Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women

Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais tell the history of American working people as part of the larger national story rather than as a list of union disputes and leaders' rivalries. They trace how labor organizing grew out of the upheavals of the Civil War and the struggle for Black freedom, how economic depressions pushed workers into action in the decades after, and how alliances with farmers, small businesses and Black Americans fed the Populist movement of the 1890s and, later, the New Deal. The authors argue that unions developed in response to the rise of monopolies and industrial empires, and that the financiers and industrialists of the period shaped workers' conditions as much as any labor leader. Written in a lively narrative style, the book follows the battles, betrayals and victories of the men and women who built the movement.