Editing Labor history (section)

{{Short description|Sub-discipline of social history}}
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'''Labor history''' is a sub-discipline of [[social history]] which specializes on the history of the [[working class]]es and the [[labor movement]]. Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors besides class but chiefly focus on urban or industrial societies which distinguishes it from [[rural history]].

The central concerns of labor historians include [[industrial relations]] and forms of labor protest (strikes, lock-outs), the rise of [[mass politics]] (especially the rise of [[socialism]]) and the social and cultural history of the [[Proletariat|industrial working classes]].

Labor history developed in tandem with the growth of a self-conscious working-class political movement in many Western countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Whilst early labor historians were drawn to protest movements such as [[Luddism]] and [[Chartism]], the focus of labor history was often on institutions: chiefly the labor unions and political parties. Exponents of this ''institutional'' approach included [[Sidney Webb|Sidney]] and [[Beatrice Webb]]. The work of the Webbs, and other pioneers of the discipline, was marked by optimism about the capacity of the labor movement to effect fundamental social change and a tendency to see its development as a process of steady, inevitable and unstoppable progress.

As two contemporary labor historians have noted, early work in the field was "designed to service and celebrate the Labor movement."<ref>Mike Savage and Andrew Miles, ''The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1840–1940,'' Routledge, 1994, p. 1. {{ISBN|0-415-07320-0}}</ref>