Sixty-hour weeks, children on the payroll, fingers counted. Where the holiday came from and what it cost. Plus a full week of events.
This week: the origins of Labor Day 137 years ago next Monday, and what the people who shut the factories that morning were asking for. Plus a full events calendar, the final concert of the Washington Friends of Music festival on Friday, and Frankenstein with a live score on Saturday.
Glad you’re back!
Patrick
The Litchfield Ledger
Where Labor Day Came From, and What It Cost
Children and adults working in Lowell, MA
A note before we begin
We usually spend this space on the natural world: the rivers, the trails, the working land of Litchfield County. This week we turn to the people who work in it.
A person is not separate from the place they spend their days. The same century that polluted the Naugatuck with mill runoff also sent the millhand home shorter and sicker. Bad air and bad water don't stop at the factory door; a workplace that poisons a river is usually poisoning the people standing next to it first. So the fight to make work safer and the fight to make it cleaner have always been the same fight: the body on the line and the watershed downstream, both. Human flourishing and a living landscape grow from the same soil.
Monday is Labor Day. Here is where it came from, and what it cost.
To understand the beginnings of the holiday, let's start with the world most working people were up against in the Northeast.
The workweek ran about sixty hours. Ten hours a day, six days a week, was standard in the factories. In the steel mills it was twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with a twenty-four-hour shift every other Sunday when the crews changed over.
The pay did not cover a life. The average industrial worker earned around $380 a year in 1880. A man could work the full sixty-hour week and still land below the poverty line, and he could expect to be out of work about a month out of every year. By most measures, unskilled workers in 1880 were worse off than they had been twenty years earlier, before the Civil War.
The work maimed and killed. Railroads were the deadliest trade. In 1889, one in every 117 railroad workers died on the job and one in thirty-five was hurt. In a single year around 1890, more than 2,400 railroad men were killed and nearly 23,000 injured. Hundreds died coupling cars by hand, a job where men measured their experience by counting the fingers they had left.
Children were on the payroll, and cheaper. The 1870 census counted 750,000 workers under 15, and that figure excluded children laboring on family farms. By 1890, more than 18 percent of children between 10 and 15 held jobs. In the North, that meant breaker boys in Pennsylvania, children minding looms in New England textile mills, and children in the pin shops and clock works along the Naugatuck.
There were no safety nets. There was no vacation, no sick pay, no unemployment insurance, and no compensation for injury. A man killed or crippled on the job left his family with nothing.
For these reasons, workers began to organize. As industry grew and families left the farm for the mill and the rail yard, a single laborer had little standing against an employer. But a hundred of them had real leverage. They joined together to win better wages, shorter hours, and safer work for the men, women, and children on the line beside them.
The same conditions produced the first calls for a day to honor the work itself. The idea was to recognize the people who built the country. The men who coupled the freight cars, the women who tended the looms, and the children who worked when they should have been in school.
Connecticut recognized Labor Day before the end of the 1880s, years ahead of the federal government. Washington did not make the holiday national until 1894, after a railroad strike near Chicago turned deadly.
From them we inherited the day off itself, the first laws putting a ceiling on the hours, the first ones keeping the youngest children off the factory floor, the beginnings of a workplace that had to account for the safety of people in it. All of it started by people we'll never meet.
The only question a gift like that asks is what we'll hand down in turn. What will our children inherit from us?
Tuesday the 25th
The Moviehouse, Millerton – Movie Trivia Night, free and no ticket needed. Play solo or bring a team of up to four. Seats go first come, first served. 7:00 PM TEST YOUR RECALL
Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Rhinebeck – The Dutchess County Fair opens for its six-day run, through Sunday. Livestock, midway, and the biggest agricultural fair in the Hudson Valley. 10:00 AM GO TO THE FAIR
Wednesday the 26th
Woodbury Public Library, Woodbury – The Freedom to Read banned book club takes on Fahrenheit 451. 5:00 PM READ THE BANNED BOOK
Infinity Hall, Norfolk – Jake Shimabukuro, the ukulele player who made the instrument famous again, on the Norfolk stage. 8:00 PM HEAR THE UKULELE
Thursday the 27th
The Moviehouse, Millerton – The Troutbeck Symposium student film showcase, short documentaries by filmmakers from Salisbury School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School, with a Q&A after. Free with RSVP. 1:00 PM SEE THE FILMS
Woodbury Brewing Company, Woodbury – Meet Your Greens, a free public meetup with Steep Rock and the area's land trusts and conservation groups. 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM MEET YOUR GREENS
Woodbury Public Library, Woodbury – Ranked Choice Voting, a talk with Michael Trusiewicz on how it works, where it is used, and where it stands in Hartford. 6:00 PM LEARN THE BALLOT
Litchfield Community Center, Litchfield – Ukulele Club with John Concilio. All ages and levels, three songs together and an open mic. 6:00 PM BRING YOUR UKE
Friday the 28th
Gunn Memorial Library, Washington – Dig Into 3D Printing: Design a Phone Stand, the last of the beginner Makerspace series. Ages 18 and up, registration required. 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM PRINT A STAND
Alain White Field, Bantam – The Bantam Community Farmers Market. 3:00 PM SHOP LOCAL
Kent Farmers Market, Kent – Growers and makers at the Welcome Center on Railroad Street, Friday afternoons. 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM SHOP THE MARKET
The Meeting House, Washington – The Washington Friends of Music Summer Festival closes its season, the last of four Friday concerts at the First Congregational Church, with a reception to meet the musicians after. Students and anyone under 21 free. 5:30 PM HEAR THE FINALE
Woodbury Brewing Company, Woodbury – The Rakes, live in the taproom. 8:30 PM ROCK THE TAPROOM
Saturday the 29th
Cornwall Village Green, Cornwall – The Cornwall COOP Farmers Market on Pine Street. 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM SHOP THE GREEN
Judy Black Park, Washington Depot – The Washington Farmers Market. 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM MEET THE FARMERS
Rattlesnake Preserve, West Cornwall – An Invasive Species Scavenger Hunt with the Cornwall Conservation Trust and Conservation Commission. Learn the plants crowding out the natives, with two $50 gift cards for the winners. Park near the viewing platform at the south end of Rattlesnake Road. 10:00 AM HUNT THE INVADERS
The Wish House, West Cornwall – The West Cornwall Farm Market. 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM MEET THE GROWERS
White Memorial, Litchfield – The Ron and Joan Jones Memorial Hikes: Loving Haight and the White Oak Trail, a guided walk of the Haight property and the Foundation's newest trail. Pre-register. 10:00 AM WALK THE NEW TRAIL
Gunn Museum, Washington – A guided tour with longtime Washington resident Kenyon Clark. Registration recommended. 1:00 PM TAKE THE TOUR
Institute for American Indian Studies, Washington – Indigenous Soldiers of the American Revolution, a talk on the Native men who fought in the war. 1:00 PM HEAR THE HISTORY
Hopkins Vineyard, Warren – Live music above Lake Waramaug with Bad Saints. 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM WINE AMONG THE VINES
Judy Black Park, Washington Depot – Opening reception for a show of work by Leora Armstrong. 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM SEE THE SHOW
The Lesser Workshop, Washington – An adaptation of The Bakkhai, Euripides in a barn. 3:00 PM SEE THE PLAY
Cornwall Town Hall, Cornwall – Kurt Andersen, co-founder of Spy and host of Studio 360, talks about his new novel The Breakup with Roxana Robinson. Presented by the Cornwall Library. 5:00 PM HEAR THE AUTHOR
South Farms, Morris – Sip & Shuck, a raw bar and cocktails in the garden, then the fireworks that got rained out on the Fourth. 6:00 PM SIP AND SHUCK
Gordon Hall, Music Mountain, Falls Village – Jazz at Music Mountain with the Bill Charlap Trio. 7:00 PM HEAR THE TRIO
The Stissing Center, Pine Plains – Frankenstein (1931) with the world premiere of Michael Shapiro's chamber score, played live by the Argus Quartet and pianist Steven Beck. Boris Karloff's daughter Sara takes questions before the film. 7:30 PM MEET THE MONSTER
Infinity Hall, Norfolk – The Moonrise Cartel. 8:00 PM CATCH THE SHOW
Woodbury Brewing Company, Woodbury – Almost Elton, the tribute act, in the taproom. 8:30 PM ROCKET MAN
Sunday the 30th
Hopkins Vineyard, Warren – Live music with the Lee-Ann Lovelace Duo. 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM WINE AMONG THE VINES
Gordon Hall, Music Mountain, Falls Village – The Cassatt String Quartet with violist Javier Montiel closes the clarinet quintet project, with Florence Price, Mozart, Weber, and a Montiel world premiere. Free pre-concert talk at 2. 3:00 PM HEAR THE QUARTET
Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot – Author talk and signing with Harry Moses. 3:00 PM MEET THE AUTHOR
Van Vleck Farm & Nature Sanctuary, Woodbury – The Flanders Summer Soirée, the land trust's biggest fundraiser of the year. VIP hour at 4, main event at 5, with food from 16 local chefs, live music, and a silent auction. Tickets limited. 4:00 PM SUPPORT FLANDERS
Monday the 31st
Cornwall Conservation Trust, West Cornwall – Bridges Across the Housatonic, Woldemar Neufeld's paintings of the river crossings, 50 years on. Gallery open hours at 7 Railroad Street, Mondays through September 14. 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM SEE THE BRIDGES
A few poll respondents mentioned they didn’t know the Ledger was on Instagram! It is. Photographs of the county between issues, plus events that don’t make the newsletter.
Show your business to thousands of Litchfield locals. Email Patrick at patrick@litchfieldledger.com.
