Davis and Bacon felt it was wrong for workers from other areas to be herded together to work for lower wages than the standard in that state. .

             An important labor leader in the early labor movement was Francis Perkins. Francis Perkins devoted much of her life to the improvement of the American Worker. While going to school at Mt. Holyoke College, Perkins gained an interest in social reform. This interest grew when she joined the National Consumer League, which had a goal to improve labor conditions through consumer pressure. In 1928, New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins as the head of the state labor department. Four years later, when Roosevelt was elected to the presidency, Perkins was asked to be his secretary of labor. Perkins played a major role in Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression. She also was an advocate of social security, wage and hour regulation, and the abolition of child labor.

             Eugene V. Debs was another famous labor leader. Debs made the first major attempt to form a labor union for both skilled and unskilled workers of a specific industry. This attempt was the American Railway Union. Debs also played a major role in the Pullman Strike in 1894. He asked for arbitration and when Pullman refused to negotiate Debs and the American Railway Union began boycotting Pullman train. Later in the Pullman strike Deb was arrested. While in prison Debs realized his true calling. He became a spokesperson for the Socialists Party of America and ran for president five times. Surprisingly, in 1912, he won 900,000 votes. A famous quote of Deb's was, "I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.".

             A significant strike of the past was the aforementioned Pullman Strike. The Pullman strike began during the Panic of 1893. The Pullman Company laid off three thousand of its fifty-eight hundred employees.