What Labor Day Means

The holiday may have started with a parade in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, but the story of Labor Day began in the 1860s, when American workers were fighting for the 8-hour workday. 

For most of the industrialized 19th century in America, workdays were 10 to 16 hours long and workers were routinely hurt or killed on the job. The kind of conditions that American workers faced at that time