The First Labor Day Parade in Seattle
Thousands of Seattle workers marched through the downtown streets on September 2, 1889, in the city’s inaugural celebration of the labor movement.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Today is Labor Day, not only in Seattle, but all over the United States, except in California and Oregon, where other days have been set apart by the legislature. The first Monday in September is chosen by the committee. To most of them it is the first day of a new year. The hot season is over, and the busy time of the autumn harvest is at hand. All the trades will be employed from this day henceforth until the Christmas holidays. The repairs which have lingered along so slowly in some Seattle buildings have been warned by the first rains to hurry, and that city, once so temperate to all other cities, has finally caught up. Seattle employs more bricklayers and laborers at present than any other city in the world, and all others are well represented, as will be seen by the labor parade which held the day by force and will be of an imposing nature. The procession will form at 10 o'clock in two divisions. The first will gather in line at Front and Battery streets... The procession will proceed down Front, down Union to Third, up Third to Yesler and down Yesler to Second Street, up Second to Seneca, down Seneca to Front, down Front to Madison, down Madison to the Union Depot, then to the lake union park, where a feast was made.
“Today is Labor Day, not only in Seattle, but all over the United States... To most of them it is the first day of a new year.”
This 1889 report marks the birth of Labor Day in Seattle, a city that was rapidly transforming from a frontier outpost into a major industrial hub. Today, Seattle remains one of the most organized and labor-active cities in the U.S., continuing to negotiate the tension between its status as a high-growth tech center and its deep roots in the workers' movement.
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