Groups representing labor won a federal holiday honoring workers in 1894. For many today, it’s a 3-day weekend and retailer sale event.
Labor rights and middle-class prosperity were hard-won. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, workers were treated little better than serfs; and in the early days of labor organizing, police and troops were often used to break strikes. Now, union power is largely gone, the middle class is hollowing out, and America is dividing again into haves and have-nots.
America’s labor history produced countless legends of struggle and sacrifice. Left: Company thugs beat up a labor organizer outside a Ford Motor Company plant in 1937 (story here). Below: Textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, faced bayonets in a 1912 strike that won short-term improvements in pay and working conditions which didn’t last (story here).
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