Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/laborday#.Ves3L8RHarW

Excerpt,

It's a bit odd that in America's thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains of Industry, and yet we do have one for working stiffs: Labor Day! Where did it come from? Who gave this day off to laboring people? History books that bother mentioning Labor Day at all usually credit president Grover Cleveland with its creation: He signed a law in July 1894 that proclaimed a holiday for workers in Washington, D.C., and the federal territories.

Cleveland? Holy Mother Jones! He was an extreme laissez-faire conservative, a "Bourbon Democrat" who never lifted a presidential pinkie to ameliorate the plight of exploited workers. To the contrary, in that same month of 1894, Cleveland enshrined himself in Labor's Hall of Eternal Infamy: At the behest of robber baron George Pullman and other railroad tycoons, he ordered some 12,000 U.S. Army troops in to crush the historic Pullman Strike, which was being led by union icon Eugene V. Debs. Thirty workers were killed, Debs was arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiracy, and all workers who supported the strike were fired and blacklisted.