International May Day and American Labor Day: A Holiday Expressing Working Class Emancipation Versus a Holiday Exalting Labor's Chains

This is a polemical 1910 assault from the early American socialist movement, arguing that the choice between May Day and American Labor Day is the choice between worker liberation and worker deception. Written by Boris Reinstein, a collaborator of Eugene V. Debs, the book traces how May 1st emerged from the 1886 Haymarket affair as an international day of working-class solidarity, a call to arms against exploitation that knows no borders. By contrast, Reinstein argues, American Labor Day was deliberately instituted by capitalist interests as a safety valve, a hollow celebration designed to placate workers while leaving their chains firmly in place. The pamphlet reads as both historical analysis and political weapon, written to awaken American workers to what Reinstein sees as the fraudulent promise of a holiday that asks nothing of them except that they remain quiet. Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, the argument remains provocatively relevant: who decides what we celebrate, and why?