Mark Cal
Posted on 09/25/2006 6:33:06 PM PDT by Coleus
The dispute over who founded Labor Day has been fueled for more than a century in equal parts by an enduring mix of passion and confusion. Perhaps no two people embody the dynamics particular to this debate more than Georgene and George Maguire, longtime residents of Elmwood Park. "Shouldn't this man be honored?" Georgene Maguire asked rhetorically one recent morning at the couple's home on Gilbert Avenue. "I don't want him forgotten after everything he went through."
"This man" is Matthew Maguire, a Paterson-born machinist and labor leader who was, more than likely, the driving force behind the first Labor Day celebration in 1882. Maguire's husband, George, a retired electrician, says he is a direct descendant of Matthew Maguire, and the couple -- primarily Georgene -- are determined that if someone is to be credited as "The Father of Labor Day," it be Matthew Maguire. For the record, Matthew Maguire was born in New York in 1850, according to papers kept at the American Labor Museum in Haledon. His family moved to Paterson when Matthew was a child and the boy was educated in public schools until the age of 14, when he went to work in one of that city's many factories.
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Fast facts September 1882: First Labor Day parade and picnic held in New York City. June 1894: President Grover Cleveland signs Labor Day bill, prompting inquiries into the origins of the holiday. September 1897: Labor leader Peter J. McGuire publishes an editorial recounting the founding of Labor Day 15 years earlier. January 1917: Paterson labor leader Matthew Maguire dies. His obituary stakes claim that Maguire was founder of Labor Day. May 1973: Clifton historian George Pearlman publishes study of origins of Labor Day, prompting labor experts to review claims by supporters of Maguire and McGuire. |
Maguire later became a machinist and moved to Brooklyn, where he joined the labor movement and fought to establish the eight-hour workday. In 1882, Maguire helped found the New York Central Labor Union, while, apparently, at the same time conceiving and organizing a large parade and picnic to honor American workers that was eventually held in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Maguire moved back to Paterson in 1889 and, running as a Socialist, won a seat on the city's Board of Aldermen. He was later a vice-presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket.
Yet, despite this storied past, the latter-day Maguires were until recently mostly unaware of the specifics of Matthew Maguire's role in shaping the labor movement.
Indeed, the couple, who raised four children in Elmwood Park, stressed that it was their Aunt Mamie Maguire, a longtime schoolteacher in Paterson and dead now for over 30 years, who was the real family catalyst for maintaining Matthew Maguire's place in history. "I'm just doing the work she told me to do. She was a real patriot, and she wanted it to be known about the hard work he did," said Georgene Maguire. "She wanted to straighten it the heck out," added her husband. With this in mind, the Maguires have had all of Aunt Mamie's newspaper clippings related to their historical ancestor lovingly preserved and framed.
Still, George Maguire smiles and shrugs when asked exactly how he is related to the turn-of-the 20th century statesman whose name he carries. The Maguires might be forgiven for their confusion, however. Consider that Matthew Maguire's rival for the title Founder of Labor Day comes from a fellow union leader who was also active in the New York-area labor movement in the late 19th century, an ambitious and charismatic carpenter named Peter J. McGuire. Historians believe much of the confusion over the origins of Labor Day can be traced to an editorial McGuire wrote for the September 1897 issue of Carpenters magazine in which he traced the founding of the celebration and seemingly took credit for the holiday honoring America's workers.
For decades that editorial was used as the template by the media and other labor leaders to describe the founding of the holiday – and to hold up McGuire as the founder of Labor Day. Yet the editorial is not without ambiguity. For while McGuire was explicit in some places as to his role, he also included this eloquent paragraph:
"More than all, the thought, the conception, yea the very inspiration of this holiday came from men in the ranks of working people – men active in uplifting their fellows, and leading them to better conditions."
Was McGuire hinting at Maguire's role? Who knows? The late George Pearlman, that's who. Pearlman, a retired machinist and amateur historian, spent years scouring archives, old newspapers and obscure histories of the U.S. labor movement in an effort to prove that Maguire the machinist rather than McGuire the carpenter was the real founder of Labor Day. Pearlman told a reporter in 1974, "As I got going, I got hotter and hotter. I kept reading and reading and found that a lot of the stuff was manufactured history." His case, compiled in a 1973 report worthy of any Ph.D. dissertation, was so convincing that it prompted a U.S. Department of Labor historian to write a long, scholarly article reiterating many of the points made in Pearlman's study.
Today the Department of Labor's Web site acknowledges the dispute over the holiday's origins, and seems to lean in the direction that it was Maguire rather than McGuire who first came up with the idea. Nevertheless, the controversy seems no closer to a resolution than when it first surfaced around the time McGuire wrote his editorial. On Friday, AFL-CIO leaders placed a wreath at the foot of McGuire's grave in Pennsauken in southern New Jersey. Carved into McGuire's elaborate tombstone are the words "Father of Labor Day." And the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, the union founded by McGuire in 1881, states McGuire's claim in no uncertain terms on its Web site. Among his other achievements cited by the union, McGuire "also created a lasting memorial to workers -- the Labor Day holiday." Donald Norcross, president of the Southern New Jersey AFL-CIO, said the dispute was regional in nature: Northern New Jerseyans support the Paterson-born Maguire, while in the south the Camden-born McGuire gets the credit.
Local labor historians take a more philosophical approach. The particulars of the origins of Labor Day weren't recorded in such a way that a founder can be named with certainty, said Angelica M. Santomauro, director of the American Labor Museum in Haledon. Consequently, the museum takes "a neutral" position. "It would be great for us to be able to name a Paterson alderman -- a hometown guy -- as the father of Labor Day. However, we can't honestly come to this conclusion based on our records. We feel the need for a workers holiday came from the hardworking men and women themselves. So the parents of Labor Day are the workers," she concluded gracefully.
Let me guess... Karl Marx?
Cal Marks?
Lenin?
I think it's time to get a hobby, peoples.
Mark Cal
Carly Marx?
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