1801-1932 White House New Years Day Receptions

 
Engraving of the White House by William Strickland

The White House Historical Association tells us that "the White House New Year's reception was a tradition for more than 130 years...

President John Adams began the tradition in 1801, opening the doors of the Executive Mansion to high-ranking officials, diplomats, and the public. This tradition spanned more than a century and was only canceled a few times due to wars, illness, or the president’s busy schedule. This was one of the most talked about events in the nation’s capital." 

By the early twentieth century, crowds swelled to more than 6,000 people. A line on the sidewalk outside the White House snaked out beyond the gates and around the block, bordering what is now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building." 

President Herbert Hoover held the last New Year's Day reception in 1932. Although the major event concluded that year, it is said that a man named J.W. Hunefeld waited at the gates of the White House in 1934 because "he wanted to make sure the president hadn't changed his mind."

White House Evolving During the administrations of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson  

Library of Congress

On October 13, 1792, George Washington laid the first cornerstone of the building in a freemason ceremony. Scottish masons were brought to Washington to do the stone work. 

Their technique for sealing the porous sandstone was a thick whitewash that covered like paint but sealed like glue. So, from its earliest days, the president’s house was white, and it quickly got the nickname “White House.”

When John Adams moved into the President’s House on November 1, 1800, it was far from complete. He used the second floor as his residence and the ground floor was used by servants as kitchens, laundry, and housekeeping rooms. 

Today’s Diplomatic Reception Room was originally the housekeeper’s room, with built-in cabinets. 

The Adams’s began furnishing the house in a fairly grand style, although Abigail Adams used the great Public Audience Chamber for hanging laundry. See: https://bestinamericanliving.com/2016/07/history-of-the-white-house-1792-1814/#

Women and Labor Day

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Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riviter 1943

The United States Department of Labor tell us that Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the country.

Who Was the Founder of Labor Day?

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers. Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

Winslow Homer, Bobbin Girl. 1871 Lowell Massachusetts, National Historical Park

But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The Moss Industry in the South, Harper's Weekly, September 2, 1882

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

New England Factory Life.  Harpers Weekly June 25, 1888

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Working Women's Protective Union Hearing Complaint Against Sewing Machine Dealer

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Maryland - The Labor Troubles In The Cumberland District - Scenes At and About the Eckhart Mines Detail, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 10, 1882

Labor Day was important for women who organized & took part in parades and celebrations. It honored women laborers during World War II, who took the place of men in the American workforce, as they were deployed around the world. World War II's Rosie the Riveter was a real woman, Rose Will Monroe, who was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1920, and moved to Michigan during World War II. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-29 and B-24 bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.

Pennsylvania - The Carpet-Weaver's Strike in Philadelphia - Female Strikers Patrolling the Streets, Frank Leslie's Illustrated News, November 3, 1888

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

Labor Day Parade, float of Women's Trade Union League, New York

Women Organizing in the 19th Century compiled by the I Am Woman blog.

1824 Women workers strike for the first time in history at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 102 women workers strike in support of brother weavers protesting the simultaneous reduction in wages and extension of the workday.

1825 'The United Tailoresses of New York' is formed. It is the first union for women only.

Labor Day

1831 In February of this year, almost 1600 women, all members of the United Tailoresses of New York, strike for "a just price for our labor."

1845 The 'Female Labor Reform Association' is formed in Lowell, Massachusetts by Sarah Bagley and other women cotton mill workers to reduce the work day from 12 or 13 hours a day to 10, and to improve sanitation and safety in the mills where they worked.

Detroit, Michigan. Women workers parading in the Labor Day parade photo by Arthur S. Siegel, September 1942 Photos from Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

1853 Antoinette Brown becomes the first U.S. woman to be ordained as a Protestant minister.

1867 Cigar makers are the first national union to accept women and African Americans.

1869 In July, women shoemakers form the 'Daughters of St. Crispin', the first national union of women workers, at Lynn, Massachusetts.

World War II Rosies

1872 Congress passes a law giving women federal employee equal pay for equal work.

1881 In Atlanta, Georgia almost 3,000 black women laundry workers stage one of the largest and most effective strikes in the history of the south.

Detroit, Michigan. Float in the Labor Day parade showing relationship between the Army, Red Cross and industrial workers photo by Arthur S. Siegel, September 1942 Photos from Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

1888 Suffragists win passage of a law requiring women doctors for women patients in mental institutions.

1889 Jane Adams founds Hull House in Chicago to assist the poor. It becomes a model for many other settlement houses and establishes social work as a profession for women.

World War II Rosies

1892 Mary Kenney O'Sullivan of the Bindery Workers is appointed the AFL's first female national organizer.

1898 Charlotte Perkins Gillman wrote 'Women and Economics' which argues that women need to be economically independent.

1899 The National Consumers League is formed with Florence Kelley as its president. The League organizes women to use their power as consumers to push for better working conditions and protective law for women workers.

Englishmen Working by Stanley Spencer 1891-1959

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Workmen in the House 1935

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Workmen in the House 1935


Stanley Spencer painted men working for decades. He was an Official War Artist in both World Wars. His great cycle of wall paintings in the National Trust Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere commemorate his experiences in the RAMC and infantry during the First World War.

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde


The Imperial War Museum in London loaned paintings to augment an exhibition of Stanley Spencer's series on WWII British shipbuilding in 2012. An introduction to the exhibition written by Stanley Spencer Gallery's Curator, Carolyn Leder, explains...

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Garage 1929 

In 1939, Spencer urged his dealer Dudley Tooth to find him 'a war job, some sort of official art employment.' The art market was slack and as Tooth noted Spencer was 'terribly in debt all round'. On Tooth's writing to Sir Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, and Chairman of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) under the Ministry of Information, Spencer was interviewed and appointed. His initial suggestion of a Crucifixion with predella panels to show the Nazi conquest of Poland was rejected.

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959)


Instead, he agreed to depict a shipyard, paying his first visit to the suggested 'Kingston' yard, owned by Sir James Lithgow, at Port Glasgow on the river Clyde in May 1940. He responded to the place with enthusiasm...The strong sense of community reminded him of Cookham: 'many of the places in and corners of Lithgow's factory moved me in much the same way as I was by rooms in my childhood.'

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959)


During WWII, Spencer depicted all the major trades involved in the building of the ships, including developments in technology, such as the use of welding, which gradually superseded riveting as a method of joining steel plates...They fully engaged his creative imagination: 'The point is that whatever may be thought of these shipbuilding pictures of mine, I am much moved by what I see up here and experience joy in attempting to express the feeling I have about it all…'

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) The Builders

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Plumbers

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Laundry

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Filling Tea Urns

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Burners

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Riveters 1946

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Riveters

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891 – 1959) Shipbuilding on the Clyde Welders

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Mending Cowls, Cookham 1915

Stanley Spencer, (English painter, 1891-1959) Bedmaking 1927-32