o trade unions that were able to withstand open-shop employers and two severe economic depressions. Labor unions in Los Angeles were virtually stripped of their influence in the aftermath of the First World War. During the 1930s, however, the labor unions regained strength and tripled their membership in less than a decade (Lewis 210-226).
Three major characteristics emerge from the labor history of San Francisco and Los Angeles (Kazin 375). The first characteristic was that, with little opposition, urban federations of skilled craftsmen dominated the labor movement until the 1930s. White women, agricultural workers of all races, and menial laborers in the cities at times acted on their own; however, the objectives and accomplishments of their few efforts were limited in "almost every case by the ideological and institutional hegemony of craft unionists" (Kazin 376). Key to this craft union supremacy was the sustained influence of strong, city-wide central labor federations in
...