At the beginning of the twentieth century in the U.S., "most American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions did not admit unskilled mass-production workers."[3] Selig Perlman wrote in 1923 that skilled workers organized into craft unions were more interested in trade separatism than in labor solidarity.[4] The craft workers were capable of demanding more from their employers due to their skills, and preferred to fight separately from unskilled or semiskilled workers.[5] In Perlman's words, the trade unions "declared that their purpose was 'to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to beggary'."[6]