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Washington, DC
Liza Featherstone may have a point about the vapidity of Labor Day, but she's repeating a historical canard ["Will Labor Come Back?" Sept. 20]. The September Labor Day was not created by union bosses as an alternative to May Day, since it was created two years before May Day by the New York City labor federation. May Day, however, was created by American labor bosses--in fact, the AFL--to initiate the eight-hour day. But it was used instead to commemorate the dead of the Haymarket riot in Chicago, a holiday that then caught on in Europe while the New York City Labor Day became a US national holiday.
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