The split between labor and management began in the late 1700's with the rise of merchant capitalism. While in the colonial period, most products were "custom-made," now merchants began working with shop masters to produce goods for wholesale trade on the mass market. With the aid of a transportation system provided by merchants, larger mass-producing factories could force smaller shops to compete by joining the bandwagon and lowering wages and increasing working hours.
Laborers, who produced the goods sold, remarkably could do nothing on their own to combat their employers, the capitalists who owned the factories and raw materials. Employers could always find someone else (often immigrants) to replace them as cheap labor. But eventually workers realized that if they banded together they could accomplish much more...