In Praise of Labor

After seeing the slogan “What Would Jesus Drive?” I got into a humorous discussion once about which cars which Gods and ancients would drive. Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom, would drive a Kia Sephia. Odysseus would drive a minivan. Freyja would tool around in a Mercury Cougar. And Hephaistos? He would drive something handbuilt and custom modified. Maybe a Panoz roadster.

I tend to associate Hephaistos with cars a lot in my own mind. Maybe because mechanics are the closest things to blacksmiths today, or maybe because I’m a Union Baby, born UAW. Hephaistos and his hammer are the symbol of a lot of unions, and for good reason. He represents physical labor, working with your hands and being skilled at a trade. Today we tend to view such work as undesirable, but this was not always so. Getting a good factory job used to be a mark of pride in the US, and before that getting your child apprenticed to a craftsman was better than an MBA.

So this labor day weekend I thank the Labor Movement for giving me the 40 hour work week. For inventing the weekend. For giving me health benefits, leave benefits and all kinds of safety guarantees that I get because unions fought for them first. Here’s to the people who work with their hands, who learn skilled trades that have palpable, concrete results. Here’s to the people who fought and died in the labor movement, who said children belong in schools instead of mills, and to the women of the mills in Lowell who said their employer had no right over their bodies and souls.

Here’s to the labor we all do: the washing, the ironing, the sweeping, the mopping, the weeding, the cooking, and the childcare. Here’s to the poets who sing of labor:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it whould be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The woodcutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day–at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
— Walt Whitman

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!