What Labor Day Actually Means — A Thank You to Our Crew and Our Customers

Most of what gets written about Labor Day treats it as a finish line — the last cookout, the last pool day, the unofficial end of summer. We spent the last three weeks doing exactly that ourselves. Today we want to do something different and just talk about what the day is actually for.

This isn't a post about awnings, screens, or pergolas. There's no product in this one.

Where the day actually came from

In 1882, a New York City parade brought together somewhere between ten and twenty thousand workers, marching from City Hall to Union Square in their work clothes, carrying banners about fair wages and reasonable hours. It wasn't a government holiday yet — it was organized labor deciding the contribution of ordinary working people deserved a day of its own, and then doing the work of making that stick.

It took twelve more years for that to become federal law. State by state, the idea spread — twenty-three states had already adopted some version of the holiday by the time Congress acted — until President Grover Cleveland signed it into national law on June 28, 1894. The date itself, the first Monday in September, wasn't an accident either: organizers wanted a day that belonged entirely to workers, distinct from the international May Day observances of the same era.

To our crew

Every pergola and screen system we've installed this year got there because someone showed up, in the heat, on a ladder, and did careful, physical work that doesn't show up in a blog post about mesh counts or wind sensors. That's the actual labor behind everything this series has written about all month. We don't say it enough, so: thank you.

To our customers

And to everyone who's trusted us with their backyard this year — thank you as well. Whatever you're doing today, whether it's the cookout this series has spent three weeks helping you plan for, or just a quiet day off, we hope it's a good one. See you next season.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Labor. History of Labor Day. dol.gov

2. U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives. The First Labor Day. history.house.gov