Liberty Lifestyle: Labor Day Isn’t What It Used to Be

Americans usually talk about liberty in terms of speech, religion, property, privacy, and government. But there's another freedom we exercise almost every day without thinking much about it: deciding what to do with our own time, abilities, and labor. Labor Day began as a public celebration of the dignity, independence, and economic importance of ordinary working Americans. More than 140 years later, we still celebrate it, but the meaning of “labor” itself has changed dramatically.

Liberty and Labor Day

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” has been an expression used for centuries. Although it first appeared in written form by James Howell in Paroimiographia Proverb or, Old Sayed Savves & Adages in English in 1659, the saying perfectly pertains to the 1800s when people were working long hours in less-than-desirable conditions.

“I’ve worked in the mill in my day, until nine o’clock at night, from seven in the mornin’…I wouldn’t want to go back to it, and I don’t think anyone else would. An eight hour day is long enough,” a woman told the Library of Congress in an interview at the time.

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Industrial America could be brutal for workers with long workdays and limited workplace protections. The National Labor Union started asking Congress to establish an eight-hour workday as early as 1866. A person’s labor is their time, skill, knowledge, and effort. It could also involve creativity and ingenuity. Americans have spent generations debating how much government should regulate work hours, how much employers should control it, and how freely people should be able to negotiate for themselves. 

The early labor movement argued that workers needed collective power because individual workers often had little bargaining power against large employers. So, the inspiration behind Labor Day wasn’t just organizing and creating unions, it was a much larger concept and question over how much of a person’s life an employer could expect in exchange for a paycheck.

Introduction of the Holiday

While New York gets credit for the first official celebration, states had already individually been celebrating their workers. Oregon was the first state to enact a law on February 21, 1887, then Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York followed later that year. By 1894, enough states were recognizing Labor Day that Congress followed.

The country’s first Labor Day celebration almost didn’t happen. New York Cit y hosted the event on September 5, 1882, with plans for a street parade that would demonstrate the “strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations,” followed by a festival for workers and their families to relax and enjoy themselves, as explained by the US Department of Labor.

However, when the celebration was supposed to start, hardly anyone was there and ready to march, and there wasn’t a band. Then, 200 members of a Newark jewelers union saved the day. They arrived by ferry with musicians, and the parade was able to begin. Workers marched through Manhattan, then they gathered at Wendel’s Elm Park for speeches, food, cigars, and plenty of beer. The Department of Labor estimates the crowd ranged from 10,000 to 20,000 people.

It took more than a decade for Labor Day to become a federal holiday, and it seems it was more of a political movement than to honor workers. In 1894, the Pullman railroad strike happened. The American railway Union became involved in a boycott associated with Pullman workers which disrupted traffic causing the government to get involved. Troops were sent and violence followed. On June 28, 1894, then President Grover Cleveland signed legislation making the first Monday in September a legal federal holiday. According to the Library of Congress, this happened amid the Pullman strike as a way to calm tensions.

The eight-hour workday happened much later though. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established nationwide labor standards that involved minim wages, maximum hours of work, and addressed child labor.

From Factory Whistle to Laptop

The first Labor Day parade was connected mostly to organized labor, but today, most American workers aren’t union members. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2025, 10% or 14.7 million people belonged to unions. In 1983, there were 20.1% of workers in unions.

The people marching in 1882, those marching to celebrate workers and call for better hours and working conditions couldn’t imagine today’s workforce. Who would have thought that less people would be working in labor fields and instead be able to earn a living running an Etsy shop, working from home on a laptop, and driving or delivering goods from a cell phone app?

Labor Day started in industrial America where the main labor questions usually involved factories, railroads, mines, trades, and physical working conditions. But times have changed and today’s concerns center around remote work, artificial intelligence and automation, and gig work and independent contracting.

The same big liberty issue still remains today, just in a different way. How much of a person’s life can an employer expect in exchange for a paycheck? Employers may offer eight-hour workdays, but with email, cellphones, and more people working from home, the question becomes: Does technology give workers more freedom or simply make it possible for work to follow them everywhere?