The Crime of Radical Industrial Unionism

A great deal of scholarship documents the history of antiradical repression in the United States. But this literature remains incomplete, particularly regarding the role of state laws and state authorities in undermining campaigns for radical industrial unionism in the first half of the Twentieth Century. This essay addresses this issue, describing how state-level sedition laws were used against the Industrial Workers of the World and communist unions, while also highlighting how progressive politicians and jurists joined with the capitalist sponsors of these laws and their conservative allies in government in promoting these efforts. While it avoids suggesting that such prosecutions were the only, or even primary, reasons for the demise of radical industrial unionism, this essay argues that the history of these laws must feature prominently in any attempt to understand this movement’s tragic fate and to comprehend the role of the state in labor history.