I remember my very first seminar with David Montgomery at the University of Pittsburgh in January 1976. Here I was, a working-class kid from Bridgeport, Connecticut, trying to switch from rank-and-file labor activism to an academic career. Montgomery's classroom was an intense experience. His seminars were a combination of readings in secondary sources as well as deep reading in primary sources (whether business magazines, industrial relations expert reports, or radical and union journals). In addition, there were always student-generated political debates on one or another left-wing perspective—we had widely diverse ideological leanings! David accepted all approaches in the New Labor History, as long as the evidence was there.