Denver's First Labor Day Celebration Held at Argo Park

During the 1880s, Denver was booming. The arrival of the railroads attracted manufacturing, meat packing, food processing and small businesses. That growth spurt would include the Boston and Colorado, the Omaha and Grant and the Holdenville Smelters, brickyards, Denver Rock Drill and several meat packers offering jobs to both immigrants and American-born workers. Clusters of workers settled near their jobs in rural-sounding tracts like Garden Place, Greenwood Addition, Tacoma heights, and Cranberry Place. (Globeville would not be incorporated until 1891).
Industries focused on productivity, with workers toiling 12 hours a day, six, sometimes seven days a week, in gritty factories with few safety regulations, little fresh air, sanitary facilities or breaks. Women found employment in sugar factories, cigar making, commercial laundries or as domestic servants, while children could be found in factories, mines and agriculture. Injuries and deaths were common and left families very much alone and often destitute. The only holidays were Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Sundays, and employees were not paid if they took the time off.

Workers responded by banding together, campaigning for shorter hours, more pay, better working conditions and recognition of their right to organize. New York City was home to the first Labor Day celebration on September 5, 1882, a peaceful event organized by the Central Labor Union (CLU) promoting the notion of a 10 hour work day. By 1885, “Labor Parades” were being staged in a number of industrial cities across the U.S., and municipal ordinances recognizing the holiday emboldened workers to take part. The first statewide Labor Day law was passed by the Oregon legislature on February 21, 1887. Colorado followed suit, with the measure being put before the voters, passed by the Colorado Legislature and signed into law by pro-labor Governor Alva Adams on March 15, 1887.

The city's first Labor Day celebration was held Monday, September 5th, 1887 with Denver's labor unions deciding to hold picnics and concerts, rather than a parade, in Argo Park.

The Rocky Mountain News from September 6, 1887 described the festive celebration, reporting that around 2000 people attended, listening to a band play at the pavilion and speeches by Governor Adams and various labor leaders. 

The inaugural holiday was a celebration of a day off, as well as the contributions of workers. It would be many years, and hard-fought battles before labor won the many rights we take for granted today.

Workers pose in front of the Boston and Colorado Smelter at Argo

Photo Colorado Historical Society

Map of the area in 1887, before the appearance of the Globe Smelter 

and before Globeville is incorporated

Globeville's Police Station and Town Hall

Police Officers H. Cornell, J. Lindsey, George Bosner and J. Malone strike a serious pose for the photographer in front of the former town hall building, recently remodeled as a police substation and renamed "Globeville No 1." The article in September's Denver Republican explains that, after Globeville's annexation to Denver in 1903, "it becomes necessary to establish at least one substation auxiliary to headquarters. The station ...is the old city hall remodeled...and contains two cells where prisoners ...are confined until they are tried in police court." If the city were anticipating how busy the substation would become, it wasn't apparent in the upbeat article.
On July 1, 1903 the Mill and Smeltermens' Union at both the Globe and Grant Smelters went on strike, part of a wave of labor disturbances across the state demanding higher pay, shorter hours, better working conditions and recognition for the union. (The eight-hour day had been signed into law by the Colorado legislature in 1902, but was not enforced). The union brought in its superstars, co-leaders Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood, who spoke at the town hall in Elyria, giving rousing speeches and urging members to strike. What began as an orderly protest soon disintegrated into a mob with strikers beating watchmen, superintendents and men who wished to remain on the job. The walkout idled 775 men, a significant number in the small town, and the violence destroyed the public's view of the union. Management obtained an injunction prohibiting picketing and two weeks later reopened the Globe works with twenty-five non-union men, protected by the Denver police. ASARCO then announced that it would close the obsolete Grant Smelter permanently, eliminating 475 jobs. By the end of November, many unionists had exhausted their resources and reapplied for their jobs at the Globe plant, which employed only 300.
The remaining strikers were desperate. On November 29, about 100 women and 50 men held a meeting at Max Malich’s saloon and determined to take action, attacking and beating a wagonload of non-union men returning from work. Several men were hospitalized and 18 people were arrested and jailed, 14 of them women. (whether or not all 18 were confined to the two cells in the Globeville station is unclear)
The union had more resources than the workers and by the end of 1903, most employees had gone back to work, after first pledging they had severed their connection with the union. 
Old maps show the former town hall and jail on Elgin Place, east of Washington Street - now occupied by small businesses. 

Scratchy photo from the Denver Republican, September 1903

® Photo 2012 by Mary Lou Egan