Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960

• Published in: Labour Vol. 39; no. 39; pp. 326 - 327
• Main Author: Scheinberg, Stephen
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Committee on Canadian Labour History 22.03.1997; Canadian Committee on Labour History
• Subjects: Business history; Community relations; Corporations; Education; Free enterprise; History; Industrial democracy; Labor unions; Labour history; Labour relations; Liberalism; Political activities; Political culture; Propaganda; Reviews/Comptes Rendus; Social justice; U.S.A; United States > US
• DOI: 10.2307/25144141
• ISSN: 0700-3862

The author gives us numerous examples of both union and employer efforts to use radio, television, and print to promote their positions. For the most part, however, she addresses only the more narrowly conceived propaganda of each side. Unlike [Lizabeth Cohen], who portrayed the impact of commercial films, radio, and records, as well as broader aspects of the consumer culture, [Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf] limits her study to the propaganda produced by the business associations and unions themselves. In rare departures she mentions On the Waterfront, the portrayal of labour in the Orphan Annie comic strip, and in the last paragraph of the book Ronald Reagan's work for General Electric. Yet, in the business offensive against the unions surely the business of mass communications had a more important role in the formation of consciousness than the tons of propaganda pamphlets produced by the National Association of Manufacturers. The "selling of free enterprise" by business was the very day work of Hollywood, the television industry, radio and the press. Perhaps that is a subject for a different study but its omission is disappointing.