Michael Bushnell
Northeast News

This year, in honor of the approaching Labor Day holiday, we get a rare glimpse inside of one of the meat packing houses located in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City. Schwarzschild & Sulzberger’s packing plant was built in 1893 at the bend of the Kaw River in what was then Armourdale, Kansas. Two separate photo postcards show the front of the plant as well as the beef killing floor inside. It is part of a series of advertising postcards designed to promote the Schwarzschild & Sulzberger brand. S&S had packing plants in Chicago, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Albert Lea, Minn., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, most all of them built on a shoestring budget. After a 1916 reorganization, the company operated as Wilson & Company Meat Packing until 1975 when the company shuttered its operations.

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.