History and Origins of Labor Day

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Today is Labor Day, an annual holiday that celebrates the dignity of being a member of the working class. A response to the socialistic celebration of Mayday, the holiday's origins reach back into the 19th century.

During the mid-1800s, after continued abuses by manufacturers, labor unions rose up. The inspiration for the first American Labor Day came from an alliance between the American Federation of Labor (AFL), craft unions, and local central labor federations in 1882. Waves of strikes followed lasting through the middle of the 1890s, reaching a crescendo that called out the police, and ultimately the army, to control the situation. The Pullman Strike, led by future Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1894, was crushed, and Debs was imprisoned for his involvement. The problem was being pushed to a breaking point.

In the Northeast the unions and federations had traditions of summer holidays, and the government decided a day for labor where beer drinking and family fun was the plan of the day would help quell the unrest. Shortly after the end of the Pullman Strike, Democrat President Grover Cleveland rushed a bill recognizing Labor Day through Congress. The Democrats had been bruised by the fact that they were largely behind calling in the police and army, and needed a way to mend fences.

Not a single elected official in Congress voted against this measure.

President Cleveland chose the September date in order to set the American holiday off from European Mayday. An AFL resolution of 1909 declared the first Sunday to be the proper Labor Day, and eventually all states and the District of Columbia affirmed the holiday status for their residents. In 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The act moved several federal holidays, including Labor Day, to Mondays, and Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday of September ever since.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary