For most of us, this holiday marks our last hurrah before summer’s end. Celebrate its historical significance and delve into the controversy over its true founder:

While it precedes the start of fall by a few weeks, most people think of Labor Day as the end of summer. Falling on the first Monday in September, it’s a U.S. federal holiday that was created by the labor movement to pay tribute to working men and women.

Why It’s Unique

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor, as reported by this U.S. Department of Labor site. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

The day commemorates the social and economic achievements of American workers. It celebrates the contributions they have made to the “strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

McGuire Vs. Maguire

So who first proposed the holiday for workers? That would be either McGuire or Maguire.

According to the DOL site, some evidence suggests that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in coming up with the idea.

However, many believe that similarly monikered Matthew Maguire, a machinist, founded the holiday. And recent research seems to verify that Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, NJ, proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.

This much is uncontested: the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and established a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was observed on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City with a parade, as planned by the Central Labor Union.

In 1884, the first Monday in September was designated as the holiday, as originally proposed. The union selected this day because it’s halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, according to How Stuff Works, one of my favorite online resources.

The Central Labor Union encouraged similar organizations in other cities to commemorate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea took hold as labor organizations grew in prominence, and in 1885 many of the country’s industrial centers celebrated Labor Day.

The Law on its Side

Labor Day became increasingly important over the years and earned its first governmental recognition in the form of municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. These efforts snowballed into a movement to secure state legislation. While the first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states–Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York–created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade, Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had done so as well. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday to pay tribute to workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

Labor Day has been celebrated as a national holiday in the U.S. and Canada since that year.

How Stuff Works notes that President Grover Cleveland, who did not support labor unions, signed the law designating the nationwide holiday. He did so to make political reparations for his decision to send federal troops to quash a strike by the American Railway Union at the Pullman Co. in Chicago, IL–an action that resulted in the deaths of 34 workers.

The Significance of Labor Day

How Stuff Works reports that with the declining membership in labor unions, Labor Day now holds “less significance as a celebration of working people and more as the end of summer. Schools, government offices and businesses are closed on Labor Day so people can get in one last trip to the beach or have one last cookout before the weather starts to turn colder.”

What’s Up with White and Labor Day?

I’ve often wondered about the origins of the old custom prohibiting the wearing of white after Labor Day. Apparently, according to Wikipedia and Ask Yahoo!, the exact reason for this tradition is uncertain. One explanation is that since white reflects light and heat, white clothes are lower quality protection against cold weather. Another possibility is that the rule was meant to be a guideline for new members of the middle class in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The ranks of nouveau-riche people swelled during these years and they often did not know the standards of high society, so such codified rules were meant to help them fit in.