Labor Day for most Americans has evolved into just another excuse to have a three-day weekend, perhaps with a nod to the unofficial end of summer and a celebration of the first full week of college football. Perhaps this is appropriate considering that, of the federally mandated holidays, this is the one that began most obviously with the intention of promoting rather specific and relatively narrow political interests.

First celebrated in 1882 with a parade in New York City, Labor Day was inspired by similar trade union demonstrations in Canada. It was explicitly designed to further the interests of the burgeoning labor and trade union movement. Then in 1894, when federal troops and U.S. marshals killed a number of people involved in the Pullman Strike, and President Grover Cleveland soug

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