Labor Law in America: Historical and Critical Perspectives

Abstract

research proposals?others were offered verbally?fell into five overlapping categories: factors uniting, dividing, or integrating the labor movement at the national level or beyond (national integration, nationalism and internationalism, immigration, ethnic and racial antagonisms); the cross-cultural comparison of specific institutions, or of the interaction of such institutions (mutual benefit societies, workers' parties, trade unions, cooperatives, etc.); the influence of various groups active within or alongside the movement (cadres of diverse background, intellectuals, artists, the young, labor journalists); the relationship between labor and other social groups (farmers) or forces (religion); and political activities and ramifications of the movement. In fact, the call to reconsider the multifaceted intersection of class activities and those of the state recurred throughout the conference. Without minimizing the complex theoretical and practical problems involved, the wide-ranging discussions disclosed the potential richness and promise of systematic, comparative labor history. As John Saville put it, the discourse of the conference shifted from that of crisis to that of challenge. The assembly did not attempt to set an agenda for research. A few groups planned to pursue specific projects, and the IISH is prepared to lend moral and possibly material support to promising proposals, some of which may be taken up in a postgraduate research program that it plans to initiate. The Institute has put labor historians doubly in its debt, first, for the appearance of the Formation volumes, which will long serve as handbooks on national labor movements, and second, for its initiatives in comparative labor history, of which the Alkmaar conference is an impressive example.