Volume 14 , Issue 36

Labor Day

t was over one hundred years ago that we celebrated our first "Labor Day," September, 1894. On Monday, 2 September 1912, in The Tacoma Times, the only independent newspaper in Tacoma Washington, on the front page had the following "Labor Day" poem:

Labor Day
This is the day of Labor,
This the Triumph of Toil,
When they march in their mighty millions,
Sons of the shop and soil.
And those who are bent front he benches
And those who are pale from the mines,
And those who are old and broken,
Are part of the serried lines,

This is the day of Labor
When those who delved and built,
Who made the roads and bridges,
Who tunneled under the silt,
Have straightened up from their toiling,
Have turned a space from their trade,
To march with their worthy brothers
In the world that they have made.

This is the day of labor;
And yet, among this throng,
Are faces of little children
Who labor the whole day long.
And there are weary mothers
Who toil at the clattering loom
Leaving their wan-faxed babies
In the Ghetto's filth and gloom.

But they are as the work has made them,
And they march in the ranks
To hasten the hour when the toilers
Shall win their own again.
Theirs is the joy of doing,
Though greed shall waste and spoil;
This is the day of Labor,
This is the triumph of Toil.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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