Labor Day is Here!

Happy Labor Day Weekend! The unofficial end of summer is upon us. Next week the kids will be back in school, footballs will be flying and it's back to business in the workplace.

But first a day of rest on Labor Day. I did a little research on Labor Day and found a nice history in the Old Farmer's Almanac that I thought I'd share.

"The funny thing about Labor Day is that it’s the one day of the year no one expects to work! We celebrate work by not doing any. But it replicates our week. We labor, and then we rest. On Labor Day, we honor the value of labor by putting it out of our thoughts for an extra-long weekend...

Labor Day is to celebrate you, the American worker! It was envisioned by the founders to honor the American worker, the driving engine behind the most productive economy in the world, and the American work ethic that resulted in one of the highest standards of living in the world. All of this came out of a belief in economic and political democracy. 

Labor Day was the idea of Peter J. Maguire, a labor union leader who, in 1882, proposed a celebration honoring the American worker. Peter Maguire was the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor. The date chosen was simply “convenient.” Peter Maguire suggested that this date would nicely fall “nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.”

In the U.S., the first Labor Day parade was on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September a legal national holiday every year."

I hope you all have an opportunity to enjoy the weekend. I'm looking forward to a couple of days down the Cape. Which means I'll be sitting in traffic for much of Labor Day, alas.

Tom O'Rourke
President and CEO