Many workers in the late 19th century faced harsh working conditions, long hours, low wages, and a lack of workplace safety regulations. To help promote awareness of the workers’ plight and the need to correct the ills they faced, in 1894 President Grover Cleveland signed into law a bill making the first Monday of September each year a federal holiday.
Several decades of labor unrest preceded the establishment of the Labor Day holiday.
Three of the most significant events were the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Riot in 1886, and the first-ever Labor Day parade in New York in 1882.
The railroad strike began on July 14, 1877, in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut workers’ wages for the third time in a year. The strike spread rapidly to other parts of the country, and within two weeks involved more than 100,000 workers in 27 states. Violence erupted after President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to force the strikers back to work, which resulted in many clashes between the strikers and the troops. The strike failed in its immediate objectives, but it marked a major turning point in the battle for workers’ rights.
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