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Monday, we salute the American worker for developing the highest standard of living and contributing to the greatest production the world has ever known.
Labor Day is an outgrowth of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.
Once an occasion for protest, Labor Day for most of us now is a time for recreation, shopping and a moment’s respite before getting on with the business of our lives.
Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. The union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The Central Labor Union’s event was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City.
The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed in 1885 and 1886. Oregon became the first state to recognize the holiday in 1887. Congress made the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in 1894.
As the summer of 2010 races toward a conclusion, all is not perfect in America. The nation’s economy inched ahead in the spring, but we still haven’t awakened from the Great Recession. Local workers remain laid off.
There, however, is much right in America. The fact that there was growth fuels hope that the economy may be ready to begin climbing again.
We also continue to enjoy a remarkably high standard of living.
Hard-working, amazingly productive men and women have helped make it that way. They proved that an energetic people working in a free society can produce material far beyond the capacity of oppressed people in contrary economic and political systems.
On this Labor Day, ponder these words by Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor: “Labor Day differs in every essential from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day ... is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”
For Labor Day is a day to sit back, relax and contemplate the fruits and future of our labor.
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