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:: Sunday, August 31, 2003 ::
Gulf Live: Southeast Mississippi Labor Day, 2003
When the first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882, the American job market and an individual's place in it seemed, and in many ways really was, relatively predictable and orderly.
Most credit the carpenters' union for that holiday, although some hold out for the machinists' union, and a man -- and they were all men -- who practiced those crafts at the turn of the century could expect to do so for all his working life. Women were not generally employed outside the home, but simply running a 1900 household was a grueling and unrelenting physical marathon. There was no concept of retirement; that man and woman would work until they could work no more.
posted 8:49 AM :: reference link ::
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