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This paper documents the attempt to obtain the nine-hour working day in Canada during the first six months of 1872. The primary role of the working class of Hamilton and Montreal is indicated and the view is taken that the Toronto Printers' Strike obscured, rather than advanced, the aims of the nine-hour movement. It is argued that, while there was certainly developing a class identity and a trade union consciousness, there existed only an inchoate sense of class consciousness among Canadian workers during the early 1870s.

The article reviews and comments on "Outcasts in Their Own Land: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906-1911," by Rodney D. Anderson, "Chilean Rural Society from the Spanish Conquest to 1930," by Arnold J. Bauer, "Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," edited by Kenneth Duncan and Ian Rutledge, with the collaboration of Colin Harding, "The Brazilian Corporative State and Working-Class Politics," by Kenneth Paul Erickson, "Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931," by John M. Hart, "A History of the Bolivian Labour Movement 1848-1971," by Guillermo Lora, edited and abridged by Laurence Whitehead, "Labor and the Ambivalent Revolutionaries: Mexico, 1911-1923, by Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, "Struggle in the Countryside: Politics and Rural Labor in Chile, 1919-1973," by Brian Loveman, " Organized Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Workers in Dependent Societies," by Hobart A. Spalding, Jr.

Published in Winnipeg in 1902 under the pseudonym of Libertas Brammel, the futuristic novelette, "The Great Tribulation," was a harbinger of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Set in Winnipeg in 1960, "The Great Tribulation" chronicles a society with deep class tensions that culminate in "the greatest strike ever known." A. Ross McCormack introduces this abridged version, which originally appeared in the labour publication, "The Voice."

This article reviews the books, "Work Without Salvation: America's Intellectuals and Industrial Alienation, 1880-1910," by James B. Gilbert, and "The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920," by Daniel T. Rodgers.

Critiques Reg Whitaker's article, "Corporatism, Liberalism and Mackenzie King," published in Labour/Le Travail no. 2 (1977), in particular Whitaker's treatment of King's intellectual background and his work in labour relations prior to World War I. Revised version of a paper presented by the author at the York University conference,"Political Thought in English Canada" (1978).

This article reviews the album and book, "Come Hell or High Water: Songs of the Buchans Miners," by Breakwater Recording.

In the years after 1899 a small but vigorous socialist movement emerged in Canada's Maritime Provinces. This article describes the origins, activities, ideas and personalities of the early socialist movement in the region. The socialists gained support in the region's industrial centres and coal-mining districts and contributed a proportionate share of the national support enjoyed by the Socialist Party of Canada and the newspaper Cotton's Weekly. The article concludes that early Canadian socialism found an important following outside western Canada and that "conservatism" is not an adequate explanation of the history of the Maritimes.

[The article] concerns the activities of Montreal padrone, Antonio Cordasco, who served as an intermediary between Canadian big business and Italian migrant labour during the early part of the century, in relation to the nature of padronism itself. The padrone's activities extended both along the communications network between European labour and North American industry and into many aspects of Italian life in Canada. Although the dishonesty and corruption of the padrone are clear, it is also clear that it was not the migrant labourers who objected to his work, or indeed, when it suited them, the Canadian government itself. Big business in Canada, backed by the government, needed transient labour and it was the actual immigrant policy of the Canadian government, the wish to make use of Italian labour but to prevent it from turning into permanent immigration, which made Cordasco's role possible. The migrant labourers, looking for means to make money and then return to their hometown, were happy with the padrone as long as he supplied the jobs promised them. It is shown then that the padrone came under attack only when the needs of Canadian big business did not satisfy the requirements of migrant labourers. Cordasco was destroyed, in the end, not by the Canadian government's concern for migrant labour, but by a more practical dilemma, that is, the existence of hundreds of labourers caught in Canada without work and without means of returning to their homeland.

This article reviews the book, "Worker Self-Management in Industry: The West European Experience," edited by G. David Garson.

Highlights the expansion of the documents section of the journal and the inauguration of a new section on literature reviews. Invites wider contributions to the journal (poetry, fiction, theatre, musical recordings) and debates, as illustrated by Paul Craven's response in the issue to Reg Whitaker's article on Mackenzie King that was previously published in the journal. The volume is in memoriam of H.C. Pentland, whose article on the 1972 survey of the Canadian industrial relations system is published for the first time.

This article reviews the book, "The Great War and Canadian Society, An Oral History," edited by Daphne Read & Russell Hann.

Introduces the life and work of journalist C.W. Lunn, including an excerpt from his serialized novel, "From Trapper Boy to General Manager." Published in the early 20th century, Lunn's portrayal of life inside the mining union in Springhill, Nova Scotia, was written with a view toward Christian self-improvement. The republication commemorates the centenary of the founding of the Nova Scotia Provincial Workmen's Association in 1879.

This article reviews the book, "The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution In American Business," by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

This article reviews the book, "Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fail of the One Big Union," by David Bercuson.

This article reviews the book, "Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-1884," by Daniel J. Walkowitz.

Discusses the historical development of Canadian industrial relations and compares Canada's system to the American and English. Originally written in 1972, it summarizes a number of the insights of Pentland's study for the 1968 Woods' Task Force on Industrial Relations.

Pays homage to H.C. Pentland as a teacher and scholar who, despite the conservative intellectual climate of the Cold War, brought to the study of Canadian history a radical perspective informed by the European Marxist critical tradition. Includes photo.

This article examines the political debate within Toronto's District Labour Council (DLC) from 1900 to 1921. It argues that divisive factors within the Council hindered the emergence of an effective third party alternative in the city. The majority of the delegates to the DLC favoured the formation of a labour party controlled by trade unionists. The Council fostered the formation of such a party, but the combined opposition of left-wing delegates, who advocated affiliation with the Socialist and later the Social Democratic Parties, and right-wing delegates, who opposed third party electoral action of any kind, prevented the DLC from affiliating or working too closely with the various labour parties. During the war the socialist and labourite delegates within the Council joined forces to promote a reorganized and more broadly based Independent Labour Party, but, again, severe internal conflict prevented the ILP from winning significant electoral support in Toronto.

This article reviews the book, "L'altro movimento operaio: Storia della repressione capitalistica in Germania dal 1880 a oggi," by Karl Heinz Roth.

This article reviews the book, "Natives and Newcomers: The ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Poughkeepsie," by Clyde Griffen and Sally Griffen.