We’re once again on the downhill side of Labor Day.

There will be more summery days before leaves and temperatures fall, but there’s a definite change in mindset when we pass the first Monday of September.

Backyard barbecues have replaced Labor Day speeches extolling the virtues of American workers, but this holiday still deserves reflection on its roots of more than 100 years ago.

It was Samuel Gompers who said, “Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country.” He said, “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day … is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

Gompers came to the Twin Cities just about a century ago to address crowds of workers and labor organizers. This nationally-prominent figure, who was the founder and long-time president of the American Federation of Labor, played a major role in defining the form and the economic and political goals of America’s labor movement.

The L-A visits by Gompers around 1906 and 1907 are outlined in a time-line of labor history in Lewiston-Auburn posted on a Web site (www.nancho.net).

In it, historian Charles A. Scontras tells of workers’ struggles for fair treatment in the textile mills and shoe factories.

Scontras, who has taught in the History and Political Science departments at the University of Maine, Orono, and has been a research associate with the Bureau of Labor Education at the University of Maine, said the Knights of Labor, an early labor organization, initiated a campaign to end child labor as early as 1880. However, 25 years later child labor was still a blot on many industrialized communities of New England.

Gompers condemned child labor in the Lewiston mills when he addressed labor union members and the general public in Lewiston.

He said Maine children of 11, and even younger, worked in the factories and mills.

“This is temperate Maine!” he exclaimed.

“Who interests themselves in this matter?” Gompers asked.

“Is it the capitalists? No.

“Is it the churches? No.

“They pray for the children Sunday and prey upon them the rest of the week,” Gompers is quoted as saying.

Scontras said the national labor leader’s local appearances led to the formation of the Maine Child Labor Committee.

Workers enjoyed some early successes. A new 58-hour law for women and children cut the textile mill workday by 20 minutes, but that was enough to warrant a big celebration by Lewiston’s union leaders and textile workers.

Scontras said there were reports in 1912 that organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, then known as the nation’s most militant labor organization, were in Lewiston. Scontras said newspapers reported that striking weavers at the Farwell cotton mill in Lisbon Falls asked the I.W.W. to lead their strike.

A year later, Scontras said, “I.W.W. organizers could be found working among the shoe shops of the cities. They are called in to lead a strike at the Lunn and Sweet Shoe Co. at a time when Auburn was totally unorganized. Major figures of the I.W.W. were no match for the Shoe Manufacturers’ Association, the blacklist, strike-breakers and ‘imported’ detectives who ‘shadowed’ the strike leaders.”

Union organization in L-A’s large mills and factories were slow and difficult up to the 1920s. Scontras said Lewiston had about 18 unions, mostly craft, and the only textile union appeared to be the loomfixers’ group. The shoe industry in Auburn was totally free of organization, with owners emphasizing their open shop policies.

At that time, the Communist Party was reported to have appeared in Lewiston. Scontras said newspapers reported that police broke up the party, burned its charter and warned members against forming such an association again.

“Labor leaders were constantly facing opposition from clergy, which accounts, in part, for the failure of organizational campaigns in Biddeford, Waterville, Lewiston and Augusta in 1928 and other time periods,” Scontras said.

In 1932, a major strike by Auburn shoeworkers led to formation of the Lewiston and Auburn Shoe Cutters’ Protective Association. It grew to a general strike with picketing, protests against blacklisting, the use of state troopers and an attempt by “communists” to take over control of the strike.

The strike failed and “at least one shop demanded that its returning workers tear up their Association cards and apologize,” Scontras said.

More strikes followed in the 1930s, including the shoe strike of 1937, which was one of the largest in Maine’s history. Scontras said the strike brought out “the use of the court injunction, state conspiracy laws, strike breakers, sabotage, mass meetings, charges of communism, state police, National Guard, sub-machine guns, and determined opposition of the shoe manufacturers to maintain their long-time open shop policy.”

“The CIO scored a limited success in winning over shoe workers to their union, but were unable to secure contracts,” Scontras said. The Lewiston-Auburn Protective Association, an independent organization originally organized in the 1932 strike, was revived in 1937 to become the dominate organization of shoe workers in the area, he said.

The past dedication of many L-A workers for the cause of fairness in the workplace deserves a share of Labor Day attention along with the current goodbye-to-summer celebrations.