During July 1910, antiliquor activists hired twenty-three private detectives to raid three illicit saloons in Newark, Ohio. Deputized by the mayor of a nearby town, these agents sought to serve “search and seizure” warrants, which authorized them to confiscate liquor as evidence of illegal sales. In doing so, they assumed the duties of the Newark police, who had refused to enforce county prohibition. But their actions only led to tragedy.

In the last two decades, one of the central debates of civil rights historiography has concerned the role that the federal government played in securing the gains of the civil rights era. Historians have often been critical of the federal government's inaction, pointing out that it was only pressure from the civil rights movement itself that prompted federal action against Jim Crow. Other scholars have studied the civil rights record of the federal government by analyzing a single issue during several administrations. In this vein, there have been studies of the federal government's involvement in areas as diverse as black voting rights and racial violence against civil rights workers. These studies have both recognized the importance of federal intervention and have also been critical of the federal government's belated and half-hearted endorsement of civil rights.

In 1920 the Pennsylvania Railroad sued several small coal companies over water pollution. The lawsuit, ultimately decided in the railroad's favor, overturned an earlier Pennsylvania court decision that granted a property right to pollute, and, more important, now represents a major transitional period in American water policy history. The period marked the end of water policy generated from court decisions and case law, and the beginning of an era dominated by legislative statute and agency interpretation. With the Pennsylvania case, the impacts of nineteenth-century court decisions that sanctioned pollution to encourage business waned as concern for the nation's public health demanded more expansive attention, and industry itself began to experience excessive costs from corrupted water resources. In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, lawmakers attempted to institute a new strategy for economic interest in harmony with efforts to improve environmental quality.

Robert Zieger's “Historians and the U.S. Industrial Relations Regime” offers both a crisp historiographical survey of the field and a thoughtful agenda for further research. Iagree with much of what he has to say, particularly concerning our fascination with the first fifteen yearsof modern labor policy (running from the early New Deal through the Taft-Hartley Act) and our relative neglect of the postwar era. Having said this, I want to turn our attention back to 1935, in part because the Wagner Act is such an important and defining moment, and in part becauseZieger casually dismisses critical interpretations of the Wagner Act's passage and logic as “ahistorical” or “ideologically-driven speculations.” As one whose scholarship is caricatured in this way, I appreciate the opportunity to respond.