TY  - JOUR
AU  - Currie,Janet
AU  - Ferrie,Joseph
TI  - Strikes and the Law in the U.S., 1881-1894: New Evidence on the Origins of American Exceptionalism
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5368
PY  - 1995
Y2  - November 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5368
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5368.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Janet Currie
Princeton University
316 Wallace Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609-258-7393
Fax: 609-258-5974
E-Mail: jcurrie@princeton.edu

Joseph P. Ferrie
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208-2600
Tel: 847/491-8210
Fax: 847/491-7001
E-Mail: ferrie@northwestern.edu
AB  - The origins of American exceptionalism þ the apolitical nature of American labor unions compared to their European counterparts þ have puzzled labor historians.  Recently, the hypothesis has been advanced that organized labor abandoned attempts to win reform through legislation because the reforms did not have the desired consequences. We evaluate this claim using information on each state's legal environment and unique strike-level data on over 12,000 labor disputes between 1881 and 1894.  We find that the law affected strike costs and strike outcomes, though not always in the anticipated directions.  For example, laws outlawing blacklisting were associated with the increased use of strike breakers, while the legalization of unions, one of the hardest won legislative changes, had little impact.  Only maximum hours laws had clearly pro-labor effects.  Our results are consistent with the view that the American labor movement abandoned political activism and embraced business unionism because unions found the law to be an inaccurate instrument for effecting change in labor markets.
ER  -