Labor Day (and Labor Union) Ruminations

This is the third time that my September 5 blog post has been made on Labor Day, but on this date in 2011 and 2016 I made no reference at all to it being a federal holiday in the U.S. But now I am sharing some reflections on the history and significance of Labor Day—and of labor unions. 

On June 28, 1894, President Cleveland signed S. 730 into law declaring Labor Day a national holiday. Since 1882, Labor Day had been celebrated at local and state levels, and from 1887 to 1894, 23 states had enacted a Labor Day holiday. Now it had become a nationwide observance.

It is highly ironic that the creation of Labor Day in 1894 came in the midst of the Pullman Strike, one of the most consequential strikes in U.S. history.*

Just four days after Cleveland signed the Labor Day bill, the U.S. Attorney General got an injunction against the strike, and on July 3 the President dispatched federal troops to enforce the injunction. Then on the 7^th, the Guardsmen fired upon the strikers; 30 were killed and many more wounded.

What a sad start for the new federal holiday to honor the nation’s working class!

Despite Labor Day becoming an official national holiday in 1894, it took decades as well as much struggle and suffering for laboring people to achieve the reforms they had ardently sought.

From long before 1894, the laborers clamored for an eight-hour workday and a forty-hour workweek. They also called for safer working conditions, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, and the end to child labor.

The appeals/demands of the labor movement were augmented by some prominent religious voices. For example, in 1886 Walter Rauschenbusch began his pastorate of a Baptist Church in "Hell's Kitchen," New York.

His first-hand experiences there led Rauschenbusch to lead what became the Social Gospel movement, which was to a large extent the struggle against systemic injustices foisted upon exploited laboring people in New York and elsewhere.**

Then in 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” an encyclical addressing the condition of the working classes.

The Pope’s primary concern was some amelioration of “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class,” and to that end, he supported the rights of labor to form trade unions and to engage in collective bargaining.  

Such efforts and support were still necessary for long after 1894. Finally in 1938, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). That law established a minimum wage (of 25 cents per hour!)

The FLSA also instituted a standardized 44-hour work week, which later dropped to 40 hours, a requirement to pay extra for overtime work, and a prohibition on certain types of child labor.

Even though it was forty-four years later, the dreams surrounding the founding of Labor Day in 1894 were finally realized, and labor unions experienced widespread growth and acceptance over the next 20+ years.

Support for labor unions was highest in the 1950s when three-fourths of USAmericans approved of them. According to a recent Gallup Poll (see here), now over 70% approve of unions, the highest point since 1965.

This is a good sign—as are recent initiatives by Amazon employees and Starbucks baristas to form unions.

President Biden, thankfully, is a big supporter of labor unions. In his remarks in honor of labor unions last September, the President said that “a union means there is democracy. . . . Organizing, joining a union—that’s democracy in action.”

In his Labor Day Proclamation last Friday (Sept. 2), President Biden said, “I call upon all public officials and people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the energy and innovation of working Americans.”

No matter how, or whether, you celebrate Labor Day today, remember those across the nation who are part of the laboring class, those people who are working for an hourly wage including many who are still working for a highly-inadequate minimum wage and still unable to form a labor union.

_____

* In May 2022, History.com (here) posted “10 Major Labor Strikes Throughout U.S. History.” Following the disastrous Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the Pullman Strike is the second of those ten. For more about the latter, see “How a Deadly Railroad Strike Led to the Labor Day Holiday” (here).

** See here for my Sept. 30, 2021, blog post about Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel.

Tasting the Grapes of Wrath

Last week I finished reading John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) again—decades after my previous reading of that powerful book. Although closely related to my two previous posts, I am writing again about the knotty issue of exploited laborers. 

Migrants and Immigrants

“What about the Immigrants?” was the title of my May 5 post, and this one might have been titled “What about the Migrants?” Whereas immigrants are people who move from one country to another, migrants move domestically from one region to another in their own country.

What is called the “Great Migration” was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately 6,000,000 African Americans moved from the American South to northern, midwestern, and western states from the 1910s until the 1970s.

The “Great Okie Migration,” another significant relocation of people in the U.S., took place in the 1930s as some 2,500,000 people migrated from the Dust Bowl region of the lower Midwest to California. Many of those migrants were from Oklahoma and were given the derogatory nickname Okie.

The Migrants in The Grapes of Wrath

As the many of you who have read The Grapes of Wrath know, Steinbeck’s book is about the Joad family, who traveled from Sallisaw, Okla., to the San Joaquin valley in California. Much of that trip was going west on Route 66, the Chicago to Los Angeles road that became a national highway in 1926.

Google maps indicates that the distance the Joad family traveled was more than 1,750 miles—and can be made in about 25 driving hours on today’s Interstate highways. But it took the Joads considerably longer than that in their rickety old vehicle.

But the worst of Joads’ troubles began after arriving in California. They were used at the discretion of the landowners and managers and had absolutely no bargaining rights. There were far too many migrants for the work available.

Those who did find work at a depressingly low wage one day might find the wage even lowered the next day as other migrants desperate to feed their families would agree to work for less.

The Joads’ decision to leave their home in Oklahoma and make the arduous trip to California was aroused by their vision of Calif. as a place of abundance for all.

Just before they left their old home, Grandpa Joad exclaimed, “Come time we get to California I’ll have a big bunch a grapes in my han’ all the time, a-nibblin’ off it all the time!’’

But Grandpa died long before the Joad family got to California, and for those who did make it, soon their vision of plentiful grapes and other fruit turned to grapes of wrath.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines grapes of wrath as “an unjust or oppressive situation, action, or policy that may inflame desire for vengeance: an explosive condition.”

Those words appear only one time in Steinbeck’s novel by that name: “in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

The “Grapes of Wrath” in 2022

The current situation in the U.S. is far different, and far better, than it was in the 1930s.

Now, rather than there being hordes of workers without jobs, there is a shortage of unskilled laborers. Still, there are far too many workers with jobs that pay far too little. Laborers deserve a living wage.

William Barber II and Liz Theoharis continue to lead the Poor People’s Campaign, an anti-poverty campaign that calls for "federal and state living-wage laws, equity in education, an end to mass incarceration, a single-payer health-care system, and the protection of the right to vote."

Here in the Kansas City area, Stand Up KC is an organization of fast food and retail workers who have joined forces to demand better wages and a voice (labor unions) for low-wage workers.** 

Those of us who are better off financially need to act in greater solidarity with those around us who are presently tasting the grapes of wrath.

_____

** Here is the link to the Poor People’s Campaign, and the link to the blog post I made about Barber is here. And you can find more information about Stand Up KC here. 

How Will You Observe May Day?

The title of this post may seem rather senseless to most of you, for in all likelihood you have no plans to observe May Day at all. But there are people in countries around the world who will be observing May Day with great earnestness. 

In the U.S., May Day in the past was often observed with May Day baskets of flowers hung on the doorknobs of family/friends and with dances around a Maypole—but I won’t be writing any more about that. (If you want to reflect on that type of May Day observance, click here.)

Observing May Day in 1967

On May 1, 1967, I had lived in Japan exactly eight months. Even though it was a Monday, since it was an unofficial holiday in Japan, June and I had the day off from language school where we were students. That gave me the chance to see May Day observed as I had never seen it observed before.

The mission house into which my family and I moved in September 1966 was 20-minutes by foot from the Yoyogi National Stadium that was part of the venue for the 1964—and the 2020—Olympics. On that May Day, I decided to walk over there and see what was going on.

Before reaching the Stadium, I encountered masses of people—largely blue-color laborers—holding rallies and protesting what they considered injustices in Japanese, and world, society.

While the rallies were mostly related to domestic labor issues, there were also protests against the Vietnam War and against the presence of U.S. bases in Okinawa which were supporting that war. There were also appeals / demands that Okinawa be returned to Japan.

I don’t think I saw one other gaijin (foreigner) at those May Day rallies, and I was later told by gaijin friends that I was foolish for going there as I might have been accosted/injured. But it was a most interesting experience, and I am still glad that I learned some about that type of May Day then.

International May Day 2022

Although I didn’t know it then, in many countries around the world May Day is also known as International Workers' Day or Labour Day. The reason for May 1 being chosen as a day of advocacy for workers of the world goes back to 1886.

Two years earlier, a convention held by the organization of labor unions that later took the name American Federation of Labor (AFL) unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which an eight-hour workday would become standard.

On that fateful Saturday, thousands of workers went on a general strike in support of the eight-hour workday, and rallies were held throughout the United States. The strike in Chicago led to the deadly Haymarket Riot on May 4.

Because of those events in Chicago, a few years later in Europe, advocates for laborers there and across the world chose May 1 as International Workers' Day. It is now a public holiday in some 80 countries around the world.

Here is a link to a 4½-minute video showing how six countries (beginning, interestingly, with Ukraine and including Russia and France) observed International May Day in 2017.  

And here is a link to a 2-minute video titled “Join the 2022 International May Day Online Rally this May 1!” It is by David North, an American Marxist theoretician who serves as the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States.

SEP opposes both “the ruthless imperialist ambitions of NATO,” and “rejects the national chauvinism with which the Putin regime defends its desperate invasion of Ukraine.” The online May Day rally will also be advocating for greater equality for the workers of the world.

Despite strong opposition to socialism by many USAmericans, why shouldn’t we, especially those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, be more concerned about the suffering and even exploited workers of the world?

Let’s observe May Day this year by at least giving some thoughtful consideration to how we might help working people struggling because of low-paying jobs that are inadequate for meeting their basic needs.

_____

** For a closely related viewpoint, I encourage you to read Celebrating Labor Rights, on May Day and Beyond, an article by Adam Russell Taylor in the May 2022 issue of Sojourners magazine. 

Learning from the Indomitable Mother Jones

For some reason, I have never known much about the indomitable woman known as Mother Jones. But noticing that she died 90 years ago, on November 30, 1930, I decided to read some about her and to share some of what I discovered about that most remarkable woman. 

Mother Jones, 1924

Learning about Mother Jones

In her autobiography published in 1925, Mary Harris Jones claimed that she was born in Ireland on May 1, 1830. Well, the country is correct, but the date probably isn’t. Most likely she was born shortly before her Catholic parents had her baptized on August 1, 1837.

In the late 1840s, Richard Harris, Mary’s father, emigrated to the U.S. and then a couple of years later Mary’s mother and siblings joined him in Canada where he was then working.

By 1861, Mary had moved to Memphis, and the next ten years were filled with joy and tragedy. In that Tennessee city, Mary married George Jones and in the next five years they had four children. But then in 1867, George and all four of their children died of yellow fever.

Mary then moved to Chicago and started a dressmaking business, only to lose it and most of her possessions in the Great Fire of 1871.

In the 1870s, Mary Jones became affiliated with the Knights of Labor (KoL) and became lifelong friends with Terence Powderly (1849~1924) who was the Grand Master Workman of KoL from 1879 to '93.

After the demise of KoL in 1893, Mary became heavily involved with the United Mine Workers. When she began working for that fledgling union in the 1890s, it had 10,000 members; within a few years, 300,000 men had joined, and it became the largest union in the U.S.

Claiming to be older than she actually was, Mary started being called Mother Jones by 1897.

Her tireless work, and success, in organizing strikes for the betterment of working conditions for miners and other laboring people prompted a West Virginia district attorney in 1902 to call her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

The danger, though, was to the wealthy mine owners and others who profited off the labor of their insufficiently paid workers. By contrast, for some fifty years she was instrumental in helping improve the working and living conditions for common laborers across the United States.

Mother Jones’s funeral in 1930 was held at a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. She was then buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois, after she was honored with another funeral Mass in that small Illinois town.

Learning from Mother Jones

Here are some important lessons we today can learn from the indomitable Mother Jones:

** Pressing on in spite of adversity. The five years between 1867 and 1871 was a terrible time for Mary Harris Jones. Can you imagine losing four children, your spouse, your business, and all your possessions in the space of five years?

And yet, Mary pressed on becoming increasingly involved in seeking to help others. In spite of her personal tragedies, for nearly fifty years she lived mostly to help the working poor across the country. What an inspiration!

** Recognizing that “silence is violence.” The lifework of Mother Jones, a lifelong Catholic, is expressed in these oft-quoted words of hers: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” She was a woman who wouldn’t keep silent, even though harassed and jailed repeatedly.

** Expressing faith in deeds, not words. Although a Christian, Mother Jones was not a “pious” churchwoman and seemingly didn’t talk a lot about her faith. But her indefatigable activity for others was in harmony with the kinds of things Jesus noted in Matthew 25:31~40 about his true followers.

These are just three of the many things we might learn from Mary Harris Jones, who probably did more for laboring people than any other woman in the history of the U.S.

*****

Links: Here is the link to the Mother Jones Museum website, which has a wealth of information about Jones.

Also, see this link to access Mother Jones, the politically progressive/liberal magazine that was founded in 1976 and named in honor of Mary Harris Jones. 

Jane Addams on the New $10 Bill?

As you probably know, in 2020 the Treasury Department is planning to issue a new $10 bill with the picture of a woman on it. Jane Addams was one name on a list I saw suggesting twenty women worth being considered for that honor. 

Wanting to learn more about her life and work, last month I read Robin K. Berson’s book Jane Addams: A Biography (2004)

Berson tells the fascinating story of Jane, who was born 155 years ago tomorrow (on September 6, 1860) in Illinois near the Wisconsin border about 250 miles (as the crow flies) almost due north of St. Louis. Hers was an upper middle class family, and her father served as a state senator for seven terms. (He was also a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln.)

As a girl and young woman, Jane had various health issues. Further, by the time she was 21, she “felt an overwhelming sense of failure, a despairing purposelessness, a debilitating passivity” (Berson, p. 14).

After several unfruitful years, in 1888 during a visit to England she visited Toynbee Hall, a “settlement” in a poor district in London. That visit sparked her desire to open a similar facility in Chicago—and she did. Hull-House opened its doors in September 1889.

A settlement house is defined as “a center in an underprivileged area that provides community services.” And that is what Hull-House was for more than 120 years. Unfortunately, it closed in 2012.

According to the Chicago Tribune article announcing its closing, “The organization, first formed in 1889, has provided foster care, domestic violence counseling, child development programs and job training to 60,000 children, families and community groups each year.”

Jane Addams died in 1935, but during her 75 years she was involved in far more than helping the poor people of Chicago—although those efforts were certainly praiseworthy. Beginning especially in 1915, and for the rest of her life, she was an untiring opponent of war and advocate for world peace.

Addams presided at the International Congress of Women, which met in The Hague, and was the president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which grew out of that 1915 meeting.

She presided at six congresses of WILPF, and partly for her work with that organization she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931—the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Addams was an untiring supporter of those who were exploited and/or discriminated against. Accordingly, she was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920.

She was also prominently involved in the labor movement and a strong advocate of unions. Because of that kind of activity and advocacy, as well as because of her unwavering pacifism, she came under considerable criticism during the 1920s.

In fact, J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to characterize Addams as “the most dangerous woman in America.”

The Road to Character by the New York Times op-ed writer David Brooks has been one of the bestselling non-fiction books of 2015. In the second chapter Brooks writes appreciatively of the life and work of Jane Addams, highlighting how she “dedicated her life to serving the needy.”

In spite of the criticism by Hoover and others, at the time of her death she was, once again, very high regarded. Although she likely will not be the one selected, Jane Addams is indeed a woman worth being considered for the new $10 bill.

Honoring Cesar Chavez

Tomorrow, March 31, is a state holiday in California, Colorado, and Texas. It is Cesar Chavez Day. And four years ago today, President Obama proclaimed March 31 of each year as Cesar Chavez Day nationwide, although it is not a holiday in the other 47 states.

César Chávez, the Mexican-American migrant farm worker, civil rights activist, and outstanding labor leader, was born on March 31, 1927. He died in 1993.

In his Presidential Proclamation of March 30, 2011, President Obama said,

Cesar Chavez’s legacy provides lessons from which all Americans can learn. One person can change the course of a nation and improve the lives of countless individuals. Cesar once said, “Non-violence is not inaction. . . . Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.”

The President went on to say,

From his inspiring accomplishments, we have learned that social justice takes action, selflessness, and commitment. As we face the challenges of our day, let us do so with the hope and determination of Cesar Chavez, echoing the words that were his rallying cry and that continue to inspire so many today, “Sí, se puede” – “Yes, we can.”

The achievements of Chavez were also recognized the year before and the year after his death. In 1992, Chavez was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award, named after a 1963 encyclical by Pope John XXIII calling upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.

Then on September 8, 1994, Chavez was presented posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. The award was received by his widow, Helen, whom Chavez married when he was 21 and with whom he had eight children.

There was national recognition of Chavez and his work much before the 1990s, though. In 1969 he became the first Mexican-American to have his picture on the cover of Time magazine.

Last year, the biopic film “Cesar Chavez” was released, and June and I watched it with great interest soon after it came out on DVD. Although panned by some critics for being too hagiographical, we thought it was a good presentation of Chavez’s life and work.

Chávez was born in Arizona, but when he was still a boy his family moved to California and became migrant farm workers. In 1942 when he was 15, César dropped out of school and became a full-time migrant farm worker himself. Except for two unhappy years in the Navy, he worked in the fields until 1952 when he founded a Latino civil rights group.

In the 1950s, Donald McDonnell, a Catholic priest who died in 2012 at the age of 88, introduced Cesar to social justice and the principles of nonviolence, which became the basis for his activities as a labor leader.

In 1962, Chavez co-founded what became, and still is, the United Farm Workers. (The other co-founder was Dolores Huerta, who will soon be 85 and an outstanding woman who also deserves to be honored.)

At the time of McDonnell’s death, Arturo Rodriguez, Chavez’s son-in-law and successor as president of the United Farm Workers, said,

Cesar Chavez tried to live the gospels and the social teachings of his Catholic faith every day, but his career dedicated to service to others all began with the lessons he learned early in life from Father McDonnell.

Cesar Chavez was not without his faults. Still, he did so much to help the impoverished and exploited farm workers, first in California and then across the nation, he is well deserving of the honor given him on Cesar Chavez Day.

ADDENDUM (3/23/26)

It is with sadness that on March 18, 2026, Chavez was publicly charged with grooming and sexually abusing girls and women in the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement. Although it will not be possible to officially change the name of the March 31 holiday or related observances this year, it will be widely called United Farm Workers Day. Chavez, of course, will not be honored at all, and statues of him have been covered with blankets.

As mentioned near the beginning of the above article, Dolores Huerta was the co-founder of the UFW. She will turn 96 on April 10. Ms. Huerta was also sexually abused and even raped by Chavez, but she never spoke of that publicly until last week. She said the work of the UFW was more important than her personal mistreatment by Chavez. 

In Praise of Toyohiko Kagawa

He is no longer well known in the U.S., but there was a time, especially up to the early 1940s, when Toyohiko Kagawa was the best-known Japanese in America, except for Emperor Hirohito.

Kagawa was born 125 years ago today, on July 10, 1888. Although sickly from the time he was a young man, he lived until April 1960. During his lifetime of nearly 72 years, he was creatively involved in a wide variety of activities.

He was a Christian evangelist, social reformer, labor activist, author, and peace activist. Because of his contributions in the two latter arenas, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and 1948 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954, 1955 and 1956.

Kagawa studied at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1914 to 1917 and later made several other trips to the U.S., the most extensive one being for more than six months beginning in December 1935.

In the spring of 1936, he delivered the Rauschenbusch lectures at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. (Those lectures were named for Walter Rauschenbusch, whom many consider the most prominent Baptist theologian of the 20^th century.)

Kagawa’s Rauschenbusch lectures were published later that year under the title “Brotherhood Economics.” Even though (or because?) he was a Christian evangelist, Kagawa was deeply interested in economic matters, especially the plight of the many people in Japan (and the world) who were living in poverty.

He knew about being poor from his own experience.

When he was still a seminary student in 1909, he moved into the largest slum area of Kobe and lived there for years. He freely shared what he had, including his small house, with needy people.

As a result, he contracted trachoma (a serious and contagious eye disease) from one of the poverty-stricken people he took into his home.

Because of his concern for the poor, Kagawa was active in the founding of the first labor unions in Japan soon after his return in 1917. Over the next several years he worked extensively in forming unions and cooperatives, and that was a major topic in his 1936 lectures.

Kagawa has been called a “reverse missionary.”

Bo Tao is a doctoral student at Yale University. His master’s thesis at a university in Shanghai was on Kagawa, and his article in the July 2013 issue of “International Bulletin of Missionary Research” is titled “The Peacemaking Efforts of a Reverse Missionary: Toyohiko Kagawa before Pearl Harbor.”

Tao tells how President Roosevelt personally asked for Kagawa to be allowed to enter the United States after he had been detained by immigration authorities in San Francisco in 1935. He was held, ostensibly, because of fear that his trachoma might be transmitted to others.

There were some, though, who opposed his involvement in labor unions and cooperatives. They were the same ones who objected to President Roosevelt’s implementation of New Deal policies during the Depression years of the 1930s.

A few years later, after being arrested and detained in Japan for nearly three weeks in 1940 because of his anti-war activities, Kagawa again visited the U.S. from April to August of 1941 in a “last-ditch” effort to avert war in the Pacific.

Unfortunately, as we know, his peace activities were unsuccessful. But not because he didn’t try.

There is much more I would like to write about Kagawa, who as early as 1939 had been deemed one of three “modern saints”—along with Gandhi in India and Schweitzer in Africa.

After all, I included Kagawa on my list of “top ten Christians” in my Sept. 15, 2010, blog posting.

In Praise of Pope Leo and Labor Unions

One hundred and twenty years ago, on May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the momentous encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”).

Leo XIII, who had been the pope for twenty-five years when he died in 1903, began his 1891 encyclical (formal statement sent to the bishops) by talking about the problem of “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses.”

While opposing socialism and affirming the right of private property, Pope Leo also recognized the right of workers to unite in labor unions. The latter was a significant new emphasis and one reason there have been special activities commemorating the 120th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. One such activity was held earlier this month at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., a university founded in 1887 with the approval of Pope Leo.

Even though issued 120 years ago, Pope Leo’s encyclical speaks directly to matters facing the nation at the present time. As you know, back in February there was a clash between the public-sector unions and Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. In a highly politicized confrontation, the labor unions were demonized by one side and strongly supported by the other.

As you might guess, Rush Limbaugh was staunchly on the side of Gov. Walker and strongly against the position of the union leaders. But it was laughable to hear Limbaugh criticize the “greedy” union members of Wisconsin (and other states) when he has reportedly signed (in 2008) an eight-year contract for $400,000,000! How can anyone who makes $137,000 a day (!) have the gall to call to people greedy who make far, far less than that a year?!

Doubtlessly there have been excesses in some of the demands and practices of labor unions through the years. But many of the things that we take for granted now were due largely to the efforts of the labor unions and their work since 1891, things like the forty-hour work week, child labor laws, unemployment benefits, factory safety laws, and the like.

It is widely recognized that labor unions tend to support the Democratic Party, so Democrats are charging that Gov. Walker and others are opposing the unions primarily to lessen financial contributions to Democratic candidates. Conversely, the Republicans are charging that the Democrats, and the President, are supporting the unions mainly in order to reap financial rewards for upcoming political campaigns.

But labor unions are not primarily about politics; they are about the welfare of workers. Thanks to those labor unions—and their support in Pope Leo’s 1891 encyclical—the workers of the nation are far better off, and far less exploited, than they would be otherwise. In the U.S. and other industrialized countries of the world “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals” still exists. But, thankfully, partly due to the labor unions, it is no longer necessary to speak of “the utter poverty of the masses.”