For many, Labor Day is an extra day off from work, a three-day weekend, even. But an Ohio University Southern professor said the holiday was borne of a hard-fought battle for recognition of service by largely unappreciated workers.

"American labor really didn't make progress until the 1840s," professor Bob Leith said. Until then, the carpenter, bricklayer, factory worker and even the cowboy worked long hours for little pay, often with little attention paid to their health and safety. The tradition of Labor Day is a holiday of modern making. The road to recognition of labor has been punctuated by many gains but also littered with many setbacks, Leith said.

The first strike

In 1619,

Polish immigrants brought to the New World as indentured servants staged what would become the first labor strike in American history.

Leith said

the Poles had been recruited to produce pitch, tar and glass, with the understanding they would work four to seven years and then gain their freedom.

As Jamestown colonists prepared to elect representative to the House of Burgesses, the precursor to Congress, Poles

requested their right to vote. But at that time, the right to cast a ballot belong to the privileged few: white male landowners of English extraction. The Poles were incensed.

"They went on strike by laying down their tools and refusing to work," Leith said. "No vote, no work."

The Gay '90s

Leith said throughout history, the laborer has often provided far more for others than he received for himself through his own hard work.

Even in the 1890s, an era rather erroneously dubbed "The Gay '90s," Leith said many suffered under the worst of conditions.

"In this decade, one-eighth of the families in the United States controlled seven-eighths of the country's income." Many immigrants worked 60 hours a week for less than $10.

"Indians were being forced onto reservations, cowboys were losing their jobs because of the railroads, immigrants in this country were being housed in inhumane environments and paid very little for their work, and labor was losing out to scabs and injunctions," Leith said. "The Gay 90s weren't very happy for a lot of people."

In 1892, A strike occurred at Carnegie Steel in Homestead, Pa., when management asked workers to take pay cuts to avoid layoffs.

Workers were locked out of their jobs and management tried to sneak replacement workers into the back of the plant.

The workers who had been locked out discovered the plan and a gun battle ensued.

The governor of Pennsylvania sent in troops. After a five-month strike, the company rehired only 800 of the 4,000 former employees. Another strong steel union would not be born until the 1930s.

Their own mistakes

Leith said while management could be stubborn in the face of the need for change, often, labor made its own situation worse by resorting to violence to try and win concessions from their bosses. This usually only worsened labor's reputation.

A case in point was a mass meeting organized in May 1888 in Chicago. The rally was organized to show solidarity for an eight-hour work day and to protest police violence in the McCormick Harvester Company strike. Protesters met in the city's Haymarket Square, chosen to accommodate what organizers thought would be masses of angry laborers.

Apparently the mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, thought masses of people would show up, too: he ordered a detachment of police to Haymarket Square to quell any violence.

"Few people showed up," Leith said. "The mayor left early because the speeches he heard were harmless."

After the mayor left, police officers began ordering people to disperse and as they did, a bomb was thrown and 11 people were killed: seven police officers and four workers.

"More than 70 people were injured. The culprit was never caught, but eight so-called "radicals" were found guilty of inciting violence; four of them were executed, and three were eventually pardoned by the Governor of Illinois. The repercussions of the incident- whether the rally organizers were to blame or not, delayed any real progress on the issue of the labor rights the rally was meant to address, Leith said. "The Governor's career was ruined. This 'Haymarket Massacre' dealt a huge blow to labor by slowing the movement for an eight-hour workday," Leith said.

Makings of Labor Day

In 1882, Peter J. McGuire, one of the founders of the AFL-CIO,

spoke to the Central Labor Union of New York City about establishing a day set aside to honor the American worker.

He suggested that day fall somewhere between July 4 and Thanksgiving, Leith said.

A celebration, complete with a parade, was planned for Sept. 5. Ten thousand workers attended, many of whom risked losing their jobs if they did. In the parade down Fifth Avenue, they carried signs that read "8 hours to constitute a day's work" and "All men are born equal."

But it wasn't until 1887 that Oregon became the first state to officially create a Labor Day holiday. Washington, D.C., followed suit and by 1923 all states had declared such a holiday.