18941776 Club
Cleveland signs Labor Day into law; September beats out May, and the reason is deliberate
Thirty states already marked the day; the federal act sets the first Monday of September, keeping clear distance from Haymarket and the socialist calendar.
By the summer of 1894, thirty states already observed Labor Day — but the federal government had not made it official. On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed legislation designating the first Monday of each September a holiday for federal workers, codifying what the labor movement had been building toward since the first New York City parade in 1882. Cleveland's choice of September over May 1 was deliberate: he wanted no association with the Haymarket affair, and no fuel for socialist or anarchist movements. All U.S. states and territories eventually followed the federal lead…
