The Company Store: James Bryson McLachlan and the Cape Breton Coal Miners, 1900-1925

The devastating story of the Cape Breton miners and the strikes they launched against the companies that owned their homes, their possessions, and their churches. Never before has the human drama of North America's last existing feudal system been written down for the general reader. Canadians - and the rest of the world - will shocked by the stories of police brutality and murder, mass demonstrations, rebellions, scandalouos politicking, and most of all, desperate poverty and hunger. The miners had always been paid starvation wages by companies that held total monopolies of such towns as Glace Bay. The first time they launched a strike in 1905, soldiers were brought in and machine guns and barbed wire were set up around the mining communities. Credit was cut off from company stores (the only stores). Miners were evicted from company-owned houses (the only houses) in the middle of winter. The death toll was enormous. Strikes over the next fifteen years simply led to continued harassment and eviction. At one time, the company was permitted, by government order, to employ hundreds of special police, mounted on horseback and supplied with guns and heavy sticks, to batter miners into submission. James Bryson McLachlan was the hero of the Cape Bretoners when he took up their cause and organized the strikers and entered into negotiations with the companies. This book is also his story - and the story of the beginning of the labour movement for all of Canada. --Publisher's description