Full bibliography

The story of the Newfoundland Industrial Workers' Association (NIWA) is one which has largely been passed over in the writing of the island's labour history. Yet this organization figures prominently in the events which helped shape the labour-capital relationship during the World War I years. As the Canadian and international record will testify, these years were critically important to the development of modern working-class organizations, while maintaining a direct link to the previous struggles of an earlier era. Centred in St. John's, but exerting an Island-wide influence, the NIWA arose out of a pressing need for working people to confront the economic and political realities of their class in a manner intended to redress the subservient and exploitive circumstances to which they were subjected. This thesis examines the NIWA in terms of its structure, membership, and mandate and attempts to place this movement into the larger context of the international labour revolt of 1917 to 1920. In doing so, it argues that class formation, development, and conflict is central to history.