- Givens, Richard Ayres. “The Milwaukee Brewery Strike of 1953”; 1954.Notes: M.S. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1954. 64 leaves. The first half (p. 1-33) of this thesis details the story of the strike by the brewery workers at six Milwaukee, Wisconsin breweries from May 14 to July 28, 1953. The breweries involved in the strike were the Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Blatz, Gettelman, and Independent (Braumeister) breweries and the employees on strike were represented by the Congress of Industrial Organization’s United Brewery Workers Union Local 9. Givens was able to interview several key management and union people involved with the strike, including Local 9’s corresponding secretary, John Schmitt, who went on to be elected president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO in 1966.Major issues of contention in the contract negotiations were increased wages and reducing to thirty-five the hours of the work week. For a long time the employees at breweries located in the Midwest had been being paid less favorable wages than employees of breweries located on the eastern and western coasts of the United States, with the brewery owners maintaining that those lower wages insured that breweries would continue to be concentrated in the Midwest. With the threat in the near future of an economic recession, union leadership was increasingly worried about loss of jobs due not only to the annual seasonal fluctuations, but also due to the possibility of future permanent workforce reductions caused by trends in the brewing industry. Givens uses most of the second half (p. 34-55) of the thesis to discuss how economic trends within the brewing industry affected this 1953 labor dispute, especially the factors of increasing productivity due to improvements in labor-saving machinery, the concentration of production among large firms through acquisition of smaller firms, and the decentralization of those large firms through construction of geographically-distributed branch plants.
- Jones, Mary Harris Mother. “Girl Slaves of the Milwaukee Brewers”. United Mine Workers Journal. 1910 Apr 7; 20(47):2. Notes: How eloquently Mother Jones writes here of the dismal plight on the job for the young women who work in the bottle washing departments of the Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, and Blatz breweries in Milwaukee, Wisconsin–the constant wet shoes and wet clothes leading to early rheumatism and consumption, the pitiful wages, the foul language and unwelcome sexual attentions of the foremen! Unable to win any relief for the “Girl Slaves of the Milwaukee Brewers” from either the owners of the Milwaukee breweries or from the Wisconsin legislature in Madison (the state’s capital), in spite of two months of agitation, Mother Jones ends this article by calling upon “all fair minded people to refrain from purchasing the product of these Baron Brewers.”
- Schlueter, Hermann. The Brewing Industry and the Brewery Workers’ Movement in America. New York: Burt Franklin; 1970. 331 p. (Burt Franklin: research and source works series, 611; Burt Franklin: history, economics and social science, 204). Notes: An overview volume of the brewing industry in the United States and Canada from its earliest days during the colonial period up to 1910, when the volume was originally published by the International Union of United Brewery Workmen of America and the history of the development of this union. The author has taken care to provide sufficient context to show how technical and economic developments within the industry in the United States affected strategies used by brewery owners and the unionization advocates among the employees of the industry.This book is available in ‘full view’ in the Google Books website: 1) go to Google Books at: http://books.google.com/; 2) then, put in the search box: Brewing Industry and the Brewery Workers’ Movement in America; 3) then, click on the first listing, which is for the 1910 edition in English, and the entire text will open up for you in PDF.Because no index was provided in this work, here are noted the pages where discussion about Milwaukee will be found: p. 50, 53, 73, 75, 126, 134, 141 (in table), 146-149, 163, 165, 172-173, 177, 179-182, 184, 186, and 265-266.
Another edition: Schlueter, Hermann. The Brewing Industry and the Brewery Workers’ Movement in America. Cincinnati, Oh.: International Union of United Brewery Workmen of America, 1910. 331 p.
Another edition: Schlueter, Hermann. Brau-Industrie und Brauarbeiter-Bewegung in Amerika. Cincinnati, Oh.: Internationaler Verband der Ver. Brauerei-Arbeiter von Amerika, 1910. 327 p.
- Wisconsin State Brewers Association. The Wisconsin Brewing Story. S.l.: Wisconsin State Brewers Association; n.d. [196?].  p. Notes: Prepared as a lobbying tool to impress the reader with the extent of the impact of the brewing industry on the economy of Wisconsin (which at the time had more breweries than any other state), this work is valuable for the photograph included of each of the then current twenty-eight Wisconsin breweries, as well as photographs of thirty-two Wisconsin manufacturers of brewery supplies.