The American economy at the turn of the century offers an excellent opportunity to study the functioning of relatively unregulated labor markets. The essay surveys the economic history literature to determine how well labor markets operated in the early 1900s. After examining the mobility of...

Although workers, employers, and insurance companies by 1910 supported the adoption of workers' compensation, they fiercely debated the specific features of the legislation. In this paper we examine how workers' compensation benefit levels were determined in the political process of forging...