How's this for a strange idea: a day off from work in honor of work itself?
Actually, that is what Labor Day, celebrated in the United States and Canada on the first Monday of every September, is all about.
The first American Labor Day was celebrated in New York City on September 5th,1882, as thousands of workers and their families came to Union Square for a day in the park.
It was not a national holiday but had been organized by a union to honor workers and their hard efforts with a rare day of rest, halfway between July 4th and Thanksgiving.
There were picnics and a parade, but there were also protests.
The workers had gathered, not just to rest and celebrate, but to demand fair wages, the end of child labor, and the right to organize into unions.
During the period known as The Industrial Revolution, many jobs were difficult, dirty and dangerous.
People worked for twelve hours, six days a week, without fringe benefits, such as vacations, health care and pensions, and if you were young, chances are you were doing manual labor instead of your ABCs and fractions.
Children as young as ten worked in some of the most hazardous places, like coal mines or factories filled with boiling vats or dangerous machines.
Trying to win better pay, shorter hours and safer conditions workers had begun to form labor unions in America and Canada, but the companies they worked for often fought hard to keep unions out and to supress strikes.
