Labor Day used to be much more than just a final fling of the summer season. Its roots go back more than 120 years and its early observation had great personal significance to many working men and women – and a remarkable number of children.

The history of the labor movement in Lewiston and Auburn casts light on a time when people were recognizing that they could begin to take control of the role that employment played in their lives. It was a long period through which employer and worker clashed in many ways.

Labor Day’s origins in 1882 were a demonstration and picnic in New York by the Central Labor Union. It sparked the idea of a workingman’s holiday, and several states soon adopted the first Monday of September for a celebration. In 1894, Congress made Labor Day a national holiday.

Labor historian Charles A. Scontras has written a time-line of Lewiston-Auburn labor history which he says is “by no means complete, but perhaps will provide those interested with a sense of labor events in the area.” It’s posted on www.nanchos.com, a Web site with a strong labor-activist flavor.

Scontras has taught in the history and political science departments at the University of Maine and has been a research associate with the Bureau of Labor Education at the University of Maine.

He states that 1849 was the year of the first recorded strike in L-A. It was an unsuccessful action by Irishmen who were employed in railroad construction near Lewiston, Scontras said. They were demanding higher wages.

In 1854, workers at Bates Manufacturing Co. struck for the first time in an effort to shorten their workday, which ranged from 12.5 to 15 hours.

Scontras said female workers were important leaders of the strike. Marching with the Lewiston Brass Band, they paraded through Lewiston and spoke to a crowd of strikers gathered at Jones Hall.

The first strike by shoe workers in L-A came in 1863. It was an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a reduction of wages, Scontras said.

A year later, the Journeymen House Carpenters’ Association of Lewiston was organized. Scontras described how members were sworn to secrecy concerning “secrets or signs” of the association.

“Secrecy was not an unusual feature of labor organizations in the post-Civil War period,” Scontras said. “Signs, symbols, grips, passwords and oaths were commonplace.”

A national movement in favor of a 10-hour workday was central to many other labor actions in the 1860s.

“In 1869,” Scontras wrote, “local unions (lodges) of shoe workers belonging to the Knights of St. Crispin (the nation’s largest labor organization) gathered in Auburn to create a statewide organization. The event included a parade of 800 shoemakers who paraded throughout the cities of Auburn and Lewiston. The procession of shoe workers, who were dressed in their regalia, and who made ‘a fine appearance,’ proved to be the largest labor parade in the state prior to Labor Day celebrations which began in 1891.”

Water-trench diggers of Lewiston took part in an unsuccessful strike, during which some were arrested for “inciting to revolt,” Scontras wrote.

“The City Marshall, convinced that strikers would cease to be disorderly, dismissed them on parole. Some strikers claimed a ‘conspiracy’ existed between city officials and the contractor against the strikers,” he reported.

Scontras added, “The cadence of strike activity quickens beginning in the 1880s and beyond.”

In 1881, French-Canadians held a convention in Waterville where strikes were condemned as against the moral and religious duties of Catholic citizens.

However, French-Canadians supported the 10-hour workday.

It was an exceptionally divisive time in the history of the Twin Cities. In the mid-1880s, Auburn shoe worker Ossian Phillips headed the statewide organization of the Maine Knights of Labor (District Assembly 86) located in Auburn. Scontras said Bishop Healy of Portland condemned the Knights and instructed the clergy to deny sacraments to those Catholics who belonged to the organization.

The Knights “spearheaded movements for a variety of labor reforms and they increased publicity given to the working and living conditions of the working men, women, and children of the state,” Scontras said.

The state branch of the American Federation of Labor was organized in 1891 and the first president of the new labor organization was P.J. Carver of the Lewiston and Auburn Central Labor Union, Scontras reported. Carver was followed by Samuel Tillitson of the Lewiston and Auburn Central Labor Union.

That year, Labor Day became an official holiday and residents of Lewiston-Auburn soon celebrated the new holiday set aside to honor workers.

Next week, I’ll continue to summarize more L-A labor events after the first Labor Day.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can write to him at [email protected].