We introduce Bill Droel of the National
Center for the Laity as the guest author of our 2014 Labor Day article. www.catholiclabor.org/NCL.htm
Droel is longtime editor of INITIATIVES, a free newsletter on faith
and work from the National Center for the Laity (PO Box 29112, Chicago, IL
60629). We expect to continue to post
Bill Droel’s articles on this blog.
The
Working Catholic
Bill
Droel
Labor Day History
Labor
Day began in 1882 when machinist Matthew Maguire (1855-1917) and carpenter
Peter Maguire (1852-1906) organized a parade in New York City. Both, though unrelated,
were Catholic laymen active in the Knights of Labor, the first successful
national union in this country. The New York parade was repeated in 1883 and
1884.
Soon thereafter Oregon, and then a few
other states, began honoring working people with an official Labor Day on the
first Saturday of June. It was later changed to the first Monday in September.
Finally in 1894 Congress voted for that day to be a national holiday.
Once upon a time I was part of a lobby
to change the feast of St. Joseph the Worker from May First to the first Monday
in September in the United States only. The proposal got a fair hearing from
the U.S. bishops but the inertia of bureaucracy stopped us.
May First means something to workers in
Europe, but strangely not to people in the U.S. Strangely because that date commemorates an event in my sweet home,
Chicago. It all started on May 1, 1886 when the Federation of Organized Trades
and Labor Union, with a city permit, demonstrated for the enforcement of
eight-hour work laws. A previously scheduled follow-up rally was held on May
Fourth. “No single event has influenced the history of labor in the U.S. and
even the world more than this [1886] Haymarket Affair,” writes William Adelman
in Haymarket Revisited (Illinois
Labor History, 1976).
Late in the evening someone at the rally
threw dynamite; the police fired wildly. Soon seven police and four workers
were dead. Eight workers were quickly arrested, including a lay minister, a
printer and others. Seven were found guilty in August. One was given 15 years;
two got life sentences; one was killed in jail. The remaining three were hanged
in November.
Thus by July 1889 European countries
designated May First as Labor Day to honor Chicago’s Haymarket workers. The
European date, contrary to assumptions, does not point to any date associated
with communism.
Haymarket history was pushed aside in
the U.S. and young adults now know of our Haymarket area only as a trendy place
to eat.
Catholics risk losing a crucial part of
our identity if we forget our own labor history.
Cardinal James Gibbons (1834-1921) of
Baltimore spoke up in Rome in 1887 for the Knights of Labor and thereafter he
spoke stateside in support of the Catholic doctrine on labor relations. His
good pastoral sense was not always the norm in Europe and Canada. The close cooperation
between the U.S. labor movement and Catholicism benefited both for an important
century in our nation’s growth.
The connection between labor and, to use
the current jargon, new evangelization
was particularly strong in the years before and just after World War II. There
were several “labor priests” in those days including Chicagoans Msgr. John
Hayes (1906-2002), Msgr. Dan Cantwell (1915-1996) and Msgr. George Higgins
(1916-2002), who spent most of his career at the national bishops’ conference. There were also several outstanding U.S. “lay
apostles” who devoted themselves to nurturing the relationship. They staffed
over 100 Catholic labor schools where workers were trained in parliamentary
procedure, history and Catholic social doctrine. They produced inspiring
newspapers, including Work here in
Chicago. And they formed some networks operating alongside the labor movement,
including the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the Catholic Labor
Alliance. A good start on this history is reading Go To the Worker by Kimball Baker (Marquette University Press,
2010).
Of
course, things have changed. But young adults are still invested in their
jobs—probably more so than in the industrial era. The challenge is to assist
them with new ideas and new forums. The future of the U.S. Catholic church,
despite worthwhile energy devoted to other projects, largely depends on a turn
toward the world of work.
Droel is editor of INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102,
Chicago, IL 60629), a newsletter about faith and work.
