Labor Day History Quiz

**Kusha Navadar** (0:10)
All right, hey, everyone, it's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today here on WNYC. And to end the show today, let's look ahead to the holiday on Monday and test your knowledge of Labor Day and the history around it. Here's what I want you to do. Call in to play. Give us a call at 212-433-9692.
What do you get if you win? You get one question right. That's all it takes. And you'll get a prize, a Brian Lehrer Show baseball hat. And folks, I've seen the hat. I'm looking at one right now. It is blue with red lettering. It is beautiful. It is a wonderful thing to wear. I don't know. Maybe when you're enjoying your Labor Day, give us a call. Send us a no, don't send us a text. Give us a call. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC.
We'll have some callers come in, get the boards filled. And while we're doing that, let me introduce our quiz master and guest. I'm joined for this by a frequent guest, Kenneth C. Davis, the author of the Don't Know Much About History series of books and other things. Welcome back, Ken.

**Kenneth C. Davis** (1:23)
You ready to start? It is always a great pleasure to be here, and I have my Brian Lehrer baseball cap with me. It is a beautiful cap, so let's do it.

**Kusha Navadar** (1:33)
All right. So we have our first guest, Mike in Huntington. Ken, would you like to read this first one and then we can alternate?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (1:40)
Yeah, let's do it that way.

**Kusha Navadar** (1:42)
I'll lead off. Okay. So Mike, hey, you with us?
Mike, you there? I am here. Oh, hey, Mike. Okay, Ken, go for it.

**Kenneth C. Davis** (1:51)
Okay. We're going to do this multiple choice. So you really get a good chance here. Which US president signed the Labor Day holiday into law? Was it Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon or Grover Cleveland?
Cleveland. That is correct.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:09)
Nice job, Mike. Oh, tell me a little bit about that.

**Kenneth C. Davis** (2:15)
Well, Grover Cleveland, who was the first president to serve nonconsecutive terms, signed the bill into law in June of 1894 It was not that he was a great friend of labor by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he had just sent federal troops in to break a strike, which was called the Pullman strike, the biggest company in America at the time. Grover Cleveland had sent 12,000 troops to break the strike. He was claiming that the strike was stopping the railroads and the railroads carried the mail, so that's why he could send troops in.
More than 30 workers were killed in that strike, and this is part of the story of Labor Day that we don't know how violent this period was in the late 19th century in terms of labor organizing and opposition to labor. So Cleveland signs this law into the bill into law. It's a bone toss to the workers because none of their other demands was met. They went unheeded for decades.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:15)
Wow. It took an enormous effort that ended in a lot of bloodshed just to get Labor Day recognized.

**Kenneth C. Davis** (3:22)
Absolutely. It was a period when you have the Homestead strike, the Pullman strike, the Haymarket Square affair, wars in the Colorado mining wars in the early 20th century. But this was a really violent period. It was another civil war in essence, a period when the businesses were doing everything to prevent labor from organizing and they had the full cooperation of the government at every level.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:50)
Well, Mike, good job. You're getting a hat. We'll get your information. Starting off this quiz on a good foot, let's go to Tess in Astoria. Hey, Tess, welcome to the show.
Hi, how are you? Good. Let's do it. I'll read this one to you. Who said labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration? Was it A, Karl Marx, B, Abraham Lincoln, or C, Bernie Sanders?

**SPEAKER_2** (4:19)
I'm going to go A.

**Kusha Navadar** (4:22)
Oh, Tess, you want to try one more time maybe?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (4:26)
Of course. I'll go C.

**Kusha Navadar** (4:29)
Oh, Tess, I'm sorry. We're not doing three strikes here, but really good try. It was actually, Ken?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (4:37)
Abraham Lincoln in his first message to Congress in 1861, December 1861 It was then a written message to Congress. We call it the State of the Union now. But he did write those words that labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. The first Republican president, of course, saying something that no Republican today, I don't think, would remotely consider. It would be blasphemy in the Republican Party. Absolutely.