Global Master Workman

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.

scholarly journals Collective Action and the Origins of the American Labor Movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 744-784 ◽  
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.

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

1987 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 317-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Orren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
American Strain ◽  
Comparative Treatment ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

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.

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

1987 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 317-336
Author(s):  
Karen Orren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
American Strain ◽  
Comparative Treatment ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

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.

Terence Vincent Powderly—An Appraisal

1941 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-87
Author(s):  
Harry J. Carman
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Knights Of Labor ◽  
Labor Leader ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

T. V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor from 1879 to 1893, has been portrayed in many different ways—as idealist, reformer, humanitarian, windbag, renegade, crook, imposter, agitator, introvert, self-seeker, charlatan, cheap politician, turncoat, rabble rouser, and drippy sentimentalist. Some claim that he was a great labor leader; others just as vigorously maintain that he was utterly lacking in the qualities of leadership—that he was, in reality, an insignificant nobody swept along by the changing currents of the American labor movement. It is not the purpose of this short article to paint a full-length portrait of Powderly but rather, on the basis of newly discovered data, to indicate briefly which, if any, of the above characterizations fit the man.

Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal. By David Brian Robertson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 320p. $75.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-217
Author(s):  
Andrew Battista
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
American Labor

This important new study argues that American labor markets have been and are governed by employers to a degree unique among Western capitalist democracies; that this pattern of governance is the outcome of crucial struggles among unions, employers, and middle-class labor reformers from the Civil War to the New Deal; and that American political institutions strongly shaped the struggles and their outcome. In the nineteenth century, all Western countries largely protected employer control of hiring, firing, wages, hours, and working conditions, but in the twentieth century nations other than the United States began to curb employer prerogatives and extend worker protection in the form of labor regulations, trade union and collective bargaining laws, public management of labor supply and demand, and work insurance (the four major types of policy in Robertson's framework). In the United States, fewer such protections were established, and the fragmented federal and state labor policies that were enacted were often undermined by lax enforcement or court rulings. On the eve of the New Deal, Robertson shows, U.S. employers had a degree of autonomy in labor markets unparalleled in European and other industrialized countries.

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

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.

Reflections on the History of the French and American Labor Movements

1957 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Val R. Lorwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labor Movements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jules Michelet ◽  
American Labor

Jules Michelet remarked that the forms of association “must differ … among the different countries, according to the diversity of national genius.” and Denis W. Brogan once said (he is surely one who does not merit the reproach): “Because we have studied only France, we have not understood even France.” The second remark might apply to the United States, too. There has been talk of the value of comparative study of labor movements, but comparatively little application of comparative methods to labor history. A comparison of the history of association in labor unions in France and the United States may therefore throw a little more light on the “national genius” of each country as well as on die behavior of each labor movement.

scholarly journals Yellow-Blue Collars: American Labor and the Pursuit of Swedish Policy, 1961-1963

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Byron Z. Rom-Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small States ◽  
Wage Policy ◽  
Short Period ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Economic Landscape ◽  
American Labor

This article studies the Kennedy administration’s labor market policies as a case of lesson drawing during a transnational moment in the early 1960s. With the election of Kennedy, leaders in the labor movement rose to positions of policymaking influence, in the process reimagining the United States’ political and economic landscape. This spirit of reform led to the embrace of Sweden’s solidarity wage policy and Rehn-Meidner model as lessons on how to balance full employment, economic growth, and a powerful labor movement. However, Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg and Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers found implementing Swedish policies to be more difficult than they expected, even with the support of a sitting president. Their experiences demonstrate the possibility for policy diffusion from small states to the United States over a short period, as well as its risks and limitations.

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