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World|politics|September 4, 2018 / 12:41 PM
Labor Day 2018: The riot that gave rise to America's national holiday

AKIPRESS.COM - Labor Day is being observed in the US today, the national holiday commonly celebrated with parades, parties, picnics, cookouts and shopping sprees, Independent reports.

Commemorated in the latest Google Doodle, the event was inaugurated in the late 19th century to honour the American worker and the social and economic achievements of organised labour.

There is some debate over who first proposed it.

The first Labor Day was duly held on 5 September 1882 in New York City at the instigation of the CLU, with a street parade held in Union Square.

Other cities followed suit and Oregon became the first state to make it an official holiday in 1887. By 1894, 34 states observed the date, prompting the president, Grover Cleveland, to sign a bill into law that June making it an official national holiday.  

President Cleveland’s bill coincided with one of the darkest episodes in the history of American industrial relations: the Pullman Strike.

Labor Day thus played an important role in stabilising, resetting and advancing America’s relationship with its working men and women in the aftermath of this tragedy.

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