Labor Day Means More When Your Roots Run Through Springfield

In Springfield, Labor Day is more than the unofficial end of summer. It is a reminder of the miners, railroad workers, tradesmen, shopkeepers, and generations of Americans whose work built our communities and created opportunities for the people who came after them.

For most Americans, Labor Day is the unofficial closing bell of summer. It means cookouts, a long weekend, one last trip to the lake, maybe a final baseball game before fall starts settling in. I enjoy all of that too. But when your roots run through Springfield, Illinois, Labor Day carries a little more weight.

Springfield is known around the world as Lincoln’s hometown and the capital of Illinois. But it was also built by people whose names never made it into history books. Coal miners went underground. Railroad workers kept freight and passengers moving. Foundry and mill workers handled iron, heat, and machinery. Carpenters, printers, horseshoers, drivers, and tradesmen built a city one shift at a time.

That history is easy to overlook when we drive past the Capitol or visit Lincoln’s home. Yet beneath Springfield’s political history is a working-class history.

Sangamon County’s first deep coal mine opened in 1867.[1] By the late nineteenth century, Springfield had become an industrial city as well as a government town. The Springfield Iron Company employed 1,000 or more workers when operating at full capacity, producing railroad rails and other products.[2] By 1909, the Springfield Federation of Labor listed 68 union organizations in the area, representing everyone from coal miners to cigar makers, ice wagon drivers and horseshoers.[3]

Those numbers tell you something important. Springfield was not built by one profession, one class or one kind of person. It was built by people who got up, went to work, and expected their efforts to create a better life.

That idea is about as American as it gets.

It is also one Abraham Lincoln understood. In his 1861 annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, “Labor is prior to and independent of capital.”[4] He was making a broader argument about freedom, work and opportunity. Capital matters. Business matters. Investment matters. But before any of those things can produce anything, somebody has to do the work.

That is the part of Labor Day worth remembering.

The first Labor Day celebration was held in New York City in 1882, when thousands of workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union. Congress made the first Monday in September a national holiday in 1894.[5] More than a century later, the holiday can sometimes feel detached from the people it was created to honor.

It should not.

Today’s American worker may be wearing steel-toed boots, scrubs, a police uniform, a chef’s apron or a suit. He or she may be driving a truck, teaching a class, writing software, running a family business, wiring a house, farming a field or working the overnight shift at a hospital. The workplace has changed. The value of work has not.

And honoring labor does not require turning every question into a fight between workers and employers. A healthy economy needs both. Workers need businesses willing to hire, invest, and take risks. Businesses need employees who bring skill, reliability, judgment and pride to the job.

The goal should be upward mobility. A job should be a place where a person can build experience, support a family, save money, learn a trade, start a business or move into something better. The American promise has never been that everyone gets the same outcome. It is that hard work should still have a path to opportunity.

That is what I think about when I think about Springfield on Labor Day.

I think about the miners beneath Sangamon County, the men in the old rolling mills, the railroad crews, the tradesmen, the shopkeepers and the generations of families who made central Illinois home. I think about Lincoln’s belief in the dignity of labor and the possibility that a person could rise by his own effort.

So enjoy the cookout. Enjoy the ballgame. Enjoy the extra day with family.

But somewhere between the burgers and the last unofficial weekend of summer, remember why the day exists.

America works because Americans work.

Endnotes & Sources

1. “Coal Mining: Boom to Bust”  Sangamon Link, Sangamon County Historical Society Sangamon County Historical Society Coal Mining: Boom to Bust

2. “Working at the Rolling Mill, 1890s”  SangamonLink, Sangamon County Historical Society  Sangamon County Historical Society Working at the Rolling Mill, 1890s

3. “First Labor Strike, 1872-73” SangamonLink, Sangamon County Historical Society Sangamon County Historical Society First Labor Strike, 1872-73

4. “First Annual Message,” December 3, 1861 Abraham Lincoln, The American Presidency Project The American Presidency Project Lincoln’s First Annual Message

5. “History of Labor Day” U.S. Department of Labor U.S. Department of Labor History of Labor Day

David Lee writes on politics, budgets, and public accountability for Direct Line News.

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