I. From the Encyclopaedia Britannica: Labor Day, (Sorry. Access limited to registered users -- U of I students/staff are "registered users.")

annual holiday devoted to the recognition of working people's contribution to society. Labor Day observed on the first Monday in September in the United States and Canada and on May 1 or other dates in other countries.

The idea for such a holiday in the United States attributed to Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader who later the precursor of the AFL-CIO. In 1882 he to the Central Labor Union of New York that a celebration be held to honour the American worker. Acting on this idea, about 10,000 workers in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, under the sponsorship of the Knights of Labor. The date of the celebration chosen simply because it the long gap between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. In 1884 the Knights of Labor a resolution that the first Monday in September should be considered Labor Day. The idea rapidly, and by 1885 Labor Day events in many states. Oregon in 1887 the first state to grant legal status to Labor Day (though the state initially it on the first Saturday in June). That same year Colorado, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts the holiday on the first Monday in September, and other states soon In 1894 Congress passed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday.

Labor Day's associations with trade unions . The holiday the end of summer vacation for many American school-children and often celebrated at family picnics and sporting events. In most other countries, including former communist ones, May Day (q.v.; May 1) the day generally chosen by labour unions and left-wing political parties to honour workers.

II. Now try this one, THE ORIGINS OF LABOR DAY, from PBS Online Newshour, Sept. 2, 1996:

Pullman, Illinois a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman and the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of nearby Chicago.

The town strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would lodge while in town.

Its residents all for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, smoothly and sucessfully for more than a decade.

But in 1893, the Pullman company caught in the nationwide economic depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars , and George Pullman forced to lay off hundreds of employees. Those who wage cuts, even while rents in Pullman consistent. Take-home paychecks .

And so the employees out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation trains carrying Pullman cars.Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ; mobs of non-union workers . The strike instantly a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, the strike a federal crime and 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence , and two men killed when U.S. deputy marshals on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike doomed.

On August 3, 1894, the strike declared over. Debs to prison, his ARU disbanded, and Pullman employees henceforth a pledge that they would never again unionize. Aside from the already existing American Federation of Labor and the various railroad brother-hoods, industrial workers' unions effectively stamped out and so until the Great Depression.

It not the last time Debs would find himself behind bars, either. Campaigning from his jail cell, Debs would later win almost a million votes for the Socialist ticket in the 1920 presidential race.

The movement for a national Labor Day for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City an unpaid day off and around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland's harsh methods the appeasement of the nation's workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill on President Cleveland's desk just six days after his troops the Pullman strike.

1894 an election year. President Cleveland the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day born. He not reelected.

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."

Almost a century since Gompers those words, though, Labor Day seen as the last long weekend of summer rather than a day for political organizing. In 1995, less than 15 percent of American workers to unions, down from a high in the 1950's of nearly 50 percent, though nearly all from the victories of the Labor movement.

And everyone who can a vacation on the first Monday of September. Friends and familes , and the highways, and the picnic grounds, and their own backyards -- and farewell to summer..

III. Look at one more Labor Day article, What's with this day off for Labor Day? from KC Wildemoon, CNN, September 3, 1995.

You will see that most of this article, like the earlier two, is in the simple past, since it is recounting historical events in chronological order, with only a very few cases of progressive to show duration, or perfect to interrupt the narrative and go back to an earlier event. Each article also switches to the present when it reaches the point where present attitudes and activities are described. Can you see how around and between these sections the perfect aspect is often used as a bridge, or frame? (Note have gradually declined   in the first article, have benefitted   in the second, and has lost, and has always been   (misunderstood) at the beginning of this third article and has never taken hold   and has been   (a love it or hate it thing) near the end. Also note the interesting switch back to the past at the end of this article, accomplished with the verb remember.

Ann Salzmann
Intensive English Institute
University of Illinois