Local 21's Quest for a Moral Economy
The industrial working class began the middle decades
of the twentieth century with unlimited hope and
possibility but ended them fraught with
disillusionment and dismay. This marked a disjointed
experience as optimism for the future gave way to
disenchantment. With the ratification of the National
Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the National
Labor Relations Act in 1935, hundreds of thousands of
workers across the United States became union
members. The euphoria that this initial burst of
unionization created, however, could not be sustained
throughout the post-World War II years. The Cold War,
McCarthyism and later the onset of
de-industrialization ushered in new phases in working
class history marked by the gradual ineffectiveness
of the working class to shape domestic policy.