Labor Day had a turbulent and rather convoluted beginning when it was first enacted some 126 years ago in 1894.
Today Labor Day is no longer about trade unionists parading down the street with banners and their tools of trade protesting long hours and long work weeks. Instead, it’s become a rather discombobulated holiday with no associated ritual, unless you’re a Minnesotan.
For many Minnesotan’s, Labor Day signals the “unofficial end of summer,” the last weekend of “The Great Minnesota Get-Together”–which, for only the sixth time since its inception in 1859, found the fairgrounds overshadowed by circumstance.
Normally bustling with fattening fried foods, furry farm animals, featured crafts, futuristic midway rides and an eclectic assortment of fantastic music, true fair-heads had to pocket their discretionary Fair dollars in 1861 and 1862 due to the Civil War and U.S.-Dakota War; in 1893 because of scheduling conflicts with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago; in 1945 due to federal government travel restrictions during World War II; in 1946 due to a polio epidemic; and in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the Fair opened again in 1947, the Pronto Pup, a defining feature of the exhibition for many (including myself), made its debut.
Come to find out, however, Pronto Pups, also known as Corn Dogs, aren’t native to Minnesota, although many Minnesotans have put them at the top of their “to do list” when it comes to State Fair “cuisine.”
Tracy Mumford, a digital producer for MPR News and The Thread, fills us in on the tasty treat in an article she contributed in September 2016. “Corn dog lore has it that George Boyington, a concessions vendor serving tourists in Rockaway, Oregon, hit a breaking point over Labor Day weekend in 1939 when the rain ruined his stock of hot dog buns.
“Boyington was a reformed bootlegger who had spent years smuggling liquor into Michigan from Canada; he’d moved to Oregon to clean up his act. As he fed the scraps of his ruined buns to the seagulls, he bemoaned his plight. If only there was a way to cook buns on the spot, as they’re needed.
“That spark of an idea grew, and thus, the corn dog was born, a deep-fried solution that was portable for vendors and pleasing to taste.
“‘Dun in a bun,” the early slogan promised. Boyington dubbed it the Pronto Pup for the speed of the cooking process.
“Boyington and his wife, Versa, trademarked the Pronto Pup name in 1942, and began selling franchises of the carnival treat.”
In the late 1800s, the founders of Labor Day knew nothing of Boyington’s Pronto Pup, although they very well could have chomped down a hot dog called ‘dachshund sausages’ which were sold by a German immigrant out of a food cart in New York in the 1860s.
Organizers envisioned something very different from what the day has become. The founders were looking for a means of unifying union workers, and a reduction in work time, including shortening the work week. Americans were working 12-hour days seven days a week during the 19th century (Not unlike a lot of today’s farmers for whom seventy-five percent work between 10 to 15 hours or more a day).
It wasn’t until September 3, 1916, some 72 years after Labor Day had become an official federal holiday, that the 64th United States Congress passed The Adamson Act to establish an eight-hour workday.
Robert Whaples, Professor of economics at Wake Forest University documents in his article titled, “Hours of Work in U.S. History,” “In 1880 a typical male household head had very little leisure time–only about 1.8 hours per day over the course of a year. However, [as renown American economic historian and scientist Robert W. Fogel outlines in his 2000 publication The Fourth Great Awakening] between 1880 and 1995, the amount of work per day fell nearly in half, allowing leisure time to more than triple.
“Because of the decline in the length of the workweek and the declining portion of a lifetime that is spent in paid work (due largely to lengthening periods of education and retirement) the fraction of the typical American’s lifetime devoted to work has become remarkably small.”
Whaples concludes, “Based on these trends Fogel estimates that four decades from now less than one-fourth of our discretionary time (time not needed for sleep, meals, and hygiene) will be devoted to paid work, over three-fourths will be available for doing what we wish.”
Let’s just say, “I’ll believe it when I see it!” In the meantime, I think I’ll run down to the grocery store and purchase a box of those classic State Fair Corn Dogs and a jar of mustard.
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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