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The article presents a collection of papers that respond to an essay that compares the role of political repression in the early American labor movement and European labor movements. One paper questions the severity of political repression in the U.S. during the period in question, 1870 to 1914, and offers additional historical moments that influenced the labor movement in the U.S. Another paper discusses how the essay addresses the issue of American exceptionalism in the early American labor movement. An additional paper argues that the essay utilizes a crude conceptualization of political repression of labor movements and does not allow room for alternative explanations.

An essay that explores the role that political repression played in the development of the early American labor movement is presented. The author argues against previous research that has stated that political repression in the United States was low compared to the European experience and had little effect on labor in the U.S. as well as an approach that states that labor repression in the U.S. was intense and more significant than the European experience.

This article reports on financial aid provided by the U.S. Central Intelligent Agency (CIA) to the labor movements in Europe during the late 1940s. Activities supported by CIA funds were wide-ranging. In France there was an ongoing subsidy to the non-Communist trade union center "Force Ouvriere." In Germany, a secret "Ostburo" provided a window on East Berlin and a base for espionage activities. From 1949 to 1958 the Free Trade Union Committee received $464,167 directly from the CIA in the form of numerous relatively small contributions. Activities in China accounted for the largest single expenditure with $99,401 donated between 1949 and 1952.

Women who were actively engaged in the labor struggles of the first part of this century faced a continual dilemma. They were caught between a trade union movement hostile to women in the work force and a women's movement whose participants did not work for wages. The wage-earning women who undertook the difficult task of organizing their coworkers also faced yet another problem: they had to reconcile active involvement in labor unionism with community traditions that often discouraged worldly roles. Understanding how women who were union organizers experienced these tensions tells much about the relationships of men and women within unions and throws into relief some of the central problems unionization posed for many working women. Among immigrant Jews in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other large cities only the exceptional unmarried woman did not operate a sewing machine in a garment factory for part of her young adult life. In the old country, where jobs were scarce, daughters were married off as fast as possible. In America they were expected to work, for the family counted on their contributions. Many young girls emigrated as teenagers to go to an uncle or older sister who would help them to find a job so that a part of their wages could be sent back to Europe. Expectations of independent self-assertion were frustrated when marriage intervened and women were confined to more restricted roles.