The declining incidences of strikes in the United States and some Research Paper

The declining incidences of strikes in the United States and some possible explanations - Research Paper Example To understand the extent and causes of this phenomenon, one needs to leaf through the labor history of this country. Once the European settlements grew in America, notions of prosperity based on agricultural development slowly started to be replaced by the mineral wealth mined out from the earth. Gold and silver became the most coveted attributes and mining expeditions often ended up in looting of ancient civilizations like Aztecs and Incas. The American labour class emerged from the Native Americans who were deprived of their godly havens of Mother Nature and left to toil for a living by this new civilization. (Nicholson, 2004, p.4). Expansion of trade succeeded the crusades of 13, 14 and 15th centuries. America along with the whole world was witnessing the birth of the merchant class, the bourgeoisie. Colonies in Africa were established initially to exploit the rich natural resources but eventually the merchants realized that they could make use of the physical capabilities of the black Africans to further their commercial interests. America started importing African slaves who thereby joined the labour forces of the country. When following the civil war, slavery was finally abolished in 1865, all the free slaves got consolidated into a more visible form of working class. Thus it was the ethnic mix of natives and black slaves that formed the labouring masses of this country. Philip Yale Nicholson, writing on the labour history of USA had noted several historians observing that â€Å"the wealth produced by slavery and slave trade provided the economic foundation for the industrial revolution and that plantation slave labour was the precursor to the property-less industrial working class or proletariat.† (Nicholson, 2004, p.6) The working conditions of the early labourers were so inhuman that the human spirit in them often revolted in the form of â€Å"theft of property, flight into the wilderness or other colonies, rebellions, slowdowns, strikes, mutinies