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I probably didn't make it very clear that I was arguing from an historical point of view. I agree, unions have outlived their purpose, and are pretty much communistic in their approach now. But I think they did achieve a bit of needed balance for workers in the early days. Now they've gone too far.

I believe that you can see the same type of thing in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. The autocracy and brutality of the Czars, replaced by the bureaucracy and brutality of the communists. Both sides wrong, but like a pendulum, swinging wildly from one side to the other. In the early days of unions, people had to make harsh choices as to whether they would work in unsafe conditions for very little money, or basically watch their family starve. Now, due to unions, people have to make harsh choices as to whether they can put up with working in a union environment, or do something else. I know exactly what you are talking about when you speak of the union shop and factory. I wouldn't work in one. Having read a fair amount of history, I do kind of understand where it originated from.

To say that pure capitalism would have solved it on it's own, well, I'm just not too sure of that. I'm a little suspicious of "pure" anything anymore. These type of things (unions, communism,etc.) weren't created in a vacuum. They were bad reactions to bad things. If we could travel back in time to see the circumstances of some of the workers back in those days, I believe you might temper your opinion on this a little bit. If the early capitalists hadn't been so greedy and heartless, some of this socialist crap that we live with wouldn't be around. I just want people to understand that there are consequences from having a heartless capitalistic mindset, and one of those consequences is socialism. A capitalist society underpinned by Christian values is the ideal system, in my opinion. For the most part, what I see in corporate America today is not that, and I just want to point out that there will always be consequences to that sort of thing. To say that capitalists had no responsibility in the creation of unions, is to ignore quite a bit of history. I'd like to see this "pendulum swing" find it's center one of these days. The ONLY way that will happen is if both sides learn from history.

Those faced with unsafe working conditions that result in injury have always had the courts to go to for negligence or attractive hazards, etc.

They always had free choice to seek other employment.

Kids in factories versus on the farm, was a pay raise they were willing to take. Like Nike workers making more than their fellows in rice paddies.

As long as it's all voluntary, we are free to choose.

The horror stories we were all fed in school by those interested in the Big Govt that benefits them, not all but most, was mostly propaganda to infuse socialism.

Like the iconic photo by David Duncan of the Vietnamese being shot in the head point blank, the little girl in the textile mill is also ingrained in the American pysche.

It gave the impression that all factories were manned by children slave laborers with no free choice.

Govt created the Great Depression and further interventions of perverse incentives kept it alive for a decade, while the concurrent European depression ended much sooner. Keynes came here from there, and our Govt drank heartily from his poison well, as many still do!

WE raised taxes and killed off thousands of cattle & hog to "support" prices for ranchers. No matter that the 25% unemployed were near starvation.

FDR was the biggest traitor and abuser of our Constitution. Rockefeller & their socialist foundation - even worse, the inventors of Corp subsidy along with the railroads and utilities.

Read this for some real valuable perspective:

http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm

I respectfully disagree, without free markets of free choice - there is no freedom as the Founders intended. It is severely diminished. The Equal Protection, Genl Welfare & Commerce clauses were after 120 some odd years miraculously reinvented by judicial fiat. Unions from day one served their bosses and the politicians that empowered them over the individual, period. They solved nothing that market forces by men of free will wouldn't have. Unions were always about keeping southern blacks out in America and N Africans and Near Easterns out in Europe. The more socialist the more unionized they were. And never forget that socialism is THE step between freedon and totalitarianism.

Our so-called Progressives borrowed every bit of the policies, which required the constitutional corruption that ensued, from the pre-Hitler Socialist Germans a la Marx. By the thirties, FDR, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini were all a regular mutual admiration society, all quoted to have said so of the others. When FDR died Uncle Joe said "there goes my man in Washington".

Our politicians were envious of the power the Euro-dictators wielded. The insistence of the industrialists cum global operators, Rockefeller & House of Morgan among them, who profited from both sides of both world wars, ceaselessly lobbied Govt for the regulation and price supports that insulated them from the small competitors who were responsible for the falling prices of commodities, freight and utilities rates that had benefited all American consumers for the last qtr of the 19th C. Govt never prevented monopoly, they created it.

They got what they wanted, Govt subsidy thru the ICC, the Fed and a fiat currency to inflate to finance business, wars, vote buying and Govt expansion, & to top it off an unconstitutional Fedl income tax, all in hand by 1913. Just in time to get into the war Wilson promised we would not enter. A war without which Hitler would not have risen.

I suggest you may find a different historical viewpoint to your liking and fear your history texts are the same ones used by leftist public and university educators. After all there are fewer than 10% of our educators who don't call themselves liberals. Most conservative and classical liberal educators are in the sciences. Today's socialists (progressives) stole the name liberal - they are not, they are leftists - our Founders were real liberals. These are the people that select the textbooks!

Now in the liberal arts, they are decidedly solid leftists - communists & socialists - trendy but foolhardy believers in some utopianism that has as yet met economic failure, or serious underperformance, where ever it's been tried. That we have remained the most free market oriented country in spite of our backsliding, is the only clue you need to see what works and what does not.

Freedom Works best, anything short of it is some degree of slavery. Just look at the dupes in Euroland suffering dbl digit unemployment, shrinking pension funds and big fat rich politicians. Did you know that the more socialist the higher the wealth disparities?

May I suggest where one gets the constitutional limited govt viewpoint of history ignored and lied about by modern leftwing academe? All are super informative. Let me know what you think of them.

(great essay - read this if nothing else) http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm

mises.org

cato.org