Labor Day

Today is Labor Day, a day when people from all over the United States get together for cook outs or head to the beach for this last long weekend of the Summer. We now see it as the non-official end to Summer but it started off as something completely different.

In 1893 workers for the Pullman Company that made sleeping cars for railroads, went on strike to protest low wages and high rent (the workers all lived in Pullman, IL a company town where you lived in a house you rented from the company, bought goods in a store owned by the company, etc.). The strike turned violent and supporters of the strike from other railroad unions son started boycotting trains that contained Pullman cars along with vandalizing and burning some of the cars. The railroad industry in the US was brought to a standstill.

The government declared the strike illegal and sent in troops to quell it. Some of its organizers were thrown in jail, workers for Pullman were forced to sign statements saying they would never form a union again and the railroad unions were effectively destroyed until they were reborn during the Great Depression. The US Congress and then president Cleveland wanted to make some sort of move to reconcile with workers across the country who were aghast at their actions and so in 1894 they made the first Monday in September an official holiday to celebrate the workers of our country.

Today Labor day is nothing more than an excuse to go to the beach, but it should be much more. It should remind us that it isn't the CEOs and Executive VPs that make this country great, it is all of the hard work done by ordinary people who make this country great and who's work allows the CEOs and Executives to make the big salaries that they do. Make all the CEOs in this nation suddenly vanish and it might be a while before we notice, make all the trash collectors vanish suddenly and we will all take notice right away.

We need to use this holiday as a time to remember that wealth is created by the poor and the middle class and then makes its way up to the wealthy by a process of concentration, the wealthy never create wealth they only consolidate what others have created. We need to use this holiday to remind our government that all of this is true and if they want to turn the economy around they need to look at what they can do for the people at the bottom of our economy, help them and the wealth will trickle up, helping those at the top ONLY helps those at the top. We need to use this holiday to stand up and say it is the workers and laborers that made this country great, crush us and you destroy the nation. Lift us up and we can all fly.