In the early 1900s, tragedies such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Sinclair Lewis’s exposé The Jungle about the meat-packing industry, contributed to the growth of labor unions. Over the next several decades, unions won shorter hours, higher wages, and better conditions for laborers, many of them immigrants and minorities. The number of people in the middle class rose. But, since the mid-1950s, as union membership has declined from a peak of 33% to less than 7% today, income inequality has risen to levels not seen since the era of the “robber barons.” Read more about the exploitation of workers and early labor laws in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
