TWO ENDS OF THE WORKER SPECTRUM

Marxism, Communism, and Socialism all lifted high the rights of the "Worker."  Many of the first labor organizations were coming from these political and philosophical stances.  In fact, in Mao Tsetung's little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung ( Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1972)  The page before the title page reads " Workers of all countries, unite!"   It is interesting to note that the Progressive Movement actually worked to do away with the amatuer in many fields ushering in the era of the professional, the scientist, and the skilled worker as platforms of their reform movements. Although both functioning as radical reform organiations they approached the worker from two sides of the issue.  One raised the common, muscled worker with shovel, pick, or hammer to an almost mythic superman position.   The progressives did the same thing with the schooled, trained, scientifically based 'new professionals'. This in many ways would greatly marginalize the 'worker.'  In the middle was the American middle class - a new and trying to grow group - who were as much in the middle ideologically as they were socially and economically.