Have you noticed that speedy delivery is a big deal these days? Labor Day is next Monday. The U.S. Post Office will be closed so mail will not be delivered on the federal holiday. Of course, that will not stop Amazon from making deliveries. Retailers will be open for business on Labor Day and items will continue to be delivered to your doorstep despite the holiday. This seems a bit odd given the history behind this particular federal holiday.

Back in 1893, the railroad was a major component of commerce. If you were in business, you were dependent upon the trains running regularly and on time. Just how dependent was the economy on railroads? They were the main source of moving products to and from manufacturing facilities and warehouses, much like we use trucking today. Railroads were also the best way to travel long distances, much like we use the airlines today. But they were also crucial to communication because the railroad moved the mail from one location to the other. So if you were to roll all trucking companies, all the airlines, all of your package delivery companies, and all communication companies into one huge conglomerate, you would get a sense of how big the railroad industry was in the late 19^th century.

In 1893, the economy started to skid and the United States went through a financial downturn known as the Panic of 1893. The Pullman Palace Car Company was a major manufacturer of train cars. They employed massive amounts of workers in Chicago - so many that they built apartment cities in poor parts of Chicago and rented these to their employees. When the Panic of 1893 hit the economy hard, the management of Pullman decided to reduce wages, but they did not reduce the rent their employees paid back to the company. This led to a strike of Pullman workers. Soon the strike spread to other railroad workers who were part of the American Railway Union led by activist Eugene Debs. 250,000 railway workers refused to allow any train with a Pullman car to travel on the rails. This brought commerce – and the mail – to a halt.

In stepped President Grover Cleveland, who ordered the workers back to the job. Since the striking workers had tampered with mail delivery, he signed an executive order threatening to jail anyone who kept the trains idling on the tracks. They refused. The railroads hired non-union workers to run the trains. This led to violence between members of the union and the strike busters. President Cleveland sent in U.S. Marshals and the Army to put down the violence. He had Eugene Debs put in jail for refusing to obey a federal injunction. This action had a polarizing impact on the general public. Many felt the violence of the striking railway workers was too much. Others sided with the union and felt that the feds had been too aggressive in putting down the strike. The strike continued until the summer of 1894.

Many felt there needed to be some form of contrition to begin the healing process between the two sides. There was a lot of pressure put on Washington to do something to help reconcile the two sides. Congress hastily put together a bill declaring the first Monday of September to be Labor Day, a nationally observed holiday that gave workers a day off and where all federal offices would be closed, including, ironically, the U.S. Postal Service! So the executive order that denounced the striking railway workers for stopping the mail was settled with a day off without mail delivery!

That leads us to today. In 1893, the main way to get information out was by mail and the primary way to ship products was by rail. The methods of communication and delivery have changed, but the need has not. What does that look like in 2020? Nowadays consumers expect products to be available immediately and delivery to happen overnight or sooner. The process takes place over the internet and the delivery is to your doorstep. People expect transactions to be easy and delivery to be fast.

This leads us to marketing. Marketing is charged with finding out what consumers want and promoting it so they will buy from you. Through the years, two main marketing themes come up time and again: Promote low prices (think Walmart) or superior quality (think Nordstrom). However, there is a new marketing theme that has tipped the scales in marketing – how fast can you deliver it? It is not that price points are not important any longer (they still are) or that producing a quality product has gone out of vogue (it has not – that is why return policies are so important on e-commerce sites), but the new tipping point is delivery and you need to build that into your marketing message.

How are you changing the way you communicate your ease of placing an order with your company? How are you marketing fast delivery? Smart marketing is taking this into account and using it as a way to make a distinction between you and your competition. As Labor Day rolls around, when you won’t get your mail, but you may get a delivery, remember: easy and fast are great marketing campaign slogans in 2020.