Labor Day Facts

Here are some facts about Labor Day that not many people realize.

• Although the movement to have Labor Day had been happening for quite some time, in September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and gathered in Union Square to support the holiday.

• 1894 - President Cleveland made a campaign promise to enact the holiday to win votes and he followed through with his promise.

• 1898 - The head of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, called it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."

• But most of all Labor Day is a celebration of workers in America.