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' associations but allowed participation of a broad range of sympathetic citizens in addition to those employers apt to be affected by 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' Associations (MOA) or the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
Organizational history
General outline
The Citizens' Alliance movement originated in Dayton, Ohio circa 1900 as a secret society called the "Modern Order of Bees," also known colloquially as the "Hooly-Goolies."Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 3: The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor, 1900-1909. New York: International Publishers, 1964; pg. 26. The group was viewed as an adjunct of a local employers' association, with membership open not only to the narrow circle of employers, but also to any citizen who was not a member of a trade union.Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 3, pp. 35–36.
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.Rosemary Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006; pg. 8.
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."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.
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 Charles W. Post, the breakfast cereal manufacturer, declared that,
Methods
Citizens' Alliance groups also sometimes conducted boycotts in an attempt to isolate and influence employers who sought labor peace through the recognition of unions and collective bargaining. By way of example, in May 1903 representatives of the Denver Citizens' Alliance and the local manufacturer's association conducted an organized campaign to visit local employers with unionized work-forces in order to force them to abrogate their labor contracts.Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 3, pg. 47. Deadlines were issued and boycotts threatened to be visited upon those firms failing to heed to Citizens' Alliance's warnings.
Such hardball tactics drew condemnation in the local press, with the Denver Post opining:
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.Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 3, pg. 48.
National organization
The various locally organized Citizens' Alliances and employers' associations were joined into a unified national organization by a convention held in October 1903 in Chicago, which launched the Citizens' Industrial Association of America.Stuart B. Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino (eds.), The Samuel Gompers Papers: Volume 6: The American Federation of Labor and the Rise of Progressivism, 1902-6. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997; pg. 193, fn. 1.
State-level activities Alabama Birmingham
A Citizens' Alliance group was formed in Birmingham, Alabama in August 1903.
California San Francisco
The year 1900 saw dramatic growth of trade unionism in San Francisco, then the largest city on the Pacific Coast.Robert Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1960; pg. 44. 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 on the East side of San Francisco Bay. 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 and Berkeley of the East Bay.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 45. 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.
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. 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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pp. 46–48. 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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pp. 49–50.
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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 66. 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.
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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 67. 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. 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. A series of increasingly bitter strikes followed, with labor further pushing the envelope with the establishment of the 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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 131. 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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pp. 139–140.
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.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 140. 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. 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.
The San Francisco Citizens' Alliance branch claimed to have a membership of 16,000 in the fall of 1904.Knight, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918, pg. 141. As such, it was the largest branch of the organization in the state. Membership in the organization was bolstered by pressure said to have been exerted by employers on their managerial staff to join the group. Additionally, local offices of the Chamber of Commerce made efforts to drum up support for the group among their membership.
Other cities
In addition to its San Francisco branch, the Citizens' Alliance also maintained local organizations in Los Angeles (purportedly the largest group in the nation relative to size of the city); Stockton and Bakersfield in the Central Valley; Oakland, San Jose, and Palo Alto in the Bay Area; and Fort Bragg on the North Coast.
The Los Angeles Citizens' Alliance branch was notably headed by 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.
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.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. It had a war chest of nearly $20,000.Suggs, Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, pg. 68. 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."Suggs, Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, pg. 69."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.