( CNN ) -- A small boy , perched on an open catwalk in a candy factory , falls to his death . No , it is not a macabre moment out of `` Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory . '' It is a true story told by social reformer Jane Addams , who founded Chicago 's Hull House in 1889 . Addams also described little girls who refused sweets as Christmas gifts that year . `` They could not bear the sight of it , '' Addams wrote . `` We discovered that that they had worked from 7 in the morning until 9 at night , and they were exhausted . '' These Dickensian scenes lasted in America from the late 19th century until 1938 , when child labor was outlawed under the Fair Labor Standards Act . They are a sobering reminder of why the nation marks Labor Day . To most Americans , the first Monday in September means a three-day weekend and the last hurrah of summer , a final outing at the shore before school begins , a family picnic . But Labor Day was born in a time when work was no picnic . As America was moving from farms to factories in the Industrial Age , there was a long , violent , often-deadly struggle for fundamental workers ' rights , a struggle that in many ways was America 's `` other civil war . '' It was a war fought when 12-hour days and six-day weeks were routine . Wages were low ; there were no sick days , pensions or holidays . There was certainly no unemployment insurance . Any attempts at organizing were met by the combined wrath of business and government . The business of America was business . That conflict , a period in which thousands of workers died in America 's unsafe and unsanitary factories and mines , and hundreds more died in riots and pitched battles over workers ' rights , is the little-noted history behind this holiday . The first American Labor Day is dated to a parade organized by unions in New York on September 5 , 1882 , as a celebration of `` the strength and spirit of the American worker . '' Their goals were simple : decent wages , an eight-hour workday and the right to organize . The September date was selected to provide a respite for workers and their families midway between July Fourth and Thanksgiving Day . By all accounts , the first Labor Day was a peaceful affair that drew tens of thousands of workers and their families to the city 's Union Square Park . But the path to a national Labor Day holiday was no walk in the park . The federal Labor Day was created 12 years later , signed into law by President Grover Cleveland during his second term in 1894 . It 's not that Cleveland was a great friend of labor . In fact , he had just sent out troops to break a strike . During the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893 , workers for the Pullman Car Co. , one of the country 's largest manufacturers , walked off their jobs when Pullman tried to cut wages , fire workers and evict them from their company-owned homes . They were joined by hundreds of thousands of workers in a nationwide walkout . Facing a strike that would shut down America 's railroads , Cleveland dispatched 12,000 federal troops on the premise that the strike interfered with the U.S. Mail . In the ensuing violence , at least 13 strikers were killed . This was not the first time troops had been used against American workers . Federal soldiers , state militias and private armies , often from the Pinkerton Detective Agency , had used deadly force to break many 19th-century strikes . Some of these strikes had become pitched battles , like the Homestead strike of 1892 in Pennsylvania . There , men on both sides armed with rifles and cannons died fighting over keeping a union at a steel mill , a union that owner Andrew Carnegie and manager Henry Frick were determined to break . After crushing the Pullman strike , Cleveland thought that granting workers a Labor Day holiday was a sop that would appease them as he sought a third term . ( It did n't work ; he was denied the Democratic nomination in 1896 . ) Politicians and labor leaders were content to keep the holiday in September , far from the growing popularity of May Day as a commemoration of the `` Martyrs of Haymarket Square , '' a group of union leaders executed -- unjustly , it was later proved -- after Chicago 's deadly Haymarket Square Riots in May 1884 . For unions , Labor Day proved a hollow victory . Most of the reforms they sought did not come about for nearly half a century . The Depression-era fair labor laws that were passed under Franklin D. Roosevelt finally set standards like the eight-hour day and an end to child labor . This history is worth remembering on Labor Day . But at a moment when American workers are battered by high unemployment , the Great Recession , a technology revolution in the workplace and globalization , there seems to be little to celebrate . And these economic forces are only part of the relentless pressures faced by America 's work force . There is also a renewed war over labor in this country . It is being fought in battleground states including , most notably , Wisconsin , Ohio , New Jersey and Florida , where mostly Republican governors are wrangling with public employees over pay , pensions and more fundamental issues including the right of collective bargaining . Their sharp anti-union rhetoric has increasingly found receptive listeners who have been convinced that `` spoiled '' unions and public employees -- the people who fight our fires , teach our children and pick up our garbage -- are at fault for our budgetary woes and the sorry state of the economy . The fight has been vitriolic but well short of the violence of America 's `` other civil war . '' With that in mind , it is worth recalling President Abraham Lincoln 's words during the dark early days of the real Civil War . `` Capital is only the fruit of labor , and could never have existed if labor had not first existed , '' he told Congress in December 1861 . `` Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration , '' Today , the first Republican president 's words would count as heresy in the GOP . But they are a sharp reminder that working men and women built this country and fought its wars . And their labors are worth more than a Monday holiday or the mean-spirited contempt they now face . They deserve , as Lincoln said , `` the higher consideration . '' The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kenneth Davis .
Ken Davis : Today , labor under fire . But war for workers ' rights was long , deadly struggle . There was child labor , 12-hour days , 6-day weeks , low wages , no sick days , holidays . Soldiers , militias , private armies used deadly force to break 19th-century strikes . Labor Day born in 1894 , he says , but reform did n't come till FDR 's fair labor laws .