Robert A. Heinlein made them the instruments of social upheaval in the 1940 short story The Roads Must Roll.
Labor unions, which had been treated negatively in "The Roads Must Roll", are here subjected to even more severe and categorical criticism, where a significant portion of the plot revolves around Max's attempts to enter the closed guild system of the spacelines' officers and crew.
Damon Knight, in his introduction to the paper-back edition from the New English Library edition of The Past Through Tomorrow, Vol 1., compares the story to then-current power of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union.
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The technicians who maintain the Stockton section of the road have been persuaded by a radical social theory, Functionalism, that their role in maintaining the nation's transport infrastructure is more important than that of any other workers and that they should therefore be in control.
Maureen lives through, and gives her (sometimes contradictory) viewpoints on many events in other Heinlein stories, most notably the 1917 visit from the future by "Ted Bronson" (in actuality Lazarus Long), told from Long's point of view in Time Enough for Love, D. D. Harriman's space program from The Man Who Sold the Moon and the rolling roads from The Roads Must Roll.
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