Milk the Iron Cow begins in the months leading up to December 7, 1941, during World War II. The story is set in the Midwestern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has a huge industrial capacity: foundries, machine-shops, factories, rails systems, and water-ways. The lake-port and river docks are beehives of ships loading soldiers and war materials. Day and night, on the streets near the docks, there is a constant roar of motors as trucks arrive and leave from loading and unloading stations.

This is a time when the industrial might of the US was converted from making automobiles and washing machines to airplanes and bombs; a time when men carried guns instead of lunch pails; a time when machines stood idle because there was no white men to operate them; a time when white women left home to take the place of white men in the factories. This is a time when most unions and companies continued to ban Negroes from skill-training or employment in all but janitorial jobs; a time when white men refused to have black men work alongside them; a time when colored men and women protested racial discrimination in employment, and along with the Urban League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and A. Philip Randolph, of the Brotherhood of Sleeping-Car Porters' Union, took that protest to the streets, the courts, and to the president of the United States.

Milk the Iron Cow is for lovers of a good story. Educators could find it entertaining and informative as a supplement in courses such as American History, Ethnic Studies, Social Studies, and African and African American Studies.