The Post-World War II America and the High Point of Union Participation

Abstract

The Great Depression of the 1930s-early 1940s tried the soul of the industrial nations, including the United States. As in other industrial nations, in America, only collective action could protect workers at all from factory owners in a time of high unemployment such as the Great Depression. Other sectors of the population also found relief in collective action: consumers, renter tenants, farmers, miners, and advocates for children, public health, and other good causes. This acceleration in collectivism threatened the basic social and economic structure and frightened even upper class supporters of the Great Reform. The FDR administration is well-known for its response to this threat: sweeping social and economic reform to stave off any real structural change (Cohen 2010). Legalization of union organizing and activity provided a major component of this reform. Even before World War II united American society, The Great Depression and its reforms pushed that society toward social and economic collectivism to balance against the extreme individualism of unmitigated capitalism (Galbraith 1998).