Labor Day
For information on the background of the first Labor Day observance in New York in 1882 and President Cleveland's approval of the concept as a public holiday in 1894, try these articles:
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Grossman, Jonathan. "Who Is the Father of Labor Day?" Labor History
14, no. 4 (1973): 612-23. Presents the claims of Matthew Maguire and Peter
McGuire for this honor.
Hunt, Richard P. "The First Labor Day." American Heritage 33, no. 5 (1982): 109-12.
Kazin, Michael, and Steven J. Ross. "America's Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Worker's Celebration." Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1294-1323. Evolution of Labor Day since the 1880s.
Murolo, Priscilla, and A.B. Chitty. From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States. (New York: New Press, 2001). Very informal, but with good illustrations.
For material on Peter McGuire, see this fine page from the Carpenters Union Website:
http://www.carpenters.org/history/pj.html
About.com provides a useful site on origins of Labor Day (if you can stand all of the pop-up ads):
http://usgovinfo.about.com/bllabor.htm
The "Newshour" website of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has a brief but helpful discussion of President Cleveland's proclamation of the first Labor Day:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/september96/labor_day_9-2.html
And the Detroit News' website has a marvelous section on the holiday, based on the story "How Labor Won Its Day" by News staffer Patricia K. Zacharias. Don't forget to click on the "More Photos" button on this page; the images that follow are great!
http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=150&category=business
Good general histories of the nineteenth-century American labor movement are:
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Foner, Philip Sheldon. History of the Labor Movement in the United
States. (New York: International Publishers, 1947-1999). A multi-volume
work, with different volumes published in different years. From Googling,
I think this is the case, though I'm not positive.
Mink, Gwendolyn. Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986).
Nicholson, Philip Yale. Labor's Story in the United States. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
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Buhle, Paul, and Nicole Schulman. Wobblies! : A Graphic History of
the Industrial Workers of the World. (London: Verso, 2005). Excellent
images.
Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: c1988).
Fink, Leon. Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1983.
Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers. Stuart B. Kaufman et al., eds. Nine volumes to date. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: c1986 - ). This series serves as a documentary history of the founding of the American Federation of Labor as well as a record of Gompers' life.
Greene, Julie. Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 1998).
Kimeldorf, Howard. Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Phelan, Craig. Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor. (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 2000).
Renshaw, Patrick. The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999). With a new preface by the author and an updated bibliography.
You might want to start with this source, mounted at the website of the Seattle Longshoremen's Union on "Mayday, 1886: The Eight-Hour Movement":
http://www.ilwu19.com/history/mayday.htm
The bomb explosion at the May 3, 1886, rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square and the controversial trials that followed have been the subject of articles, books, songs, and, of course, websites. Here are just a few books you may want to try:
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Avrich, Paul. The Haymarket Tragedy. (Princeton.: Princeton University
Press, 1986). The standard work on the subject.
Glenn, Robert W. The Haymarket Affair: An Annotated Bibliography. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).
Roediger, Dave, and Franklin Rosemont, eds. Haymarket Scrapbook. (Chicago: C.H. Kerr: 1986). Fine compilation of images.
The "Haymarket" section of EdSitement's "Industrial Age in America" lesson plan has excellent links to Internet, video, and print resources:
http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=430
The Chicago Historical Society's "Haymarket Affair Digital Collection" site has an excellent narrative, bibliography, links, and some great samples of Haymarket images at the Society. Be sure to investigate all of the corners of this site:
http://www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/intro.html
The "Dramas of Haymarket," a cooperative venture of Northwestern University and the Chicago Historical Society, is a lively interactive addition:
http://www.chicagohistory.org/dramas/index.htm
And PBS's "American Experience" series has a helpful lesson plan on the Haymarket Square riots:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/peopleevents/e_haymarket.html
The Pullman strike of 1894 triggered the nationwide 1894 railroad strike, with an outcome that persuaded President Cleveland to approve adoption of Labor Day as a holiday. Try these books for the story:
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Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment
and of a Great Labor Upheaval. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1964).
Schneirov, Richard et al., eds. The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/pullpar.htm
