Bloodless Victories
The Rise and Fall of the Open Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890–1940

This book, first published in 2000, examines how Philadelphia employers helped each other to combat organized labour.

Howell John Harris (Author)

9780521584357, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 June 2000

476 pages, 22 b/w illus. 11 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.87 kg

'… fully deserves the highest recommendation … excellent text'. Enterprise and Society

This book, first published in 2000, examines how a group of manufacturers of metal products - 'everything from buttonhooks to battleships' - in America's third biggest city helped each other to meet the challenges of organized labour (and sometimes an interventionist state) in the half-century between the 'second industrial revolution' and the Second World War. After thirty years of success, the employers were finally overwhelmed by a resurgent labour movement backed by New Deal politicians and administrators. Their story offers the broadest and most detailed account available of the industrial relations problems and policies of small and mid-sized firms in this period. This book analyses labour issues by means of a careful local case study, but its conclusions about the interplay of labour, organized capital, law and the state in determining the fate of workers' rights and employers' interests have broad relevance to the history and politics of twentieth-century industrial relations.

Figures and tables
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. The iron masters
3. Laying the foundations: peace and war in the metal trades, c.1890–1904
4. Combat, crisis, and consolidation, 1904–15
5. 'The largest, strongest, and most valuable association of metal manufacturers in any city'
6. Riding the storm, 1915–18
7. The war after the war, 1918–23
8. Pacific passage: quaker employers and welfare capitalism, c.1905–24
9. A liberal interlude: the modernization of the MMA, c.1924–31
10. The deluge: the Great Depression and the end of the open shop
11. The New World: accommodation and adjustment, 1936–9
12. Afterword: 'We'll still be there. We're not going away'
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]