By John B. Manbeck
A Brooklyn Historian
Special to The Brooklyn Eagle

Labor Day, just like several other national holidays that have been converted to shopping outings, has been around over a hundred years but much of its original significance has been lost in the popular culture. Americans have forgotten their links to unionism. Observed on the first Monday in September, it celebrates a very important group of people: America’s blue collar workers.

Brooklyn, always the city of the common man, has strong ties to the worker. “Brooklyn Works,� a sign proclaimed on a former East River pier. Julian Ralph, a Brooklyn reporter, noted in 1893 that most products labeled “Made in New York� actually were “Made in Brooklyn.� The original “teddy bear� came from Brooklyn. Companies such as Eberhard Faber made pencils in Williamsburg since 1851. H. Fox has made U-Bet chocolate syrup in Brooklyn since 1904. Twizzlers licorice, another Brooklyn product, has been around since 1845. Pfizer Pharmaceuticals started in Brooklyn in 1849 and Squibb in 1858. Brooklyn jobs were found near the harbor, on farms, in construction and development, in the arts and in teaching. By the 1990s, over 4,000 firms employed Brooklyn workers. Now we have additional service workers for the growing population.

Created first by New York’s Central Labor Union on September 5, 1882, (ironically, a Tuesday), the initial Labor Day celebrated the achievements of the working class with a demonstration at City Hall by 10,000 workers, a march up Broadway to Union Square, followed by a mass picnic at Reservoir Park, now Bryant Park. At the time, labor unions under Samuel Gompers of the AF of L struggled for recognition and acceptance, so this became a way to honor nationally the Americans who “carved all the grandeur we behold.�

But the labor struggle became bloody with protests and strikes for an 8-hour work day initiated by Knights of Labor. In 1884, a labor march in Chicago led to the Haymarket Riot at which a bomb was thrown at police. Union organizers became identified as anarchists and communists. Subsequent labor marches and strikes protested police brutality.

New York State officially celebrated its first Labor Day in 1887. But elsewhere in Pennsylvania and Michigan, unions encountered scabs and police and army opposition. Finally, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill on June 28, 1894, making the September date a federal holiday. Cleveland, an anti-labor man, had signed it as an election ploy, trying to override bad press from the disastrous Pullman strike that same year. (Cleveland lost the election.) The U.S. and Canada are isolated as the only countries that ignore the worldwide international labor day of May 1.

Eventually the picnic of 1882 swelled into a parade along Fifth Avenue, a street more symbolic of rich owners than workers. In 2008, the Labor Day Parade on Fifth Avenue is held on Saturday, September 6—so the shoppers and workers won’t take the time off. In Washington,, D.C., a concert celebrates the day at the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn on September 1. Most laws protecting workers were passed in the 1930s. These days, though, we see Labor Day as the unofficial end of summer.

But Labor Day in Brooklyn is not about strikes but about The Carnival. Back in 1909, Coney Island celebrated the end of the beach season with a three-day New Orleans styled Mardi Gras. Since the 1960s, Brooklyn has developed the Trinidad inspired West Indian Carnival with its West Indian-American Day Parade featuring steel bands and fanciful costumes and headdresses. This year’s parade falls on September 1, Labor Day. Labor is not mentioned but the 3.5 million celebrants certainly put lots of work into the event.

The idea originated in West Indian Harlem in the 1920s, then materialized into a street parade in the 1940s. Rufus Goring decided that Brooklyn, with its growing Caribbean population, would be a better location. And so it happened. Today the weekend celebration is a sellout class act with the mayor and borough president officiating as the bands cavort along Eastern Parkway from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza and south down Flatbush Avenue.

But it’s been a long time since the labor song, “Union Maid,� been sung:

There once was a union maid;
She never was afraid,
Of goons and ginks and company finks
And the deputy sheriffs that made the raid.

© 2008 John B. Manbeck

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008
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