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Article: Labor Movement
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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LABOR MOVEMENT
In the last decades of the nineteenth century it appeared that labor was unable effectively to challenge the combined wealth and power that capitalism in its industrial phase had created. The merger movement brought corporations together into vast concentrations of economic power resting in the hands of relatively few men. These trusts, pools, mergers, "gentlemen's agreements," and other instruments of capital consolidation transformed the structure of whole industries, from oil to coal mining, railroads, iron and steel, and meat packing.
This had a major impact on labor relations. On the one hand, the concentration of capital increased the economic power of the "captains ...