Pet's BLOG-Day 26,222. History of Labor Day

Today is Monday, September 3, 2012. It is Labor Day. My stats for today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of lifting weights and 45 minutes of walking = 2.4 miles for a September total of 4.5 miles. My weight was 162.2 pounds.

QUOTE from Teddy Roosevelt: "The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored as long as it does good, but each should be sharply checked where it acts against law and justice."

I LEARNED  today about the history of Labor Day. The first Labor Day parade was held in New York City in 1882. It was held in the midst of labor strife in America. Workers were working 12 hour days and 7 days a week in order to eke out a basic living..  Children as young as 5-6 were working in mills, factories and mines across the country and earning a fraction of their adult counterparts. Workers faced unsafe working conditions with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.

With conditions like this about 10,000 workers in New York City, in 1882, took a day without pay and marched from  City Hall to Union Square to demand a shorter work day and better working conditions. This was the first Labor Day Parade. News of the parade spred across the nation and workers in other cities had parades of their own. Labor unions were being formed and were meeting with resistance from the corporate owners and the police. There were numerous strikes and bloodshed in the next decade. In 1894, in an attempt to repair ties with American workers,  Congress passed and President Grover Cleveland signed a bill establishing Labor Day as a national holiday. Workers would no longer have to forfeit a day's pay in order to march in a Labor Day Parade.

To me it is sad that we have to have labor unions. But it is corporate greed and lack of empathy for the working person that brought about the need for unions. Think about it - working 12 hour days 7 days a week and using children as young as 5-6 in terrible working conditions is unbelievable, even if it happened a 100 to 150 years ago. Companies like IBM never were unionized because they treated their employuees in a fair manner. They shared their wealth with the workers, at least enough so the workers felt they did not need a union.

HUMOR from Mark Twain: "Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor."