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"Without Blare of Trumpets" provides a fresh look at the twentieth-century open shop movement. It reveals the central role played in that movement by the National Erectors' Association and by its commissioner, Walter Drew. Fine presents an absorbing account of the union-organized dynamiting campaign and illuminates the critical behind-the-scenes part played by Drew in one of the greatest labor trials in all of American history. This important book adds to our understanding of the building and construction industry employer resistance to unionism, the role of the government in industrial relations, and the impact of the New Deal labor-management relations. "Without Blare of Trumpets" makes a major contribution to the fields of labor history, business history, and industrial relations. It will be of interest to students and scholars in many areas of American history, and to all those interested in the welfare of American jobs and American workers. Sidney Fine is Andrew Dickson White Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Michigan, and the author of numerous books and articles.

At the opening of the twentieth century, labor strife repeatedly racked the nation. Union organization and collective bargaining briefly looked like a promising avenue to stability. But both employers and many middle-class observers remained wary of unions exercising independent power.

Vilja Hulden reveals how this tension provided the opening for pro-business organizations to shift public attention from concerns about inequality and dangerous working conditions to a belief that unions trampled on an individual's right to work. Inventing the term closed shop, employers mounted what they called an open-shop campaign to undermine union demands that workers at unionized workplaces join the union. Employer organizations lobbied Congress to resist labor's proposals as tyrannical, brought court cases to taint labor's tactics as illegal, and influenced newspaper coverage of unions. While employers were not a monolith nor all-powerful, they generally agreed that unions were a nuisance. Employers successfully leveraged money and connections to create perceptions of organized labor that still echo in our discussions of worker rights.