Administrative Politics and Labor Policy in the First World War: The U.S. Employment Service and the Seattle Labor Market Experiment

William J. Breen

Business History Review, 1987, vol. 61, issue 4, 582-605

Abstract: Although Woodrow Wilson's administration was slow to develop a coherent, comprehensive labor policy during the First World War, it did experiment with a scheme designed to test the effectiveness of centralized government control over the labor market. This experiment, confined to shipyard labor in the Seattle district, involved a cooperative agreement among shipyard management, organized labor, the U.S. Employment Service of the Department of Labor, and the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the U.S. Shipping Board. It quickly became obvious that the four parties to the agreement had different objectives, and a bitter but unpublicized administrative struggle developed, with each group trying to manipulate the experiment in ways that would promote its own interests. The deadlocked bureaucratic struggle in Seattle undermined support for the Department of Labor and served to retard rather than to accelerate centralization of the wartime labor market.

Date: 1987
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