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Reviewed by:
  • Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916
  • Robert D. Johnston
Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916. By Jeffrey Haydu (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008) 268 pp. $38.95

Truth in advertising: It is difficult for a reviewer to be fair in reviewing a book that so brazenly ignores his or her own work, especially when that work seems as if it should be central to the issues at hand.

Haydu's Citizen Employers is about an important subject—the relation between employers and workers in the era that witnessed the birth of corporate capitalism. Labor historians do not much approve of studying bosses, and business historians generally worry only about strikes that impede productivity. Haydu is right in arguing that the nexus between employer and employee is a neglected subject.

Moreover, Haydu has developed an extremely useful analytical angle to this question. He has found two American cities where the relationship between labor and capital substantially differed. In Cincinnati, an early labor/artisanal republicanism and mutuality of interest turned into a hard-edged conflict between workers and employers, whereas in San Francisco business and labor engaged, to a remarkable degree, in cooperative behavior. This distinction occurred despite the fact that proprietary capitalists controlled the economy of both cities.

Haydu asks two general questions about these issues: First, how do we best study the relationship between labor and capital? Second, how do we explain the differences between Cincinnati and San Francisco?

The standard answer to the first question would be "follow the money," or, rather, "explore the material interests of both sides of the equation and try to discern the economic incentives for cooperation or (mainly) conflict." Haydu's attempt to counter this materialist approach is compelling. He powerfully argues that the collective identities, and the organization, of employers—particularly in the realm of politics—are more important than economics in explaining the interaction between business communities and labor. The visions of a good civic life developed by businessmen, Haydu effectively contends, are not mere rationalizations of economic selfishness but serious and legitimate ideologies crucial to explaining the general hegemony of business in American life.

This point leads directly to the second question. The best way to distinguish Cincinnati's business leaders from those in San Francisco is to note the differences in the civic identities developed by each city's business leaders. In Cincinnati, employers took their earlier republicanism [End Page 628] in the direction of upholding the ideal of the virtuous citizen who worked for the interest of the community in a selfless, nonpartisan way. Unions—selfish, partial to their own cause, and contentious—undermined a united community. The logic of employers' sense of identity (in combination, to be sure, with their economic interest) impelled them into a vigorous open-shop campaign. In contrast, a combination of economic and political forces, as well as a shared sense of racial privilege against Chinese "coolies," produced a "practical corporatism" in San Francisco. This ideology allowed for—even honored—the role of unions in a competitive, interest-based civic life, at least until a constellation of events after 1911 put an end to such "San Francisco exceptionalism."

Haydu's arguments make a certain amount of sense, although they are not as distinctive or powerful as he would suppose. Enter the scorned author. My book, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, 2003), offers a dramatically different reading of the social, economic, and political roles of small employers. While agreeing that politics and economics must be integrated into any analysis of what we might call "the question of the petite bourgeoisie," I find in early twentieth-century Portland a strong strain of class fluidity and democratic radicalism along the border between small employers and unionists—one not at all dependent on racial identity. For example, printer Will Daly, who nearly became mayor in 1917, was a powerful labor leader—even at times a Socialist—who maintained his anticapitalist radicalism even after becoming a successful small employer.

As the result of completely ignoring my book (notwithstanding an inconsequential mention...

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