At various times historians have shown interest in ways that firms have distinguished themselves by being model employers. The heads of these firms, unlike their stereotypical colleagues, do not believe in the classical theory of labor supply in which workers present themselves in an infinite supply at the market price. In the conventional historiography, the hey-day of this form of welfare capitalism comes in the 1920s, when businessmen held a sort of moral sway over the nation. Then, in the 1930s, welfare capitalism breaks down in the face of the collapse of the labor market that we call the depression. As the price of labor falls and the demand for products declines, benevolence no longer pays substantial dividends.
Government steps in to offer a sort of alternative form of welfare capitalism.
Through legislation the government mandates that workers have the right to bargain through representatives of their own choosing and workers also have the right to pensions and unemployment compensation that are supplied by the government, rather than the company. Whatever the results of this argument, the outcome remains the same. In the 1930s, the torch gets passed from welfare capitalism to a new world in which both unions and the government, often acting in tandem, have a substantial presence. Welfare capitalism is a subject for the first third of the twentieth century and not more recent times. Of course, that conventional view is just plain wrong.