What Labor Day Sales Say About the American Dream

As this year’s Labor Day approaches, I remember my late grandmother.

She worked her whole life in her and my grandfather’s small shoe store in the Bronx. Her relationship to her work—and Labor Day sales—reflect an America that today is under threat.

My grandmother fled Europe in the early tremors of the Holocaust, ultimately losing some of their siblings and their parents. She went on to work hard in the U.S, fitting penny loafers and pumps on customers’ feet and saved so much she paid for my college education—and trips to Manhattan department stores near her home for their Labor Day sales.

We would pore over bins of discounted 1980's clothing and sail past cosmetics saleswomen with teased hair eager to douse us in Anais, Charlie, and other stinging scents of that time.

The department