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When violence broke out in the strike-ridden coalfields of Colorado in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson was called upon to send federal troops into the State. Wilson had already made several attempts to bring about a settlement and was now faced with a decision fraught with political implications. The role Wilson played in the strike — the story of his critical decision to use federal troops — is less well known. In the spring of 1914, Wilson had problems enough on the international scene. Tension was mounting in Europe and, more immediately, the incident in Mexico had reached proportions of an inter-American crisis. Then, in April, violence flared up in Colorado, and Wilson ordered federal troops to occupy part of that State. Understanding the decision behind this movement is important in understanding Wilson's attitude toward the presidency. The situation in Colorado had not developed suddenly. The State had earlier been the site of serious labor disturbances in the mineral industry and these disturbances left a legacy that would intensify emotions of Colorado's citizens when the 1913 strike began.

In the decade following World War I the anthracite coal industry of Pennsylvania found its domination of the domestic fuel market in the eastern U.S. under serious challenge. The emergence of intense competition from oil, gas, electricity and soft coal threatened to destroy the entire hard-coal business. Under these circumstances the anthracite industry could ill afford to indulge itself in bitter labor disputes. Strikes only created a vacuum for the new substitute fuels to fill. Indeed, short work stoppages in 1920 and 1923 and a hundred-and-sixty-three day strike in 1922 put the hard-coal industry on the brink of extinction. Yet it was impossible to conclude that another anthracite strike might be avoided in 1925. The identical problems, which caused the previous strikes, persisted. At the contract negotiations in July 1925 representatives of the anthracite operators and the United Mine Workers of America reached an impasse from the outset. The union demanded a 10 percent wage increase while the operators claimed that, to save the industry, a reduction of wages was mandatory.

In 1923, leaders of the American steel industry agreed to end the twelve-hour working day, a subject of public dispute for some fifteen years. Though under intense pressure from President Watren Harding and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, industry might not have conceded were it not for a small band of reformers, most of them connected in one way or another with Survey magazine. These reformers — not workers — first made the twelve-hour day an issue, though it became a rallying point for the steel unions in 1919. They defined the terms of attack. These rolling and finishing plants had to reheat the metal and working hours in these plants often became organized around a specific number of heats. This in turn led to working hours of from anywhere between eight and fourteen a day. Late nineteenth-century technological advances led to integration of the steps of steelmaking. Companies began building plants that had both blast furnaces and the finishing mills on the same premises.

A revealing analysis by John L. Lewis of the great General Motors sit-down strike of 1936-1937 is included among the documents in the recently opened Heber Blankenhorn Papers in the Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs of Wayne State University. Prepared by Blankenhorn on the basis of a conversation with Lewis on February 25, 1937, only two weeks after the conclusion of the strike, the document is the best available contemporaneous source for Lewis' views concerning the settlement of the strike and the factors that contributed to the victory of the United Automobile Workers. Although initiated by sit-downs at the Atlanta Fisher body plant on November 18, 1936, and the Kansas City Fisher Body plant on December 16, 1936, the GM strike did not take on major proportions until sit- down strikes closed the Fisher Body plant in Cleveland on December 28 and the two Fisher Body plants in Flint on December 30. Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan sent the National Guard into Flint on January 12 following the famous Battle of the Running Bulls, but he used the troops to maintain the status quo rather than to dislodge the sit-down strikers.

This article presents the journal of S. C. Hewitt, appointed lecturer of the Fall River Mechanics' Association and labor organizer in Massachusetts in the early 1840s. Students U.S. labor movement know that the most important development of the 1840s was the ten-hour movement, and that the organization which spearheaded this demand was the New England Workingmen's Association which came into existence in the fall of 1844 to give support to the shorter workday crusade. The association was largely the product of the mechanics of Fall River, Massachusetts. Early in 1844 these men organized a Mechanics' Association to further the ten-hour day in their community. The association distributed pledge cards binding the signers not to work for more than ten hours and conducted a number of strikes for the shorter working day. In April 1844, the Fall River Mechanics Association set up a publishing committee, headed by Thomas Almy, to print a four-page weekly paper, "The Mechanic," to advocate the cause of the oppressed mechanic and laborer in all its bearings. The Mechanics' Association secure the services of S. C. Hewitt as a lecturer. Readers of "The Mechanic" were already familiar with Mr. Hewitt.

In this article the author shares his experience of attending the meetings of the labor organization, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). What first attracted the author to the IWW was its songs and the gusto with which its members sang them. Such singing, the author thought, was good propaganda, since it had originally attracted him and many others as well. Despite its size, the songbook blazed the trail for the larger songbook to come, a songbook of lasting fame, and one that would make the IWW. known in all corners of the earth. That time came nearer when J. H. Walsh blew in from Alaska. He came as a National Organizer to the Spokane Branch of the IWW, after Alaskan activities which included the founding of a paper, "The Nome Industrial Worker." By the time Walsh returned to Spokane, Washington, where he would continue his work, the worst effects of the 1907 panic were nearly over. This Panic came without advance warning. It was caused, some said, when Eastern bankers withdrew financial backing from railroad construction.

The article focuses on the alternatives to labor injunction that the federal courts can provide to meet the railway labor problem from 1877-1895. During the years between the Railways Strikes of 1877 and the Pullman Boycott-Strike of 1894, the courts turned labor injunction as a major device to protect railroads from demonstrators. Though labor advocates condemn the device, the businesspeople hailed labor injunction as proof that the U.S. legal system can adapt to the changing needs of industries. Aside from labor injunction, federal courts could have addressed railway labor disputes by acting as mediators on interstate railways, by requiring receivers to recognize and bargain with organized railway workers, or by empowering itself to enjoin workers from quitting and taking custody of the railroad companies in question until the dispute is resolved.

The article analyzes the variety of views about industrial democracy in the U.S. between 1898 and 1915. Due to the growth of unionism in the country in the same period, U.S. industrial management shifted from the traditional methods of autocracy and paternalism to those associated with representative government. The trend, which came to be known as industrial democracy, is identified in the U.S. with independent trade unionism and bilateral collective bargaining supplemented by government. The determination of the rules of participation and due process is given to the managers and trade union officials with unresolved differences of interpretation and application. However, the determination of the boundaries of appropriate bargaining is recognized as a governmental task.