Selling Free Enterprise
The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60
Business's tireless campaign to undermine worker power and the public good
Paper – $29
978-0-252-06439-5
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/1994
About the Book
The post-World War II years in the United States were marked by the business community's efforts to discredit New Deal liberalism and undermine the power and legitimacy of organized labor. In Selling Free Enterprise, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf describes how conservative business leaders strove to reorient workers away from their loyalties to organized labor and government, teaching that prosperity could be achieved through reliance on individual initiative, increased productivity, and the protection of personal liberty.Based on research in a wide variety of business and labor sources, this detailed account shows how business permeated every aspect of American life, including factories, schools, churches, and community institutions.
About the Author
Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf is a professor of history at West Virginia University. She is the author of Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio, 1933-58 and the coauthor of Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie.Also by this author
Reviews
Blurbs
"Analyzes corporate America's ideological crusade with a comprehensiveness, clarity, and sophistication that no other work can match."--Gary Gerstle, author of Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960
Awards
Winner of the First Book Award from Phi Alpha Theta, 1995.Related Titles
