Members of the New York Stock Exchange had long smugly thought that employees in the citadel of capitalism had no use for unions. One of these employees, a clerk named M. (for Merritt) David Keefe, thought differently. Too poor to finish high school, he had gone to work for the Exchange in 1928 as a $15-a-week page boy. Like many others, he hoped to get a job with a member house, and then make his fortune. But—also like many others—the 1929 crash plastered Keefe flat to the job he had. By 1941, when he was 32, Keefe was earning $28 a...
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