Here you have Scott #1082, with a first day issue of exactly 50 years ago, September 3rd, 1956. The design is by Victor S. McCloskey, Jr. of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing based on a a small portion of a much larger mosaic, “Labor is Life” (also shown below) by the American artist Lumen Martin Winter. This mosaic was unveiled in 1956 by President Eisenhower at the the AFL/CIO Headquarters in Washington DC .
What a difference 50 years makes! One could write at length about how this stamp portrays a quintessentially 1950’s view of the family, the status of women, the industrial base of American labor combined with the influence of depression-era socialist realist art. But it is Labor Day, so I suggest you all get off the computer and start up the grill. That’s what I’m going to do.
