The first proposal of a holiday was 1882 from a machinist, Matthew Maguire, who was also serving as Secretary of the Central Labor Union of New York. The first Labor Day parade occurred Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City to honor American labor. The idea spread across the country state by state, and some states designated Labor Day as a holiday before the federal holiday was created. New York, New Jersey and Colorado were among the first states to approve state legal holidays. In May of 1886, the Haymarket affair in Chicago occurred when a bomb shattered a peaceful rally of a worker’s striking over working conditions. The blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in a number of police and civilians dead and many injured. The Haymaket affair was a setback for the labor movement. In 1894, the Pullman Strike occurred with a nationwide railroad strike that shut down most of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit Michigan. The strike began in Pullman, south side of Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a "wildcat strike" in response to wage reductions. It became a national issue when mail trains were interrupted and President Grover Cleveland declared this strike a federal crime. He deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike and many workers died in the riot. Members of congress were in of a support for a national holiday. Sen. James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota rushed legislation to make Labor Day a legal holiday on the first Monday of September each year. Six days after the end of the strike, President Grover Cleveland signed this holiday into federal law.
Labor Day in the United States is a public holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. The holiday honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the country. Today, Labor day is also highly advertised as a retail holiday with most retailers offering sales. Beyond the day off work, the bbq's, beginning of the football season, and three day weekend, all stores are offering discounts for the end-of-summer, back to school, end-of-season sales. On this blog we are also offering these sales, but today we wanted to focus on the history of the US labor and jobs.
As you enjoy this holiday, remember it was not a single group, but individual contributions in the workforce that made this county great through the great depression, through the wars, the space race and today.
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