Tim Rogers: Happy Labor-free Day

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September 4, 2011

Anonymous timrogers@daltoncitizen.com The Dalton Daily Citizen Sun Sep 04, 2011, 06:35 AM EDT

Good morning and Happy Labor Day, almost.

Of all the formal holidays that we celebrate in the United States, this one is perhaps the most carefree of them all.

On the day when we celebrate and recognize the contributions of the working men and women of America, it is perhaps appropriate that we don’t put many obligations on it.

Labor Day used to be the last getaway before school started, but those days are long over in all but a few states.

In fact, Labor Day may be the best single day for kicking back and relaxing because it doesn’t come with all of the family and other obligations that accompany Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

If you just want to lay in a hammock for a whole afternoon or take a hike up a mountain with just your dog for company, today is a good day to do it.

The funny thing about Labor Day, however, is that it is probably the holiday that we know the least about. I certainly didn’t until I did a little Internet research.

Historians seem to agree that the first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. It was organized by the Central Labor Union, but there is disagreement on who came up with the idea for the day.

Some records point toward Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, as the founder of the day. He is supposed to have said that the day would honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Other records point to a different Maguire, however. These historians credit a Matthew Maguire, a machinist and later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., with proposing the holiday.

From that day, it took just 10 years for the idea of a Labor Day, complete with picnics and labor demonstrations, to sweep across the nation, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

To show you how different the country was just 120 years ago, according to one history of Labor Day the first proposals of the holiday apparently called for parades to show off “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community. In many cities and towns that would be followed by a festival for the workers and their families.

The importance of Labor Day as a way to show off the strength of trade and labor unions has decreased over the years for several reasons.

Perhaps the most important reason for this happening is that the organized labor movement has suffered from a steady loss of membership over the last 30 or more years. Today, the biggest unions are the government worker unions, not the traditional trade and industrial unions. This falloff in union membership as a percentage of overall working adults has also occurred as more and more blue collar jobs have been cut and/or sent overseas.

Labor Day has also not been as big in the South for the simple reason that organized labor unions were not as accepted here as they were in other places around the country.

Having a day to give a tip of our cap to the working people of America is still a good idea, though.

America has always found its strength in inventing and building things. We rightly honor and celebrate the brains behind these inventions and innovations, but too often we forget that it also takes brawn to bring these dreams to fruition.

Labor Day should be an important day in Dalton, which is still one of the leading manufacturing areas in this country.

So when you are out lying on the hammock or taking a walk give thanks that we still build things in America and say thanks for the people who do the building.

Tim Rogers is editor of The Daily Citizen. He can be reached at timrogers@daltoncitizen.com.

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Tim Rogers: Happy Labor-free Day

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