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Jeffrey Haydu. Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916 . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. x + 268 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-4641-2, $39.95 (cloth).

Jeffrey Haydu has written a well-researched and thought-provoking study of class formation, labor relations, and upper class civic life in Cincinnati and San Francisco during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He describes the key differences between employers in these two cities, drawing distinctions between the open shop (antiunion) policies practiced by Cincinnati’s business community and the more accommodationist strategies embraced by San Francisco’s businessmen. While employers in Cincinnati challenged the legitimacy of trade unions and strongly opposed collective bargaining, those in San Francisco, responding to a powerful labor movement, adopted what Haydu calls “practical corporatism” to deal with “responsible” union leaders (4). Like other scholars of organized employers and labor relations, including Philip Scranton, Daniel R. Ernst, and Howell J. Harris, Haydu focuses chiefly on “proprietary firms of modest scale,” noting that they “dominated both local economies” (7). What explains the differences between Cincinnati and San Francisco? In Haydu’s view, one must look beyond the shop floor and the picket line to understand fully why these two communities of employers drew different conclusions about how best to approach the so-called labor problem. In Cincinnati, businessmen’s collective identities were shaped in large part by their dislike of political corruption, high taxes, and the March 1884 Court House riot, a three-daylong melee that resulted in the courthouse’s destruction, hundreds of injuries, and fifty-four deaths. The rioters were disappointed that the jury convicted William Berner of the relatively lenient charge of manslaughter for killing his boss. Cincinnati’s civic-minded businessmen were shocked by the rebellion, viewing it as the ultimate threat to order and respectability. In the years following this event, they associated most displays of working class protests and union activities with challenges to what Haydu calls “good citizenship” (16). Sensitive to public relations, they leveled several complaints against