Michael's Reviews > Brief History of the American Labor Movement

This short pamphlet served as the government’s account of the progress of the labor movement, and possibly was intended as an argument, during a “Red Scare” period of US history, for the legitimacy of maintaining a Department of Labor. It celebrates the recent merging of the AFL and CIO, discounts a great deal of radical and populist labor history, and talks about Communists only in terms of their efforts to infiltrate and corrupt existing unions. It does give some good history, as far as it goes, particularly in terms of laws passed by Congress that impact labor and Supreme Court decisions that (often) undermined them. It also acknowledges some of the worse excesses of the “robber Barons” at the turn of the century. The main narrative does not mention the Haymarket Affair at all, and the chronology at the end only mentions it in terms of the policeman killed and others injured, not in terms of the kangaroo court that sentenced seven innocent men to death. Possibly a valuable primary source in terms of researching government propaganda, anyone looking to learn more about American labor should look to more current, and less biased, sources.