HE 1930s have been regarded as a pivotal period in the development of a modern organized labor movement in the United States. Historians have noted the rapid growth in membership of both old and new unions and the concomitant changes during these years in the political and economic environment of collective bargaining. In the course of their studies, these scholars have successfully analyzed many of the factors that played a role in that growth.' By concentrating primarily on factors peculiar to the 1930s, however, these scholars have remained within the dominant tradition of American labor history that has been organized around events and has emphasized the simple dichotomies they appear to illustrate. Thus, analysis of the rapid growth of unionism in the 1 930s has concentrated largely on strikes, contracts, federal legislation, and the effects of the confrontation between two rival federations on the institutional structure of the labor movement. Operating from within this tradition, historians have generally agreed that the 1930s saw the ascendancy of industrial over craft unionism.2 The industrially organized unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) broke with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), established themselves as a rival federation, succeeded for the first time in organizing the workers employed in