Celebration, Sept 5, 1882
To celebrate union memberships, 30,000 workers gave up a day's pay to march from City Hall to Union Square. A newspaper account of the day described "...men on horseback, men wearing regalia, men with society aprons, and men with flags, musical instruments, badges, and all the other paraphernalia of a procession."
By 10:00am very few people had shown up, but by the end of the day nearly 25,000 union members and their families filled the park and celebrated the very first, and almost entirely disastrous, Labor Day.
