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The article reviews the book, "To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York," by Renqiu Yu.

In compliance with the Third Period "line" of the Communist International (Comintern), the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) launched The Workers' Unity League (WUL) as a centre of "revolutionary" or "red" unionism in December 1929. Until it was "liquidated" during the winter of 1935-6, the WUL had a significance in Canada's Depression labour struggles far outweighing its maximum membership of between 30,000 and 40,000; a significance, moreover, that has yet to be fully acknowledged or analysed. This article seeks to look beyond the conventional view that presents the CPC as a Comintern cipher and the WUL (when it is considered at all) as a "sectarian", "adventurist", "ultra-left" organisation with no real interest in building stable labour unions. While there is no doubt that the two most crucial decisions concerning the WUL — to create it and to liquidate it — were taken in Moscow, neither the Comintern nor the CPC leadership in Toronto was in a position to supervise the implementation of the Third Period line on the ground. Within the broad parameters of the line, local organisers tended to operate as "good trade unionists" rather than "good bolsheviks", using every available opportunity to modify and adapt tactics to local realities. They used their room for manoeuvre to considerable effect, especially during the economic and political upturn of 1933-34, when the WUL led a majority of all strikes and established union bases in a host of hitherto unorganised or weakly organised industries. At the height of its power, however, the WUL knew that it had barely dented the essential mass production industries — auto, steel, rubber, farm machinery. This fact, coupled with the experience of defeat in several key strikes,forced the party to reconsider the WUL's future. Whether the WUL could have survived as part of a national union centre remains open to question. Indisputably, the Comintern terminated that option in 1935.

The article reviews the book, "'Nations Are Built of Babies': Saving Ontario Mothers and Children 1900-1940," by Cynthia R. Comacchio.

The article reviews the book, "Les carnets de David Thomas : roman," by Andrée Dandurand.

Examines crown attorney prosecution files at the Archives of Ontario as primary source material on communism in Canada, union organizing, strike activity, state surveillance, the role of women and youth in left-wing politics and the labour movement, and gender and sexual relations in labour organizing. Discusses several court cases and reproduces a 1929 Communist Party leaflet used as evidence in charging four women with circulating seditious pamphlets. Concludes that the evidence in the files sheds light on the collective struggle for economic and social justice for working people.

The article reviews the book, "Culture, Gender, Race and U.S. Labor History," edited by Ronald C. Kent, Sara Markham, David R. Roediger, and Herbert Shapiro.

The article reviews the book, "From Liberal to Labour With Women's Suffrage: The Story of Catherine Marshall," by Jo Vellacott.

From the mid- to late 19th century, the small settler population in British Columbia formed relatively isolated and highly discrete communities. One of these settlements, on Burrard Inlet, is best understood as the operation of industrial capitalism in a frontier setting. While settlement clustered around two sawmills, the power of capital -- expressed through policies of managerial paternalism -- was sharply curtailed by the ethnically complex, relatively transient, geographically isolated, and generally unstable nature of lumber society. As a consequence, relations between the companies and the community were much more a negotiated process than a simple exercise of managerial domination. Lumber capitalists could not escape the constraints imposed upon them by the frontier nature of their operation.

The article reviews the book, "The system of industrial relations in Canada," 4th edition, by Alton W.J. Craig and Norman A. Solomon.

The article reviews the book, The Origins and Evolution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States, by Bruce E. Kaufman.

The article reviews the book, "The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica," by Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith.

A.E. SMITH was a central figure in the Communist Party from the mid-1920s until his death in 1947. An advocate of the radical Social Gospel until at least 1923, Smith's interchange with leading members of the Canadian Communist movement, the growing prestige of the Soviet State, and his disillusionment with the social democratic movement in Canada and abroad, combined during the post-war epoch of reaction to cause a shift in his perspective away from the optimistic verities of the Social Gospel to his apocalyptic vision of the Communist International. While he retained his basic epistemological perspective after 1923, Smith's estrangement from the non-Communist left led to his political isolation and, in early 1925, to his entry into the Communist Party. (English)

The late "Lefty" Morgan, a British Columbia railway engineer, outlines his philosophy of workers' control in this fascinating volume. The volume has a scholarly introduction by University of New Brunswick anthropologist, Gail Pool, and University of Toronto PhD student in anthropology, Donna Young. They situate Lefty politically and historically and locate Lefty's work in current debates about workers' control. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Human Resource Management in Canada," by Thomas H. Stone and Noah M. Meltz.

Depuis le 1er janvier 1994, Québec s'est doté d'un nouveau Code civil qui établit, en harmonie avec les chartes, le droit commun applicable aux rapports entre les personnes. Ainsi se pose la question de l'harmonisation de ces règles à celles qui régissent les rapports particuliers entre employeurs, syndicats et salariés. La question est d'autant plus intéressante que ce nouveau Code civil traite directement de la relation de travail et qu'il ne comporte aucune réserve à l'endroit du Code du travail et des conventions collectives. L'arrivée de ce nouveau Code civil imposera une délicate gestion des conflits de droit en raison de l'inévitable rencontre de ces deux codes, Code civil et Code du travail, et de leur acte respectif, le contrat de travail et la convention collective.

They came north like a storm surge of humanity, those wartime workers driven by the forces of World War II. Men and women, black and white, civilian and military, they outnumbered and effectively overwhelmed the largely Native population of Canada's northwest. Under harsh and unfamiliar conditions, they built what the war effort needed - airfields, roads, pipelines. Then, like a storm tide when the winds have passed, they receded from the North, leaving both the terrain and themselves forever changed. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "The First Forty Years: A History of the Tunnel and Rock Workers Union Local 168," by M. C. Warrior and Mark Leier.

The article reviews the book, "The English Occupational Song," by Gerald Porter.

The article reviews the book, "A Way of Work and a Way of Life: Coal Mining in Thurber, Texas, 1888-1926," by Marilyn Rhinehart.

The article reviews the book, "Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina," by Bill Cecil-Fronsman.