| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Irony of State Intervention: American Industrial Relations Policy in Comparative Perspective, 1914–1939. By Larry G. Gerber. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. viii, 212 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-87580-347-4.)
Comparative histories are revamping our understanding of American history, calling into question longstanding notions of American exceptionalism. The Irony of State Intervention ably assists in that effort. In an exhaustive comparison of U.S. and British industrial relations from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, the historian Larry G. Gerber analyzes the structure of each country's industries to explain differences not only in the degree of union organization, but also in the nature of government labor policy.	1
Gerber's central concern is two landmark pieces of U.S. labor legislation in the 1930s, the National Industrial Recovery Act (nira) in 1933 and the Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act (nlra), in 1935. That legislation swept away an antistatist tradition that had been upheld for generations by American Federation of Labor (afl) craft unions; indeed, the degree of state involvement in the internal affairs of labor and industry in the United States was unprecedented. But why did Great Britain not witness such legislation, despite the fact that unions were stronger there?	. . .

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