" A one-of-a-kind study, providing an insight into the complex nature of labor relations in the United States, a perspective on the power of class and business alliances in American politics, and an exploration into the ways powerful interests have used the state to distort the labor market, the workplace and the political arena. This book will reshape the way we think and teach about labor and politics in the twentieth-century American city."

Elizabeth Faue, professor of history, Wayne State University, author of Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945.

"One cannot read this book without becoming a more astute viewer of and listener to the 'news', a more skeptical reader of
the newspapers, and a more determined pursuer of alternative sources of information....I suspect that many readers will have
their eyes opened by A Union Against Unions, and quite a few will not like what they see.  But all will recognize the
remarkable achievement that this book represents."

Peter Rachleff , professor of history, Macalester College, author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the
Future of the Labor Movement.

"A Union Against Unions is an important and welcome book for historians interested in the employer side of industrial relations...Millikan's exhaustive research into the CA's records and other primary sources provides historians of business, labor and industrial relations insight into the workings of class warfare in Minneapolis.... A valuable and detailed case study."

---Enterprise & Society, The International Journal of Business History


 

"A fine study that explores the philosophy of the Citizens Alliance and its effort to thwart unionization in Minneapolis during the first half of the 20th century. Millikan effectively uses a variety of sources...to meticulously detail the complex nature of business-labor relations in Minnesota...This thoughtful study explains the power of the business class and how it sought to manipulate labor." ---

Choice


 

"A chilling story of how Minneapolis employers waged an all out war against the working class...An important contribution to the literature on the history of employer associations."

---Journal of American History


 

"This book should alter how business history, labor history, and labor-relations scholarship are practiced. It is a masterpiece of painstaking, irrefutable historical research based on exceptionally thorough, diligent, and careful use of a very wide range of hard-to-find primary sources."

Richard Valelly, professor of political science at Swarthmore College, author of Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy.


 

"William Millikan's brilliant and exhaustive study of the Minneapolis Citizens Alliance is at once a dramatic narrative of labor relations, an incisive history of the urban political economy of Minneapolis and St.Paul, and a fundamental reassessment of the politics of reform and reaction through war, depression, New Deal, and war....This is an immensely important book." ---

Colin Gordon, associate professor of history University of Iowa, author of New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America 1920-1935.

"Millikan has created a compelling narrative on the power of business elites to undermine conditions for fair negotiations
between employers and workers, manipulate local and state political institutions, and subvert movements for social and
economic justice during the first half of the 20th century.

Labor History