Most Americans could tell you three things about Labor Day: it's the unofficial end of summer, it's a good excuse for a cookout, and you're not supposed to wear white after it.

But do you know why Labor Day exists?

Labor Day became a holiday during some of the most violent labor conflicts in American history. One of the biggest was the Pullman Strike of 1894.

The conflict started at the Pullman Palace Car Company outside Chicago, when employees had their wages cut by roughly 25 to 30 percent during a national economic depression. When they walked out in May 1894, Eugene Debs' American Railway Union, then the country's largest labor union, organized a nationwide boycott of any train carrying a Pullman car. The boycott disrupted rail traffic across the country.

As the Pullman strike spread throughout the nation, tensions between Democrat President Grover Cleveland's administration and organized labor intensified. Congress acted quickly, and President Cleveland signed legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday on June 28.

Interestingly, there were two competing traditions for celebrating labor at the time.

In 1889, an international convention of socialist parties in Paris, known as the Second International, established May 1 as a day for international labor........

© Townhall