LABORING FOR FREEDOM

"History reminds us that collective action has been essential in our struggle for freedom. It also reminds us that collective action invariably threatens individual liberties; that to act collectively is to attempt to bind individuals."


Labor Day Parade, Main Street, Buffalo, New York, circa 1900.

On September 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America's first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall to Union Square, the workers and their families gathered in Reservoir Park for a picnic, concert, and speeches. This first Labor Day celebration was initiated by Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader who a year earlier cofounded the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a precursor of the American Federation of Labor.

McGuire had proposed his idea for a holiday honoring American workers at a labor meeting in early 1882. New York's Central Labor Union quickly approved his proposal and began planning events for the second Tuesday in September. McGuire had suggested a September date in order to provide a break during the long stretch between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. While the first Labor Day was held on a Tuesday, the holiday was soon moved to the first Monday in September, the date we continue to honor.
(from: 'Today In History': The First Labor Day)



People labored out of necessity, out of poverty, and that necessity and poverty bred the contempt in which laboring people had been held for centuries. Freedom was always valued because it was freedom froth the necessity to labor.
-- Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Freedom means work.
-- GeneralOliver O. Howard, Freedman's Bureau, 1865



Laboring for Freedom : A New Look at the History of Labor in America This book by Daniel Jacoby [M. E. Sharpe, 1998] could perhaps be a nice reading to learn more about this day.
And it's quite easy and cheap, too, since the reading is available online here:
Book Title: Laboring for Freedom : A New Look at the History of Labor in America


Don't work to much today :wink: :

HAPPY LABOR DAY!