Labor Day: 5 things you probably didn't know, from boycotts to wearing white

Labor Day: From a debate surrounding the holiday's founder to an enigmatic social rule, the history of Labor Day offers plenty of material to keep you reading on your time away.

#5 McGuire? Maguire? MacGyver?

Though it is one of the most celebrated federal holidays, there is great debate over who founded Labor Day.

According to the United States Department of Labor, some records show that Peter J. McGuire, cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was the first to propose a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold." But other accounts promote a different story: that Matthew Maguire, secretary of the International Association of Machinists and a machinist himself, suggested the creation of the holiday.
Luckily the McGuire/Maguire mixup didn’t stall the plans, and the first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882.

#4 No shirt, no shoes... no white?

You’re not supposed to wear white clothes after Labor Day, but hardly anybody knows why.
Laura Fitzpatrick relates multiple stories behind the bizarre rule in a piece for Time. One theory is that people wore white in the summer months to keep cool, but put it away customarily in the fall when the rain delivered mud (and stains). But this, she says, is far too logical a history for any fashion trend.
A more probable theory is that white was a symbolic color: those wealthy enough to "decamp from their city digs to warmer climes" did so, and they wore white on vacations to force contrast with the dark attire of urban life. So white garments represented leisure, and as a metaphor for summer they were stored in the closet when fall jobs and schooling began.

Some etiquette enthusiasts rebuff this tale. "There are always people who want to attribute everything in etiquette to snobbery," says Judith Martin, American journalist and authority on manners and style.

#3 A disastrous strike and hasty congressional action

The Central Labor Union began observing Labor Day in Boston in 1882, but it wasn’t until 1894 that it became a federal holiday. Why so?

It’s likely that congress couldn’t find the motivation. At least, that was, until the Pullman Strike, which the Encyclopedia of Chicago calls the most "famous and farreaching labor conflict in a period of severe economic depression." It began on May 11, 1894, when factory workers left Pullman Palace Car Company due to low wages. Soon after, the American Railway Union declared that its members would have no stake in Pullman’s affairs, and a boycott was born.

In July the federal government deemed it necessary to intervene, deploying both soldiers and the police force. By the time the boycott had been trounced, ARU president Eugene V. Debs had been jailed and commander in chief Grover Cleveland had started to fear the unrest would lead to further conflict. Cleveland signed the bill to establish Labor Day nationally only six days after the ordeal in Pullman, Illinois had ended.

#2 A case of the Mondays

The United States Department of Labor recalls that the first Labor Day was celebrated on a Tuesday (Sep. 5, 1882). It wasn’t until its status as a federal holiday that Labor Day acquired the well-known "first Monday of September" slot in 1894. Some think Grover Cleveland chose this date to counterbalance the madness of May 1's International Worker's Day, which commemorates the tragic Haymarket Affair of 1886 and raises more ire than it does patriotism.

The most notable result of the placement, writes PBS News, is the incidental three-day weekend that allows for friends and families to clog the highways, the picnic grounds, "and their own backyards--and bid farewell to summer."

#1 Labor... Days?

More than a few countries celebrate their own versions of Labor Day.

VIA: AlaskaDispatch