America. And back to our opening sentiment about your toddler and your grandfather.
So, now you’re in your Labor Union or Workers Union and you want to send a message to the authorities that you’re not going to take this anymore. You don’t want much, just what’s fair. You’re not like those radicals in eastern Europe that want to overthrow the government, you just want a shot at living this prosperous life that the authorities keep talking about. Let’s just start with fair wages and some time to actually LIVE your life, not spend all of it on the job. Maybe a natural balance of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure. That seems fair, right?
Well, that seems like a 30% reduction in the energy that my machine needs to produce. You’re talking about hampering Industry! You want to stall the progress of America (and my income) just so you can laze about in free time? What kind of bum are you? Get out of my office, you ingrate.
OK, so that clearly didn’t work. What will get them to listen to us? How can we hit them where it hurts?
As it’s always been, where it hurts is their wallet. And the wallet to them is their machine, their factory. If the factory doesn’t run, then that will get their attention. If we all agree to strike, well then we’ll have the floor.
So you strike. And your boss responds by cursing you and, as you should have expected, resists your imposition on him. Again, he, just like the rest of the human race, hates it when his authority is challenged. So he fires all of you and hires new people to take your place. Your move.
Well, this absolutely enrages you and your friends. All you were trying to do is get his attention to talk about getting an honest shake, but out of complete selfishness he’s totally escalated the situation and done something totally uncalled for. You and your friends go down to the factory to let everyone know how you feel. You shout at the scabs, the strikebreakers, for betraying you, for taking the side of your boss and selling you out. Some of your friends are so enraged, so desperate and at the end of their rope, they get violent with them. The police are called. And you, just like your boss, hate having your authority challenged by these authorities. Can you guess what happens next?
The Haymarket Affair
If your answer is you and your friends have a reasonable dialog with the highly empathetic officers and by so doing calmly regain your senses and everyone quietly disperses, then bless you, you have no concept of human nature.
If you guessed the opposite of that, then you understand what actually happened in Chicago in May of 1886. I don’t have time to go into the whole story, but it’s truly a fascinating event. To read all about it, check out this article.
The summary is that the back-and-forth escalation of tensions between workers, employers, and authorities came to a head as what started as a peaceful protest centered on advocating for an 8-hour workday erupted into violence. Policemen were attacked, who in turn fired on the crowd. I’m writing this in August of 2020 – does this sound relevant to current events, anyone??
This violence, in turn, led to even more unrest. Clampdowns were tightened, restrictions increased, warrant-less arrests were made, especially among ethnic immigrant workers.
However, the movement for the 8-hour workday, far from being squashed, only galvanized around this incident. In fact, it’s the Haymarket Affair that is most commemorated in the May Day holiday otherwise known as International Worker’s Day. This is the holiday that most other countries, especially socialist ones, recognize as their Labor Day.
Strikes, demonstrations, parades, and other acts of both civil and uncivil disobedience continued to grow throughout the industrial centers of the country for the next several years. In 1894, though, something happened that finally put the issue in the national spotlight.
The Pullman Strike
Once again, the full story is definitely worth the read. Check out this article.
Again, it’s the same story of an enormous Industrialist employer, George Pullman, who, during a recession, tried to force his workers to do more with less. Pullman (who built and named an entire town after himself outside of Chicago, BTW), made railway cars and owned the houses and stores in which his workers (serfs?) lived and shopped. When a recession hit, he fired them or reduced their hours, but kept his rent and store prices the same. They resisted, he resisted.
This time, though, the workers had a powerful, trans-American Union to rely on for support. When the Pullman workers went on strike in May of 1894, the American Railway Union (ARU) instituted a sympathy boycott of all the trains pulling Pullman cars. This effectively shut down railway traffic in 27 states. BIG deal. HUGE deal. National problem. It caused the leaders of the railroad companies to seek help from the federal government to shut down the strike.
On June 29, things got out of control at a gathering of the ARU, and members of the crowd set fire to several nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive attached to cars carrying US mail. This was exactly the casus belli that the feds needed to step in. A federal injunction against the strike was issued on July 2nd, and President Grover Cleveland immediately dispatched troops to enforce it.
However, the pro-labor Illinois governor, who had already dispatched state troops of his own to deal with the unrest, resisted this move and called it grossly unconstitutional. Again, 2020 people, does this sound familiar?
The next few days saw tensions continue to escalate. Riots ensued. Fired were stared. Troops fired into mobs. Eventually, federal troops were recalled and the strike was called off in early August.
A Nuanced Approach
Here’s the thing though – the Cleveland administration was not relying solely on heavy-handed authority to deal with the situation. Cleveland’s Democrat base had a large bloc of pro-labor constituents, and coming down hard on the strike like this was going to make him very unpopular with them. In response to the years of unrest and knowing that eventually the Federal government was going to have to enter the fray, Congress and Cleveland passed legislation making the first Monday of September a national holiday to recognize the laborers across the nation. Cleveland actually signed this into law on June 28, the day before the ARU protest damaged several buildings and the mail train.
Obviously, the news of the national holiday didn’t immediately quell the anger of the Pullman workers or the ARU. Nor did it prevent Cleveland from deploying troops to deal with a strike and the ensuing unrest that most Americans disapproved of. (People’s food and mail supply lines were cut off due to trains not running). But it did much to signal to the country that at least the American Worker is recognized at the national level. They had made enough noise to be taken seriously. And this recognition is critically important to ANY group that feels disenfranchised from the establishment.
But the nuance doesn’t stop there. Even the selection of the day held a lot of political importance. The natural choice for what day to celebrate the Laborer would be May Day, just like all the other countries were doing. However, that day had by that time already been claimed by the Socialists, and the government (and most of the American population) wanted NOTHING to do with that. Remember, Socialism was at this time a massively disruptive intellectual contagion spreading throughout the world, and governments were terrified of it. Fortunately, a tradition of celebrating a workingman’s holiday in early September had already been established in New York since 1882, and by now 23 other states had adopted it as well.
The Unwanted Holy Day
Again, like I said in the introduction episode, you get a sense that the government never really wanted this holiday. It was like it was forced to adopt it in response to massive unrest. And even then, America had to adopt it on America’s own terms, making sure that it was on a day that belonged to America, not anyone else.
So there continues to be this weird, awkward tension between America and Labor Day. We don’t really know what to do with it. It doesn’t really fit with part of the ethos that we still hang on to as a country, the ideals of prosperity through hard work, expansionism, individualism, and industry. In fact, it’s a holiday whose origins lie in just the opposite: a right to rest, the need for collective action, strength through unity, and the idea that we deserve a living wage no matter what we do.
If that sounds Socialist to you, that’s because it is. But that’s the history. Turns out America has some socialism in her after all. It’s celebrated as one of her holy days. It’s weird and awkward, but it’s still there. And unless we want to go back to 12 hour shifts for six days a week, whether we want to admit it or not, we all have some socialism in us as well. So what on earth do we do with that? Seriously, who are we?
And THIS is what I love about Labor Day. It’s this fantastic representation of how complex and layered and multi-dimensional we are are as a nation. We still have this tension within us, these two different natures pulling on us. One is like Iron; one is like Ivy. But on Labor Day, we have the occasion to take an honest look at ourselves and acknowledge that we need both in order to thrive.