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{{Short description|State and local anti-union organizations in the early 20th-century United States}}
{{Use American English|date=March 2023}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2023}}{{Other uses}}
'''Citizens' Alliances''' were state and local anti-[[trade union]] organizations prominent in the [[United States of America]] during the first decade of the 20th
▲'''Citizens' Alliances''' were state and local anti-[[trade union]] organizations prominent in the [[United States of America]] during the first decade of the 20th Century. The Citizen's Alliances were closely related to [[employers' association|employers' associations]] but allowed participation of a broad range of sympathetic citizens in addition to those [[employers]] apt to be affected by [[strike action|strikes]]. Originating in the American state of [[Ohio]] as the "Modern Order of Bees," the Citizens' Alliance movement spread westwards, playing a particularly important role in [[labor relations]] in the states of [[Colorado]] and [[California]]. Citizens' Alliance groups often worked in tandem with smaller but better financed employers' organizations interested in establishing or maintaining [[open shop]] labor conditions, including the [[Mine Owners' Association]]s (MOA) or the [[National Association of Manufacturers]] (NAM).
==Organizational history==
===General outline===
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The term "Citizens' Alliance" was adopted from the name of a political organization established more than a decade earlier. The populist National Citizens' Industrial Alliance of 1891 sought to bolster the rights of working people; the employers' Citizens' Alliance of 1903 sought to curtail union power.<ref>Rosemary Feurer, ''Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950.'' Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006; pg. 8.</ref>
If the [[National Association of Manufacturers]] (NAM) represented the large industrialists, the Citizens' Alliance groups were composed of smaller local associations. These entities were united in the belief that organized labor was "evil and un-American."<ref>William Millikan, ''A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor.'' St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001; pg. 31.</ref>
Within three years it was perceived that the "educational campaigns" of the NAM and the CIA had reversed public opinion and ended the growth of unionism. At the 1906 CIA convention [[C. W. Post|Charles W. Post]], the breakfast cereal manufacturer, declared that,
===Methods===
Citizens' Alliance groups also sometimes conducted [[boycott
Such hardball tactics drew condemnation in the local press, with the ''[[Denver Post]]'' opining:
▲"The Citizens' Alliance and the employers' association have adopted one of the very methods of unionism that they condemn so vehemently — the submit or be destroyed method — to bring offending employers in line. They certainly can no longer wonder where laboring men get their ideas for pushing strikes and boycotts. If these steps had been taken by unions, all the better class, so-called, in the city would be loud in denouncing them."<ref>''Denver Post,'' c. May 15, 1903, quoted in Foner, ''History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 3,'' pg. 47.</ref></blockquote>
Boycotts imposed by local Citizens' Alliance groups hit both sides of the production chain, including both organized refusals to sell components to and organized refusals to buy finished products from subject firms.
===National organization===
The various locally
==State-level activities==
===
====Birmingham====
A Citizens' Alliance group was formed in [[Birmingham, Alabama]] in August 1903.<ref name=Gomp6-193 />▼
James C. Craig became president of the Citizens' Alliance of Denver,<ref>George G. Suggs, Jr., ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners.'' Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1972; pg. 67.</ref> which enrolled nearly 3,000 individual and corporate members within three weeks after its creation. It had a war chest of nearly $20,000.<ref>Suggs, ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism,'' pg. 68.</ref> The organization had a "clandestine character", and all the inner workings of the organization were enshrouded "in deep secrecy", raising the possibility that "the group might take extralegal action against all organized labor."<ref>Suggs, ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism,'' pg. 69.</ref><ref>"Article I, Citizens' Alliance Constitution," in Carroll D. Wright (ed.), ''A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado: From 1880 to 1904, Inclusive, With Correspondence Relating Thereto.'' Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Labor, 1905; pg. 46.</ref> Membership was restricted to persons, firms, associations, or corporations owning property, or engaged in business in Colorado, with members of labor organizations specifically excluded.<ref>"Article III, Citizens' Alliance Constitution," in Wright (ed.), ''A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado,'' pg. 46.</ref> Local Citizens' Alliance organizations throughout Colorado made up the Colorado Citizens' Alliance, which formed a close partnership with the [[Mine Owners' Association]] and with the [[Colorado National Guard]]. Together, these groups engaged in widespread extra-legal activities in the [[Cripple Creek, Colorado|Cripple Creek gold mining district]], where the [[Western Federation of Miners]] (WFM) had declared a strike. The Colorado Citizens' Alliance:▼
===''California''===
====San Francisco====
The year 1900 saw dramatic growth of trade unionism in [[San Francisco]], then the largest city on the Pacific Coast.<ref name=Knight44>Robert Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918.'' Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1960; pg. 44.</ref> By the middle of that year the California Bureau of Labor Statistics counted no fewer than 90 trade unions in the city of San Francisco and an additional 24 in neighboring [[Alameda County, California|Alameda County]] on the East side of [[San Francisco Bay]].<ref name=Knight44 /> The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated a total union membership of 20,000 for San Francisco — a significant percentage of the city's approximately 340,000 residents — as well as 3,000 more in [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] and [[Berkeley, California|Berkeley]] of the East Bay.<ref name=Knight45>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 45.</ref> Moreover, while these mid-year figures may have represented something of an overcount due to methodological errors by the BLS, the trade union movement was unquestionably experiencing rapid growth and may well have exceeded these estimates by the end of the year.<ref name=Knight45 />
The demands of these growing unions for a shorter working day and higher wages put pressure upon local employers. A series of strikes swept the city, the most bitter of which being a battle between the San Francisco Building Trades Council and Bay Area [[planing-mill]] employers attempting to establish the [[8-hour day]].<ref name=Knight45 /> A newly unified Bakers' Union won a six-day work week, retail clerks unionized and campaigned for 6 pm closings, and unionized electrical workers and [[longshoremen]] won wage gains as the result of strike actions.<ref>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pp. 46-48.</ref> Local garment workers of the Cloakmakers' Union conducted an effective boycott against three local manufacturers, gaining the cooperation of retail stores and maintaining pickets against the involved companies.<ref>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pp. 49-50.</ref>
Many employers, interested in maintaining the status quo in terms of hours and wages, sought to organize themselves against their increasingly organized workers. This took concrete form in April 1901 when there was established the [[Employers' Association of San Francisco]].<ref name=Knight66>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 66.</ref> This organization maintained strict secrecy as to its size, membership composition, financing, and goals, but it emerged before the public eye in May, when it first attempted to exert organized opposition in San Francisco labor disputes.<ref name=Knight66 />
The secrecy employed by the Employers' Association created public image of a mysterious and omnipotent force; in reality the group included only a small minority of San Francisco's employers.<ref name=Knight67>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 67.</ref> Those which did participate, however, were among the city's largest and best-financed, and new members were required to post financial guarantees of their observance of the policies advanced by the organization.<ref name=Knight67 /> It was estimated that even by May 1901 a war chest of $150,000 had been amassed for the organized fight against trade unionism — a total which union leaders believed to have doubled or tripled by the end of that first summer.<ref name=Knight67 /> A series of increasingly bitter strikes followed, with labor further pushing the envelope with the establishment of the [[Union Labor Party (California)|Union Labor Party]] that same year, followed by the electoral capture of City Hall.
It was in this context that the Citizens' Alliance movement emerged in California, as a component of the anti-union reaction to growth of organized labor in the state's urban center of San Francisco. The first branch of the Citizens' Alliance was established in the city sometime in the winter of 1903–04.<ref>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 131.</ref> The organization, which worked hand-in-glove with the Employers' Association of San Francisco, was the local reflection of a national campaign on behalf of the [[open shop]] and drew active interest and support from the National Association of Manufacturers and other industrial leaders eager to see organized labor's West coast stronghold deconstructed.<ref>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pp. 139-140.</ref>
At the time of the establishment of San Francisco Citizens' Alliance a critical strategic decision was made: rather than making use of well-connected local employers to staff the organization, professional anti-union functionaries were imported.<ref name=Knight140>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 140.</ref> The organization also made the determination to engage in [[political action]] in an attempt to wrench the city administration of San Francisco from the hands of the Union Labor Party.<ref name=Knight140 /> Although not initially clear at the time, these two decisions had the unanticipated effect of increasing the unity of the labor movement and thereby helping to assure a third term of ULP control in the election of 1905.<ref name=Knight140 />
The San Francisco Citizens' Alliance branch claimed to have a membership of 16,000 in the fall of 1904.<ref name=Knight141>Knight, ''Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918,'' pg. 141.</ref> As such, it was the largest branch of the organization in the state.<ref name=Knight141 /> Membership in the organization was bolstered by pressure said to have been exerted by employers on their managerial staff to join the group.<ref name=Knight141 /> Additionally, local offices of the [[Chamber of Commerce]] made efforts to drum up support for the group among their membership.<ref name=Knight141 />
====Other cities====
In addition to its San Francisco branch, the Citizens' Alliance also maintained local organizations in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] (purportedly the largest group in the nation relative to size of the city); [[Stockton, California|Stockton]] and [[Bakersfield, California|Bakersfield]] in the [[Central Valley (California)|Central Valley]]; Oakland, [[San Jose, California|San Jose]], and [[Palo Alto, California|Palo Alto]] in the [[San Francisco Bay Area|Bay Area]]; and [[Fort Bragg, California|Fort Bragg]] on the [[North Coast (California)|North Coast]].<ref name=Knight141 />
The Los Angeles Citizens' Alliance branch was notably headed by [[Harrison Gray Otis (publisher)|Harrison Gray Otis]], publisher of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' and well known as one of the most bitter opponents of organized labor in the state.<ref name=Knight141 />
===''Colorado''===
====Denver====
▲James C. Craig became president of the [[Citizens' Alliance of Denver]], which enrolled nearly 3,000 individual and corporate members within three weeks after its creation.<ref>George G. Suggs, Jr., ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners.'' Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1972; pg. 67.</ref>
Membership was restricted to persons, firms, associations, or corporations owning property, or engaged in business in Colorado, with members of labor organizations specifically excluded.<ref>"Article III, Citizens' Alliance Constitution," in Wright (ed.), ''A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado,'' pg. 46.</ref> Local Citizens' Alliance organizations throughout Colorado made up the Colorado Citizens' Alliance, which formed a close partnership with the [[Mine Owners' Association]] and with the [[Colorado National Guard]]. Together, these groups engaged in widespread extra-legal activities in the [[Cripple Creek, Colorado|Cripple Creek gold mining district]], where the [[Western Federation of Miners]] (WFM) had declared a strike. The Colorado Citizens' Alliance:
====Telluride====
▲<blockquote>"...claimed its purpose was for protection and to resist the unlawful demands of the unions, with 'unlawful' meaning anything the unions requested. The thinly veiled objective was the eradication of the Miners' Union and, on the state level, the obliteration of the entire WFM."<ref>MaryJoy Martin, ''The Corpse On Boomerang Road: Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908.'' Lake City, CO: Western Reflections Publishing Co., 2004, page 204.</ref></blockquote>
Accusations that the strikers were a threat to mines, mills, power stations, reservoirs, train trestles, power lines, and trams were used to justify occupation by the national guard. The real purpose was protection of strikebreakers.<ref>Martin, ''The Corpse On Boomerang Road,'' pp. 208, 210.</ref> The Citizens' Alliance helped to decide who was arrested and who walked free, and union sympathies were the determining factor. Some union arrestees were brutally treated, with pistol blows to the head and rifle blows to the body. But generally, union men in Telluride were too well-behaved, and new criminal offenses had to be invented. For example, men simply standing together were guilty of conspiracy. "Offensive carriage" became a crime when union men "disturbed the peace and quiet" by the way they stood and walked. Undercover Pinkerton spy [[George W. Riddell]] was arrested on such a charge with a group of strikers and determined during incarceration, perhaps to no one's real surprise, that the miners had no plans of the sort with which they'd been accused.<ref>Martin, ''The Corpse On Boomerang Road,'' pp. 210, 212.</ref>
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The Alliance in Telluride advertised that there was no strike, and, with the militia, they "acted as a fortified employment agency for the mines." Meanwhile, union miners could have pockets stuffed with money, but were still found guilty of vagrancy and expelled.<ref>Martin, ''The Corpse On Boomerang Road,'' pp. 206, 216, 238.</ref> Finally, the Citizens' Alliance in Telluride acted as a vigilante mob, issuing itself national guard rifles and rounding up the remaining sixty-five union men and supporters late on an icy night. Some of the detainees were without shoes and shirt, most without coats or hats. About fourteen of them were injured, at least one was robbed, and all were forced out of town.<ref>Martin, ''The Corpse On Boomerang Road,'' pp. 241-243.</ref>
====Cripple Creek====
In Cripple Creek the Citizens' Alliance organizations of Colorado willingly participated in the suspension of the Bill of Rights by the National Guard. To crush the union, its leaders were arrested without cause and either thrown in [[Bullpen#Response_to_labor_unrest_.28United_States.29|bullpen]]s, or banished.<ref>Suggs, ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism,'' pp. 105-106.</ref> Prisoners who won [[habeas corpus]] cases were released in court and then immediately re-arrested. A local newspaper was placed under military censorship, with all union-friendly information prohibited. Freedom of assembly was not allowed. The right to bear arms was suspended—citizens were required to give up their firearms and their ammunition.<ref>Elizabeth Jameson, ''All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek.'' Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998; pg. 213.</ref> Even "loitering or strolling about" was criminalized in an effort to crush the union.<ref>Jameson, ''All That Glitters,'' pg. 214.</ref> After spasms of violence — some of them brutal crimes that were never properly investigated — the Citizens' Alliance and their allies wrecked union halls throughout the district, and looted four union cooperative stores.<ref>Company L was also referred to as the Victor militia. See: Jameson, ''All That Glitters,'' pp. 218-219.</ref> Ultimately, many died and many families were torn apart in the [[Colorado Labor Wars|successful effort to expel the union]] by force of arms.▼
▲In Cripple Creek the Citizens' Alliance organizations of Colorado willingly participated in the suspension of the Bill of Rights by the National Guard. To crush the union, its leaders were arrested without cause and either thrown in [[Bullpen#
If the Minneapolis Citizens' Alliance sought to hide the nature of their actions, their Colorado equivalents minced no words. The struggle between employers and employees was viewed as a relationship imbued with class interests. Craig declared that one purpose of the Denver Citizens' Alliance was "correcting and preventing pernicious class legislation."<ref name=AmInd48>"Statement published in ''American Industries,''" May 16, 1904, reprinted in Wright (ed.), ''A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado,'' pp. 48-50.</ref> And the Cripple Creek District Citizens' Alliance delivered resolutions to the Colorado Governor which starkly expressed their goal of "controlling the lawless classes."<ref>Suggs, ''Colorado's War on Militant Unionism,'' pg. 147.</ref>▼
▲
Craig wrote that the Citizens' Alliance movement "has completely counteracted the terror and influence of the boycott, the unlawful and un-American weapon of the unions."<ref name=AmInd48 /> In order to accomplish the goal of counteracting union boycotts, the Citizens' Alliance in Colorado used boycotts of its own. In hiring, they arranged for employers to boycott union members.<ref name=AmInd48 /> They arranged for the Denver Advertisers' Association to boycott newspapers that expressed disapproval of the Citizens' Alliance and the Mine Owners' Association.<ref name=AmInd48 /> They arranged for Cripple Creek newspapers to refuse to advertise the store of the Interstate Mercantile Company, which had bought out the stock of goods in a Western Federation of Miners store that had been ransacked by a mob.<ref name=AmInd48 />
===''Minnesota''===
====Minneapolis====
In his book ''A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor'', William Millikan writes that David M. Parry stated "the true nature of the United States business community's drive against union labor" when he addressed the Minneapolis Commercial Club in 1903:
Parry later became the first president of the Citizens' Industrial Alliance.<ref name="Millikan 33" />
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In Minnesota, Citizens' Alliance leaders focused on defeating organized labor by establishing anti-union policies and legislation at the city, state, and federal levels. They sought to accomplish this, in part, by helping to incorporate the Minnesota Employers' Association (MEA).<ref name="Millikan 42-43">Millikan, ''A Union Against Unions,'' pp. 42-43.</ref>
Millikan observes that Parry let slip in a moment of candor what the Minneapolis Citizens' Alliance would seek to keep secret for three decades: this was "a [[Class conflict|war between the owners of American industry and the working class]]."<ref name="Millikan 30" />
===
====Dayton====
In an effort to curb the local union movement in [[Dayton, Ohio]], a Dayton Employers' Association was established in 1900.<ref name=BeginsCampaign />
▲A Citizens' Alliance group was formed in [[Birmingham, Alabama]] in August 1903.<ref name=Gomp6-193 />
===''Washington''===
====Seattle====
Formation of the Citizens' Alliance of Seattle was announced in the ''Seattle Star'' late in September 1904. Annual dues were set at $31 per year, with a $1 initiation fee and headquarters opened in the city's Lumber Exchange Building.<ref name=BeginsCampaign>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22185661/citizens_alliance_begins_campaign/ "Citizens' Alliance Begins Campaign Among Employers,"] ''Seattle Star,'' vol. 6, no. 192, night edition (Oct. 3, 1904), pg. 1.</ref> Jacob Furth of the Seattle Electric Company was selected as the local organization's first president, with other officers coming from the managements of other local commercial concerns.<ref name=BeginsCampaign />
The Citizens' Alliance of Seattle was launched behind a five-point program that promised support of the open shop, opposition to sympathetic strikes and boycotts as well as [[picketing]] and other forms of "unlawful coercion and persecution," the enforcement of existing laws, and the unfettered use of apprentices.<ref name=BeginsCampaign />
The anti-union employers' organization claimed to be organizing in self-defense amidst an ongoing effort to expand the organized labor movement, with five organizers of the [[American Federation of Labor]] said to be already present in the city of Seattle with three more said to be en route.<ref name=BeginsCampaign />
===''Wisconsin''===
====Beloit====
A Citizens' Alliance was organized in [[Beloit, Wisconsin]] in June 1903.<ref name=BeginsCampaign /> The group claimed success in breaking one of the most influential trade unions in that city, with the Beloit Teamsters' Union surrendering its charter in February 1904.<ref name=BeginsCampaign />
==See also==
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* [[History of union busting in the United States]]
* [[Anti-union violence]]
* [[American Protective League]]
* [[Italian Hall disaster]]
==Footnotes==
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==Publications== <!---chronological--->
* ''Declaration of Principles, Platform, Constitution and By-laws of the National Citizens' Industrial Alliance and
==Further reading==
* Carroll D. Wright (ed.), [
[[Category:Trade unions in the United States]]
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