July 1887: The Legislature approved a law declaring that one day each year be dedicated to the wage earners of the state, which they may regard as peculiarly their own, and as set apart for the observance of labor festivals and other such reunions as may to them seem proper, and that Sept. 6 be added to the list of days when no man shall be compelled to labor. “And this, curiously enough, is called labor day,” the Law Journal remarked, adding that despite the apparent oxymoron, the new holiday would be “well understood by the Knights of Labor.”
100 Years Ago
July 1912: The Law Journal cited with approval the St. Louis Bar Association’s establishment of a legal aid bureau to provide free legal services to poor litigants “in the event they are overreached by designing members of the profession.” The editors saw a need for the same in New Jersey, saying “the lack of such a body results in a regretable condition, as it is seldom that an individual will seek redress for his wrongs in the courts at an expense which can bring no returns to himself.”
