The Industrial Workers of the World: A Study of Violence and a Labor Movement

Thomas Jefferson\u27s dream for the United States was that it should become a great rural republic, inhabited by an independent yeomanry, and free from the great factories and coal pits of England as well as the serfdom of France. A century after the death of Jefferson the value of manufactured products was five times that of farm products, financial titans and industrial barons dictated policies in Washington, and the farmer seemed in danger of becoming a peasant. The situation may not have been as frightening as the last two clauses would indicate, but neither was the United States free from the conditions which Jefferson sought to avoid. In the United States, as nowhere else in the world, big business was flourishing. A vast and varied supply of raw materials, and the inventions and techniques to put these resources to use, had pushed the country into a leading position as an industrial revolution