"By incorporating the perspective of gender, labor, business, social, and political history, Tone adds significantly to our understanding of the development of welfare capitalism."
* Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"Tone's panoramic analysis of welfare capitalist programs across the industrial landscape of Progressive era America challenges all previous works even as she acknowleges her debt to them.... Tone has written a compelling history... and a first-rate study which goes a long way to helping us understand why the American welfare state is so weak and so easily eviscerated today."
-- Daniel J. Walkowitz * Journal of Social History *
"Fluent and well-researched... This impressive work locates itself neatly in the existing literature and makes its own contribution by offering a sense of the structures, nuances and forms of early welfare work."
* Labor History Review *
"A splendid book."
-- Michael B. Katz * American Historical Review *
"Tone's basic thesis is that 'welfare work' provided a means for firms to forestall government regulation of working conditions and to improve their public image and relations with workers.... A thorough and thoughtful survey of an important episode in the development of corporate labor policy."
* Choice *
"Andrea Tone's refreshing new volume deftly combines business, labor, cultural, and gender history to resituate walfare capitalism in its contingent historical setting.... Tone's work is thought-provoking and adds complexity to the historiography of welfare capitalism."
-- John Williams-Searle * Annals of Iowa *
