Labor Day: Expanding Its Scope and Importance

As we celebrate Labor Day across the country today, it’s both fun and instructive to take a look at its origins and evolutions over more than a century.

No one knows exactly who invented Labor Day.  There’s symbolic merit in this ignorance, because the holiday doesn’t celebrate government leaders or captains of industry, or any individuals at all.  Rather, it pays homage to a group of “everyman” and, through time, “everywomen” as they toil not in the trenches of war but in those of the workaday world. Labor Day was also created by a group — the labor movement.  And it’s been dedicated to the social and economic achievement of American workers.

The first two Labor Day’s were held in New York City, in 1882 and 1883, both on September 5.  More municipalities joined this annual tribute, with ordinances passed in 1885 and 1886.  States then began to follow suit, and, with 23 in observance, on July 28, 1894, Congress passed an act legalizing the first Monday of September as a holiday in D.C. and the territories.  How appropriate, for a national celebration of us folks to have grass-root origins like these.

As more than a century has come and gone, Labor Day has morphed for many into a day of parades, too much food (and unhealthy, at that), parties, and other festivities, all held to acknowledge the end of summer.  But this, too, can be connected to labor.

The end of summer is also the beginning of the school year.  Not all work is rewarded by a paycheck.  The United States is a rich country not just because of our natural resources and investments in machinery and technology but also because of our investment in people.  It’s human capital that’s responsible for most of our technological breakthroughs; it’s human capital that makes our workers so productive and our country so prosperous.  And it’s education that’s at the heart of its formation.  Our students are putting in seven-hour days even before they start on their homework.

Robert Samuelson just wrote a discouraging  piece on the failure of educational “reform.” Although he makes many important points, he neglects to mention what may be one of the most obvious problems in our system: how much school time is wasted by restoring the skills lost over the 2-3 month break over summer vacation.  We really should rethink the length of summer vacation, surely an artifact of those long-ago days when ours was largely an agricultural society and children were needed to work on their parents’ farms during the growing season.  Wouldn’t one of the easiest reforms be to shorten this break?

Samuelson’s strongest point involves his concern about the lack of motivation in many high-school students – even those who have been well served by their elementary-school experiences.  This observation brings us to another, and final,  point.

A lot of work – and maybe the most important work – does not get included in GNP.  School teachers get paid; parents do not.  Those parents who are motivating their children to work hard and purposefully may have the most important jobs of all.

We should celebrate all labor, regardless of whether our jobs are in the workforce or in the household.  Let’s start now.