Associated Industries of Seattle was an organization of local businessmen formed after the General Strike of 1919, which soon became the largest business opposition to the labor movement in Seattle. With 425 members, many of Seattle's leading companies were represented, and the group operated spies throughout the city into 1920. The organization created the "American Plan," first publicized in The Seattle Daily Times on October 14, 1919, advocating for what later became known as the "open shop," or a business that could hire a worker without considering union membership.

Published on December 10, 1919, this booklet was written by Altnow-Singleton-Hield, Inc., of Seattle and explains the creation of the American Plan in response to the "teachings of the foreign-born agitators, the Bolsheviki of America." The history is joined with 15 pages of reproduced newspaper articles from the Seattle Daily Times and the Post-Intelligencer, to offer a model for how other cities can defeat their labor unrest. The final four pages give concrete steps to implementing this action in the reader's own city, even including sample street car cartoons and newspaper publicity.

Caption source information: "Anti-Labor Reactions and Labor Espionage," Digital Resources Guide for the Labor Archives of Washington," University of Washington Libraries, Digital Collections, http://content.lib.washington.edu/portals/law/antilabor.html.