By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
August 31, 2016

The Labor Day holiday is coming Monday, so here, with this Real Photo Postcard published in 1910, we pay homage to the greatest workforce on the face of the earth.

This card shows six workers inside Kelly Flour Mills in Kansas City, Mo., circa 1911. It was sent to Mrs. Nathan Story of Essex, Mass., on April 22, 1911. Two huge flywheels flank the workers, who are looking stolidly into the camera.

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated in New York on Sept. 5, 1882, planned by the Central Labor Union of New York City. Through the coming years, the idea for a workers’ holiday spread with the labor movement in New York. New York’s labor unions selected the first Monday of September to honor America’s workers, and the concept spread like wildfire throughout the country during the 1890s.

By 1894, 23 states had adopted resolutions to honor the American labor movement with a holiday in September, and in June of that year, Congress passed an act to make Labor Day an official national holiday.

In addition to honoring the American workforce, Labor Day traditionally is viewed as the end of the summer, as public pools close and families are back from vacations preparing their children for the upcoming school year.