Episode Notes

Thank you all for your support! Please check the link to the 'tip jar' below if you would like to support my work!

This episode covers the story's major antagonist, the Minneapolis Citizen's Alliance, and its thirty-year war on organized labor. We cover the reasons for its founding, its capitalist ideology (and a Marxist critique of it), and specific historical instances of the organization at work and the tools they used.

The title comes from Karl Marx who argued that society was ruled by capitalists, both in the economy and in the state (legislatures, courts, bureaucracy, military, police, etc.). While Millikan does not use this term to describe the Citizens' Alliance, the CA's close alliance with the state and its unusual control of the local economy warranted the description, in my view.

I forgot to note that the first strike I cover, the streetcar strike, occurred in 1889.

Major historical source: William Millikan, Union Against Unions The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903–1947 (Minnesota Historical Society: 2003).