Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes. Hearts starve as well as bodies; Give us bread, but give us roses.

-- James Oppenheimer

In 1912, thousands of immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., went on strike to protest grim working conditions and reduced wages. Solidarity among the strikers, mostly women and girls, crossed ethnic lines and endured in the face of violence.

The writer James Oppenheimer was in Lawrence that winter and penned his famous "Bread and Roses" poem after seeing mill girls carrying a banner that read, "We want bread, and roses too."

That well-worded demand still resonates. The widely accepted idea that our workplaces should allow for both good wages and a high quality of life is something for which we can thank the labor movement.

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For most of us, Labor Day weekend signals the end of summer. Most see this holiday as a celebration of not working rather than a day to acknowledge the labor movement and its contributions.

It wasn't always so. For a long time in this country, Labor Day was a passionate holiday, a day of speeches, rallies and remembrance.

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, the city retained enough civic and social memory to experience Labor Day as a sacred holiday. There were memories of lives lost in the plants and mines, and lives saved by safety rules and union working conditions.

Labor history and its emotions are embedded in my family's psyche. My family never would have come to America if not for the steel strikes that lured starving Polish workers to industrial cities with promises of jobs, food and survival. But the jobs they came to take were other men's jobs -- other immigrants who had arrived here a few years earlier and were striking the mills.

My father's family lived in Lawrenceville. Five brothers and one sister. There was no need to talk about a "work ethic." My father went to work at 14, his brothers at 14 and 15. Even Joe, the "baby," worked in his early teens and put his earnings on the kitchen table to support the family.

These brothers were such hardworking men, driven by need and fear and a crazy hope that their kids might get high school diplomas and maybe even get into college so they would not have to do hard labor for low pay.

Many of the Eastern European immigrants arrived as strike breakers and were widely despised. Yet they wanted exactly what the men carrying the placards wanted: enough work and money to support their families. "Scab" was a dirty word, though I didn't know what it meant apart from skinned knees.

Later, after joining the union, my father, his brothers and neighbor men took their turns carrying signs, walking the line and paying their dues. I remember the whispers about meetings and strikes and the fear in the air. I remember the sense that the union was a brotherhood. That I understood.

I had all these uncles and two brothers of my own. My older sisters married men in unions: a painter and a teacher. I remember Pittsburgh's first teachers strike -- the debate, the chaos and, again, the fear.

I saw what the union meant: work, protection, paychecks, benefits. The small pile of money on the kitchen table grew a little bit and lasted a little longer. Most of the time we could pay the bills.

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Now people ask: Has organized labor gone too far at this point? Cost us too much?

The arguments can be made. We all know of some ridiculous union demand or workplace routine or undemocratic practice, but let's remember the benefits that accrue to all of us because of the labor movement.

Even in nonunion workplaces, the U.S. standard is five eight-hour work days per week. And, yes, it's a bumper sticker, but it's also true: American labor brought us the weekend. A six-and-a-half day workweek was common pre-labor.

We can thank organized labor for rest rooms and smoke breaks and clean places to eat lunch; for safety laws, paid vacations, sick leave, pension and insurance plans -- policies and procedures that most of us take for granted.

The labor movement also helped bring us social reforms, such as child-labor regulation, free public education and the concept of equal pay for equal work. We enjoy these gifts whether or not we belong to unions.

But one of the biggest contributions from organized labor that we don't appreciate, because it's so very close to us, is our middle class way of life. In large measure, organized labor's efforts over decades established the American middle class. Decent wages and job security allowed workers to buy homes and cars and send their kids to college, which fueled our economy and what we now so easily disdain as middle-class life.

So this weekend, while you celebrate a day dedicated to working people by taking an extra day off, please take a moment to thank those girls in Lawrence, Mass., if you enjoy a working life of both bread and roses.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.