America Celebrating Its 41st Labor Day, Sept. 4, 1922

America’s 41st Labor Day

Labor Day was observed officially for the first time in 1882.

The celebration was decided on by the Central Labor Union, in New York city.

The first Monday in September seems to have been chosen because it was toward the end of summer that the idea was suggested, and that was the earliest convenient date.

The union made its plans without any precedents to go by, but it made them very well indeed, and the celebration proved to be a gratifying success. First there was a parade. Appropriate public speeches followed.

Everybody was so well satisfied that the Central Union adopted resolutions, soon afterward, in favor of similar celebration on the first Monday in September regularly every year. May 1 is Labor Day in most Old World countries and in South America, but Labor in the United States has stuck to the choice originally made by the Central Union in New York, from that day to this.

In 1884 the American Federation of Labor made the celebration its own and it became national.

Approved by Congress

It had no legal standing, however, until 1887, when the various states, one after another, began to adopt it as a statutory holiday. They did not all name the first Monday in September, but most of them did, and in 1894 Congress passed a bill making Labor Day an occasion for the whole country to observe.

The workers’ celebration of 40 years ago represented the high spirits of American Labor’s youth. Today it represents maturity, experience and the character-forming stress of recent years.

It is not quite the kind of celebration that once it was.

In the old days it had in it something more perhaps of the exuberance of 21—of strength and energy and promise, but of nothing like the sound, sober thoughtfulness, the pride of achievement, the confidence in itself that it represents in this year 1922.

Labor has had its separation representation in the federal cabinet since 1913.

The portfolio of commerce and labor had existed previously, but in that year the work of the department was divided, the country’s purely commercial interests were assigned to the commerce secretary’s care and the post of secretary of labor was created to assume direction of those pertaining distinctly to the wage earners of the land.

It was a department established, as set forth by congressional enactment “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners in the United States and to improve their working conditions and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.”

The control of immigration and the enforcement of immigration laws, the naturalization of foreigners transplanted in the country, the compilation of labor statistics and direction of the work of the children’s bureau were among the administrative tasks placed within its jurisdiction.

From the front page of The Salisbury Evening Post, Sept. 4, 1922