One study of the history of social welfare in the Western world found that by 1950, the Beveridge report had been cited by over twenty countries when they introduced important social welfare programmes in the 1940s and 1950s. If one wishes to confirm the significance of the shift wrought by the war, it is instructive to compare the politics of social welfare in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s with those of North America. At the heart of the post-war capitalist system in the USA, there may not have been a dramatic extension of the welfare state, but organized labour seized the opportunity presented by the Second World War to increase its influence. Arguably, the fact that organized labour had a seat at the table in Washington from the 1940s through the mid-1960s was the most important post-war development for the average working man in the USA.