Labor Day - A balance in our workplace with freedom in the marketplace

Except taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman," Lucile Ellingwood Morrow, published August 30, 1951 in The Collinsville News.  

"I remember my first Labor Day and at the time wondered what it was all about. I recall. too, what was then called "walking delegates", men who went from job to job in the district to oversee labor conditions and check illegal practices. They always seemed to be big, burly fellows and we children were afraid of them as
they stood for strife and always seemed to have a chip on their shoulders.
Labor was just beginning: to make itself heard in those days. Nowadays, when Labor has become so powerful that it is the tail trying to wag the dog, instead of the other way around, we must seek a safe balance of industry for both producer and consumer. We do not ever want to lose our free enterprise system and be like Socialist England where a man dare not sell even an onion that does not meet government measurements and weights or where a woman dare not have chicken for Sunday dinner without government permission.  
We want good protection for labor and we shall have gone a long way toward solving the problem of war if we scatter the seeds of free enterprise and good labor laws to the far corners of the earth where millions are still enslaved to the tyranny and power of a few rich overlords. But let's keep watchful, lest we let, our own government get more and more power to tell us what to raise, how to buy and sell against our own good judgment-we are in danger of losing our precious possession."  

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