Labour Day

Notes Compiled from various sources

Origin:

Labor Day is truly a global holiday, or as it is known internationally May Day. The roots of Labor Day stretch back to the 1810’s and what was known as the eight hour day movement. Robert Owen, as early as 1817 had formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan Eight hours labor, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.

In the new founded Wellington colony in 1840, the carpenter Samuel Parnell refused to work more than eight hours a day. This movement also began in Australia, when the Stonemasons stopped working and proceeded to march on Parliament from the University of Melbourne, to achieve an eight hour work day. This movement eventually found its way to Canada as well, and Labor Day in Canada as well as the United States ca bn be attributed directly to the efforts of the Knights of Labor.

The Knights of Labor was labor union founded in secrecy in December 1869, by a group of Philadelphia tailors led by Uriah S. Stephens. Originally called 'The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor', it was designed to protect all who worked for a living.

Source: http://www.motivatedentrepreneur.com/articles/The_Origin_of_Labor_Day.shtml

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The Eight Hour Movement

When the Chicago labor movement emerged in 1864, the eight-hour day quickly became its central demand.

Exhausted by 12 to 14 hours a day of work, six days a week, workers throughout the city and state organized to secure a law limiting the workday to eight hours.

In 1867, the Illinois legislature passed such a law but allowed a huge loophole that permitted employers to contract with their employees for longer hours. Trying to eliminate that option, Chicago labor called for a citywide strike that began on May 1, 1867, and practically shut down the city's economy for a week. When the strike collapsed, the law collapsed with it and workers were left unprotected.

In the 1880s, the issue resurfaced and became the key demand of a movement that shook the city and the nation. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions—predecessor of the American Federation of Labor—urged American workers to observe an eight-hour day beginning May 1, 1886. Implying direct rather than legislative action, the eight-hour movement united skilled and unskilled workers of all nationalities. Chicago anarchists, trade unionists, and the Knights of Labor, despite the coolness of their national organizations, actively promoted and profited from the movement, and made Chicago its national center.

Source: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/417.html

Knights of Labour

Photograph taken July 7, 1886

The Knights of Labor were founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Uriah Stevens and six other taylors in 1869. They began initially as a secret society structured after Free Masonry with the goal of promoting the organization of working people. The Knights rose to national prominence in the 1880's under the leadership of Terence V. Powerly, "General Master Workman" of the Knights of Labor for a period of 14 years which saw the end of secrecy in 1881 and the growth of the labor union from 10,000 workers to over a million by 1886. At that time the membership consisted of 50,000 African American workers and 10,000 women workers.

Source: http://www.knightsoflabor.org/

Plaque at Melbourne Uni honours world beginnings of the 8-hour day

In March, 1856, stonemasons working on Melbourne University held a public meeting and agreed that from April 21 they would work for only eight hours a day. Each working day should be one-third sleep, one-third work and one-third leisure. Their goal was achieved on the following May 21.

It was not a new concept; Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) had raised the demand for a ten-hour day as early as 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark, Scotland. As early as 1817 he had formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan "Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest".

On April 21 there was a march to Parliament House with other members of the building trade. The movement in Melbourne was led by veteran chartists and mason James Stephens (1821 - 1889), TW Vine and James Galloway. The government agreed that workers employed on public works should enjoy an eight-hour day with no loss of pay and stonemasons celebrated with a holiday and procession on Monday May 12, 1856, when about 700 people marched with 19 trades involved.

By 1858, the eight-hour day was firmly established in the building industry, and by 1860 the eight-hour day was fairly widely observed in the State of Victoria. From 1879, the eight-hour day was a public holiday in that state. The initial success in Melbourne led to the decision to organise a movement, to actively spread the eight-hour idea and secure the condition generally. Australia became the first country in the world to legislate for an eight-hour day, and each state still has a public holiday for Eight Hour Day (sometimes called 'Labor Day').

In 1903, veteran socialist Tom Mann spoke to a crowd of a thousand people at the unveiling of the Eight Hour Day monument, funded by public subscription, and located on the corner of Victoria and Russell Streets, outside Melbourne Trades Hall.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pipwilson/2346443933/

Robert Owen

"What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal".

Extract from Robert Owen’s "Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark"
New Year’s Day, 1816

Owen made this speech when he opened the Institute for the Formation of Character, effectively a community education centre. He outlined his visionary plans for an astonishingly progressive and enlightened system of education which he believed was the key to a happier society, and universal harmony.

Under Owen’s management the cotton mills and village of New Lanark became a model community, in which the drive towards progress and prosperity through new technology of the Industrial Revolution was tempered by a caring and humane regime. New Lanark had the first Infant School, a creche for working mothers, free medical care, and comprehensive education, including evening classes. Leisure and recreation were not forgotten; there were concerts, dancing, music-making and pleasant landscaped areas for the benefit of the community. The village attracted international attention.

Even today New Lanark attracts visitors from all over the world who come to see the historic buildings and to enter the award-winning Visitor Centre (for more info see www.newlanark.org).

While at New Lanark, Robert Owen demonstrated management policies that are now widely recognised as precursors of modern theories relating to human resource management, as well as skilful and ethical business practice. His work inspired infant education, humane working practices, Co-operation, trade unionism, and garden cities. It inspires New Lanark Conservation Trust, the independent Scottish charity which is dedicated to restoring and caring for the historic village of New Lanark in Southern Scotland.

Robert Owen looked forward to the new Millennium with optimism and with confidence. In 1841 he wrote the following words:

"It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium".

Source: http://www.robert-owen.com/

Robert Owen on Working Conditions

Owen's extremely advanced system of factory management, which he pioneered at the New Lanark Mills gained him credibility, not only as a successful businessman, but also as a benevolent employer. He proved that commercial success could be achieved without exploitation of those employed; his approach to social and economic organisation was extended beyond the mill floor into every aspect of village life.

"The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways:

1st When they are neglected in infancy

2nd When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them.

3rd When they are paid low wages for their labour ". (On the employment of children in manufactories, 1818)

"The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others". (From a Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America, London 1841)

"Eight hours' daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep". (From the Foundation Axioms of Owen's "Society for Promoting National Regeneration", 1833)

Source: http://www.robert-owen.com/quotes.htm/

American Atheists.Org on Robert Owen

No one knows what it is that makes a man of a different stripe. Hundreds of millions of us go through life not seeing, not caring, not attempting to make a difference. It reminds one of our own nation's Declaration of Independence — which no one, now, ever reads. There the simple truth is set out:

. . . all Experience hath shown, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.

The Declaration then goes on to list twenty-seven very grievous offenses which the king of England had visited upon all of the colonies of America.

Robert Owen only needed to see children in the factories of his day, cold, hungry, dirty, alone — and that was enough for him. We can only wonder what made him into the man he became.

Source: http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/robertowen/

Robert Owen's Background (American Atheist.org)

He started out in life very ordinary, the son of a comfortable small tradesman, a saddler - who hustled on the side as a postmaster. His mother, Anne Williams, was a farmer's daughter — and like the women of the day had been taught that her function was to breed. She had seven children of whom Robert was number six. Somehow the parents managed to get some of their brood into school, which for any child in the late 1700s, was a one-in-seventy chance.

In any event, Robert Owen was born a Welshman on May 14, 1771, in a nation which was filled with tranquil and ignorant people. Robert Owen was quickly infected with the most dangerous proclivity known to man: he learned to read. This is a burden upon one's life and activities that few people experience — for the uncrushable desire to know is all-consuming.

In his case, as in the case of all avid readers, there came to him information which would fashion him differently than any others. By the age of ten, he already knew of the mutual bitterness of the diverse sects of religion, and this alone had turned him skeptical in that field.

He had other labor to do, for at age nine he was put to work in a grocer and haberdasher's shop to earn his living. But his reading education goaded him toward further horizons, and when he was ten he was permitted to go to London to join an elder brother who was a saddler there. Once in London, he stumbled onto a haberdasher in Lincolnshire who made him a handsome offer — board and lodging in return for work for one year. Should his master profit from young Owen's work, in the second year he should earn £8 and in the third year £10.

"Our opinions are made for us, not by us."

When he was installed at the shop, to his delight he discovered that the haberdasher had a library. When the shop was closed at 4:00 P.M. each day, Owen was permitted to read for the next five hours in the library. His master was a Presbyterian and his mistress was Episcopalian, and as he dutifully trotted to one or the other churches to hear each minister rant against the other, he quickly concluded that "our opinions are made for us, not by us." His religious feelings were quickly displaced by a "spirit of universal charity toward the human race rather than toward god" — and he was, even then, halfway to the rescue of the children....

His Principles on Reform (American Atheist.org)

... Owen soon attempted to define what he perceived as the needed reforms of society and published his "abstract principle" of reform in a series of essays. The just of this was summarized by one writer as:

1. To establish a universal, uniform, unsectarian system of schools, with training colleges . . . for teachers.

2. To establish a department of State which shall collect and publish each quarter the condition of labour, unemployment, and wages in every district.

3. To restrict the hours of adult labour to ten, and forbid the employment of children.

4. To institute public works (making roads, etc.) which shall absorb all who are left unemployed by private enterprise.

5. To revise the Poor Laws drastically.

6. To reform the jails and the administration of justice with the same thoroughness.

7. To reduce the number of licenses and raise the duties on spirits.

8. To suppress the State lotteries and discourage gambling.

9. To reform the Church by abolishing tests and dogmas.

10. To get rid of religious intolerance and war. 1

Robert Owen on Christianity (American Atheist.org)

... The very first of what came to be called "freethought" periodicals was founded as a vehicle for Robert Owen's social views and was published at this community of New Harmony. The first issue was dated October 1, 1825.

... The second issue, however, found the editor openly espousing infidelity. During the fall of 1826, articles appeared showing the flimsy foundations of Christianity, the absurdity of the doctrine of original sin, and the insufficient evidence in support of future rewards and punishments. The accounts of the creation of the world, the Garden of Eden, the deluge, the Tower of Babel, Lot and his daughters, and, indeed, most Old Testament stories were held up to be absurd, irrational, and (often) obscene.

... Somewhere along the way Owen had made an agreement to debate a fiery Baptist preacher, the Rev. A. Campbell, and a date was set for April 13, 1829. He returned to the United States to keep this commitment ... The churches in the city of Cincinnati, where the debate was to be held, refused to rent space, but finally a Methodist meetinghouse, which seated one thousand, was obtained. The debate began at 9:00 A.M. every morning and continued for eight days — each day the meetinghouse being crowded to capacity... At the end of the debate, Campbell used the stratagem of asking all those present who believed in the Christian religion to stand. When, obviously, almost the entire meetinghouse did, he asked those who doubted the Christian religion to stand. Three were brave enough to do so.

... On May 4, 1845, a "Convention of the Infidels of the United States" was held in New York, and Owen was in attendance and gave an address. ...A society was to issue from the meeting, and the name proposed by Owen was "The Society for the promotion of Universal Mental Liberty," but the name finally chosen was "The Infidel Society for the Promotion of Universal Mental Liberty."

... He died on November 17, 1858, at age eighty-seven. He wanted to be buried beside his father, and the rector of the parish demanded a full church service over his grave. The rector refused to permit any of his friends to speak at the grave.

But Owen has his memorial stone elsewhere: in the nations in which young children no longer are in factories, in which there are public schools for all, in which poverty and vice are not so proliferate as in his early years in Britain, in which women are often the civic equals of men, in which the average work day is eight hours. There is hardly a reform movement in the world which does not owe much to Owen's original spirit and aspirations. He could well be the greatest, but least-known, social redeemer in the world.

For the Full Article visit the source at: http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/robertowen/