When, however, prices fell and margins of profit contracted, labor's
bargaining strength waned, strikes were lost, trade unions faced the
danger of extinction, and "cure-alls" and politics received their day in
court. Labor would turn to government and politics only as a last
resort, when it had lost confidence in its ability to hold its own in
industry. This phenomenon, noticeable also in other countries, came out
with particular clearness in America.
For, as a rule, down to the World War, prices both wholesale and retail,
fluctuated in America more violently than in England or the Continent.
And twice, once in the thirties and again in the sixties, an
irredeemable paper currency moved up the water mark of prices to
tremendous heights followed by reactions of corresponding depth. From
the war of 1812, the actual beginning of an industrial America, to the
end of the century, the country went through several such complete
industrial and business cycles. We therefore conveniently divide labor
and trade union history into periods on the basis of the industrial
cycle. It was only in the nineties, as we saw, that the response of the
labor movement to price fluctuations ceased to mean a complete or nearly
complete abandonment of trade unionism during depressions.
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