American labor
- London Yale University Press 1952
- 459 p.
The new prominence of that labor question which Carlyle long ago characterized as the "universal great problem of the world" has of late transformed "labor" from a descriptive term into a continuing headline.
During the past few years, however, the strong upsurge of union organization in the United States has been too often treated as something only of recent origin; as if it were, indeed, almost a phenomenon of the depression itself. Hence to many people, labor's practices and person alities partake of a novel character and even seem to hold the somewhat sinister overtones of the unknown.
But labor's actions, as well as its aspirations, are neither new-born, nor menacing, nor obscure. They express the dynamics of a continuous drive toward that better life implicit in democratic government and in unionism which in this country began at about the same time.
To view the current labor movement historically, against the background of its predecessors, and thus perhaps to bring some perspective to the interpretation of its present hopes and achievements and defeats, forms the under lying purpose of this book.
The approach of the author reflects the attempt to approximate, however remotely, that spirit of free inquiry which some call liberalism and others the scientific temper.
The author wishes to give grateful acknowledgment to Professor E. Wight Bakke and Nelson Frank for valuable suggestions and criticism and for checking errors of fact; to Harold Friedman for expert aid in legal research and the compilation of an index; and to Elenore Levenson for patient assistance in gathering the scarcer items of bibliography.