Citizens' Alliance

For other uses, see Citizens' Alliance (disambiguation).

Citizens' Alliance was a name commonly adopted by groups of pro-employer individuals, associations, or corporations that existed in the United States from approximately 1903 to 1915, and that were formed in opposition to unions of workers. The Citizens' Alliance often worked closely with other employers' organizations, such as Mine Owners' Associations (MOA) or the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

The term "citizens' alliance" was adopted from the name of a populist era campaign of 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.^[1][2]

If the 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,"^[3] and they formed a working bond through the national Citizens' Industrial Alliance (CIA), which likewise adopted a name similar to the National Citizens' Industrial Alliance. The CIA became the national parent of the local Citizens' Alliance groups, and through these local chapters it was able to reach a much broader audience than could the NAM.^[4]

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,

"Two years ago the press and pulpit were delivering platitudes about the oppression of the working man. Now this has all been changed since it has been discovered that the enormous Labor Trust is the heaviest oppressor of the independent workingman as well as the common American Citizen."^[4]

Minnesota

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:

"I believe we should endeavor to strike at the root of the matter, and that is to be found in the wide spread socialistic sentiment among certain classes of people."^[5]

Parry later became the first president of the Citizens' Industrial Alliance.^[4]

Members of the Commercial Club, Minneapolis business leaders and their supporters who would sponsor the local Citizens' Alliance, responded favorably to the demand,

"Law and order must be enforced and ... class domination over industry is not going to be tolerated."^[5]

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).^[6]

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 war between the owners of American industry and the working class."^[5]

Colorado

James C. Craig became president of the Citizens' Alliance of Denver,^[7] which enrolled nearly 3,000 individual and corporate members within three weeks after its creation. It had a war chest of nearly $20,000.^[8] 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."^[9][10] Membership was restricted to persons, firms, associations, or corporations owning property, or engaged in business in Colorado, with members of labor organizations specifically excluded.^[11] 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 gold mining district, where the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) had declared a strike. The Colorado Citizens' Alliance:

"...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."^[12]

In Idaho Springs, Colorado, miners were rounded up by an Alliance-connected citizens' organization and banished at gunpoint during a strike for the eight hour day. During the 1903 strike in Telluride, the San Miguel County Citizens' Alliance circulated a petition accusing union leaders of the murder of William J. Barney, an out-of-town worker who had walked away from his job as a mine guard after only a week. A grand jury had concluded there was no evidence a crime had been committed, but members of the Alliance ignored that conclusion. When the alleged victim appeared in court seeking a divorce one year after he'd disappeared, at least two Alliance members discovered he was still alive. That knowledge didn't serve their purpose so they ignored it.^[13]

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.^[14] 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.^[15]

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.^[16] 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.^[17]

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 bullpens, or banished.^[18] 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.^[19] Even "loitering or strolling about" was criminalized in an effort to crush the union.^[20] 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.^[21] Ultimately, many died and many families were torn apart in the successful effort to expel the union by force of arms.

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."^[22] And the Cripple Creek District Citizens' Alliance delivered resolutions to the Colorado Governor which starkly expressed their goal of "controlling the lawless classes."^[23]

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."^[22] 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.^[24] They arranged for the Denver Advertisers' Association to boycott newspapers that expressed disapproval of the Citizens' Alliance and the Mine Owners' Association.^[25] 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.^[25]

See also

Organized labour portal

• History of union busting in the United States
• Anti-union violence

References

1. ^ Declaration of principles, platform, constitution and by-laws of the National Citizens' Industrial Alliance and proceeding of the National Assembly held at Topeka, January 13 to 17, 1891, Alliance Tribune, 1891.
2. ^ Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950, Rosemary Feurer, page 8.
3. ^ A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, William Millikan, 2001, page 31.
4. ^ ^{a b c} A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, William Millikan, 2001, page 33.
5. ^ ^{a b c} A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, William Millikan, 2001, page 30.
6. ^ A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, William Millikan, 2001, page 42-43.
7. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 67.
8. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 68.
9. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 69.
10. ^ "This association is secret, and its deliberations shall be held confidential, and its name shall be The Citizens' Alliance of Denver, Colorado..." Article I, Citizens' Alliance Constitution, as recorded in A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, January 27, 1905, page 46.
11. ^ Article III, Citizens' Alliance Constitution, as recorded in A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, January 27, 1905, page 46.
12. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, page 204.
13. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, page 142-147.
14. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, pages 208 and 210.
15. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, pages 210 and 212.
16. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, page 206, 216, and 238.
17. ^ The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, pages 241-243.
18. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 105-106.
19. ^ All That Glitters—Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, Elizabeth Jameson, 1998, page 213.
20. ^ All That Glitters — Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, Elizabeth Jameson, 1998, page 214.
21. ^ All That Glitters — Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, Elizabeth Jameson, 1998, page 218-219. Company L was also referred to as the Victor militia.
22. ^ ^{a b} Statement published in American Industries on May 16, 1904, as recorded in A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, January 27, 1905, page 48.
23. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 147.
24. ^ Statement published in American Industries on May 16, 1904, as recorded in A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, January 27, 1905, page 49.
25. ^ ^{a b} Statement published in American Industries on May 16, 1904, as recorded in A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado, from 1880 to 1904, Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, January 27, 1905, page 50.