Today on the American calendar is Labor Day. It is a day where thanks to the organizing of the labor movement, if you are lucky you don’t have to work. It is the end of a three day weekend. It is the unofficial last day of summer. Perhaps there is a barbecue or a picnic or a parade or one last trip to the pool or beach. And you better not wear white after Labor Day!
The Labor Movement really got its start in two places. In Lawrence, MA with the Bread and Roses strike. Plenty has been writing about this. While it maybe apocryphal that the women in Lawrence carried signs saying that “We want bread but we need roses too”, the myth has stuck and every year on Labor Day the State Park in Lawrence hosts a Bread and Roses Concert.
Long before there was the Bread and Roses Strike, women were working to improve working conditions. Jewish women in particular were at the vanguard of organizing other young Jewish women to fight for better wages, safer working conditions and even the women’s right to vote. One of those women has Rose Schneiderman, whose speech, “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too,” is what became the title of the poem, Bread and Roses, and later was set to music.
Rose Schneiderman was born in Swain, on the Russian/Poland border and actually went to Hebrew School, usually reserved in those days just for boys, in Chelm, before coming to New York. Her father died when she was young, leaving the family in poverty. Her mother, trying to keep the family together worked as a seamstress, but for this immigrant mother, it wasn’t enough and she had to give the children up for a short time to an orphanage.
From this beginning, Rose understood the importance of community and taking care of others. She was already a union organizer by the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 and that tragedy propelled her activism further. In 1920 she ran for US Senate. She didn’t win but her platform called for the construction of nonprofit housing for workers, improved neighborhood schools, publicly owned power utilities and staple food markets, and state-funded health and unemployment insurance for all Americans. Today these are all things that we think a strong community needs.
Along the way, activists made friends and colleagues—maybe even comrades. They created their own community, including theater, movies, poetry readings, lectures, dinners. An entire social network.
They also understood, many from their Jewish roots, the value of rest. Of not working 24×7. Of a work week that was only 40 hours. Of government mandated breaks in the work day. Of child labor laws.
So today, while those of us who are lucky to enjoy a Labor Day picnic or barbecue, let’s remember those in the Jewish community, who built community, strengthened community by making sure we have fair labor laws, including today being a holiday. And let’s remember to thank those people who are working today so that we can enjoy time with our families.