Labor Day

Published 8:30 am Monday, September 6, 2010

    Throughout the nation families are celebrating Labor Day, the first Monday in September, in dedication to the social and economic achievements of American workers.

    According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers more than 100 years ago.

    Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

    But another person with a similar name, Matthew Maguire, a machinist, is believed by some to have founded the holiday.

    Either way, the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with plans of the Central Labor Union.

    In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday and other labor organizations in other cities were urged to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. As labor organizations grew, so did the holiday.

    The first governmental recognition of Labor Day came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York Legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on Feb. 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

ON THE WEB

View Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’ Labor Day Address on the U.S. Department of Labor Web site at www.dol.gov/loborday/