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The Law and Labor Strife in the United States, 1881–1894

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Janet Currie  and
Joseph Ferrie
Janet Currie
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of California, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024, telephone: (310)206-8380, e-mail: [email protected]; and Research Associate, NBER.
Joseph Ferrie
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2003 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2600, telephone (847) 491-8210, e-mail [email protected]; and Research Associate, NBER.
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Extract

This article examines the effect of state-level legal innovations governing labor disputes in the late 1800s. This was a period of legal ferment in which worker organizations and employers actively lobbied state governments for changes in the rules governing labor disputes. Cross-state heterogeneity in the legal environment provides an unusual opportunity to investigate the effects of these laws. We use a unique data set with information on 12,965 strikes to show that most of these law changes had surprisingly little effect on strike incidence or outcomes. Important exceptions were maximum hours laws and the use of injunctions.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 2000 , pp. 42 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2000

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