Abstract
WORKING conditions for great numbers of Americans were not pleasant in the early 1900s. Wages, at a subsistence level in many industries, reflected the prevailing business view that labor was a "cost item" to be reduced to a minimum. Mechanization was also undermining the manual skills of the craft unionists and the defeat of the Homestead strike of 1892 led many corporations, especially in the steel industry, to believe the "climate" was right to suppress organized labor's efforts.
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