Abstract
The rise of organized labor has been one of the impressive phenomena of the Twentieth Century. This thesis, a history of unionization in Waterloo, Iowa, seeks to explore a small local facet of the larger nation-wide movement. I chose Waterloo as the locale of my study because of its placement in a farming region of the Midwest and because most of the city’s employment is provided by two very different companies: one a family-owned packinghouse and the other a branch of a large implement manufacturing corporation. Waterloo’s labor history presents on the local level, the original struggle of the American Federation of Labor for the right to unionize, the opposition of management, the fear and apathy of workers, the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations for the benefit of unskilled workers, strikes and violence, and the present problem of automation. In the story of this Iowa city, vaguely diffused national generalizations become sharply focused local realities.