ABSTRACT
I. Introduction As observed in Chapter 1, there is nothing new or entirely surprising about workers withholding their labor. Work stoppages were fairly common in American mines, factories, and transportation industries in the period preceding passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Many of these strikes were met with violence. Robert Shogan (2004) relates the story of the country’s largest mine strike in The Battle of Blair Mountain. In the fall of 1921, more than 10,000 armed members of the United Mine Workers of America’s “Red Bandana Army” marched through the mountains and valleys of West Virginia to fight for the freedom of their jailed brothers. Troops from West Virginia and the federal government, along with thugs from the Felt-Dobbs Detective Agency, attacked the miners with clubs and guns in a bloody battle. For the first, and so far only, time, government aircraft dropped bombs on U.S. citizens on domestic soil.
