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The article reviews the book, "The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy," edited by Charles D. Thompson, Jr., and Melinda F. Wiggins.
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The article reviews the book, "The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945," by Cindy Hahamovitch.
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The article reviews the book, "Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labor, 1800-1991," by Bryan D. Palmer.
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Farm workers were central to the development of Canada's prairie West. From 1878, when the first shipment of prairie grain went to international markets, to 1929, when the Great Depression signalled the end of the wheat boom, the role of hired hands changed dramatically. Prior to World War One, hired hands viewed themselves and were treated in the rural community as equals to their farmer employers. Many were farmers in training, informal apprentices who worked for wages so they could accumulate the capital and experience needed to secure their own free 160-acre parcels of land. In later years, as free lands were taken, hired hands increasingly faced the hkehhood of remaining waged labourers on the farms of others. They became agricultural proletarians. In this first full-length study of labour in Canadian prairie agriculture during the period of settlement and expansion, Cecilia Danysk examines the changing work and the growing rural community of the West through the eyes of the workers themselves. World War One was a catalyst in bringing into focus the conflicting nature of labour-capital relations and the divergent aims of workers and their employers. Yet, attempts at union organization were unsuccessful because most hired hands worked alone and because governments assisted farmers by stifling such attempts. The workers' greatest form of workplace control was to walk off one job and find another. --Publisher's description. Previously published in 1995 by McClelland & Stewart. Contents: Introduction -- Labour-Capital Relations in Prairie Agriculture -- Part 1. Beginnings, 1870s-1900. Recruiting the Agricultural Labour Force. Part 2. Expansion, 1900-1918. Agricultural Labour as Apprenticeship -- Class, Culture, and Community -- The Nature of Work --Part 3. Consolidation, 1918-1930. Proletarianization -- The Dialectic of Consent and Resistance -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index.
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Between the 1880s and the Great Depression agriculture emerged and matured as the mainstay of the prairie economy. Farm workers were essential to the developing economy and society, but their place in the rural west was ambiguous. During the pioneering period, labour shortages and accessible land gave farm workers bargaining strength in the labour market and a niche in prairie society. A cooperative working relationship and a shared ideology resulted in a lack of overt conflict between labour and capital. But as lands were taken, farm workers faced more and more the necessity of remaining as wage labourers. Their position became institutionalized. The First World War highlighted the conflict that was fundamental to labour-capital relations, as farm workers and farmers alike bolstered their economic positions. Labour and capital entered the post-war decade recognizing the increasing divergence of their aims. Their relationship became more overtly conflictual. Throughout this transformation, farm workers used strategies to influence the shape and rate of change in the industry and to maintain significant control over their own working lives. They responded as members of the working class, as active agents in relationships with their employers and with capitalism.
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