America Works On Labor Day
And every other day of the year. Despite the obstacles, the American Dream still beckons.
“On Labor Day, Consider Abraham Lincoln’s Views on Labor,” suggested Randolph May for Real Clear Politics.
“As far back as 1847, speaking at a Whig event, Lincoln declared: ‘I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man’s rights and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole,’” revealed May.
No, argued the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, consider instead “Franklin D. Roosevelt on Labor Day as an American holiday.”
“Editor’s note: Labor Day in the United States was officially promulgated in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland, as part of the trade union movement that followed industrialization,” they preface. “The first labor parade predated Labor Day by about a decade and occurred in New York City.”
Oh, and “Today, Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade is the largest in the country.”
“Labor Day in this country has never been a class holiday,” wrote the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board. “It has always been a national holiday. It has never had more…