September 1, 2019
It’s time to repurpose ‘Labor Day’ as “Taxpayers’ Day’
By Thomas Lifson
A federal holiday at the end of summer was a wonderful idea, a chance for families to shift gears as the children go back to school and for the rest of us to prepare for the shorter days and less friendly weather of winter. And it is even better that this day of leisure was linked to honoring work and those who perform it. The holiday began as an organizing tool for unions:
On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history.
When President Cleveland signed Labor Day into law in 1894, industrial workers were the fastest-growing segment of the workforce, and they were facing 7-day work weeks, low pay, and often hazardous working conditions. Efforts to organize unions to demand better pay and working conditions faced sometimes brutal repression. The federal holiday was viewed as an attempt to heal the wounds opened by the class conflict between owners and the industrial proletariat that Marxists viewed as an opportunity for revolution.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/its_time_to_repurpose_labor_day_as_taxpayers_day.html
