Happy Labor Day from the Oshkosh Brewing Company

Here’s an 80-year-old ad from the Oshkosh Brewing Company saluting all of us who work for a living. This appeared in the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern on September 1, 1934.

This appeared in conjunction with the first Labor Day since the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933. After suffering nearly 14 years under the yoke of an asinine law, you can’t blame the folks at OBC for their melodramatic slant: “America has risen up, shaken off the dregs of a nightmare that seemed beyond control.”

For others, the nightmare hadn’t ended. In 1934, the Great Depression was battering the workers of Oshkosh. If you hadn’t already lost your job, chances were your wages had been substantially cut. It was a grim time for many and that undercurrent informs the text of this ad. To read it all, click the image and it will enlarge.

Here’s to Labor Day and hoping that yours is more festive than that of 1934.