Examples Of Economic Justice In The 1930's

There were many major proponents of economic justice in the 1930's. During the mid-1930's, the assembly of millions of workers in mass-production industries had succeeded in resisting unionization. What came as a great surprise to many Americans was the way the federal government now seemed to be on the side of labor. The National Industrial Recovery Act and the Wagner Act granted worker's the legal right to form unions. However, American factories at the beginning of the New Deal were small dictatorships where unions were very rare. Here, workers could be beaten by their supervisors and fired at will and management dictated the speed of the assembly line and the length of the workday. The government was firmly supportive of these companies. During this time worker's went above
These included the right to distribute literature, the right to picket and the right to meet to talk about their complaints. These goals required union acknowledgement. The presidential election of Roosevelt revived the hopes of the millions that were thrown into hot water because of the depression. The federal government received many letters about the terrible and inhuman conditions of many workers. The public opinion was that the political liberty that their forefathers had fought for were now meaningless because of industrial tyranny and economic inequality. In the year 1934, the great upheaval of labor spread like wild fire. There were more than 2,000 strikes, many created violent fights between workers and the local police. This upheaval posed a threat to the American Federation of Labor's traditional ways of organizing worker's by craft. In 1934, thirty AFL leaders wanted to create a union of industrial workers. However, when it was refused, the head of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, led a walkout that in the end created a new labor organization, the Congress of Industrial