“Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Erik Loomis writes in A History of America in Ten Strikes (2018): “Labor Day was created as a conservative holiday so that American workers would not celebrate the radical international workers’ holiday May Day.”

“The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.” Sir Walter Gilbey.

“Under a capitalist society such as that of the United States, employers profit by working their employees as hard as they can for as many hours as possible and for as little pay as they can get away with.” Erik Loomis.

A wise person said, “The world’s work must be done by some of us. We can’t all be politicians, pundits, and financiers.”

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” Jerome K. Jerome.

“We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many who work without living.”

“We don’t teach class conflict in our public schools. Textbooks have little material about workers.” Erik Loomis.

Apparently, Henry Ford never worked on one of his assembly lines doing a repetitive task hour after hour, day after day, year after year, for Ford said, “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”

“To sneer at another man’s work is the special privilege of little minds.”

“If a laborer were to dream for twelve hours every night that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream twelve hours every night that he was a laborer.” Blaise Pascal.

In 1919, the average work week in dangerous conditions for steelworkers was 68.7 hours.

“To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.” Samuel Butler.

“It’s always been and always will be the same in the world: the horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.” Anonymous.

“We work not only to produce but to give value to time.” Eugène Delacroix

The 1963 March on Washington, famous for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Among other things, it advocated for a $2-an-hour minimum wage (about $20 in today’s money) and expansion of the Fair Labor Standards Act to agricultural workers. When King was assassinated, he was in Memphis to support a union strike.

Adam Cohen reports in Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America (2020) that in a recent election cycle, political action committees supporting business interests outspent PACs aligned with labor 16 to 1.

“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that have ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.” Clarence S. Darrow.