Why Do People Stop Wearing White After Labour Day?

All I know is we are entering the season where the rules about wearing white are supposedly about to change.

It’s the first Monday in September and while I have to work today, the majority of Canada and the United States are synchronized in our labour day paid time off holiday deal. Over the last few years I’ve wondered more about why certain holidays exist, especially when the Canadian government recently gave itself a day off to think about how it treats indigenous folk poorly. The regular indigenous folk in the country have to work on September 30 while the government chills. 

Make it make sense though.

That being said it’s clear labour day is a holiday that has to do with work in some way. 

Let’s read my summary of information I will google in the next 30 minutes together.

Labor Day and Labour Day are not the same thing while being the same thing

At a practical level they are more or less the same thing.

However Labor Day and Labour Day have separate wikipedias and affect different countries while being the same movement. When the USA can get on board with spelling like the rest of us, the holiday’s can be the same. But for real, each country has its version of a labour based holiday, such as “International Workers’ Day”. Canada and the USA have a history of Labour Day that’s sewn together like they were siamese twins. 

In the true spirit of Canada, we worked with a guy, who pulled off the first Labor Day parade in NYC, named Peter J. McGuire. He then came up here and did it again. Basically a big protest in Toronto back in 1872 sparked the wave up here, then in 1882 we got Peter on the job and by 1894 there was legislative change. Overall this wave of pushing for labour reform actually reaches as far back as 1594 with Philip II of Spain. 

Philip wanted people to work 8 hours a day to ensure health or something to avoid the harshness of noontime sun.

Thinking of the Spanish work culture today, we can see how we all live very different lives due to very different rulers. 

For the rest of the world the industrial revolution had people working 10-16 hours a day, six days a week and we were wild comfy with child labour. 

Shout outs to Spain for helping us have labour laws all this time later.

The Eight Hour Day Movement is the wave that led to Labour Day

According to Wikipedia, which I’ve been using to supply all this info, in Philadelphia the carpenters went on strike in 1791 pushing for a ten-hour day.

By 1835 this movement grew to workers across all domains and then they striked. After some time the Philadelphia city government worked out the original 10 hour day, which appeared to be from 6 to 6 with two unpaid hours off for food (I’ll update this if I’m wrong). 

This spread across the country as other cities also went on strike and fought for their shorter days. Pushing it further in 1864 the Chicago labour movement went on the offensive but ultimately their strike did not turn the tide. Still the quest was on for the eight hour day and cities were toying with it legislatively.

In 1868 congress made it illegal for federal employees to work more than 8 hours (always starts with the government eh?). As time went on more and more cities linked up and created Eight-Hour Leagues. They coordinated rallies and parades across America

Long story short it was in 1937 that the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed establishing the 40 hour week.

Labour Day started before then so let’s get back on track.

Inspired by Canadians, A New Yorker pulled off making Labour Day a thing

I’m not digging too deep into this and it was clearly Spain that sparked off the wave of modern day Labour laws so if we’re being real they get the credit.

The legend goes that Peter came up to Canada, and got inspired by our labour parades. Then he went back and pitched the holiday to celebrate the labourers and trade unionists. There was to be a parade in the streets that would march towards a picnic where trade unions could sell some tickets as a fundraiser. 

The inception of Labour Day is literally to throw a block party to make cash for the unions. 

Evidently Peter pulled this off then came back back to Toronto and made it happen up here.

In America the first Labor Day parade was in 1882. Because Peter was one of those grade A promoters, he banged out the first Canadian one in 1882 as well. Homie pulled off the inception of two countries having an annual tradition in like 6 months.

New York City really does produce some incredible people. 

To avoid clickbait, here’s why the rumours say we don’t wear white after Labour Day

The traditional view on this is that it’s an anti-rich protest.

The wealthy wore white in the summer while playing tennis. It was a clear way of stating you don’t do the menial work. But apparently it’s also because white hid sweat and sweat wasn’t very lovely and these rich folk had to mate and looking as lovely as possible helped.

When the summer ended and the rest of the year kicked off, coincidentally at Labour Day weekend, the fine rich folk returned to their homes in places like New York City. Until real sanitation kicked in, it was very disgusting to walk the streets. If you wore white, it would get ruined. 

The not wearing white after Labour Day was a matter of practicality, not protest. 

Once the gross months were over and people were out of the city doing rich people summer home stuff, they could go back to wearing white, being all elite. City workers wouldn’t wear white because why bother. As a messy eater in recovery, I get it, no one needs a stained white shirt on day one.

With that being said, it should be safe to wear white in Montreal most of the year if you are careful. 

I’ve managed to clean my white shoes after some slush, it’s okay. 

Anyone trying to paint it as classist or something retroactively co-opted the idea, it wasn’t a protest, it was just practical behaviour. 

Live Long and Prosper Everyone