Some random observations about labor on Labor Day.
Last week, waiting on the train platform, I could not help but notice how many people were staring down at their phones – perhaps already beginning their day of labor. A few looked up and out across the Hudson River to take in the splendid Palisades. I wonder who had a less laborious beginning to their day.
I went to work near Union Square, which was the site for the first Labor Day Parade in 1882. Contrary to what one might think, the name Union Square has nothing to do with that event but rather is simply because it is where Broadway and 4th Avenue unite.
I teach around the corner from the park at Parsons School of Design. The school was founded by Willam Merritt Chase. A few doors down from my building is a branch of the bank, JP Morgan Chase. It sits at the location of the former Coffee Shop. Before it was a hip nighttime hangout in the 90s for models and other fashionable folks, it was actually Chase Coffee Shop in the 1970s. Ironically, that diner was cited for health code violations in 1972 by a city inspector named Gordon Chase.
Consider this. An artist, a banker, a restaurateur and an inspector – all named Chase labored here. While their names and location were the same, the products of their labor could not have been more diverse: education, capital, food and safety.
Recently, I got into an argument at a bar over labor. At one point, my “opposition” argued that capitalists were more important than laborers. When given the somewhat false choice of who was more indispensable in building American railroads, the capitalists who funded them or the workers who built them, he said the capitalists. I disagreed, arguing that the tens of thousands of workers were more important than a handful of tycoons whose investments – while important – were dwarfed by the money spent by our government and the land grants given to the railroads. Who do you think is more indispensable in America – those who labor or those who accrue capital?
Labor and work are different. Work refers simply to action. Labor adds a degree of struggle.
Labor as a word dates back to the 1300s in the text of Life & Martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Approximately a hundred years later it was used in the context of childbirth. Which is not – although perhaps it should be – the inspiration for the term “Labor of Love” – which first appears in the King James Bible and refers to work in the service of God or others.
Labor does not appear in reference to groups of workers until 1839.
Labor Day first became a federal holiday in the United States in 1894.
Approximately, 70 million people in the United States still have to report to work on Labor Day.
Including workers at Dunkin Donuts, Barnes and Noble, Sephora, Staples, Whole Foods and other retailers that all surround Union Square. The corporate offices of these businesses however – and of course – are closed. Who is more indispensable again?
This Week’s Recommendation: Last year, I interviewed Adam Chandler about his book, 99% Perspiration. It was a fascinating conversation about the history of work in America and our attitudes towards labor. Check it out here.
Share this with someone whose labor deserves to be recognized.