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The article reviews the book, "Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism 1945-1960," by Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf.

The study of collective violence has generally reinforced national stereotypes that Canada is a "Peaceable Kingdom" and that the United States is extraordinarily violent. This article assesses the historiography of collective violence since the 1960s and offers specific suggestions for further exploration into Canada's riotous experiences. Scholars often assume that Canada's collective violence has been infrequent and less destructive than American episodes. Future research -- with a focus on nativism, the social legitimacy of the crowd, religious and ethnic conflict, the entrenchment of powerful state institutions, and vigilantism -- might prove otherwise. Regardless, Canadian collective violence will be better understood if it is conceptualized in a North Atlantic context.

The article reviews the book, "Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950," by Gilbert G. Gonzalez.

The 1920s is generally seen as a period of defeat for Canadian labour. With the rise of monopoly capital, strike activity and union membership steadily declined in the face of wage cuts, new technologies and corporate welfare schemes. The continental alliance of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada (TLC) that, for the most part, provided labour's leadership during this crisis, proved ineffective. By 1927 a secessionist movement challenged the legitimacy of the AFL/TLC alliance. In March of that year, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees (CBRE), gathered with the One Big Union (OBU), the Canadian Federation of Labour (CFL), and communist-influenced unions, including the Mine Workers' Union of Canada and the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union, to form the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL). It is the focus of this thesis to bring the Congress front and centre and to provide an alternative interpretation of its effort to build a national labour movement in the 1920s--one that was neither opportunistic, anti-communist, nor right-wing. Instead, this thesis supports the contention that the ACCL was a counter-hegemonic, working-class initiative that aimed to improve the political representation and material conditions of the Canadian worker.

The article reviews the book, "Class, Democracy and Labor in Contemporary Argentina," by Peter Ranis.

The article reviews the book "Arctic Revolution: Social Change in the Northwest Territories, 1935-1994," by John David Hamilton.

C.S. Jackson was the labour leader that the establishment loved to hate. Tough, intelligent, courrageous, and incorruptible, he was one of the founders of industrial unionism in Canada in the 1930's. He served as the head of the Canadian division of the United Electrical Workers for 43 years. During that time he battled with some of the world's largest corporations, with powerful politicians who had him interned, and with most of the leadership of the Candianlabour movement. Long-associated with the Communist Party, Jackson and the UE were victimized by the Cold War, expelled from teh Candian Congress of Labour, and subjected to red-baited raids conducted by unions under more moderate political leadership. But in the Cold War, which disfigured both Canadian society and the Candian labour movement, he gave as good as he got. This biography demonstrates that Jackson thrived on conflict and challange and rarely shrank from a confrontation - in either his public or private life. Making extensive use of interviews conducted with Jackson and his associates, it provides an intimate portrayal of one of the most controversial and successful radical labour leaders in Canadian history. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "From Artisans to Paupers: Economic Change and Poverty in London, 1790-1870," by David R. Green.

The article reviews the book, "We Ask for British Justice": Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain," by Laura Tabili.

The article reviews the book, "Union Mergers in Hard Times: The View From Five Countries," by Gary N. Chaison.

The article reviews the book, "Unnecessary Debts," by Lars Osberg and Pierre Fortin.

The article reviews the book, "Voracious Idols and Violet Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg and Basel," by Lee Palmer Wandel.

In this study of the clothing industry in Canada, historian Mercedes Steedman examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and workplace served, often unconsciously, to create a job ghetto for women. Although 'girls', as working women were labelled, comprised a significant majority of garment workers - 80 percent in 1881, at the very beginnings of industrialization; 68 percent in 1941, when the percentage of women in all industrial sectors in Canada was only just over 15 percent - their roles were circumscribed both in the workplace and in the trade union bureaucracy. When strikes occurred, women were at the front of picket lines, gaining sympathy and favourable media coverage for the workers' cause. But when negotiations among union leaders, management, and government officials took place, women were conspicuous by their absence, and the subsequent agreements and job classifications invariably left them with lower wages and marginal status - in an industry where they were numerically dominant and often valued as the better workers. In "Angels of the Workplace," Professor Steedman presents a history of both the garment industry and the role of women in it. The rise of left-wing unionism held out some hope for a more equitable work environment, but by the 1930s a 'new unionism' that focused on labour-management co-operation - and on maintaining male hegemony on the shop floor and at the bargaining table - had formalized gender discrimination in the needle trades for the rest of the century. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Across the Great Divide -- The Industrial Fields of Activity: Send Forth Your Daughters -- Worlds Apart: Women and Unions in the Needle Trades, 1890-1920 -- From Shop-Floor Action to New Unionism: The War Years and After -- Taking a Stand: Civil War in the Needle Trades -- 'A Real Man's Fight': Clothing Battles in the Depression Years -- When the Boys Get Together: Orchestrating Consent -- After the Acts: Setting the Standards, Putting on the Pressure -- Conclusion: 'This Group of Girls and Men .... '

The article reviews the book ,"Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880-1920," edited by Ulla Wikander, Alice Kessler-Harris and Jane Lewis.

The article reviews and comments on extensivel on several books including "The Girl Problem: Female Sexual Delinquencies in New York 1900-1930," by Ruth M. Alexander, "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World," by George Chauncey, and "Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the U.S.," by Mary E. Oden.

The article reviews the book, "Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain," edited by Winston James and Clyde Harris.

The article reviews the book, "People of the Bays and Headlands: Anthropological History and the Fate of Communities in the Unknown Labrador," by John C. Kennedy.

Rather than seeing the mainstream, anti-communist labour leadership in the post-war era as opponents of membership activism and as politically right wing, we might more accurately see them as ideologically-diverse architects of an activism designed to suit the institutional conditions of the new industrial legality in the Cold War era. Labour bureaucrats they indisputably were, but the new regime of industrial relations prompted them to re-examine and to attempt to democratize the basis of their institutional power. Evidence for this thesis is supplied through a study of welfare work and its promoters. Further evidence lies in a survey of idological interpretations of union welfare work and the political uses to which it was put.

The article reviews the book, "Women Workers and Technological Change in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," edited by Gertjan de Groot and Marlou Schrover.