Labor Day

Labor Day, Swami Vivekananda and You!

As you read this, the American Labor Day holiday is just ahead. Many American families think of the Labor Day weekend as the last big bash at the end of summer before going back to school or work. But Labor Day was not created as an end-to-summer barbecue or beach holiday. Labor Day was created as a time to honor workers and the dignity of hard work – labor.

In the 1890s, over a hundred years ago, and at the time of Swami Vivekananda’s first visit to America to attend the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, the United States was a country full of new workers. The Industrial Revolution – the coming of the machine age, when so many new inventions were creating brand-new jobs – meant that Americans who had worked the land as farmers, and immigrants who came to the United States from Europe, flocked to the big cities of America to get good work.

This good work, however, often came with a terrible price. Many business owners – often they were known as “captains of industry” and they became very rich, very fast – had one objective in mind: production, production, production. Workers had to endure long hours on the job – 14 hours or more each day! – six days per week, in often dimly-lit factories with unsafe working conditions. Pay was too low. Many were hurt or accidentally killed on the job. Children worked alongside their parents. Slums grew in cities where many families lived together in overcrowded buildings in order to be able to afford their rent. There was little honor in working this way, and even less dignity.

Workers banded together to demand better working conditions. Unions were born – the banding-together of steelworkers, cabinetmakers, electricians, mine workers, garment workers, and more. Workers created lists of what they felt was fair treatment and pay, and then, when business owners did not bargain with them fairly, the workers began to strike – to walk off the job. Fights broke out between the workers and the business owners. It was a violent time in the United States.

In 1893 – the same year as Swami Vivekananda’s address to the World Parliament of Religions -- the tensions between labor (the workers) and management (the business owners) erupted in violence. In Pullman, Illinois, a town not far from Chicago, the American Railroad Workers went on strike, asking for better pay and working conditions. U.S. President Grover Cleveland was influenced by railroad executives who told him that the interruption of train service would mean no rail-delivered goods -- and this included the U.S. mail -- would get through to their destinations.

President Cleveland declared striking a federal crime and sent 12,000 troops to Illinois to break up the strike. Two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters. The strike failed, and Pullman employees signed a pledge that they would never again unionize. The action was so violent that it effectively stamped out unions until the time of the Depression in the 1930s.

In this same year, 1893, Swami Vivekananda traveled from India to America, where he “stole the show” at the World Parliament of Religions, as he addressed a standing-room only crowd: “Sisters and Brothers of America!” Swamiji would likely have not known about the Pullman strike – it had happened some months before his arrival in America, where he was befriended by the elite of American society, those who had means and money, and by some who were those “captains of industry.” And a good thing! Swamiji had come to America not only to spread the news of Vedanta in the West, but to raise funds for the founding of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in India. Securing the help of the captains of not only industry, but of education, philosophy, and philanthropy would be a key to his success.

Swami Vivekananda loved America. He was dazzled by American advances in science and technology while at the same time he bemoaned America’s lack of a spiritual life that pervaded every daily activity. He understood that daily activities (including work!) and spiritual life are inseparable. In his address to the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda said, “The lord says in Gita, ‘Whosoever comes to Me; through whatever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.’” All struggle was a spiritual struggle, according to Swami Vivekananda, and indeed, according to all the world’s great religions. Using that definition, the labor struggle in the United States was a spiritual struggle for the recognition of basic human rights and dignity, as much as it was a struggle to be afforded safe working conditions and a living wage.

President Cleveland was facing re-election in 1894, and the movement for a national Labor Day had grown for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of a holiday that would be set aside to honor workers. At this time, a bill to secure the Labor Day holiday was introduced in Congress. It arrived on President Cleveland’s desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike. Cleveland had been severely criticized for his actions in Illinois, and he seized this chance to make up for it – he signed the bill and Labor Day was born. He was not re-elected.

In the more than one hundred years since that day, labor and management have argued, bargained, and struggled in America, sometimes violently. Unions have thrived. Workers have marched. Heroes on both sides of the struggle have been born and have died. And, once a year, work and the American worker are honored.

Swami Vivekananda said, “Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it, but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth – Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.” Can you see Labor Day as a spiritual holiday? On Labor Day (on any day!) we can take time to honor our own daily work as well as the work of those who came before us. If you think you are not yet old enough to “go to work,” think again. Schoolwork is good work. Chores are important work.

Loving family and friends is important work. Whatever work you do, if you do it with diligence and honor, with your heart and soul, you create your own Labor Day!

– Swami Yogeshananda