"[This book] is packed with interesting historical facts, based on the author's examination of an impressive volume of primary and secondary resources."—Jonathan Cutler, author of Labor's Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW, and the Struggle for American Unionism
"Richard Greenwald shows how in Progressive Era New York garment workers, middle-class reformers, and Tammany politicians, in coalition and conflict, created new approaches to industrial relations and reform politics that remain with us today. Even those who think they know this story will learn a great deal from this lucid, engaging account."—Joshua B. Freeman, Professor of History, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
"By linking of the Protocols of Peace with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Richard Greenwald recasts the history of industrial relations with verve and insight into gendered assumptions and class relations. With a cast of characters that includes giants of modern liberalism like Robert Wagner, Louis Brandeis, and Florence Kelley, he details how the private system of industrial adjustment intersected with a public system of labor standards to elevate middle-class expertise over worker empowerment. His is a model study of reform, labor, and the state."—Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara