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Reminiscences of homesteading, railway construction, logging, mining and life in the farming and resource communities of western Canada in the years since1912 by two populist/socialist participants. Accounts markedly different from the usual picture of rural conservatism and quiescence. --Author's summary
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The opening of the twentieth century saw a fervour of radical political movements in Western Canada. Ross McCormack explores the constituencies, ideologies, and development of early reformist, syndicalist, and socialist organizations from the 1880s up to the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. He distinguishes three types of radicals - reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries - who competed with each other to fashion a gneral western constituency. The reformers wanted to change society for the betterment of the workers, but both their aims and methods were moderate, essentially transfering the philosophy and tactics of the British labour movement to the Canadian west. The rebels, militant industrial unionists, periodically battled the Trades and Labour Congress in order to establish unions strong enough to defeat the employers and, if necessary, the state. The revolutionary Marxists were committed to the destruction of industrial capitalism and the establishment of a society controlled by the workers. The book describes the origins of radicalism, traces the histories of the various organizations that expressed its ideals, and discusses the impact of the First World War on the labour movement. Using previously unexplored sources, McCromack has produced the first comprehensive examination of the early history of the radical movement in western Canada, adding an important dimension to our knowledge and understanding of Canadian labour history. --Publisher's description. Contents: The emergence of the socialist movement in British Columbia -- Militant industrial unionism and the first western rebellion -- The ascendancy of the Socialist Party of Canada -- A case study in labourism: Winnipeg 1899-1915 -- The Industrial Workers of the World and militant industrial unionism -- Western radicals and the Great War: the first phase -- Western radicals and the Great War: the second phase.
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If these arguments are correct [i.e., arguments against a sexist psychological interpretation], then we must set ourselves another course to explain the failure of working class women in the 1896 to 1914 [period] to respond to their problems in a more explicitly collective fashion. The framework for such an alternative explanation rests upon a more concrete understanding of the work-life and work-place ecology of working women. Reliance on reliable clichés and "momified" abstractions about feminine psychology has hindered a recognition of the strictures that demographic and occupational influences placed on the possibilities for a concerted action. Combined with an appreciation of some of the thoughts and activity of working women, this approach should help us to reevaluate both the objective constraints and organizing capacities of the woman worker and the interplay of various aspects of her consciousness--particularly her feminism, her sense of feminity and her class consciousness. --From author's introduction