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The article reviews the book "Seeking the Highest Good: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1937," by Sara Z. Burke.
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The article reviews the book "A Marriage of Convenience: Business and Social Work in Toronto 1918-1957," by Gale Wills.
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The debate about public funding and regulation of childcare has always had as its central focus: should mothers be encouraged or discouraged from seeking paid work outside the home? While some scholars argue that labour needs -- the "reserve army" thesis --best explain resulting public policies regarding childcare, this article argues that campaigns by women's organizations, sometimes aided by mixed-sex progressive social organizations, have been more important in public policy-making. Discourse on paid work for women with children has shifted from 1945 to 1990 from extremely negative to ambivalent. But the Right has limited the impact of women's mobilization for shared state responsibility for childcare by insisting on childcare arrangements as a working mother's responsibility.
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This article reviews the book, "Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century Britain," by Royden Harrison & Jonathan Zeitlin, edited.
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The article reviews the book, "Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit," by Bob Hesketh.
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The article reviews the book, "Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta," by Edward Bell.
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The article reviews the book, "Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910-1945," by David Laycock.
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In the period following World War II, Alberta's Social Credit government passed several pieces of restrictive legislation which limited labour's ability to organize workers and to call strikes. The enforcement of labour law also reflected an anti-union bias. This article argues that Social Crediters, who had a penchant for conspiracy theories, believed that union militancy was the product of the manoeuverings of an international communist conspiracy. Their labour legislation was intended to foil the conspiracy's plans in Alberta and incidentally to reassure potential investors, particularly in the oil patch, of a good climate for profit-taking. But the path for such legislation was made smoother by the conservatism of one wing of the labour movement in the province and the fear of being tarnished with the communist brush by the other wing. On the whole, the Alberta experience casts a grim reflection on the theory that the post-war period provided a measure of industrial democracy for Canadian workers.
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While Alberta is generally regarded as a conservative province, its early labour movement was class conscious and, for many years had a significant political impact provincially and in many municipalities. The Labour Party, which united trade unions and socialists of every stripe (until its expulsion of the Communists in 1929) reflected the determined independence of Alberta workers: its leaders and members were almost exclusively working-class. But the party was always an uneasy alliance between those who saw politics purely in electoral terms and those who emphasized extra-parliamentary activity. And the election in 1921 of a Farmers' government caused divisions about how closely Labour should work with a non-Labour government. After the purge of the Communists, those who favoured an exclusive concentration on electoral activity and close collaboration with the Farmers, held sway. Their narrow conception of politics turned the Labour Party increasingly into a private preserve of union bureaucrats and created a political vacuum into which Social Credit stepped in.