ABSTRACT
It has become something of a sociological cliché that the absence of significant social unrest in developed industrial societies is attributable to the institutionalization of class conflict and incorporation of the working class. Historically the effectiveness of incorporation has been most evident in that cauldron of class conflict-strikes. As Taft & Ross (1979) document, the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-1930s was tumultuous for American industrial relations. Full-scale battles between troops and public and private police forces, on the one hand, and pickets, on the other, frequently left many dead and injured. In one incident in 1913 an armoured train was used to attack strikers living in tents, firing over 200 shots in the process. The workers were not defeated by these methods nor was conflict suppressed. It was the New Deal and specifically the Wagner Act of 1935, supplemented by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, that quelled what had become endemic violence. It did so by providing
mechanisms for the expression of grievances, independent arbitration and channels for influencing government policy.
