Samuel Peter Orth is an author about whom relatively little biographical information is available; public sources contain no confirmed record of his nationality, dates of birth and death, or personal career. On the evidence currently at hand, his one representative work is The Armies of Labor: A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-Earners, a volume in a historical series that deals with organized wage-earning groups and thus falls at the intersection of labor history and world history. Judging from the title and its classification, Orth's writing tends toward a chronicle-style account of the labor movement and the development of trade unions, presenting to general readers the historical process by which wage earners organized themselves. Works of this kind are usually marked by clear narrative and well-defined lines of development, making them suitable introductory reading on the history of modern labor organization. Since only one of his works is held here and biographical background is lacking, a fuller assessment of the author must await further material.
