Taft joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and, while working in the northern Great Plains as a harvest hand, became an organizer.
Later he assisted with legal defense of IWW members in New York City where he was befriended by Roger Baldwin, a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1952, Taft pushed Brown University to join with a newly formed Rhode Island businessmen's committee to study the economic problems of the state.
In 1963, Taft won a grant from the Ford Foundation to study the financial difficulties confronting, and the economic impact of, an aging populace.
Two months before Taft's death, George Meany summed up the labor movement's gratitude by writing, "Generations of students will continue to benefit from your scholarship and understanding of the economic, social and human aspects of the world of work.
The highly sought-after and prestigious annual award goes to a book of original research which explores ...the history of workers (free and unfree, organized and unorganized), their institutions, and their workplaces, as well as scholarship that explores the ways in which broader historical trends have shaped working-class life, including but not limited to: immigration, slavery, community, the state, race, gender, and ethnicity.
[2]Taft's papers are maintained at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, which is housed at the Catherwood Library at Cornell University.