Column for Friday on Labor Day

I am so old that I recall when school started the day after Labor Day. I am old enough to be caught between conflicting whirls toward labor. My maternal grandfather was kicked out of the company house for considering joining the IWW. Both my uncles were attacked by private and public police when the United Mine workers were organizing in the western Pennsylvania coal fields. My father worked his way up the ladder as a seafarer through the programs of the Seafarer’s International Union, and I could afford college due to a scholarship from that same union. I would walk into bars when I was young, and the folks would show me precisely where John L Lewis stood and spoke ot the gathered men. At the same time, corruption infested segments of the labor movement. Some of its demands pressed industry beyond economic capacity, and concern for maintaining positions led to a crazy quilt of regulations and sometimes featherbedding. When I was in school, we barely touched on labor history, in the heart of the union movement. I recall when George Meany was an important guest on a Sunday talk show, but now unions are hovering just over 10% of the work force. Even as unions are in full retreat, listen to how the very word is spit out in political speeches. Long ago, as labor strife was increasing in the country, a surge began in the East for a workingman’s holiday. Soon, many states enacted just such a holiday and in the midst of grave labor struggles and social unrest, the Congress enacted a national Labor Day in 1894. Within a week, President Cleveland would send in federal troops to crush the Pullman strike in Chicago. Working people could use a rest. the average industrial wage was often less than 25 cents and hour and the average industrial work week was sixty hours a week. 35,000 workers were killed annually around the first Labor Day and over 500,000 were injured. In some cities, children made up almost 10% of the work force. A Hull House report told of girls in candy factories working over 80 hours a week. Mary Harris Jones spent years in labor agitation. Mother Jones is buried not far from Alton in Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive. Among her quotes she said: “injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time.” In 1891 Pope Leo wrote an encyclical on the rights of labor. Here are two noteworthy sections: “The oppressed workers, above all, ought to be liberated from the savagery of greedy men, who inordinately use human beings as things for gain. Assuredly, neither justice nor humanity can countenance the exaction of so much work that the spirit is dulled from excessive toil and that along with it the body sinks crushed from exhaustion. The working energy of a man, like his entire nature, is circumscribed by definite limits beyond which it cannot go. (#59)… Equity therefore commands that public authority show proper concern for the worker so that from what he contributes to the common good he may receive what will enable him, housed, clothed, and secure, to live his life without hardship (#51).” As we mourn the passing of summer, I hope and pray that we pause in thanksgiving for the gift of labor to build a nation, to provide the dignity of work for all, to honor how each gift can be fitted within a society to contribute to the common good. May all who work by hand, or head, or heart know, for at least a day, that they are recognized and respected.