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The article reviews the book "Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America," by Michael Denning.

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "A Matter of Hours: Women, Part-Time Work and the Labour Market," by Veronica Beechey and Tessa Perkins.

The article discusses the significance of gender in the debate over unemployment insurance in Canada in the late 1930s. The longstanding belief that the man was the head of the household is described, noting that the Great Depression undermined men's confidence in their role as head of the household and main provider. The question of how concern for women was related to the debate over unemployment insurance is discussed, noting that the large number of unemployed women in the Great Depression was almost entirely ignored at the time.

The article pays homage to the historian and labour activist, John Ross Bullen, who taught at the Labour College of Canada in Ottawa. Includes a photo of Bullen.

The article reviews the book, "Les Juifs progressistes au Québec," by Allen Gottheil.

The article reviews the book, "Flexibility and Labour Markets in Canada and the United States," edited by Gilles Laflamme, Gregor Murray, Jacques Belanger and Gilles Ferland.

Reviewed: Histoire Générale du Canada. Brown, Craig, ed.

The article reviews the book "Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago's Anarchists, 1870-1900," by Bruce C. Nelson.

The article reviews the book, "Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s," edited by Mike David and Michael Sprinker.

A book about succeeding because you are Canadian - not in spite of it. About doing all those things we're not supposed to be very good at. Things like outmaneuvering monster corporations; like standing up to the Americans; like putting regional differences aside; like blowing the whistle on polluters; like rising above linguistic differrences. But, most of all, it's about cracking the Canadian formula--about learning how to win on our own terms, in our own time, in our own way. No fuss. No muss. Cracking the Canadian Formula is not just the story of Canadians building a unique union. The story of how we succeed in Canada when we have the courage to try it our own way. That makes it the story of far. It also makes it a story that might just hold the secret of Canadian yet to come." -- Publisher's description. "This is the encyclopedia of what unions can do to help build a made-in-Canada movement for personal, social and economic independence." -- Mel Hurtig.

The article reviews the books "Which Side Were You on Boys...Canadian Life on the Left," by Peter Hunter and "A Communist Life: Jack Scott and the Canadian Workers Movement 1927-1985," by Jack Scott.

Le but de cet article est de comparer l'efficacité de la conciliation volontaire et de la conciliation obligatoire au Québec.

The article reviews the book, "La vie d'artiste. Le cinquantenaire de l'Union des Artistes," by Louis Caron.

Utilisant les données d'une enquête spéciale de Statistique Canada, l'auteur examine d'abord la dynamique du marché du travail au Québec comparativement à celle du Canada et de l'Ontario. Il étudie ensuite la situation spécifique au Québec en se concentrant sur les travailleurs déplacés et recyclés.

The central argument of this book is that getting people to work and getting them to stay there is a significant political achievement in its own right. ...[W]e may assume that in any social situation in which labour is experienced as a coercive aspect of daily life, work, or more accurately obtaining work effort, becomes problematical. Often it entails state intervention in a well-developed system of industrial relations that includes an important element of public policy. This book is a study of that element in Canadian industrial relations. Proceeding from this starting point, two central questions are posed throughout the remainder of this text: 1) What does the state do when it practices industrial relations; and 2) What are the implications of such practices on work and those groups that are brought together in labouring processes? --From introduction

The article reviews the book, "Images of Appalachian Coalfields," by Builder Levy.

Les auteurs présentent les données de deux études québécoises menées respectivement en 1983 et 1986 sur le harcèlement sexuel au travail. Les résultats sont présentés sous sept rubriques distinctes: 1) types de comportements harcelants; 2) caractéristiques de la personne harcelée; 3) caractéristiques du harceleur; 4) lien d'autorité (ou organisationnel) existant entre la personne harcelée et le harceleur; 5) réactions des personnes harcelées, des tiers et des harceleurs; 6) conséquences vécues par les personnes harcelées et les harceleurs et 7) caractéristiques des milieux du travail dans lesquels se trouvaient les personnes harcelées.

The radicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the early 20th century placed it outside of the dominant, contemporary social ideology. At the same time, there were large numbers of unskilled, migrant, and largely immigrant workers employed in seasonal, labour-intensive industries, whose social and economic marginalization made them receptive to the IWW's radicalism, while the IWW was prepared for the radical step of attempting to organize them. This paper is a study of the IWW's efforts to organize the unemployed of Edmonton and Calgary during the depression of 1913-1915: most were transient and unskilled; many had just arrived from railway construction camps in the interior where the IWW had led massive strikes. The tactics used in the struggle included large demonstrations, the invasion of churches, and refusals to pay for restaurant meals. But the special nature of unemployment — which was caused by the economic system, threatened the men's integrity as workers, but was dealt with by the State — allows a careful examination of the practical effects of the IWW's ideology. Other Canadian cities saw protests by the unemployed, but only the IWW in Alberta asked for work at the best going rate for general labour, 30 cents an hour, and if they could not get that they demanded free food and accommodation. They tried to preserve the men's integrity as labourers, based on a belief that unemployment was not an inevitable experience to be passively endured, but a nefarious consequence of capitalism to be actively resisted. The IWW also fostered an inter-ethnic solidarity founded on a right to work, "regardless of race, color or nationality." However, the IWW's efforts also took place within very narrowly circumscribed limits: the workers they represented had little economic bargaining power and less still in a time of unemployment. when they were dependent on urban political authorities to whom most had no other connection. Their political force was only equal to their threat to public order and hungry men were no match for the police. Moreover, responsibility for their relief was thrust onto municipalities which could barely afford to care for the resident unemployed. In the end, the difficulty of achieving even short-term material gains must have discouraged most workers and doomed the organization to instability.