Forgotten Facts of American Labor History

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. reports:

The vast bulk of the existing scholarship on American labor history is essentially unreadable. It takes for granted all the economic myths of unionism, the essential righteousness of the union cause, and the moral perversity of anyone who would dare to oppose it. Major incidents in the history of American unionism, as with the Haymarket incident of 1886 and the Homestead Strike of 1892, are often misleadingly described in order to conform to the ideological demands of this one-dimensional morality play.

Labor historians and activists would doubtless be at a loss to explain why, at a time when unionism was numerically negligible (a whopping three percent of the American labor force was unionized by 1900) and federal regulation all but nonexistent, real wages in manufacturing climbed an incredible 50 percent in the United States from 1860–1890, and another 37 percent from 1890 to 1914, or why American workers were so much better off than their much more heavily unionized counterparts in Europe. Most of them seem to cope with these inconvenient facts by neglecting to mention them at all.

An article well worth your time.