That is, the key labor leaders on this issue were Hillman and Lewis, precisely the people that would create the new movement for industrial unions after the passage of the act. Roosevelt was faced with a choice between trade unions regulated by the government and the continuing use of force to repress militant labor activists.
These associations displayed brutal determination in combating the growth of labor unions, because they dominated local governments and political parties. Voss then draws an important contrast when she shows that the British and French governments in effect forced employers to compromise with workers (Voss 1993, pp. 238-239).
The group was soon doing highly detailed studies of labor relations in Rockefeller-related companies, providing reports (available through the Rockefeller Archives) that clearly stated any faults its investigators found and included suggestions to improve working conditions and labor relations.
The early forms of labor organization in the United States were largely mutual aid societies or craft guilds that restricted entry into a craft and enforced workplace standards, as was also the case in Western Europe.
In 1919 nearly four million workers (21% of the workforce) took disruptive action in the face of employer reluctance to recognize or bargain with unions. There were major strikes in the nation's coalfields and among longshoremen in New York City and police officers in Boston, as well as a general strike in Seattle.
In the aftermath of the summer of violence in 1877, a few railroad corporations began to consider the use of employee benefits, such as accident insurance and old-age pensions, to mollify workers. Generally speaking, though, very little changed in terms of employer/employee relations.
The origins of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The many efforts to prevent worker unrest and labor organizing did not work out as expected. The inclusion of section 7(a) in the enabling legislation for the NRA turned out not to be benign after all, so at this point the story picks up a little steam again.
Between 1877 and 1900, American presidents sent the U.S. Army into 11 strikes, governors mobilized the National Guard in somewhere between 118 and 160 labor disputes, and mayors called out the police on numerous occasions to maintain "public order" (Archer 2007, p. 120; Cooper 1980, pp. 13-16; Lambert 2005, p. 44).
As Rockefeller said in a letter to King, the creator of his employee representation plan, in late April, 1937, just a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the National Labor Relations Act was constitutional, he thought that employee representation plans "were generally doomed.".
The first halting steps beyond separate craft guilds at the local level occurred between 1833 and 1837, when workers in a wide range of skilled jobs (including railroading, mining, canal building, and building construction) formed citywide labor organizations in and around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
To give a sense of proportion, the most liberal and socially oriented foundation of the 1930s, the Russell Sage Foundation, was the thirteenth-largest donor in 1934, with just over $267,000 in donations. By comparison, the Rockefeller Foundation alone gave $11.8 million, 44 times as much.