Search

This paper deals with an attempt by the farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan to have the economy regulated to their advantage. Through parity, the farmers hoped to have the prices of the goods they bought controlled by the values of those they had to sell. The agitation in favour of parity prices lasted ten years, and it culminated in a massive 30-day farm strike in autumn 1946. At the heart of the whole matter was the issue of agrarian survival. The struggle for parity involved marginal farmers who worked small acreages and had large overheads. These producers were being impoverished by their inability to compete with their more mechanized counterparts. The ultimate failure of their protest marked the end of the non-competitive farmers' existence in agriculture. But despite its failure, the agitation reveals not only the similarities between the industrialization process in its urban and rural contexts, but also the difficulties involved in transferring forms of dissent from one sector to the other.

This article reviews the book, "Le droit de grève, fondements et limites," by Pierre Verge.

Le « raisonnable deraisonnable! » ou la rationalite du raisonnable.

Les tenants et aboutissants de la convention collective.

Rapports collectifs du travail dans les secteurs publics quebecois ou le nouvel equilibre selon la loi du 19 juin 1985.

This article reviews the book, "The Company Store: James Bryson McLachlan and the Cape Breton Coal Miners 1900-1925," by John Mellor.

This article reviews the book, "Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948," by Dan O'Meara.

This article reviews the book, "Menuisier charpentier. Un artisan du bois à l'ère industrielle," by Yvan Fortier.

Introduces and publishes with minor editorial corrections the long-suppressed Bradley report of 1934 into the living and working conditions of men in the Newfoundland forest industry. The inquiry, which was led by J. Gordon Bradley, was commissioned by the government in response to worker complaints regarding the the country's two foreign-owned pulp-and-paper mills: the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company Limited at Grand Falls and the International Power and Paper Company of Newfoundland Limited at Corner Brook. However, the report's damning findings were kept secret in return for the companies' agreement to pay the workers a minimum net monthly wage of $25; the ruling Commission of Government also subsequently tooks steps to improve working conditions in addition to passing legislation on the logging camps in 1938.

This article reviews the book, "The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts 1810-1860," by Jonathan Prude.

This article reviews the book, "Communists in Harlem During the Depression," by Mark Naison.

This thesis is a case study of the Solidarity Coalition, a social protest movement which united labour and community groups In opposition to right-wing restraint legislation. It considers why this unprecedented extra parliamentary force failed to persuade the government to withdraw the offending legislation and attempts to explain the dominance of the labour agenda in the modest successes it did achieve. Interviews with participants in the Coalition and other significant political actors provide the information used in the analysis of this protest phenomena. The thesis incorporates a detailed study of the evolution of the Coalition and its organizational structure and Internal processes within the context of the larger political system and with reference to theoretical literature concerning protest movements. I argue that the emergence of the Coalition as a diverse and broad based movement in reaction to a right wing attack on the social contract is predictable, however, the outcomes of the protest action are less so. Analysis of the Coalition suggests that organizational contradictions within its structure, external and unforseen circumstances, and the strength of government intransigence were influential factors shaping both the development of the protest movement and the outcomes of its actions. The commitment to common cause, fuelled by moral outrage and espoused by labour and community groups, was not sufficient to withstand the divisive tendencies inherent in the structure of the Coalition, or the Inertia that must be overcome by large groups to achieve collective goods. Labour proved to be the more powerful actor within the Coalition due to its financial and organizational resources and its significant noticeabilIty factor as a member of the CoalItion. I argue that consistent with the theory of the logic of collective action that the labour agenda eventually dominated within the Coalition, influencing the parameters of the settlement achieved, and in part, accounting for the failure of the Coalition to meet Its collective goal of withdrawal of the restraint legislation.

The article reviews and comments on two books: "Mining Photographs and Other Pictures," by Robert Wilkie, Don Macgillivray, Allan Sekula, and Leslie Shedden, and "Voices from the Mountains," by Guy and Candie Carawan.

This article reviews the book, "George-Etienne Cartier: Montreal Bourgeois," by Brian Young.

The article reviews "WAC: Bennett and the Rise of British Columbia," by David J. Mitchell, "Louis Robichaud: A Decade of Power," by Delia M.M. Stanley, "Visions of History," edited by Henry Abelove et al., "A History of Capitalism, I500-1980," by Michel Beaud, "A Radical Reader: The Struggle for Change in England, 1381-1914," edited by Christopher Hampton, "Manufacture in Town and Country before the Factory," edited by Maxine Berg. Pat Hudson, and Michael Sonenscher, "From Chartism to Labourism: Historical Sketches of English Working-Class Movement," by Theodore Rothstein, "Dictionary of Labour Biography," v. 7, edited by Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville, "The Coal Miners' General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.," by Andy Phillips and Raya Dunayevskaya, "Studies in Labour Theory and Practice," edited by William L. Rowe, "Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition," by Cedric J. Robinson, "First Facts of American Labor," edited by Philip S. Foner, "Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism," edited by John H.M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Plain Folk: The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans," edited by David M. Katzman and William M. Tuttle. Jr., "The Ties That Bind: Law, Marriage, and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations," by Carol Smart, "A Documentary History of Communism," v. 1: "Communism in Russia," and v. 2: "Communism and the World," edited by Robert V. Daniels, "After Marx," edited by Terrence Ball and James Fair, "Dialogue within the Dialectic," by Norman Levine, and "A Guide to Marx's Capital," by Anthony Brewer.

This article reviews the book, "Discovering Women's History: A Practical Manual," by Deirdre Beddoe.

Examines the hierarchy of labour by men on Ontario farms from the colonial period to the 1980s. Argues that despite changes over the past two centuries in in the relationships of labour, capital and land, the rural agricultural class system has endured. Concludes that the farm labour regime of low wages and few legal protections continues to be firmly entrenched.

This article reviews the book, "On F.R. Scott: Essays on His Contributions to Law, Literature and Politics," edited by Sandra Djwa and R. St. J. MacDonald.