
The History of Labor Day - zoowar
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
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toomuchcoffee
Note only does the DOL page not mention the stiff competition faced with the
May 1st date, it doesn't even mention what is uncontroversially regarded as
the main impetus for the federal labor holiday, namely, as a gesture of
appeasement in the wake of the brutal suppression of the Pullman strike just 6
days before the enabling act was signed by Grover Cleveland:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike>

In that sense, the totality of the censorship on the government's page around
a simple matter of noncontroversial public history is simply astonishing. The
irony is that it seems to exemplify the very ethos of left-wing
totalitarianism that it's desperately trying to "protect" us from. Or as
Winston Smith said it best himself,

 _"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth"_
(Book One, Chapter VII).

BTW, here's a good recap of the actual political maneuverings around the time
of the federal holiday was enacted:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2004/09/why_do_we_get_labor_day_off.html)

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tokenadult
This official history of Labor Day by the United States Department of Labor is
described as a "sanitized" history of Labor Day in the United States by
another webpage

<http://www.cs.uni.edu/~campbell/gened/labour.html>

(written by a professor of mathematics who definitely has a point of view on
labor history) that I find more informative, even as it expresses a point of
view, than the government webpage. Ever since I have lived in Taiwan, a
country with a red flag (adopted during the worldwide socialist movement) and
Labor Day on May 1st, I have wondered why the United States doesn't have Labor
Day on May 1st. See also my submission from yesterday

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4468530>

of another website about this issue.

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twelvechairs
This is very sanitised. 'labor day' comes from the international unionist
struggle/demand for workers rights that stopped sweatshop conditions existing
in all western countries, usually through 'illegal' strikes. You can also
forget conflating it with Stalin and the cold war - that all came much later.

