Organized Labor and the Invention of Modern Liberalism in the United States

There is perhaps no political topic that has been given such relentlessly comparative treatment as the American labor movement. It is rare to read any comprehensive political or historical study of organized labor that is not cast, implicitly or explicitly, against the greater class consciousness of European counterparts. The explanations advanced for the uniqueness or the lack of vigor in the American strain—abundance of land, immigration, early suffrage, a revolutionary heritage of “republicanism”—constitute most of what exists in the way of theories about American labor politics.

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Global Master Workman

10.3828/liverpool/9781800859609.003.0006 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 129-150

Author(s):

Steven Parfitt

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Civil War ◽

Labor Force ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

Labor Leader ◽

Irish Immigrants ◽

National Border ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

This chapter analyzes the story of a transnational figure who hardly ever crossed a national border in his career as labor leader. Terence Powderly (1849-1924) was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1849, to Irish immigrants. He entered the labor force as a switchman for the Delaware and Hudson railroad at the age of 13, as the Civil War raged across the United States, and became a machinists’ apprentice at the age of 17. He was marked out very early as a rising star in the American labor movement, rising quickly in the Machinist and Blacksmith’s Union after joining it in 1871. In 1874, a year after the Panic of ’73 brought economic depression to the United States and forced Powderly west to find work, he joined a relatively new, secret union that he would be associated with for the rest of his life: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.

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Collective Action and the Origins of the American Labor Movement

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050718000360 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 78 (3) ◽

pp. 744-784 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ethan Schmick

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Collective Action ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

Union Formation ◽

Establishment Size ◽

Large Employer ◽

The Relationship ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

This article examines the relationship between collective action and the size of worker and employer groups in the United States. It proposes and tests a theory of union formation and strikes. Using a new county-by-industry level dataset containing the location of unions, the location of strikes, average establishment size, and the number of establishments around the turn of the twentieth century, I find that unions were more likely to form and strikes were more likely to occur in counties with intermediate-sized worker groups and large employer groups.

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A Theological Ethic for Renewing Church-Labor Alliance

Horizons ◽

10.1017/s0360966900000050 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 67-91

Author(s):

Patricia Ann Lamoureux

Keyword(s):

Labor Movement ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Organized Labor ◽

The Past ◽

The Social ◽

Social Concerns ◽

Future Viability ◽

Negative Factors ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

ABSTRACTThe contemporary American labor movement is in a state of crisis. Not only is the membership base at a low-point, but a host of negative factors and obstacles to growth present enormous challenges for its future viability. In the past, organized labor has been most effective when there was a strong alliance with the Catholic community. Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, this association has weakened, and in some cases has turned to opposition. The premise of this article is that a renewed church-labor alliance could provide needed assistance to reinvigorate the labor movement while also advancing the social concerns of the Catholic Church in this nation.

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Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x0400001x ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 1-29 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Peter A. Swenson

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Policy ◽

New Deal ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Policy Making ◽

Social Insurance ◽

The United States ◽

Organized Labor ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Industrial Societies

Current wisdom about the American welfare state's laggard status among advanced industrial societies, by attributing it to the weakness of the Left and organized labor, poses a historical puzzle. In the 1930s, the United States experienced a dramatically progressive turn in social policy-making. New Deal Democrats, dependent on financing from capitalists, passed landmark social insurance reforms without backing from a well-organized and electorally successful labor movement like those in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Sweden, by contrast, with the world's strongest Social Democratic labor movement, did not pass important social insurance legislation until the following two decades.

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Caritina M. Piña and Anarcho-syndicalism

Writing Revolution ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252042744.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 136-152

Author(s):

Sonia Hernández

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Well Being ◽

The United States ◽

Organized Labor ◽

History Of ◽

Role Of Women ◽

Free Thought

This chapter explores the role of women, such as Caritina Piña, who lived in the United States borderlands and figured prominently in the leadership of the Tampico labor movement. Piña’s vision underscored and promoted the well-being of worker activists. Shaped by her position in a new postrevolutionary Mexican world and influenced by the long history of organized labor along the lines of anarcho-syndicalism, Piña helped to both sustain the labor movement by promoting free thought in the anarchist—broadly conceived—tradition. Her unique transborder feminismo not only transcended geopolitical boundaries but consistently invoked the language of worker dignity and the revolutionary family.

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The Japanese Labor Movement, 1912–1919: Suzuki Bunji and the Yūaikai

The Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.2307/2943244 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 559-579

Author(s):

Stephen S. Large

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Labor Union ◽

The United States ◽

Organized Labor ◽

University Graduates ◽

Labor Organization ◽

Union Movement ◽

Institutional Foundations ◽

At Home

AbstractsThe Yuaikai (Friendly Society) was the only large, national labor organization in 1912–1919 Japan. Its founder, Suzuky Bunji, an intellectual and Christian humanist, believed that cooperation between labor and management was the key to developing the Yuaikai into a true labor union movement in a day when organized labor was held in suspicion. Accordingly, Suzuki organized the Yuaikai workers into potential unions and tried to persuade business and government to accept a moderate union movement. Suzuki's gradualist tactice resulted in expansion of the Yuaikai. By 1917, after two trips to the United States, Suzuki had become the symbol of Japanese organized labor at home and abroad. But Suzuki's moderate approach to reform was jolted by repression of the Yuaikai in 1917–1918 by business and government and his moderate leadership in the Yuaikai was challenged by militant workers who resented intellectual domination of their movement and by radical university graduates who sought to turn the Yuaikai into a revolutionary organization. These two groups conspired to turn the Yuaikai into the relatively militant Sodomei (General Federation) in 1919 and to reduce Suzuki's power in the movement but their revalry for power greatly undermined the capacity of the Sodomei to build further on the institutional foundations laid for organized labor by Suzuki Bunji.

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Christopher L. Tomlins. The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960. (Studies in Economic History and Policy: The United States in the Twentieth Century.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985. Pp. xvi, 348. Cloth $39.50, paper $12.95

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr/91.4.1002 ◽

1986 ◽

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Economic History ◽

Labor Relations ◽

The United States ◽

The State ◽

Organized Labor ◽

Cambridge University

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The Spirit of Private Government

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1951903 ◽

1958 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 754-770 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Grant McConnell

Keyword(s):

Labor Movement ◽

Financial Management ◽

Basic Problem ◽

Organized Labor ◽

The Public ◽

Internal Politics ◽

Legislative Proposals ◽

Private Government ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

The affairs of the Teamsters Union have suddenly loomed with an importance seldom recognized in any private association of this highly associated country. No doubt a major source of the recent interest in the internal politics of this and other unions is the fascination exerted by intimations of colorful criminality. Senator McClellan's committee, indeed, has gone far to indulge the widespread taste for this variety of sensation. Some segments of public opinion have obviously been gratified to be given ammunition useful in a campaign to weaken the economic and political power of organized labor. Meanwhile, the prospect for a few elementary reforms has suddenly improved. The American labor movement has acted to cleanse itself of some of the stain which has drawn so much attention. Legislative proposals designed to insure integrity of union elections and financial management are actively agitated.Nevertheless, publicity and agitation have so far done little to illuminate the basic problem. The public hue and cry about gangsters quite possibly may have hindered rather than helped understanding of what is involved.

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Religion and Trade Union Politics in the United States, 1880–1920

International Labor and Working-Class History ◽

10.1017/s0147547900005020 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 34 ◽

pp. 39-55

Author(s):

Ken Fones-Wolf

Keyword(s):

Progressive Era ◽

Labor Unions ◽

Trade Union ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Critical Role ◽

The United States ◽

Union Leaders ◽

The Church ◽

American Labor Movement ◽

American Labor

More than three decades have passed since Marc Karson analyzed the Catholic church's critical role in impeding the growth of socialism in the American labor movement. He was not the first to make the argument; Progressive Era socialists were acutely aware of Catholics' outspoken opposition, and David Saposs outlined Karson's arguments as early as 1933. However, the evidence marshaled by Karson, first in a 1951 article and later inAmerican Labor Unions and Politics, 1900–1918, so clearly detailed facets of Catholic antisocialism that his thesis has become the conventional wisdom. With few exceptions, historians depict the church as a potent enemy of socialism, heartily welcomed by trade union leaders.

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