How to enjoy Labor Day — Go to the lake, go to the mountains, take in a football game, cook out, go to the park with your very best friend.
Traditions Furniture is closed Labor Day.
The Origins of Labor Day
Labor Day has always seemed a misnomer to me. After all, it is a holiday. We don’t work. And we don’t labor. We do anything but…
History answers the question.
On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the law making Labor Day a national holiday. This reflected the fact that local and state governments celebrated the occasion since 1882. It was an occasion for workers around the country to demand legislation protecting the needs of workers. And in the early days, it was cause for massive rallies and parades of labor unions to demand attention. Turnouts in Chicago (30,000), New York (10,000) and Baltimore (10,000) underscored the holiday’s popularity. A picnic “after party” followed.
Almost ten years earlier, on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated, proclaiming: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Two years later, on June 13, 1888, a federal Department of Labor was created.
Labor unrest ruled the work place. Perhaps the most pivotal example of labor/management conflict was the Homestead Strike that began on July 1, 1892 at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strike reached a fevered peak when a gun battle broke out between unionized steelworkers and strikebreakers hired by management.
The steelworkers lost the strike, but the public threw its support behind the strikers and labor reform.
A First
Management said, “Unseemly and ungrateful.”
If we have to point to a first, then the Mill Girls of Lowell, Massachusetts were the inspiration for Labor Day. Some say it took place in February of 1834 others in October of 1836. Either way, one day the “girls” who worked in the cotton factories took it upon themselves to strike. As word spread that wages were about to be cut, the mills were shut down, and the girls marched in groups through the streets of Lowell from their several corporations to the “grove” on Chapel Hill, where they listened to rousing speeches from early labor reformers.
No flags, no music, just words and songs.
Oh, what a fraughtful thing it was to see. A girl, a woman speak. To demand what ought to be.
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