The incredible yet little-known story behind Labor Day.

Every year, as the dog days of summer start turning to the crisp nights of autumns, we celebrate Labor Day.  This annual rite of passage signals many things to many people – children going back to school, the beginning of the football season, a great reason to have one last barbecue, or even go to the mall to cash in on great sales.  Of course we already know it’s bad fashion to wear white after Labor Day!  Although these are all great reasons to celebrate, the national holiday of Labor Day comes from much more socially and economically profound origins. 

To learn the real story behind Labor Day, we’ll travel back in time more than a hundred years, to the late 1890’s in the United States.  It was a far different time with different problems, and the plight of the average working class person was so destitute, it’s almost unimaginable to us now. 

It was the age of the have’s and the have-nots, when robber barons and wealthy steel magnates owned the country.  The West had just been settled for a few decades and boat loads of Irish, Italian, and European immigrants flooded Ellis Island – young America’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

These wealthy families and industrialists controlled everything – including the politicians, who were in their pockets.  The Federal government still had very little authority and involvement in state affairs – that came in play around the Great Depression and the New Deal, and the comfortable, educated, and upwardly-mobile middle class created after World War II was still just a dream.  (To get an idea of working class conditions during those times, read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.)

The notion of labor rights and even a national day for labor causes had already been championed; by Matthew Maguire, a machinist with the Central Labor Union of New York, or by Peter Mcguire of the American Federation of Labor in 1882.  Most profiles on Labor Day start there, for good reason.  But the reality was still that the short lives of most working class men and women consisted of incalculable labor and suffering, and little else.  There was no place this was more of a reality than the dreaded Pullman Town area of South Chicago around 1890s. 

The Pullman Railroad Car Company, owned by George Pullman, one of the wealthiest men in America, took advantage of Western expansion and the dawning of industrialization by turning his railroad company into a monopoly unparalleled in U.S. history.  To keep profits pouring in and workers under thumb, he created a small town filled with his workers and their families in a suburb of Chicago.  The workers were just about forced to live there and Pullman owned (and profited from) everything – their apartments and rooming houses, the food markets, the stores, and even the churches and the libraries.  They worked all day at abysmal wages and unsafe conditions just to line his coffers and then owed him more just to sleep and eat once they came home.  It was essentially a duplication of the medieval feudal systems that plagued Europe centuries earlier.  Pullman was the King, and all the workers in his town were indentured servants.

One sweat and coal-faced worker described it best when he said, “We’re born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, blessed in a Pullman church, and when we die, we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to Pullman Hell.” 

Bad went to worse when the Pullman Railroad Car Company, responding to the country’s severe depression – the Panic of 1983 - cut all worker wages by 25% in one felled swoop, just to maintain their profits.  They did not, however, lower rents or any other costs of living in the Pullman Town. 

The Pullman workers finally responded, going on strike on May 11, 1894 - 4,000 factory workers strong laying down their tools at once and walking off the job.  It’s important to note that strikes were not common place in those days – there were no widespread labor unions, workers rights, or even child safety laws, and meetings or protests among workers were often broken up with hired thugs, leading to mob violence, houses burnt to the ground, and even murder – all that went unpunished.  Sure enough, after a short time, the Pullman workers began to break ranks, faced with the unbearable pressure of having to feed their families with no wages. 

Coming to the aid of their embattled brothers, the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, ordered a full-scale boycott across the country as a show of support.  By the summer of 1894, all rail travel in the country came to a virtual standstill as 125,000 railroad workers across 27 states joined the strike in protest of the Pullman Company.

Debs and the American Railway Union solicited for federal intervention to arbitrate worker conditions.  They got their wish when the federal courts stepped in, but unfortunately, Pullman’s influence and the threat of worker collusion led to a decision in favor of the railroads, not labor, backed by the logic that the strike was blocking the transport of federal property since the mail train cards could not get through.  The federal courts issued injunctions, calling for all strikes to cease and banning them as unlawful.

To back the court ruling, President Grover Cleveland sent troops and U.S. Marshalls to Chicago to quell the strike - the epicenter of the railroad industry.  Interestingly enough, Chicago, Illinois governor John Pete Altgeld refused to intervene, even as violence broke out. 

The spark that changed U.S. history came in May 4, 1886, known now as the Haymarket Massacre.  Workers gathered in Chicago’s Haymarket Square for a peaceful protest in favor of an 8-hour workday, but were met with aggressive federal troops who ordered the protest to end.  The gathering turned violent when someone threw a stick of dynamite into the crowd of police, though we still don’t know who it was.  The police responded by mercilessly beating workers with clubs and shooting unarmed protestors.  Within only a few minutes, eight people had been killed and over 120 police and civilians injured – most of them victims of police vigilantism.  

The police and troops arrested eight men from the labor side they charged with conspiracy to commit murder, calling them anarchists.  The arrest and trial was a farce, as there was no evidence against them and the police had sparked the riot, not the civil protestors.  The eight men, David to the Goliath of the railroad companies, government, judges, and police, faced a kangaroo court that included one juror who was a relative of a policeman killed in Haymarket Square.  Even the newspapers, controlled by the rich industrialists, swayed the tide of public sentiment against the workers.  They played upon the public fear of immigrant and minority strikers, labeling them as criminals, socialists, and anarchists, and conceded that true American patriotism was to side with the troops and the government (and corrupt big business.) 

All eight men were convicted of conspiracy charges.  Seven of them were sentenced to death and one man, to a fifteen-year sentence.  One of those accused and convicted was Oscar Neebe, who gave this historic testimony at the trial that illuminated the worker’s plight:

“I saw the bakers in the city were treated like dogs. I helped organize them. That is a great crime. The men are now working ten hours a day instead of 14 or 16 hours…that is another crime. And I committed an even greater crime than that. I saw in the morning when I drove away with my team that the beer brewers of the city went to work at 4 o’clock in the morning. They came home at 7 or 8 o’clock at night…they never saw their families or children by daylight. I worked to organize them. That is a great crime.”

Of the seven sentenced to death, two had their sentenced commuted to life in prison by the Illinois Governor.  One committed suicide in jail instead of being hanged at the gallows, but on November 11, 1887, four more were hanged to death. 

One of the original eight “anarchists,” Eugene Debs was defended by pro-labor attorney Clarence Darrow, who achieved even higher recognition four decades later in 1925, during the famous Scopes Monkey Trail that argued Creationism versus Evolution in our school system (read Inherit the Wind some time.)  Darrow laid the foundation for future labor activism when he argued:

“This is a historic case which will count much for liberty or against liberty. The charge of conspiracy, from the days of tyranny in England down to the day George Pullman used it as a club, has been the favorite weapon of every tyrant. It is an effort to punish the crime of thought….It is an effort to keep the powerless in chains, by denying them the right to make up in numbers what they lack in wealth. Oh, there is a dark conspiracy here, have no doubt of that. There is a conspiracy against Eugene Debs, a conspiracy sinister and far-reaching. The conspirators are George Pullman and the legislators he buys; the conspirators are the courts, which twist and warp our laws to protect the guilty; the conspirators are the soldiers and the police, who use deadly means against those whose only crime is to be hungry.”

Despite the grand oration and lack of evidence against the men, Debs was sentenced to prison for six months on charges of federal obstruction of the mail under the Sherman Antitrust Act.  In jail, he devoured the works of Karl Marx and later became America’s most prominent socialist, even gaining a seat in the Indiana Senate and running for President on that political ideology, though he was ostracized and spent most of the latter part of his life in and out of prison for his beliefs, before dying in a sanatorium.

In Chicago and among sympathizing communities, there were more riots, fires, protests, shootings, and crackdowns, leading to 34 more deaths and $80 million of property damage.  Eventually the strike was broken, but it wasn’t a resounding victory for Pullman and big business.  President Cleveland, in an effort to placate organized labor after the strike and the boycott, designated a new federal holiday, Labor Day.  It was pushed through Congress within only six days of the railway strike’s end. 

Despite the temporary defeat in Chicago the spark that led to Labor Day would not extinguish.  As they say, “there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come,” and the plight of the average worker was fanned to a blaze by many courageous activists over the next century – not only Neebe, Debs and Darrow but labor-rights icons Albert and Lucy Parsons, John L. Lewis, Mother Jones, Cesar Chavez, Jane Addams, Samuel Gompers, Rudy Lozano, Joe Hill, A. Phillip Randolph, and Addie Wyatt.

Starting with those Pullman strikes and the Haymarket Square riots, we achieved an America where workers have a Constitutional right to fair wages, reasonable hours, safe conditions, and freedom from harassment.  We now have rights that free us from abuse and exploitation by employers.  We can now organize and meet freely, and elect for trade unions to be our advocates.  There are now federal protections that free us from child labor, minority discrimination, and exclusion of disabled people in the workplace.  Because those men and women stood up against Pullman in 1893, even facing the wrath of government courts, media headlines, and police clubs, we don’t have to.  We now have our own national holiday to commemorate their sacrifices, a dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.

So remember them in gratitude this Labor Day, and feel proud. 

Where Sacramento ranks for just about everything.

Our beloved Sacramento has a rare gift of polarizing opinions - people seem to either love it or hate it.  But how does The City of Trees rank against the rest of the country?  We dug through dozens of articles, polls, blogs, and reports to come up with the most comprehensive Sacramento rankings…for just about everything you can imagine.

Of course this isn't a perfect science.  Some of these data sources included areas surrounding Sacramento, some did not.  Polls tended to rank out of 30 large metropolitan areas, 100 cities, or 200+ cities.  So to make this information easier to digest, I highlighted the bad stuff in red and the really good stuff in blue.

Some of these might surprise you!  Have fun!

Where Sacramento ranks for just about everything:

Lifestyle and livability.

#5 Worst places to live in the country.

#6 Most fun, affordable city.

#12 Americas dirtiest cities

#18 Worst run cities in America.

#91 Best places to live.

Economy, financial, and jobs.

#2 Retirement financial readiness.

#3 Fastest growing new car market.

#6 Worst places to find a job.

#7 Prosperity index.

#10 Best for women in workforce.

#12 Clean economy jobs.

#34 Best credit scores.

#38 Small business friendly cities.

#60 Access to jobs via public transit.

#97 Labor market for young adults.

#259 Charitable giving.

Online and tech.

#1 Top digital small city (Roseville.)

#4 Fastest growing for tech jobs.

#5 Best airport for tech travelers.

#9 Most likely for identity theft.

#10 Most vulnerable to online threats.

Pets.

#2 Pet friendly city in America.

#7 Best city for cats.

#9 postal service dog attacks

#11 Most pampered pet cities.

#34 Best for dogs (no wonder why there are so many postal attacks!)

Happiness and friendliness.

#1 Happiest workers in mid sized cities.

#7 Happiest young professionals.

#8 Most stressed out cities.

#9 Funniest cities.

#10 Unfriendliest cities.

Bikes, parks, and recreation.

#1 Best family-friendly place to fish and boat.

#7 Public park access and spending.

#7 Park score index.

#10 Best for urban forests.

#11 best city bike paths.

#11 Bicycle commuters.

#24 Walkable cities.

#25 Best bike cities.

Sports.

#1 Most valuable minor league baseball teams.

#4 Best baseball cities.

#23 Sacramento Kings ranked as a basketball team out of 30 NBA teams.

#47 America’s manliest sports city.

#122 Sacramento Kings as a professional sports franchise. (Dead last!)

Crime, theft, and safety.

#1 Least calamitous cities for natural disasters and storms.

#6 Watercraft thefts.

#13 Vehicle thefts.

#23 Most dangerous cities for pedestrians.

#53 Best city for crime.

#140 Safest driving cities.

#348 Highest crime cities in America. (Out of 437.)

Affordability and housing.

#1 Biggest housing inventory contraction.

#2 Market for housing recovery.

#3 Hottest housing market.

#6 Home affordability.

#10 Best destination for your vacation dollar.

#21 Yuppie price index.

#50 Gas prices.

Education.

#3 Library of the year voting.

#10 Smartest cities.

#46 Best college bang-for-the-buck.

#66 Sacramento State college ranking.

#84 Most eLiterate (Kindles, Nooks, eBooks, smartphones, etc.)

Health.

#1 City for bedbug pest termination calls.  (Yuck!)

#2 Most eye healthy cities.

#3 Healthiest eaters.

#5 Highest ozone days.

#7 Healthiest cities.

#8 Most stressful cities.

#10 American Fitness Index.

#11 Most glutunous cities.

#17 Healthiest city for kids.

#20 Most caffeinated cities.

#44 Most sleepless cities.

#72 Asthma capitals.

#88 Cities for well being.

#99 Allergy capitals. (99 out of 100)

Dating, gender, and social life.

#11 Best city for staying young.

#11 Best cities to be a woman.

#16 City for people 35 and younger.

#20 Cities with the most handsome men. (Ranked last out of 20 cities!)

#31 Most single city.

#40 Best city for dating.

#43 America’s most manly cities. (Haha!)

#48 Most romantic cities.

Funny and interesting.

#4 GTL’s! Social media check-ins for gyms tanning salons, and laundry mats. (Great!)

#4 Best cities for nerds. (Atlanta, Seattle, and Portland are top.)

#30 most generous tippers (Average tip is 18.7%, below the national average of 19.2%.)

#4 Best cities to be a chicken (ranked by number of backyard chicken coops.)

#8 Most redneck cities.

#9 Top marijuana friendly cities.

#15 Vainest city. (A lot of selfies!)

#47 America’s luckiest city. (A stat compiled from lottery winners, golf hole-in-ones, and lightning strike victims!)

The 10 most common causes of home fires.

With all of our awareness, safety protocols, and modern technology, home fires are still a significant danger.  According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), firefighters still respond to about 374,000 residential fires every year in the U.S.  At that rate, we have a home fire every 10 seconds, and every 60 seconds a fire serious enough to call the fire department.  Even more sobering, every three hours, someone loses their life to a fire in their home, about 13,000 a year on average.

The price tag on fire damage is startling as well – about seven billion dollars a year.  So where do home fires start?  The statistics show that the usual suspects are to blame – falling asleep with cigarettes, kitchen fires, and faulty wiring.  But there are also some unexpected culprits when it comes to home fires, so we’ll examine them all here.

Home fires by the numbers:

374,000     Average number of residential home fires each year. 

2,600           Average number of deaths each year from home fires.

12,975         Average number of injuries due to home fires each year.

$7.32 billion      Average annual dollar loss due to home fires.

Causes of home fires:

56%      Cooking.

16%      Heating.

9%        Electrical malfunction.

8%        Other unintentional or careless.

6%        Open flame.

5%        Intentional.

1. Cigarettes:

Smokers who fall asleep with lit cigarettes or fail to put them out adequately is a common cause of home fires.  

2. Fireplaces:

In places where traditional wood fires are still aloud, sparks or embers flying out of fireplaces not covered by a screen can easily travel all the way across a room, often unnoticed, and smolder until a fire ignites.

3. Portable heaters:

Portable heating appliances can be very dangerous in the home, especially when people leave them on when they are not in the room.  If they are too close to furniture, curtains, or even catch dust balls, they can easily ignite and cause fires.   

4. Screws into the wall:

Homeowners almost never think twice about putting a hammer or screw into the wall to hang a picture, mirror, or other decoration.  But those can easily pass through the sheetrock and pierce exposed wires, especially in older homes who didn’t have protective wall plates built into their building codes.  Once a wire is frayed or pierced, you have a nonstop electric current running among insulation behind a closed wall – a recipe for a blaze.  Twice as many electrical fires are started by old or faulty wiring than by the appliances themselves!

5. In the kitchen.

The kitchen is where most home fires occur, but interestingly enough, not where the highest fatality rates occur.  That’s because people are usually present when they cook and can put it out or escape quickly.  Most fires start with items too close to an open flame or hot burner on the stove – like paper towels, pot holders, aprons, aerosol cans, recipe cards, etc., as well as build ups of grease.  It’s recommended you keep a three foot buffer around a hot stove, never leave a hot stove unattended, and keep a small fire extinguisher in plain sight in the kitchen.

6. The clothes dryer.

Many house fires start in the clothes dryer.  When people don’t adequately clean out the lint filter, the dryer has to overwork to push hot air through a combustible clump of flammable lint, with a predictable outcome.  But even if you’re diligent about cleaning it, debris can still collect in the dryer cabinet where the heating element sits, at the bottom or in the back of the machine where it’s not easily detected.  The venting system is another place materials can spark or combust with heat.  It’s recommended you hire a professional to clean the dryer and venting thoroughly every 18-24 months.

7. Garage debris.

Sawdust, oily rags, paint thinner, combustible aerosols, and gasoline cans sit unattended in your hot garage.  A quick spark or electrical short can set them ablaze, or even spontaneously combust if the temperature rises enough. 

8. Electronics.

Computers, televisions sets, video games systems, and stereos often work hard and heat up to an alarming level.  They are supposed to have internal fans to cool them down but Apple computers and video game systems like Xbox or PlayStation are notorious for heating up past the point of safety, especially if they are not properly ventilated or partially obstructed by papers, a blanket or bedding, a cabinet or wall, etc.

With all of these electronics, power cords are another danger.  Phone chargers that short out from electrical surges are now a growing threat of home fires.  Laptop chargers that get way too hot can easily set off a flammable material like lint or papers.

In sum, electrical fires account for more than 50,000 home blazes a year, causing $1.5 billion in property damage. 

9. Dust and lint.

No matter what room of the house, even small build-ups of dust and lint are a fire hazard.  They can easily be kicked up or blown around into heating vents, portable heaters, open flames, cooking services, or ignite next to hot electronics.  

10. Children setting fires.

Children are naturally curious and it's common for them to go through a phase when they experiment with flame and fire, whether it's lighting things with a magnifying glass or messing around with matches.  Once they see a flame, they often panic or run because they're scared of getting in trouble or don't know safety measures.  5% of all home fires are intentionally set (like from deep-fryers, back yard barbecues, etc.) and very few of those are arson - leaving curious children as a significant cause.

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Look for our next blog that breaks down how to prepare your house, plan, and keep your family safe in the event of a home fire! 

Common neighbor disputes, part 1; Noise, pets, and water.

Robert Frost, the great American poet once said, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  While it probably wasn’t the most elegant thing he penned, it could be the most accurate.  Yes, we’ve all had run-ins with neighbors, those strangers who become an important part of our lives just because of their proximity.  The rule goes that if a neighbor is good, you probably won’t even notice them, but if they’re bad…they can make your life flat-out miserable.  

Whether you live in a house with a spacious yard, are stuffed close in a McMansion, or have neighbors above and below you in a condo or apartment, we’ve all had issues: loud parties on Tuesday nights, dogs who like digging up our grass, neon yellow paint colors, pink flamingos in their front yard, and not paying their fair share for that dreaded instigator of neighborly conflict –the shared fence.  

You could get mad, you could scream at them, you can even send your dog to their lawn and paint your house in pink and purple polka dots out of spite, but there may be a better way to handle challenging neighbors.  Good communication and a level head are your best allies, but knowing some of the laws and regulations also prove invaluable.  So here are a few guidelines on 3 of the most common challenges among neighbors: noisy neighbors, pet complaints, and flooding and water issues. 

Noisy neighbors.

Neighbors who are excessively loud are one of the most difficult blights to deal with because how-loud-is-too-loud is such a subjective thing that’s hard to measure.  Additionally, a backyard party on a Saturday night that goes until midnight may not offend most people, but an older or crabby neighbor might call the police.  (And the police have to come if a complaint is made, regardless of who is right or wrong.)

Condos and apartments are even more difficult with noise complaints because you usually have 3 or even 4 neighbors above and below you.  Condos usually have association rules and apartments have policies that look to minimize noise complaints.  Any grievances can be directed to the condo association or apartment management.

For homeowners, most municipal codes have some sort of clause that lays out what constitutes a noise problem.  For instance, it may define it as, “an unreasonable annoyance, disturbance or offensive activity that unreasonably inhibits another neighbor from using their property.”

There are a few things you can do: to take the subjectivity out of it, you could take an acoustical test that measures exactly who loud the neighbor is on the decibel meter.  Documenting that is a good start in case a civil action or complaint ensues. 

Before it gets to that, try to talk to the neighbor.  Ask them politely if they could give you notice when they’ll have a gathering or event where the volume will be up, are doing early construction, etc.  Ask for a pre-arranged beginning and end time to the noise.  Hopefully, they will respect you communicating and respond.  It’s a lot better than calling the police every time things get loud.  

Other common noise complaints are over noise that is “habitual or mechanical in nature,” like a loud bar down the street or a machine shop.  Usually the City’s Code Enforcement Department is the place to contact to monitor the noise from businesses.

Here is the Sacramento Police Department’s website page that deals with noise complaints: 

http://www.sacpd.org/faq/nuisance/

Pet complaints.

You may have a crazy cat lady living next door who lets them infest the neighborhood, or a neighbor who has roosters who come alive at 3 am, but usually pet issues revolve around dogs.  There are three kinds of issues with dogs: excessive barking, relieving themselves on your lawn (the dogs – not the neighbors,) and dangerous dogs not properly leashed or fenced.

If a dog barks excessively – which usually happens when they leave a dog unattended in the yard – it falls under some of the same standards as noise complaints.  

Leash laws are laid out in most municipalities, requiring dogs to be properly leashed or behind locking fences for public protection.  If a dog is not, your city or municipality will take it very seriously because it’s a huge liability if the dog attacks someone.  Condos or apartments or homes with a Homeowners Association will have additional regulations that may get as specific as weight, size, and type of pet.  

Dogs relieving themselves on their lawn also fall under the verbiage of municipal leash laws.  Generally, pet owners have a civic responsibility to clean up after their pet.  

All animal and dog complaints are handled by the City's Animal Care and Control Division, so give them a call before you contact the police.  Here is Sacramento County’s web page on animal control and complaints:

http://www.animalcare.saccounty.net/AnimalIssues/Pages/BarkingDog.aspx

Flooding and water issues.

Noise and pets may be incessantly annoying, but nothing can harm your property as quickly as water damage.  Usually this occurs in apartments or condominiums where the upstairs neighbor has a pipe burst, bathroom leak, or appliance like washing machine, icemaker on a fridge, or dishwasher malfunction.  When that happens, there is very clear accountability who is responsible (the neighbor) and who has to fix it (the condo association or apartment manager.)  In California, the law always falls on the side of tenant rights so it’s a simple process to make complaints and force them to make it right.   

But water problems also occur between side-by-side neighbors.  This is often from faulty irrigation or bad sprinklers that cause flooding, kill neighbor landscaping, or even reach the house and cause property damage.  

Of course you should document any water damage with photos/videos/and a log, and report to the proper municipal complaint agency or association.  But with water damage, another very important issue could rear its ugly head: mold.

Water damage over time causes mold, which causes serious health concerns that lead to hospitalization or even death in extreme cases.  There’s a whole line of litigation that deals with mold but be aware that a landlord or condo association is responsible for remediation if mold exists, which includes replacing damaged sheetrock or other materials and proper city inspection.   If you are having respiratory or health problems that you think are coming from mold (especially if you have children) then you can buy homeowner mold testing kits and from there, contact mold inspection and remediation companies. 

Here is the Environmental Protection Agency’s web page on mold issues: 

http://www.epa.gov/mold/moldresources.html

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Look for our next post in this serious, when we tackle neighbor parking issues, trees, and fences!