> I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed?
Wait, are you really going to try and give unions credit for antitrust laws (ie, the laws that OP is referring to)?
The first antitrust laws outlawed collusion, which also had the effect of outlawing a lot of common union activities as well. Labor unions fought to exempt themselves from antitrust laws.
I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.
> I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.
Nobody's saying that these were "utterly independent forces". I'm pointing out that the relationship between them was the exact opposite of what you claimed. Labor unions opposed antitrust laws which outlawed the sorts of behavior OP described; they certainly weren't responsible for it like you tried to claim.
It sounds like you're interested in ignoring the actual details of the history which disprove your point, in order to paint a certain narrative. In that case, there's probably not much point in discussing further, because that's not what a good-faith discussion looks like.
Wait, are you really going to try and give unions credit for antitrust laws (ie, the laws that OP is referring to)?
The first antitrust laws outlawed collusion, which also had the effect of outlawing a lot of common union activities as well. Labor unions fought to exempt themselves from antitrust laws.