Labor Day Collectibles

By Roy Nuhn

As seen in The Antique Shoppe Newspaper, September 2008 

For more than 100 years, Labor Day has been an important and much celebrated holiday for Americans. It also offers a fascinating and interesting array of memorabilia to collect.

The Story of Labor Day

Labor Day has come to mean summer's end and the coming of fall and winter with the joyous year-end rituals of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. It is one of three movable feast days on our calendar - the others being Easter and Thanksgiving. .

It all began back in the 19th century, an era of intense labor activity. Peter J. McGuire, president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and one of the directors of the Knights of Labor, the first union umbrella group, was the union leader most responsible for Labor Day.

Shortly after New Year's Day in 1882, he initiated a campaign among fellow labor chieftains to designate a day in honor of the American working man who had made America so great.

The New York Central Council finally agreed and established a "Labor Day," deciding in the process that the first Monday in September would be the date.

Thus on September 5, 1882, the nation celebrated its first Labor Day.

On that day 10,000 workers marched down the streets of New York City in a loosely organized parade. Following this came picnicking, speechmaking and, in the evening, dancing and fireworks.

The rousing success of the New York experiment impressed the Knights of Labor leaders, and this national union confederation made Labor Day a permanent event on its calendar.

Shortly afterward, other labor organizations recognized it.

The first state to make it a legal holiday was Oregon in 1887, followed by New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Less than a decade after the first celebration of Labor Day, it was officially recognized in 30 states. In 1894, the United States Congress made it a national holiday.

In those early years, up until the advent of World War I, Labor Day was vigorously celebrated with huge parades of workers, tremendous labor gatherings, much bombastic oratory, picnics and sporting events of all types. In many ways it was like the 4th of July in September - a family outing day.

Today, it has become just another holiday on the calendar, a day off from work for most and a last day to go to the beach.

There have been, however, a return in certain cities of the old-fashioned Labor Day parades.

Labor Day Collectibles

Magazine and newspaper illustrations, cartoons and articles praising, lampooning or reporting on Labor Day activities can add some interesting items to a collection. A Mobile, Alabama, newspaper, for instance, dated September 5, 1910, ran a comic illustration of how the holiday might have been observed during the caveman era, several million years earlier. Another illustration, this time from the magazine The Youth's Companion, in the September 5, 1912 issue, gave its impression of Labor Day in Kittenville.

Pin-back buttons, intended for parade participants or supports to wear on Labor Day, are much in demand nowadays by collectors, as are posters and placards of these events.

Other memorabilia relating to Labor Day include the commemorative stamp issued by the United States Post Office in 1956. Also to be found in this same category are the cacheted and uncacheted First Day Covers of the Labor Day stamp prepared for its official first day of sale.

In the America of the not-so-distant past, the entire town and all of the countryside from miles around turned out for every patriotic holiday to watch the parade, picnic on the town green, listen to the endless orations, and mingle with old and new friends. Life was hard, and the few occasions that came up for relaxation and leisure were eagerly grabbed.

It became profitable for firms - and local photographers - to sell postcards of all these festivities, including the Labor Day parade. Folks bought them as souvenirs of a fun time and as mementos to send through the mails. Often, the cards were on sale only a few days after the event. The public also purchased postcards of last year's parade or holiday activities.

Kodak successfully marketed a special camera in the years from 1900 to 1920 which allowed the picture taker to process his snapshots not as regular photos but on postcard stock. This made it much easier to mail off the results to friends and relatives. There was also similar activity by professional photographers in producing picture postcards in small quantities for local sales.

Because these black-and-white real photo postcards so perfectly caught Americans at work, home, playing and doing a myriad of  activities, they are much sought after today. In some cases they represent perhaps the only picture of a long-ago event or place.

Happily, a modest number of them about Labor Day have come down to us through the years. They show all sorts of holiday parades, official activities, and people having fun doing everything from picnicking to playing games. But most of all, they portray Labor Day being celebrated in small-town America. One even depicts a 1925 Klu Klux Klan conclave on Labor Day.

During the first twenty years of the 20th century, several American postcard publishers managed to capture both the pride of

Labor and the frolicking of the laborer and his family on their day.

Sometime around 1908, E. Nash Company produced a two-card set portraying a very heroic Labor in poster style. It was identified as "Labor Day Series No.1" - evidently more sets were planned but never produced.

The Fred C. Lounsbury Co. sold, through a diverse group of wholesalers and distributors, a four-card Series No. 2046. Put on sale in 1907, the scenes portray Uncle Sam pulling back a U.S. flag to proudly display a factory, a working man with a lunch pail, a family on picnic for the holiday, and Labor herself leading Santa Claus, George Washington, Uncle Sam, the New Year's baby, and a Thanksgiving Day turkey on parade. These cards will also be found with the Lenox Manufacturing Co. imprint on the front. This was the successor in 1912 to Lounsbury's Crescent Embossing Company.

A comedic set was distributed by Crose Photo Co. A sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to the day, it's cartoon style drawings depicted such scenes as lady workers in a sack race, crowds entering a baseball park, and three over zealous holiday revelers in hospital beds. At the top of each card was the designation, "Labor Day, usually as part of the caption, such as "A Parade on the Day Before Labor Day." Crose's name does not appear on any of these cards, only their dollar-sign logo under "Post Card" on the address side is found.

Also known is a single postcard published by the Masons and commonly referred to as the Masonic Labor Day card with an illustration of a seated man surveying the industrial might of the nation.

There were also postcards, picturing the Labor Day activities in some of the nation's towns and cities, manufactured the standard way in large printing runs and distributed by the larger publishers. These command lower prices today than the real photo and the special souvenir styles previously mentioned.

A Labor Day collection can be historical and interesting, but most of all, it can be fun. Some of the material is expensive, some not so. Much awaits discovery.

Join Our Mailing List

Email:

For Email Marketing you can trust