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On September 5, 1882 the
first Labor Day parade was held in New York City. Twenty
thousand workers marched in a parade up Broadway. They
carried banners that read "LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH,"
and "EIGHT HOURS FOR WORK, EIGHT HOURS FOR REST, EIGHT
HOURS FOR RECREATION!" After the parade there were
picnics all around the city. Workers and celebrants ate
Irish stew, homemade bread and apple pie. At night,
fireworks were set off. Within the next few years, the
idea spread from coast to coast, and all states
celebrated Labor Day.
In 1894, Congress voted it a federal holiday.
In 1882, the New York City CLU was a lodge of the
still-secret Knights of Labor, with a progressive
tailor, Robert Blissert at its head. His right-hand man
and Secretary of the CLU was Mathew Maguire, a
machinist. The parade was timed to coincide with a
national Kinghts of Labor conference being held in New
York. This accounts for the presence of almost the
entire K of L leadership on the reviewing stand. But
their affiliation with labor was masked for the
reporters who covered the parade.
The parade Call and all invitations were sent out over
the signature of Mathew Maguire. During the post-parade
picnic at Wendel's Elm Park, P.J. McGuire of the
Carpenters, was one of many speakers; but he does not
figure during the planning for the parade. By the
1890's, when the Knights of Labor had all but
disappeared, and Samuel Gompers' American Federation of
Labor was the dominant labor organization, the folklore
about the origins of labor's holiday began.
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