As the new year was getting under way a century ago, many of the city’s construction workers were taking “one of the most important steps since the formation of the first unions in Bangor six years ago,” according to the Bangor Daily News. Several unions representing dozens of masons, plumbers, carpenters, painters and other skilled workers on Jan. 1 had “demanded” – or rather “asked” as one union spokesman corrected himself so as not to give offense – an eight-hour day and raises ranging from a dime to a quarter a day.

We take so much for granted, from Social Security to unemployment benefits to OSHA regulations, that it’s hard to identify with the seemingly modest requests being made by our grandparents and great-grandparents some of whom were still fighting for their survival – often working six days a week, 10 or more hours a day in unsafe conditions.

To help me understand what was going on in Bangor, I turned to Maine’s prolific labor historian, Charles A. Scontras of the University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education. Scontras’ latest publication, “Time-Line of Selected Highlights of Maine Labor History: 1636-2003” (Bureau of Labor Education, 2003) served as one useful source.

Maine’s labor movement was just getting its feet back on the ground after a depression in the previous decade had led to the collapse of the statewide organizations for the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.

The rebirth exhibited some of the characteristics of a religious revival as workers, ranging from socialists and anarchists to plain average people who were just fed up with the excesses of capitalism, formed dozens of union chapters all over the state and nation.

After a “rousing mass meeting” at Bangor City Hall in 1902, a local labor organizer commented, “Two years ago we were strangers. Today we are a great brotherhood with 16 unions, 13 of which are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and we expect more soon.”

The next year, 2,500 people marched through the streets of the city in the parade on Labor Day, which became a legal holiday in Maine in 1891. By then there were nearly 30 unions. Striking printers the year before had started the Bangor Unionist, the first labor newspaper in Maine in the new century.

“There were few labor laws on the books in 1904. For all practical purposes, with few exceptions, none existed,” said Scontras during an interview. “The prevailing view was that government should remain aloof from the economic playing field.”

Scontras said, “Children 12 years old could and did work, many of them 60 or more hours a week. Children under 15 were not supposed to work during the public school sessions unless their absence was excused. As for hours of labor, females under 18 and males under 16 were supposed to be limited to 10 hours of labor a day or 60 hours a week unless the child ‘voluntarily’ contracted for longer hours with the consent of one of his parents.”

Maine labor leaders and reformers asserted there were hundreds of children illegally employed in the state, but even working “legally” resulted in conditions that were far from acceptable by today’s standards.

To learn more about these scandalous conditions, a reader can turn to Scontras’ “In the Name of Humanity: Maine’s Crusade Against Child Labor” (Bureau of Labor Education, 2000).

The Bangor trade unionists demanding more pay and a shorter day in 1904 were a lot better off than many impoverished women and children and immigrant ditch diggers, and they knew it.

An official of the mason’s union defended his organization’s request to a reporter from the Bangor Daily News this way: “A good mason in this city gets paid at the rate of $3.33 a day. This may seem at first to be sufficient remuneration for an ordinary day’s labor – in fact, many people will no doubt consider it very excellent remuneration indeed. But it must be remembered that brick buildings aren’t constructed here in the winter and that consequently four months out of every 12 are a total loss.

Unlike most other professions we are more or less dependent on the weather, and I doubt if even in summer, we average more than five days work out of six, so frequently are we interrupted by severe and long continued storms.”

He added that masons in all the other cities of Maine except Bangor, Augusta and Waterville had already been granted an eight-hour workday.

The Bangor Daily News story went on to enumerate the pay and requests of some of the other unions: Painters, who received $2.25 a day, were asking $2.50; building laborers (assistants to the masons) got $2.10 and wanted $2.25; plumbers made $2.75 and wanted $3; and carpenters made $2 and wanted $2.25.

This was back in the days when a quart of milk cost 6 or 7 cents and a new Oldsmobile sold for $650. You could subscribe to the Bangor Daily News for $6 a year.

The events in Bangor that year took place during an “anti-labor crusade” launched by the National Association of Manufacturers, which aggressively promoted open shops, where union membership was voluntary.

“The open shop message did not leave Bangor untouched,” said Scontras. The city’s union unrest “took place against a background of renewed and orchestrated efforts by employers to choke the labor movement in the state and nation. The new offensive against the labor movement revealed that workers were no longer to be portrayed as underdogs in an economic order that viewed them as impersonal costs of production. Unions were now viewed as un-American institutions led by tyrannical leaders who interfered with the inalienable right of employees to make their own contracts and for employers to run their own businesses.”

The unions had given Bangor contractors until April 1 to respond to their demands. “A prominent local contractor” had no comment when contacted by a reporter.

I’ll write more about the strike that occurred at a later date.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters, “The Diaries of Sarah Jane” and “Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordaily

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