Labor and Capital
Historian Carey McWilliams once commented that the struggle between labor and capital in California has been one of "total engagement." The struggle was especially intense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when organized labor steadily increased its strength and challenged the powers of corporate America. "Closed shop" San Francisco emerged as one of the most thoroughly unionized cities in the nation. In contrast, the opponents of organized labor remained dominant in Los Angeles, led by Harrison Gray Otis and his Times.
Radical organizations appealed to discontented workers and called for fundamental economic and political change. The Wobblies in California organized migratory farmworkers and stirred intense opposition from farm owners. The Mooney case revealed the fiery passions that swirled around the ongoing contest between labor and capital.