Organized Labour and the United States War Economy, 1939-1945

Labour historians have until recently neglected the domestic history of the United States during the second world war. 1 Other scholars have focused attention on diplomacy and the origins of the cold war which shaped subsequent decades. Yet events at home were equally decisive, accelerating acceptance of the Keynesian consensus about post-war economic policy. The war ended unemployment, which had never fallen below 10 per cent during the 1930s. It made high public spending a permanent part of economic planning. More important, it established the new labour unions, launched so rapidly and aggressively as a result of the 1935 Wagner Act, and enabled them to play a crucial role in converting the economy to Keynesianism. In this and other ways, the New Deal was largely completed and stitched into the nation's infrastructure by the war experience. The twelve years between the Wagner Act and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act were thus crucial in the growth of the modem American labour movement. Not only did membership leap from less than three million in 1933 to nine million in 1938 and 15 million in 1948. Semi-skilled and

Cold war · Diplomacy · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Economy · First world war · New Deal · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · Unemployment · World War II · Canadian Identity and History · History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

• The Relation of Home Investment to Unemployment

  R F Kahn•The Economic Journal•1931

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