CITIZENS' ALLIANCE

CITIZENS' ALLIANCE. The Citizens' Alliance movement began in Dayton, Ohio around 1900 as a secret society called the "Modern Order of Bees," also known colloquially as the "Hooly-Goolies."[1] The group was related 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.[2]

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 worked to strength the rights of working people; the employers' Citizens' Alliance of 1903 attempted to end union power.[3] As the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) represented large industrialists, the Citizens' Alliance groups' membership was smaller local associations united in the belief that organized labor was "evil and un-American."[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."[5]

Citizens' Alliance groups sometimes carried out boycotts to isolate and influence employers who worked for labor peace through the recognition of unions and collective bargaining. Deadlines were issued and boycotts were threatened on businesses which failed to accept Citizens' Alliance's warnings.[6] Boycotts by local Citizens' Alliance groups including both organized refusals to sell components to and buy finished products from firms not in compliance. [8]