Saturday, you'll recall, was International Workers' Day aka May Day aka day on which trust-fund commies throw bottles, torch cars, and yell "Die yuppie scum!" In tetchy parts of Europe, anyway. (See here and here.)

But in ‘Merica, it occasions about as much brouhaha as Secretary's Day, which is weird because International Workers' Day was born here. So in honor of the United States's not-insignificant contribution to workers' rights everywhere, we've compiled some of the best Yankee prole propaganda around with help from Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher, authors of Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters (Cornell University Press).

The first International Workers' Day was a tribute to the victims of Chicago's 1886 Haymarket Affair, a strike gone terribly wrong that sparked outrage from France to Cuba. Today, 66 countries officially celebrate the event. The United States isn't one of them. "A garland for May Day" by the British illustrator Walter Crane in 1895

This zexy muscleman ostensibly convinced the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to donate 50 thou to "fight Nazism and Facism." If only it had been that easy. Designed by Mitchell Loeb in 1934

Soviets might've had the catchiest agitprop, but the United States had its own rich graphic tradition, which drew, in classic American fashion, from a melting pot of design ideas. Here, one of the great icons of Stateside World War II propaganda was actually done by a Frenchman (Jean Carlu) with a yen for Cubism. From 1942

Holy phallus! Designer unknown, 1943

Here, a craven businessman symbolizes the evils of discrimination, the message being that racist hiring practices are like management -- you definitely want to stick it to them. "This represents a major shift from labor's stance during the early 20th century, when discrimination against nonwhites was a union hallmark," Cushing says. By Bill Seaman, 1945

The art-world’s leading lights used to take on labor-poster commissions. Sounds almost quaint now. Can you imagine Jeff Koons doing anything of the sort? Ben Shahn designed this offset print for the CIO Political Action Committee in 1946.

In 1958, President Eisenhower pronounced May 1 "Law Day," a thinly veiled (and strangely successful) effort to squelch American celebrations of International Workers' Day, which, in those days, fell on the wrong side of the Cold War. This linocut by the artist Frank Rowe entreats San Francisco's Yellow Cab to lift its ban on black drivers. "It’s one of the few political posters made during the Cold War 1950s," Cushing says. "This war veteran-artist lost his job as an instructor at a local college for failure to agree to a loyalty oath."

A "cosmic car show" to benefit Delano grape strikers. Only in the '60s. By Stanley Mouse (1967)

Artist Rupert Garcia hijacks conventional ad imagery to show that Lipton's labor policies are not, er, his cup of tea. Screenprint from 1972

Before the E-Trade baby, there was this. Print circa 1980 (artist unknown)

A linocut designed around 1985 looks like a cel from Merrie Melodies. Slightly different message, though. “The implications displayed here are not only about the class structure of United States society,” Cushing says, “but also the need for collective action on behalf of working people.” By Chicago IWW artist Carlos Cortez

A 1992 print from the Northland Poster Collective appropriates an 18th-century slave-ship diagram to make the case against globalization, itself a cause of "wage slavery," in Cushing's telling.

Milton Glaser, the high priest of 20th-century graphic design, whipped up this lovely ode to New York health-care union organizer Moe Foner in 1999.

Nowadays, posters are full of recycled iconography, a bittersweet reminder of U.S. labor's robust past. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees reincarnates World War II's most famous mug in 2005 to protest crappy California ballot measures. The original 1942 image, by the way, is not of Rosie the Riveter. As Cushing reveals, it actually depicts a woman manufacturing helmet liners somewhere in the Midwest. Call it "Helen the Helmet Liner Maker.”