The 125th Labor Day

Today is the 125th official national Labor Day. It was created as a federal holiday by Congress in 1894, though it had been celebrated by organized labor unions since at least 1882 and was recognized as a holiday by the state of Oregon in 1887 (those West Coast lib'ruls!).

It was created to celebrate the working men and women -- as opposed to The Bosses and the 1% -- who built the nation and kept it running. Its creation was testimony to the growing strength in the late 19th century of the union movement, in which workers banded together to demand better working conditions and living wages. Early Labor Day celebrations always featured large parades of union members demonstrating their allegiances and their solidarity.

Although many individual states followed the lead of Oregon after 1887 and declared their own state holidays to honor workers, the last-straw impetus for the federal holiday followed closely on the heels of the May 11, 1894, Pullman railway sleeping car strike outside Chicago. Employees of mastermind George Pullman went on strike over wages and were joined in a show of solidarity by the American Railway Union — 150,000 strong and led by famous socialist Eugene Debs. The strikers refused to operate Pullman train cars, snarled mail delivery, and prompted President Grover Cleveland to send in federal troops to break up the strike. Rioting and arson broke out, and it evolved into what’s now considered one of the bloodiest episodes in American labor history.

Labor Day as a federal holiday passed Congress within weeks, a kind of sop thrown at workers following the use of troops to put them down.

Labor Day

This holiday began a lot longer ago than you may think. The Central Labor Union of New York, an early confederation of workers, help the first parade and picnic of laborers in New York on the first Monday in September in 1882. A machinist named Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., is credited with proposing the holiday.

By 1884 the First-Monday-in-September parade in New York had grown exponentially. By the first Monday in September 1885, Labor Day was being celebrated by workingmen in many industrialized cities across the country.

In 1887, Oregon, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey recognized Labor Day as state holidays. Other states followed. Then in 1894, the U.S. Congress passed a law recognizing Labor Day as an official national holiday.

Classic Labor Day celebrations have always included a street parade of union members "to exhibit to the public the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families."

While the holiday became identified with the Democratic Party, in Newport, Rhode Island, and other watering holes of the super-rich, Labor Day became a boundary marker after which it was considered unfashionable to wear summer whites.

To each his own.