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Yesterday was Labor Day, which we found out was actually originally a Canadian holiday sparked by labor disputes in Hamilton and Toronto in the 1870s. American labor leader Peter J. McGuire was visiting Toronto in 1882 when he came across one such celebration, and decided to import the idea to the U.S. He organized the [...]

While we’re still vague on what President-elect Barack Obama’s WPA (Works Projects/Progress Administration) will end up doing, we sure like the images conjured by these evocations of FDR’s sweeping set of reforms to keep artists and construction workers busy during the Great Depression. In anticipation of great state-sponsored (and therefore more or less propagandist) visual [...]