Citizens' Alliance

Citizens' Alliances were state and local anti-trade union organizations prominent in the United States of America during the first decade of the 20th century. The Citizen's Alliances were closely related to employers' associations but allowed participation of a broad range of sympathetic citizens in addition to those employers apt to be affected by strikes. Originating in the American state of Ohio as the "Modern Order of Bees," the Citizens' Alliance movement spread westwards, playing a particularly important role in labor relations in the states of Colorado and California. Citizens' Alliance groups often worked in tandem with smaller but better financed employers' organizations interested in establishing or maintaining open shop labor conditions, including the Mine Owners' Associations (MOA) or the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

The Citizens' Alliance movement originated in Dayton, Ohio circa 1900 as a secret society called the "Modern Order of Bees," also known colloquially as the "Hooly-Goolies." The group was viewed as an adjunct 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.

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 sought to bolster the rights of working people; the employers' Citizens' Alliance of 1903 sought to curtail union power.

If the National Association of Manufacturers (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."

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