The Deep History of the Closed or Union Shop

This chapter discusses how the evolution of the closed shop fits into the larger puzzle of shifting ideas about the market, governance, and democracy in the century or so after the American Revolution. It first examines the evolution of the membership requirement in the nineteenth century. Next, it turns to examining how regulation of work related to regulation of other economic activity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. The final section considers how craft unions’ claims to governance conflicted with the way courts interpreted a liberal vision of the exclusive powers of the state as well as with developing ideas about the liberty of contract and markets. It also examines workers’ different responses to the state and the market as represented by the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.