Pre-Wagner Act labor relations
![History Image](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20130214154738im_/http://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/documents/users/user2591/prewagner1.jpg)
![History photo](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20130214154738im_/http://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/documents/users/user2591/prewagner2.jpg)
The Labor-Management truce during World War I evaporated after the armistice in 1918. The following year, unions lost major strikes in the steel, coal, and rail industries. Union membership dropped from more than five million members in 1920 to three million members in 1933—just 300,000 more than in 1914. Hostility between labor and management ran high in the 1920s. It was during this
![History photo](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20130214154738im_/http://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/documents/users/user2591/prewagner3.jpg)
In the depths of the Great Depression, during the last year of the Hoover Administration in 1932, Congress passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which curbed the power of the courts to issue injunctions or restraining orders against strikes, absent violence or fraud. Congress declared the policy of the United States to be that workers were free to join unions and bargain collectively.
Photos (top to bottom): Drilling Department, National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, 1902; City Mission, Dubuque, Iowa, April, 1930; Police attacking striking textile workers, Passaic, N.J., 1926.