EICHENBERGER COLUMN: Honor the worker, not the state

Labor Day is simple if we keep it honest. It is a day to honor the people whose work built this country: the nurse, the machinist, the farmer, the truck driver and the small-business owner who works late and signs the front of the paycheck. On Labor Day 1924, President Calvin Coolidge said, 'We are proud of work and ashamed of idleness. With us there is no task which is menial, no service which is degrading. All work is ennobling and all workers are ennobled.' That is the conservative meaning of the holiday, and it is the meaning some on the left want to replace. The first major Labor Day took place on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. Unions marched to show their strength, then held a picnic for workers and their families. States began making it a holiday in the 1880s, with Oregon first in 1887. On June 28, 1894, Congress and President Grover Cleveland made the first Monday in September a federal holiday. Dr. Dan Eichenberger is an Indiana native with 30 years experience as a primary care physician, physician executive and health care consultant.