Labor

Labor Day, developed by labor advocates as a holiday in the 1880s, commemorates the blood sacrifice of early labor organizers, killed by corporate goons and government enforcers. Yes, labor organizers died so that poor children can earn minimum wage when they go to work at 16. It is important to remember this at a time when Tea Party supporters would gut labor protections and Social Security. 

Photo by Lewis Hine

My maternal grandmother worked in a New England textile mill when she came to the U.S. in 1917 from Belarus. She was a teenager, recruited off her family farm to work on factory floors six days a week for ten to twelve hours a day. She was paid pennies by the hour. Her sweat and the sweat of her myriad peers maintained the great wealth of the textile magnates of Massachusetts, whose sons went to Harvard or Yale. My paternal grandfather went to work in the leather-tanning mills of Lynn, Massachusetts when he was ten. Stirring vats of tannic acid for ten hours a day, filled with raw animal hides, was a job for the boys when they were not in school. Occasionally, a child fell in. These unfortunates often died or were scarred for life.

I feel like a smooth-palmed dilettante, compared to my forebears. My parents built our family home by themselves with occasional help from friends with various craft skills. Their labor was the only way they could see to ascend to owning their own new home. Labor is a way of being, a way of thinking. It is not what stupid people do, the view of those who have no idea what it means to produce anything of practical value with their sweat and energy. 

Cook-outs and pub crawls may seem suitable celebrations to those who do not appreciate what Labor Day actually memorializes. Understanding the history of this holiday sobers me and helps me to make peace with my origins. It opens my awareness and compassion to those tired faces I see around me, the faces of those who hammer nails and pour concrete. It enables me to be honest with myself about what practical good I bring to the world with my own labor.