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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 29, 1992

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Publisher(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

ISSN 0700-3862 (print) 1911-4842 (digital)

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Cite this article (1992). Reviews / Comptes Rendus. Labour/Le Travailleur, 29, 249–318.

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Wayne Roberts, Cracking The Canadian Formula: The Making of the Energy and Chemical Workers Union by Errol Black / 249 Michael Earle, éd., Workers and the State in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia by Carman Miller / 251 Allen Mills, A Fool for Christ: The Political Thought ofJ.S. Woodsworth by Kenneth McNaught / 252 Alan F. J. Artibise, éd., Interdisciplinary Approaches to Canadian Society: A Guide to the Literature by John Mannion / 254 William N.T. Wylie, The Blacksmith in Upper Canada, 1784-1850: A Study of Technology, Culture and Power by Jane Errington / 255. Eric Tucker, Administering Danger in the Workplace: The Law and Politics of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation in Ontario, 1850-1914 by Robert H. Babcock / 257 Aline Charles, Travail d'ombre et de lumière. Le bénévolat féminin à l'hôpital Sainte-Justine, 1907-1960 by Marie-Marthe T. Brault / 258 Sylvie Murray, A la jonction du mouvement ouvrier et du mouvement des femmes: la Ligue auxiliaire de l'Association internationale des machinistes, Canada, 1903-1980 by Mona Josée Gagnon / 260 Yolande Cohen, Femmes de parole: L'histoire des Cercles de fermières du Québec 1915-1990 by Frances M. Shaver / 261 Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia by David Akers / 264 Bruce Magnuson, The Untold Story of Ontario's Bushworkers by Peter Campbell / 266 Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939 by Paul Axelrod / 268 Maryse Souchard, Le discours de presse L'image des syndicats au Québec (1982- 1983) by François Demers / 269 Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth Century America by Danny Samson / 271 David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 by Allen Seager/ 274 Lisa M. Fine, The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870-1930 by Ileen A. De Vault / 275 Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 by Suzanne Morton / 277

4 Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by James R. Barrett / 279 Richard J. Altenbaugh, Education for Struggle: The American Labor Colleges of the 1920 and 1930s by Peter Seixas / 282 Dan La Botz, Rank and File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union by Warren R. Van Tine / 284 James Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society by Nicholas Rogers / 286 Theodore Koditschek, Class formation and urban-industrial society: Bradford, 1750-1850 by David Levine / 288 George R. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750-1850 by Lynn Mackay / 290 Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, eds., New Times, The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s by Sean Purdy / 292 Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor & Guilds in Medieval Europe by James Masschaele / 29S David Kaiser, Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler by Robert Malcolmson / 296 William Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor by David A. Zonderman / 298 D.H. Whittaker, Managing Innovation: A Study of British and Japanese Factories by Michael R. Smith / 301 Susan N. Houseman, Industrial Restructuring with Job Security: The Case of European Steel by S.F. Kaliski /302 Charles Brown, James Hamilton, and James Medoff, Employers Large and Small by Gregory Albo / 304 Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth- Century French Trades by William M. Reddy / 305 Chris Ward, Russia's Cotton Workers and the New Economic Policy byN.G.O.Pereira/307 Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept by Don Wells/308 Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History by Alex Callinicos /311 Gillian A. Walker, Family Violence and the Women's Movement: The Conceptual Politics of Struggle by Gary Kinsman /313 Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace by Eleanor MacDonald /316

5 REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Wayne Roberts, Cracking The Canadian interesting part of the story lies in the Formula: The Making of the Energy and personalities, the conflicts and struggles, Chemical Workers Union (Toronto: Be­ the political intrigues within and between tween The Lines 1990). unions, and the accidents and flukes which combined to generate the union's A FEW YEARS AGO a student (Bud Book, forward momentum. a pipefitter by trade) told me he thought The formation of the ECWU was, in it strange that workers and unions in one large part, the achievement of the OWIU of the most important sectors of the leadership, and, in particular, Neil Reimer, economy — refineries and chemicals — who was promoted from the shop floor to didn't get a mention in histories of the OWIU staff in 1951. In 1954, Reimer was labour movement in Canada. The ex­ appointed Director for Canada. He planation was, of course, a simple one: brought to the job brilliant organizing and very little had been written about workers negotiating skills, an uncanny ability to and unions in these industries. Wayne anticipate changing conditions and im­ Roberts' marvelous — "official" — his­ provise tactics to deal with them, and a tory of the Energy and Chemical Workers vision of a decent society where workers Union (ECWU) assures a place in future were treated with respect and dignity. histories of the labour movement for After the merger in 1955, the union workers and unions in this sector. followed a strategy of attracting new The book is divided into two parts. members by delivering the goods for ex­ Part I tracks the transformation of the Oil isting ones. Key strikes were waged in Workers International Union (OWIU) chemical plants in Sarnia and Edmonton from its inception in Canada in 1948 as a in the 1950s, and in refineries across the small union in petroleum refining, into a country in the 1960s. In all these disputes, powerful, national union covering vir­ the union made important gains. The 1969 tually the entire energy and chemical sec­ refinery strike in British Columbia, which tors. Roberts tells this story with verve, shut down almost the entire industry for wit, and great insight. The story hinges on five months, was especially significant, three key events: the 1955 merger of the because the union finally achieved na­ OWIU and the United Gas, Coke & tional bargaining (and national standards) Chemical Workers to form the Oil, in the industry. Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW); A particular strength of the OCAW the achievement of independence by the leaders was their capacity to devise better OCAW in 1979; and the 1980 merger of ways of performing trade union functions the OCAW, the Canadian Chemical — bargaining, striking and organizing. Workers and an independent union of tex­ Reimer was extremely adept at getting tile workers to form the ECWU. The issues to the top of the bargaining agenda events themselves are anticlimactic. The in the face of employer opposition (job security in 1965, the reduced work week Table of Contents for Reviews is on pp. 4 & 5. in 1973, and pay for knowledge — a sub-

249 250 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

terfuge to get around the Anti-Inflation foundering, but merely to note that the Board — in the mid 1970s). As well, the problem is not as pervasive as he implies. OCAW advanced the concept of "all-in- While there is a fine chapter — "Dust the family unionism," pioneered member­ To Dust" — on workers and conditions in ship surveys as a means of getting feed­ the Johns-Manville asbestos products back. for the rank-and-file, and restruc­ plant in Scarborough, there is little else on tured union practices and policies to either the characteristics of ECWU mem­ accommodate the aspirations of members bers or on the conditions that confront in Quebec. them on the job. Workers in refineries and The parting of OCAW from its parent chemical plants are relatively well paid organization in 1979 was an amicable and relatively secure in their jobs. Who one, a result attributable to both the good are these workers? How do these factors will built up within the international by affect their needs and aspirations relative, OCAW leaders and members in Canada, say, to workers in foundries or garment and a progressive leadership in the United plants; and how do they affect rank-and- States. Negotiations on the merger which file participation in the union? created the ECWU in 1980 recognized Finally, Roberts notes that the ECWU Quebec's special situation in the union and its leaders are, in contrast to other constitution. Appropriately, Neil Reimer unions and other union leaders, big became the ECWU's first president. proponents of QWL programs. There is a A central theme in Roberts' analysis discussion of this issue in the third chap­ is that the ECWU (and its predecessors) ter of Part II — 'Take This Job And Shape sustained and nurtured the values and It" — which focuses on a QWL experi­ vision of early CIO unions. In Part II of ment at a Shell chemical plant in Sarnia. the book, Roberts elaborates on this The discussion is balanced, but there is theme, using concrete examples to not enough of it to provide a basis for demonstrate the union's commitment to understanding how this program differs the praxis of social unionism: the union's from similar programs in non-ECWU fight for health and safety in workplaces; plants. Nor is it possible to figure out the union's and Reimer's support for the where the leadership of the ECWU sees CCF/NDP, reflected both in the battle for QWL plans going in the future. Medicare in Saskatchewan and in By way of conclusion, I would say Reimer's leadership role in the Alberta that one of the major virtues of Roberts' NDP; and the union's campaign to get book is that it reminds us of the useful and osteoporosis onto the national agenda. important things we can learn from The study does have some minor detailed histories of particular unions. flaws. Roberts presents the ECWU as a The book should stimulate similar studies paragon for trade unions — a union with of other unions — and more studies of the a maverick leadership and a unique "cul­ ECWU. An "Afterword" to the book by the ture," innovating and leading the way for ECWU executive explains why it is vital other unions. There is much of this in the that more such studies are done — vital, history of the ECWU, but there is much of both for the labour movement, and for it also in the history of other unions. everyone else concerned about Canada's CUPE, CUPW, and the CAW, are examples future. of unions which have values and agendas which are as progressive of those of the Errol Black ECWU. Moreover, these unions have been Brandon University just as innovative in protecting and ad­ vancing the interests of their — quite dif­ ferent — memberships. This is not to deny Roberts' point that some unions are REVIEWS 251

Michael Earle, éd., Workers and the State Gamberg's "The United Mine Workers in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia and the coming of the CCF to Cape (Fredcricton, New Brunswick: Acadien- Breton," interesting and useful as they sis Press 1989). are, fail to take us very far from the coal fields. At least a third of the essays focus IN THEIR SUCCINCT historiographie in­ on the crucial 1940-50 decade. Few ad­ troduction Michael Earle and Ian McKay dress directly the important question of explain that the purpose of this collection the character and efficacy of industrial of nine essays is to examine the legality raised in the introduction. And at dichotomous legacy of industrial legality, least five of the nine essays have been that "complex network of laws, systems, published recently or contemporaneously and procedures ... which structures bar­ in Acadiensis. gaining relations between workers and Nonetheless, all are well researched, employers" in 20th century Nova Scotia. informative essays, which extend our The province's fragmented economy, knowledge of Nova Scotian labour. Kirby with its "industrial enclaves" and uneven Wood's "Coal Miners and the Law in social development, its relatively early Nova Scotia From the 1864 Combination sectoral industrialization, and its pioneer of Workman Act to the 1947 Trade Union efforts to bring industrial relations within Act" explains how labour relations in the law makes Nova Scotia a fertile field Nova Scotia's coal industry pioneered for Canadian labour historians. Here "the "the modern framework of collective bar­ elements of industrial legality were first gaining law" in Nova Scotia, and else­ articulated" and dramatically contested, where in Canada, and how its historical particularly in the province's coal and development has been viewed from a steel industries. Although the editors are "pluralist" or "critical" perspective. He critical of the whiggish assumptions that thereby provides a useful historical and industrial legality constituted a progres­ historiographical overview of the emer­ sive measure, pointing out how legisla­ gence of industrial legality. Suzanne tion and contracts limited the timing of Morton's "The Halifax Relief Commis­ strikes, stifled spontaneous action and led sion and Labour Relations during the to the bureaucratization of labour, they Reconstruction of Halifax, 1917-19" and realize nonetheless that industrial legality Jay White's "Pulling Teeth: Striking for offered other workers protection and with the Check-off in the Halifax Shipyards, "all its problems, represented the first ef­ 1944," however, concentrate more nar­ fective collective challenge to the power rowly on the Halifax building trades. In of capital." (10, 11, 14, 16) her essay Morton demonstrates how the The book's comprehensive title, how­ state-created Halifax Relief Commis­ ever, promises much more than it sion's commitment to "techno-cor- delivers. As even its editor acknow­ poratism" clashed with the interests of ledges, the book contains little on women skilled labour; and White shows how the and work, the unorganized workforce, or month long strike of 3,000 shipyard working-class cultural traditions. There is workers in 1944 wrung check-off rights nothing on woods, agricultural or through the courts. The failure of the bit­ manufacturing workers. Apart from ter, thirteen-month strike of 400 Windsor political parties and unions there is noth­ Gypsum workers, dealt with by C.J.H. ing on institutions. Moreover, despite the Gilson and A.M. Wadden 'The Windsor editor's promise to provide a record of Gypsum Strike and the formation of joint "industrial relations outside the coal­ Labour/Management Study Committee: fields" two of the nine essays, Michael Conflict and Accommodation in the Nova Earle* s "Down With Hitler and Silby Bar­ Scotia Labour Movement, 1957-79," and rett," and Michael Earle and Herbert labour's willingness to cooperate with 252 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL management's government-sponsored 20th-century Nova Scotian workers will Swedish joint labour/management com­ elude our view. mittees (so enthusiastically promoted by The volume concludes with a four­ Dalhousie University's Institute for teen page "Afterword" by Craig Heron Public Affairs) underlines the pervasive entitled "Male Wage-Earners and the conservatism and defensiveness of the State in Canada" in which he discusses pro-vince's post-war labour movement. some of the issues raised in the book's This point is underscored in Anthony introduction, and places them within the Thom-son's "From Civil Servants to larger context of Canadian labour history. Government Employees: The Nova In general, a fresher, more focused Scotia Government Employees Associa­ and comprehensive collection of essays tion 1967-1973," where Tom Shiers, the may have provided a clearer picture of the president of the Nova Scotia Quarry state and 20th-century Nova Scotian Workers Union, who led his union into workers. In this respect the book is less a the bitter gypsum strike in 1957, re-emer­ "map" than a compass. ges a decade later as the conservative ex­ ecutive secretary of the Nova Scotia Civil Carman Miller Service Association, who attempts but McGill University fails to prevent a younger generation of government workers from moving toward a "union like relationship" with their Allen Mills, A Fool for Christ: The Politi­ employers. cal Thought ofJ.S. Woodsworth (Toron­ Two of the most suggestive essays are to: University of Toronto Press 1991). Fred Winsor's "Solving a Problem: Privatizing Worker's Compensation for CANADA IS BY NO MEANS awash in Nova Scotia's Offshore Fishermen, 1920- myths. We have plenty of legends; but in 1928," and E. Jean Nisbefs "Free Northrop Frye's sense of a story which Enterprise at its Best: The State, National effectively explains collective condition, Sea, and the Defeat of the Nova Scotia experience, perception, we are deficient. Fishermen, 1946-47." Not only do these It seems a pity to deconstruct such myths articles get us away from the coal fields, as we do possess. I think that Allen Mills, which by default have shaped (and per­ in this diligent endeavour to analyze haps misshaped) our attitudes toward so­ Woodsworth's thought systematically, cial relations in Nova Scotia, but they sidesteps the very real problem of Woods- introduce us to another important labour worth as myth. force, and in the process demonstrate the In Mills' view the myth of Woods- "startling differences between state worth is something created by others, by policies toward miners and fishermen." hagiographers, admirers and his own (18) They also suggest the complexity of political movement. While Mills does not social relationships in an important sector minimize Woodsworth's courage, and of the province's economy. While the does detect in his subject the almost too- Lunenburg 64 system, whereby fisher­ willing martyr, he blurs his analysis by men held shares in their, and other ves­ obsessively searching out "contradic­ sels, might be peculiar to the fisheries, tions" in Woodsworth's thought and ac­ similar co-adventurer arrangements ex­ tion. Insisting that "the importance of isted among small woodlot owners, or ideas was indeed Woodsworth's own among those who rented crown land for a perspective on his life and politics," and cutting season. Until we understand these and similar economies, the chameleon declaring that this book is "an intellectual character of the state's relationships to biography," Mills appears to belie the title he chose for the volume. Certainly Woodsworth was profoundly curious REVIEWS 253 about ideas, particularly if they were model put forward by Ramsay Cook in 'new'; but to suggest that he can be The Regenerators. Cook's notion that the analyzed as an "intellectual" is about as essential role of the social gospellers, in­ helpful as trying to analyze Martin Luther cluding Woodsworth, was to convert the or Mahatma Gandhi in terms of the intel­ protestant churches into some kind of as­ lectual content and consistency of their sociation for the advancement of sociol­ political thinking. ogy may be helpful in understanding The point is that Woodsworth himself some of those theological renegades. created the myth and knew that this was Mills does not go quite as far as Cook; he what he was about. And the myth was does talk of Woodsworth's "fading consistent. It explained to those religious commitment" and agues that "it Canadians who would listen that beyond was as a secular-minded citizen of a the hurly-burly of business, the corrupt­ modern, cosmopolitan culture that he ing requirements of politics, the "sin of served in Parliament after 1921." Yet, he indifference" to social inequities and suf­ adds immediately that "Christianity also fering, there was an ideal, an impossible provided Woodsworth this his most per­ goal best summed up in what sistent self-images, those of the crusader Woodsworth, to the end of his life, called and the martyr." Both Mills and Cook the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. imply that Woodsworth wanted to The terms in which Woodsworth, desanctify the church, to secularize it in from time to time, depicted the goal and order to make it relevant. However, when the steps by which it might be reached, Mills refers to Woodsworth's 1918 letter varied. He moved, sometimes erratically, of resignation from the ministry (without from the formal ministry to the informal analyzing it) he observes that the reasons ministry of service and from that to advanced were not religious "but rather lengthy absorption in politics. As Mills such obvious political issues as war, points out, Woodsworth was the first to pacifism, and the dominance of the inject into parliamentary debate the ideas church's affairs by a wealthy business of J.A. Hobson, John Meynard Keynes elite." Political issues? Surely it is evident and even F.W. Taussig. He was also ready that Woods-worth left the church be­ to canvass any and all notions of social, cause, in his mind, it was no longer parliamentary and constitutional reform sanctified. He had no wish to secularize — from group government to abolition of the church; he had a consuming desire to the Senate to ending appeals to the Privy sanctify society. To him, the church was Council. And, of course, he was a already secularized. It seems to me that centralist, a firm devotee of economic this conundrum is bound to bedevil any planning, the welfare state and very wide attempt to put into separate compartments reaches of public ownership. In the midst his religious and his political thought. of all this (and a host of ancillary issues) Mills discusses Woodsworth's think­ it is not difficult to discern some "intel­ ing about money and banking, interna­ lectual" contradictions. The very exist­ tional affairs, the Canadian constitution ence of those contradictions, however, and the role of 'co-operation' as integral should serve as warning that "the real to this thinking. There are, however, Woodsworth" is not to be discovered by curious gaps. The relationship between "putting aside myth." the religious and the political (so close, I I suspect that in drawing a pretty think, as to be inseparable) in Woods- sharp line between Woodsworth's early worth's pacifism is not seriously days in the Methodist ministry and the analyzed; and, although Mills pays al­ social gospel, on the one hand, and his most inordinate attention to post-1919 political life on the other, Mills Woodsworth's views on soviet com­ has accepted too readily the interpretative munism, he gives but passing attention to 254 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL the significance of 'minority government' now he didn't mean the achievement of in Woodsworth's thinking or as part of his any political-economic system. Such political legacy. things are bound to be fluid, productive of Disavowing any intention to provide contradiction. He meant, rather, the "another chronology of Woodsworth's achievement of true brotherhood — al­ political life and of the personal relation­ though, if he were with us now he would ships within it," Mills nevertheless not use that word, being, politically, very presents some interesting personal infor­ trendy. It was with the goal of brother­ mation which was not previously avail­ hood that he began; with it he brought his able. Most of this material concerns the career to a close. Untypical in his stead­ pre-1918 years; much of it has to do with fastness, perhaps. Typical, however, in Woodsworth's attitude to immigrants and living a myth whose essential worth Canada's British legacy. Mills treats brought instant recognition. these questions somewhat ahistorically. Demanding present-day positions on race Kenneth McNaught and anglosaxondom from a nascent radi­ University of Toronto cal of Woodsworth's lineage in the early years of this century is surely an exercise in futility. But, apart from that, the mix­ Alan F.J. Artibise, éd., Interdisciplinary ture of biographical re-write and political Approaches to Canadian Society: A science analysis is very likely to confuse Guide to the Literature (Montreal and most readers: at some points Mills pre­ Kingston: McGill-Queen's University sents straight biography, while most of Press 1990). the time assuming intimate knowledge of the biography he doesn't present. CANADIAN STUDIES EMERGED as a I will close this review (which I multidisciplinary movement in academic probably should not have written) with a teaching some two decades ago. Scholars single point of defence. I find it somewhat from a variety of backgrounds in the so­ contradictory of Mills to indict A Prophet cial sciences and humanities began to of Politics for underestimating the revolu­ pool their expertise and offer inter­ tionary bent in Woodsworth, of depicting departmental programs on Canada to un­ him, politically, as a moderate liberal- dergraduate students. These programs are socialist. Contradictory because Mills' now firmly established in Canadian assessment of Woodsworth as parliamen­ universities. The movement has been sup­ tarian is that he was too willing to com­ ported by the Association of Canadian promise, afraid to exploit radically the Studies, founded in 197S, and the Journal potential for political disruption. Well, I of Canadian Studies provides a lively think this returns us to the essential point: forum for scholars in the field. In some attempts to peel away the ambience of cases, centers have been created or mythology serve to obscure rather than graduate courses introduced, and these reveal the "real Woodsworth." In his brief developments have been duplicated in essay on Woodsworth, Frank Underhill universities abroad. Generally, however, called him an "untypical Canadian." This, the Canadian studies program is ad­ too, is a half-truth. As a politician ministered by interdepartmental commit­ Woodsworth was a very typical tees and does not have the profile of Canadian, if more ardent than most. I traditional disciplines. There is also a think it can be argued, however, that he need for a more coherent, integrated cannot be understood at all in merely literature. This volume of essays is in­ political terms; that, as maker of a myth tended as a first step towards that goal. he was in but not of our political life. Dr. Artibise has recruited ten authors, all When he called for the Kingdom here and prominent Canadianists, to survey growth REVIEWS 255 and trends in the literature in their respec­ conceptually sophisticated and highly tive fields. analytical. One is impressed by the range The book contains five chapters of these studies and, at the same time, covering the development of native struck by what is considered peripheral, studies in English Canada (Price) and in or not considered at all. Little is said, for Quebec (Dominique), with collaborative example, about immigration, ethnicity reviews of the French and English litera­ and labour in Canada prior to 1850, the tures on immigration and ethnicity major exception being the commendable (Avery and Ramirez), religion (Laperrier work on early artisans in Quebec. Labour and Westfall), and labour studies (Fer- in the fishery, the fur trade, the timber land, Kealey and Palmer). In a short intro­ trade, and farming, and the rural society duction on the objectives and philosophy that characterized Canada up to the ad­ of the volume, Wallace Clement em­ vent of industry remain marginal in the phasizes the interdisciplinary character of expanding literature on ethnic and labour these pieces. Actually they are discipli­ studies. In a "primer" such as this, aimed nary in their approaches, conventional at a general readership, a fuller account of reviews of established fields or subfields, the rationale for the scope of these sub- notably archaeology, anthropology, eth­ fields would be useful. This is expertly nic history, labour history, and religious done in the chapters on native studies, and studies. They are also probably the most on religion. insightful appraisals of these important The volume is essential reading for all research areas in the literature. Each chap­ researchers in the field. It is an important ter is accompanied by a lengthy but dis­ contribution to the intellectual and cul­ cerning bibliography, of particular value tural history of the country. It brings to the neophyte scholar. together the French and English litera­ For the general reader, and for tures on some key research areas more scholars outside the specialisms repre­ creatively than has been done before; and sented here, the collection will be seen as it appears at a propitious time in the con­ limited in scope. Disciplines regarded as tinuing debate on Canadian identity. central to Canadian studies — economics, political science, sociology, geography, John Mannion other branches of history — are not Memorial University of Newfoundland reviewed. If interdisciplinarity is the con­ ceptual cornerstone of Canadian studies, then a chapter on women's studies would William N.T. Wylie, The Blacksmith in be opposite. It is more interdisciplinary in Upper Canada, 1784-1850: A Study of its approach than any of the fields con­ Technology, Culture and Power sidered here and could serve as a model. (Gananoque, Ontario: Langdale Press Readers of this journal will be espe­ 1990). cially interested in the chapters on im­ migration and labour. These fields are OUR UNDERSTANDING OF the role that closely linked thematically and do give various groups of artisans played in the the book something of a core. Both are development of Upper Canadian society concerned primarily with the working- and its economy is largely unexplored. class culture of Canada since around This is undoubtedly partly a result of the 1830, particularly the urban-industrial paucity of sources — of diaries, letter milieu in Ontario and Quebec. The books and more importantly, account academic growth of these specialisms is books, apprenticeship and customs and discussed in some detail and the rich early census records — which can be used diversity of current scholarship outlined. to recreate the world of the skilled They are vigorous and exciting subfields, labourer and craftsman. Until recently, 256 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

however, colonial historians have also other small but essential tasks, like horse­ tended to limit their attention to the politi­ shoeing, and infrequently made new tools cal, intellectual and broad economic and replacement parts. Typically a aspects of Upper Canadian development, generalist, the blacksmith worked alone concentrating particularly on the beliefs, or with one or two others. In the post War actions and attitudes of the political, of 1812 period, most blacksmiths were economic and social elites of the colony. located in rural areas of the province, and William Wylie's examination of black­ often combined blacksmithing with run­ smiths is the first book length attempt to ning a farm. fill this large vacuum — to provide some Wylie's reliance on the works of E.P. appreciation and understanding of those Thompson, Soboul, Dawley and Laslett thousands of until recently invisible resi­ for his interpretative framework most ap­ dents who nonetheless formed an integral propriately places the lives and work of link in a complex network of work and Upper Canadian smiths firmly within a economic and social cooperation. broad context of a preindustrial society. Originally written as a report for use Like their counterparts of the 18th cen­ by interpreters in the Canadian Parks Ser­ tury in Europe, the Upper Canadian vice, the bulk of Blacksmiths in Upper blacksmith undoubtedly did draw "on ar­ Canada concentrates on material culture. tisanal traditions of self-pride" (57) In Part II, "Material Culture, Tools and which were passed from master to appren­ Techniques" Wylie examines the tice and from father to son. His tools, so blacksmith's shop, his clothes, his tradi­ painstakingly explained and illustrated in tional hand tools, the methods of produc­ part two, were those which brother ar­ tion and also the goods he produced. In­ tisans had used for hundreds of years in cluding an extensive array of hand drawn Great Britain, in Quebec, and in the illustrations, photographs and woodcuts, United States. And like those of artisans Wylie explains, among other things, how in other proto-industrial societies, the various types of nails were made, the lives of blacksmiths in Upper Canada process of shoeing a horse or oxen and probably did recreate, in part at least, assorted methods of welding and joining traditional artisanal patterns of work and metals to make or repair various imple­ of leisure activity. Unfortunately, how­ ments. ever, Wylie presents little and in some What for this historian is of greater cases no direct evidence to support con­ interest is Wylie's attempt to place this clusively this interpretation alone; material culture of the blacksmith into its moreover, he often does not really come social, economic and political context of to grips with the impact that local Upper colonial Upper Canada. Section 1, "Of Canadian circumstances had in shaping Iron and Steel and Men" examines the blacksmiths' lives. world of a young, pre-industrial frontier In part, this is a result of the lack of and predominately agricultural colony easily accessible sources, a problem where supplies of raw material were Wylie himself acknowledges. Moreover, limited, and markets for goods and ser­ less than 30 pages are devoted to a discus­ vices were restricted by a lack of popula­ sion of the role of the blacksmith in the tion, poor transportation and a general economic, social and political life of the lack of capital. As Wylie notes, the colony, a limitation undoubtedly imposed general smith "was the mainstay of the by the original purpose of the study, but iron and steel industry" (46) in the one which means that Wylie is unable to province. Lacking a large manufacturing provide any indepth analysis to support sector, which would have produced his assertions. Perhaps rather more trou­ hardware, it was the blacksmith who bling is that Wylie also shows an unwill­ repaired tools and machinery, performed ingness to bring other interpretive tools to REVIEWS 257 bear on his subject For example, he as­ understanding of life in early Upper serts that smiths sought journeymen to Canada. help in their shops and only when these were unavailable did the proprietors turn Jane Errington to their own families. Given the nature of Royal Military College rural household economies on the fron­ tier, and the important role wives and children played in other business ac­ Eric Tucker, Administering Danger in the tivities, it might well be the case that Workplace: The Law and Politics of Oc­ smiths only looked to journeymen or cupational Health and Safety Regulation hired hands when they could not find in Ontario. 1850-1914 (Toronto: Univer­ suitable labour within their own sity of Toronto Press 1990). household. In addition, though Wylie recognizes that not only did most smiths ALL OVER the industrializing world states live and work in rural Upper Canada, but have regulated the workplace. Did the many were also farmers and small workers' lot improve as a result? Examin­ landholders, he presumes that they con­ ing the impact of 19th century factory acts tinued to identify themselves primarily as in Ontario workplaces, Eric Tucker says independent artisans. This may well have "no." In eight occasionally abstract but been the case; but it may also be that carefully crafted chapters the author, an smiths considered themselves part of a Osgoode Hall professor, presents a much more complex and intricate world, powerful challenge to traditional views of independent yeomen farmers, with the regarding the benefits of factory legisla­ skills of the craftsmen. Certainly, it seems tion. that most smiths augmented and may in­ The book is neither a mundane study deed have depended primarily on income of legal institutions nor a boring chronicle from working the land; and their relative of statutory details. Arguing instead from isolation from other smiths and constant the premise that the law reflects and rein­ contact with farming neighbours may forces the social structure, Tucker uses a have created and reinforced a sense of sophisticated class-based analysis to community and lifestyle quite different show how 19th century businessmen con­ than that maintained by skilled craftsmen trolled both the content and enforcement in England or the United States. of protective legislation. Having reduced Wylie has nonetheless lifted a veil labour to a commodity, they initially from the life of blacksmiths in Upper relied upon the courts to maintain tradi­ Canada. His use of the material culture to tional labour markets. Even after sym­ help explain and understand the life of the pathetic juries and politically conscious artisan can and should profitably be workers had forced the state to intervene employed by other studies of the period. in the workplace, powerful capitalists And most importantly, his study presents readily contained this "damage." While conclusions and raises questions that acknowledging the good intentions of other labour and social historians of the Ontario political leaders, Tucker em­ period must now begin to address and phasizes the political, economic, and so­ test. Langdale Press must also be con­ cial forces that removed the regulation of gratulated for reprinting this study. occupational risks from judges' hands Though parts of it could have been more without benefitting the workers. The carefully edited, and others quite exten­ legislative consequences, Tucker argues sively enlarged and expanded, to trans­ in perhaps the most telling portion of his form what was a report intended for in- analysis, reflected an inter-class alliance house use at Parks into an integrated text, sharing patriarchal assumptions. Hence the whole is a valuable addition to our factory laws ought to be seen as "an im- 258 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

portant step in the transformation of female inspectors shared both the patriarchy from its familial to its social employers' world-view and their patriar­ form." (136) chal values. As a result accident rates The 19th century workplace posed escalated, workers continued to bear extraordinary hazards to workers' health. primary responsibility for their injuries, Overcrowded factories, exposed and reformers took misplaced satisfaction machinery, unsanitary facilities, foul air, in the displacement of native-born child and the danger of fire produced appalling labour by adult immigrants. bloodshed. Rather than attributing the The author draws upon a wide range carnage to the unavoidable consequences of sources, including statues, court cases, of beneficial technologies, Tucker argues factory inspectors' reports, and legisla­ that it was directly related to the drive for tive proceedings. Some of the evidence is profits. Then he shows how employers taken from case studies similar to those were exonerated from responsibility for that many researches already will have workplace deaths by revealing the links noticed in early issues of the Labour between the class relations of four On­ Gazette. In its highly original blend of tario judges and their ideological devo­ historical evidence with class/gender tion to property rights. In this way the analysis and legal scholarship, the book is author is able to explain why the courts, a tour de force. Tucker thus joins Chris­ reinforcing English legal precedents, topher Tomlins and others who have blamed the workers for their injuries. In mounted persuasive challenges to in­ short, the criminal law "tended to con­ creasingly antiquated notions regarding stitute, reflect, and reinforce the class the autonomy and beneficence of the structure of the capitalist formation." (74) regulatory state. Nevertheless, popular dissatisfaction with judicial decisions ultimately forced Robert H. Babcock a meliorative political response. In the University of Maine wake of the Ontario Nine Hours' move­ ment during the 1870s both Grits and Tories vied for the working-class vote. At Aline Charles, Travail d'ombre et de that time it was uncertain whether Ottawa lumière. Le bénévolat féminin à l'hôpital or the provinces exercised jurisdiction Sainte-Justine, 1907-1960 (Québec: In­ over the factory workplace. Here Tucker stitut québécois de recherche sur la cul­ successfully resolves a longstanding ture, Collection Edmond-de-Nevers no. 9 question in Canadian labour history by 1990). showing how this knotty jurisdictional issue was directly related to the lengthy L'INTERET DE CET OUVRAGE est and ultimately successful battle waged by double: parallèlement à l'évolution du Premier Oliver Mowat against John A. bénévolat féminin dans le milieu Macdonald over the federal power of dis­ hospitalier durant la première moitié du allowance. siècle, nous suivons les étapes de la fon­ As for the actual implementation of dation et du développement de l'hôpital the factory acts, Tucker argues that the Sainte-Justine jusqu'en 1960. structure of class and gender power sig­ L'auteure dessine d'abord un portrait nificantly shaped the enforcement d'ensemble de la situation du bénévolat process. Starved of resources and over­ féminin et du fonctionnement des whelmed by the magnitude of their hôpitaux au début du 20ème siècle. A responsibilities, factory inspectors opted cette époque, le travail des femmes étant to persuade rather than to prosecute those confiné à l'intérieur du foyer capitalists who disobeyed the law. It was conformément aux rôles traditionnels qui made easier by the fact that most male and leur sont attribués: la maternité, REVIEWS 259

l'éducation des enfants et le bien-être de Tâche éminemment féminine qui fait dire leur entourage, le bénévolat féminin se à l'auteure que cette vocation particulière développe naturellement dans le domaine de l'hôpital peut avoir influé sur l'attrait de la santé. Dés le début du siècle, divers qu'il a exercé pour que des centaines de organismes sont fondés: L'Assistance bénévoles y consacrent leurs énergies maternelle, la Ligue des nourrissons, les pendant si longtemps. Cependant, son Gouttes de lait, etc... au sein desquels les analyse va plus loin car elle situe le femmes bénévoles exercent les mêmes bénévolat a Sainte-Justine "à l'intersec­ compétences que celles requises par leurs tion des sphères privée et publique" par­ responsabilités dans la sphère domes­ ticipant du travail domestique caché et du tique. Jusqu'au milieu du siècle, le travail spécialisé reconnu. Jusqu'aux bénévolat fait également partie intégrante années cinquante, les bénévoles se de la bonne marche des hôpitaux. Ces retrouvent à la frontière de ces deux derniers, dans l'ensemble, sont dirigés sphères: certaines d'entre elles ac­ par des religieuses non rémunérées dont complissant des tâches issues de leur le travail est secondé par des infirmières expérience domestique, d'autres remplis­ aux maigres salaires et de nombreuses sant des fonctions relevant traditionnelle­ bénévoles. ment d'une formation professionnelle Après ce survol historique, les réservée aux hommes. chapitres suivants sont consacrés à une analyse minutieuse de l'univers par­ Presque infirmières, travailleuses sociales ou ticulier des bénévoles de Sainte-Justine: institutrices, les bénévoles bousculent la barrière des compétences professionnelles, ad­ le portrait des bénévoles (leur nombre, ministratrices et gestionnaires, elles bous­ leur statut civil, leur appartenance so­ culent en outre celle des rôle sexuels. (122) ciale), la description du travail qu'elles effectuent, les relations qu'elles Au milieu du siècle, dans les années entretiennent entre elles, et enfin, les cinquante, la professionnalisation des ser­ difficultés rencontrées dans leurs rapports vices sociaux entraîne une réduction du avec le corps professionnel (médecins, travail bénévole dans la sphère de la santé infirmières, etc...). et du bien-être et surtout dans les hôpitaux En pénétrant dans l'univers de où une grande partie des tâches assumées l'hôpital Sainte-Justine, la première auparavant par les bénévoles sont caractéristique qui frappe le lecteur, c'est désormais accomplies par des employés l'omniprésence féminine à tous les rémunérés. Cette situation fut parti­ échelons du fonctionnement de culièrement difficile à Sainte-Justine où l'institution: des travaux manuels à la le bénévolat des femmes s'était exercé haute direction du conseil d'administra­ avec une telle ampleur pendant plus de tion. Et ce phénomène semble unique quarante ans. Le dernier chapitre du livre dans l'histoire des hôpitaux québécois. fait état de ces années de transition Car, si dans la majorité des hôpitaux le ponctuées de conflits et traversées par les personnel soignant (médecins exceptés) bouleversements dans la redistribution est féminin et si plusieurs de ces institu­ des tâches et dans les relations interper­ tions sont administrées par des sonnelles, dans un contexte de déva­ religieuses, à Sainte-Justine, les fon­ lorisation du travail gratuit. datrices sont des femmes qui pendant En conclusion, l'examen des cin­ presque un demi-siècle garderont le quante années d'activités bénévoles à contrôle entier sur la gestion de l'hôpital Sainte-Justine nous révèle que l'entreprise. Cet hôpital nous offre donc l'organisation et l'évolution de ces prati­ l'image d'une "communauté de femmes" ques sont liées à l'histoire interne de dévouées à une oeuvre de bienfaisance: l'hôpital tout en étant tributaires des les soins prodigués à des enfants malades. transformations survenues partout au 260 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Québec dans la gestion des institutions mélange des deux ? Sylvie Murray a choisi hospitalières et de l'émergence de la première réponse, et l'on peut regretter nouveaux modèles culturels féminins. qu'elle n'ait pas décidé d'être un peu plus Dans cette étude sociohistorique, dialectique. C'est sans doute la principale illustrée d'une quarantaine de photos faiblesse de ce livre, qui est en fait son d'archives, Aline Charles nous convie à mémoire de maîtrise. une rencontre passionnante avec les fon­ L'auteure a exploré méthodiquement datrices du premier hôpital francophone la documentation disponible (1903- pour enfants de Montréal et les milliers de 1980), de même qu'elle a interviewé femmes bénévoles qui ont travaillé à son quelques survivantes. La formation de la expansion pendant un demi-siècle. Ligue auxiliaire répondait à cinq objec­ tifs: "assister les pères, les maris et les Marie-Marthe T. Brault frères dans leur lutte pour obtenir et main­ Institut québécois de recherches tenir des salaires décents et promouvoir sur la culture les rencontres sociales entre les "camarades de travail" et leurs familles; encourager les syndiqués en cas de Sylvie Murray, A la jonction du mouve­ troubles industriels (entendre: grèves); ment ouvrier et du mouvement des fem­ soutenir les familles de machinistes mes: la Ligue auxiliaire de l'Association éprouvés par une maladie ou une internationale des machinistes, Canada, mortalité; éduquer les mères, les épouses 1903-1980 (Collection RCHTQ, Etudes et et les soeurs de machinistes en ce qui a Documents 1990). trait aux principes du trade-unionisme; encourager la production et la vente des LES ASSOCIATIONS VOLONTAIRES produits de fabrication syndicale." (34) masculines ont fréquemment, par le Sylvie Murray, à partir de ses recherches, passé, engendré des clones féminins, sor­ estime que la Ligue a constitué un mode tes d'annexés aux affaires sérieuses où d'implication des femmes qui en étaient l'on envoyait les épouses s'investir. membres à la fois dans le mouvement des L'intention était trouble et les associa­ femmes et dans le mouvement ouvrier. tions auxiliaires féminines vouées à Cependant, elle identifie une fracture sur­ l'ambiguïté. venue à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mon­ Sylvie Murray nous offre une étude diale. Alors qu'auparavant la Ligue intéressante et aux accents parfois s'impliquait de façon naturelle et sans passionnés sur la section canadienne de la rencontrer de résistance dans l'action syn­ Ligue auxiliaire de l'Association interna­ dicale de l'AIM, l'après-guerre la renvoie tionale des machinistes. Ce syndicat au royaume plus traditionnel des femmes; d'origine américaine (AFL) mit sur pied, c ' est 1 ' époque du retour au foyer, et même comme beaucoup d'autres, son associa­ la paisible Ligue n'échappe pas au ressac: tion féminine, laquelle devait succomber elle se sent devenue "inutile" (104), plus au tournant des années quatre-vingt, après vraiment valorisée par l'AIM. La fin une lente agonie, victime de son prochaine est inévitable. Perdant petit à anachronisme. petit sa raison d'être aux yeux mêmes de l'AIM, acquérant un caractère de plus en Le débat fondamental qui agite plus folklorique et désuet à mesure que les aujourd'hui les historiennes consiste bien femmes envahissaient le marché du sûr à donner un sens à ce type travail et même les rangs de l'AIM dont le d'associations féminines: s'agitil de lieux membership se démocratisait graduelle­ émancipateurs d'un point de vue ment (Noirs, femmes, travailleurs non féministe ou de voies de garage sinon de qualifiés), la Ligue ne pouvait que se faire lieux d'inculcation des "devoirs" ultimement hara-kiri, comme d'ailleurs féminins les plus traditionnels... ou d'un REVIEWS 261 toutes les organisations similaires vers la connaître des tiraillements entre les même époque. visées féministes de leurs membres, Le livre de Sylvie Murray se lit l'allégeance syndicale des mêmes, et les agréablement. On appréciera l'intéres­ pressions des appareils à dominante mas­ sante revue de littérature du début, la bib­ culine. Ne faut-il pas, à plus forte raison, liographie également, quelques intuitions voir les exligues féminines comme des stimulantes. L'ouvrage est tributaire des organisations soumises à des pressions faiblesses documentaires: peu de données contradictoires, encore moins capables de numériques, absence d'indications sur les préserver leur autonomie face au pouvoir circonstances exactes de la création de la syndical masculin? Il n'est que de se Ligue (initiative authentiquement remémorer les résultats accablants d'une féminine ou idée des hommes de l'AIM?), étude réalisée en 1966 pour le compte de silence sur les débats (y en-eut-il?) qui ont la Commission Bird (Geoffroy, Renée et agité la Ligue ou l'ont opposée à l'AIM. Paule Sainte-Marie, Le travailleur On déplorera aussi quelques raccourcis, syndiqué face au travail- rémunéré de la quelques conclusions hâtives. Ainsi, que femme) pour se douter que l'élite syndi­ la Ligue réclame des salaires égaux pour cale et ouvrière de l'époque ne devait les femmes ne manifestait pas guère priser les velléités féministes des nécessairement une conscience aiguë de organisations issues de son giron. Reste l'exploitation que ces dernières subis­ que le livre de Sylvie Murray est une saient: les syndicats les plus "machos" contribution utile non seulement à des années 30 et 40 faisaient de même l'historiographie syndicale mais aussi à la dans l'espoir de voir les employeurs recherche sur les rapports entre les fem­ remplacer les femmes par des hommes. mes de la classe ouvrière et le mouvement De même la présence aux congrès syn­ des femmes. dicaux des membres de la Ligue ne garan- titelle ni leur passion pour la chose syndi­ Mona Josée Gagnon cale non plus que leur crédibilité aux yeux Université de Montréal des syndicalistes mâles. Quiconque a assisté à des congrès syndicaux des années 70 et avant, et lu la nomenclature Yolande Cohen, Femmes de parole: des activités destinées aux "dames" ne L'histoire des Cercles de fermières du peut guère qu'en douter. Enfin, on peut Québec 1915-1990 (Le Jour 1990). être agacé par le traitement insuffisam­ ment analytique du matériel. TWELVE YEARS AGO, during a year's Nulle part ne trouve-t-on de concep­ field work in a small rural parish, I joined tualisation des catégories qui permettent the local Cercles de fermières. It proved à l'auteure de conclure au "fémin-isme" to be a remarkable group of highly ou au "traditionnalisme" de la Ligue. Syl­ motivated women who clearly recog­ vie Murray est presque trop convaincue nized, supported, and reinforced the de son point de vue: elle parsème son myriad of skills they possessed. Although analyse de phrases conclusives (et subjec­ these skills fell well within the group of tives) et fait un peu trop flèche de tout activities traditionally assigned to bois. women, they were being, and had been for J'eus souhaité pour ma part une ap­ many years, valorized, promoted, and proche un peu plus critique, qui fasse celebrated in a highly visible public davantage de place aux dé termini sraes forum. I found little support for these im­ proprement AIM (et donc masculins) sur pressions in the literature, however. The le destin de la Ligue. Même les comités research available was negligible and de condition féminine syndicaux qui nous coloured by the assumption that the sont contemporains ne sont pas sans 262 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Cercles de fermières failed to support an association dedicated to the promotion women's emancipation. and well being of all women, respectful of Yolande Cohen challenges the the autonomy of the local groups, and validity of this charge. She argues that a tolerant of the diversity within its ranks. full understanding of the Cercles must be Part III builds on this analysis by ex­ grounded in the context in which they amining the way they see and talk about were operating. Femmes de parole is the themselves through a content analysis of result of such an exercise and chronicles their publications: La Bonne Fermière, the evolution of the organization over its La Bonne Fermière et la Bonne 75 year history. It not only fills a lacunae Ménagère, La Revue des Fermières, and in our historical record, it serves to set the Terre et Foyer. It provides an exposé of record straight: "les Cercles de fermières the evolution of their ideology and ont été à l'origine du mouvement perspective on women and corroborates féministe contemporain." the portrait of the Cercles as an associa­ Cohen examines the history of the tion with an astonishing capacity to adapt Cercles de fermières in multiples of three, to social and economic change, and to triangulating a number of different data weave together rural and urban modes of bases in order to provide a three-dimen­ life. sional portrait of the organization. Each The Cercles de fermières is the oldest of the dimensions privileges different women's organization in Quebec. It was sources of information and archival founded in 1915 at a time when both material. By moving back and forth be­ religious and civil authorities were con­ tween them, Cohen traces the presence of cerned about the depopulation of rural feminism in a myriad of activities related regions. Both groups were looking for to the context of the times. She focuses on ways to discourage outmigration and the what the Cercles achieved, rather than on establishment of a women's group looked what they failed to do. like it might serve the purpose. It was, Part I is grounded in archival informa­ however, at the instigation of two tion housed at the Archives Nationale du agronomists from the Department of Québec and the association's head of nee Agriculture, and not the Church, that the in Longueil. It portrays the Cercles' Cercles de fermières was organized. development and struggle for autonomy The Cercles did not thwart the rural from church and state. It is a fascinating exodus but they did succeed in founding story told in three stages: its birth, an organization which was regarded in secularization and incorporation. Part II 1937 as being vital to the maintenance describes the expansion and recruitment and continued legitimation of their strategies adopted throughout the chosen agricultural vocation. Their op­ province and examines in detail the work position to suffrage and their resistance to and activities of Cercles in three different employment for women must be seen in regions of the province: Quebec, Abitibi, conjunction with their belief in the com­ and Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean. In this sec­ plementarity of roles between men and tion Cohen augments the archival data women, and their rigorous endorsement with information culled from a survey of of their "equal partner" status on the farm. 517 members, field work based on the By 1940 the Cercles de fermières was records of 22 Cercles, 45 oral histories, a an influential organization with 30,000 file of 200 biographies, and a preliminary members and a strong provincial network. analysis of their publications. By retrac­ It succeeded in distancing itself from the ing the history of the Cercles through provincial government and the local these various data sets, Cohen fleshes out agronomist only to come under the the structural skeleton developed in part scrutiny of the Church. The political one. The Cercles de fermières emerges as climate in Quebec was changing: women REVIEWS 263

had obtained the right to vote and the which rendered the union with them provincial government was introducing under the umbrella of the AFEAS next to educational reforms aimed at secularizing impossible. It was a resentment that per­ the schools. In seeking to defend itself, sisted for a number of years: in 1979, the Church sought to decrease the power eleven years after the Cercles incor­ of all influential groups having links with porated, my decision to join both the the state. Its strategy regarding the Cercles de fermières and the AFEAS was Cercles de fermières was to encourage the looked upon with suspicion and created a Union des Cultivateurs Catholiques to tension that, at the time, I found difficult sponsor a rival women's group. In 1944 to fathom. the Union Catholique des fermières (UCF) The most recent period in the evolu­ was founded and members of the Cercles tion of the Cercles began with their incor­ were strongly encouraged to join. Most poration in 1968. At that time the rural refused, some doing so under threat of character of the association was aban­ excommunication. This was only the first doned and a much broader mandate for of several attempts to breakup the Cercles social action was adopted. Although fully de fermières. In the twenty years to fol­ able to confront the changes taking place low, the Church launched three more of­ in the family and to ratify new concep­ fensive campaigns. tions regarding the role of women, the In the early 1950s when the Cercles Cercles have continued to defend the sought to replace their losses by sponsor­ traditional values of the family. By doing ing a membership drive in urban areas, the so, they underscore the wide variety of Bishops responded by blessing a rival as­ situations in which women operate while sociation — les Cercles d'Economie taking special care to promote and Domestique (CED). In 19S7 when the UCF celebrate the work they do for their changed its name to l'Union Catholique families. des Femmes Rurales (UCFR), brochures Femmes de parole has many were circulated to all parish priests ex­ strengths. It is written in a succinct, well- plaining how to transform the Cercles de organized fashion and it is full of impor­ fermières into UCFR. It was during this tant data and information. For the most period that the relations between the rival part, it is also methodologically sound. As groups deteriorated and their positions mentioned above, Cohen takes great care polarized: the Cercles became more con­ to validate her interpretation of the story servative and the others more liberal. by cross checking a wide variety of data With no obvious ecclesiastical support in sources including archival records, oral its camp the Cercles simply defended histories, survey data, and an analysis of themselves by endorsing the Church's Cercle publications. The references are position regarding the traditional family meticulously documented and presented and the sacred mission of the wife and in 22 pages of endnotes, an effective way mother. The final attack by the Church to provide the detail required by the was mounted in 1963 when plans were academic scholar without discouraging formed to fuse the three women's or­ the lay reader. The book includes a 16 ganizations under the umbrella of the As­ page bibliography and is enlivened with sociation féminine pour l'éducation et many enchanting photographs of l'action sociale (AFEAS). The Cercles fermières, some taken as early as 1915 began but then abandoned all discussions and others as recently as 1989. with the other two groups in order to make plans for their 50th anniversary. Despite these strengths, Femmes de parole has two flaws. One is related to a It isn't difficult to understand the ac­ problem of information retrieval. Be­ cumulated resentment on the part of the cause the story of the Cercles is as­ Cercles toward the CED and the UCFR sembled in layers, the reader is motivated 264 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

to trace through the answers to her own the IWW in British Columbia. The 'direct set of questions. Unfortunately, the per­ action' tactics of the IWW and most of the sonalized search is too often hindered for epic battles it engaged in, along with want of an historical chronology, or a list aspects of the egalitarian 'Wobbly' of tables and figures. At other times it is counter-culture, have been subjected to hampered by mislabelled maps. The considerable historical scrutiny in North second flow is related to misgivings I America. But mainstream studies tend to have when Cohen moves from description reduce the beliefs that inspired and to hypotheses testing. As a sociologist, I shaped the IWW to the status of historical expect inferences and generalizations to curiosity or ideological aberration. "Most be grounded in appropriate comparisons: historians view the syndicalism of the recruitment strategies, for example, can Wobblies as quixotic," Leier notes, (i) only be shown to be unique to the Cercles He sets out to rectify this imbalance. by comparing them to the recruitment "The book is an attempt to compensate for strategies of other groups. Similarly, the liberal and social democratic histories claims regarding the unique opportunity that are too quick to write off the IWW; it the Cercles provided for women to tries to treat syndicalism as a powerful develop as leaders have to be supported and plausible alternative to capitalism with data showing that women in regions and state socialism." (ii) where Cercles were not operating did not Leier locates the material roots of have these opportunities. Such com­ revolutionary industrial unionism in the parisons are not made. rise of monopoly capitalism at the turn of Despite these shortcomings. Femmes the century. A new industrial regime de parole is a valuable book and a wel­ premised on an increased division of come addition toward our understanding labour intensified the assault on workers' of women's emancipation in Quebec. As control. Mechanization and factory work a believer in the important and ground expanded, swelling the ranks of the semi- breaking role the Cercles had in recogniz­ skilled and unskilled. To enhance ing, valorizing, and promoting women, it 'efficiency' and increase output, techni­ was a joy to read this book. Although of ques of 'scientific management' were im­ general interest to social, economic and posed. The 'deskilling' process and the political historians, this book is invalu­ routinisation of the job tasks was not con­ able to anyone interested in pursuing the fined, Leier demonstrates, to the classical difference vs equality debate. The lesson factory setting. Efforts to destroy here suggests that the political agendas workers' job control were also under­ inherent in each position are not neces­ taken in the mines, logging camps, and sarily incompatible. railway construction sites of British Columbia's resource-dominated Frances M. Shaver economy, arenas that were IWW "stron­ Concordia University gholds" in the coastal province. "The founders of the IWW viewed their North American form of syndicalism Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River as the logical response to the new assaults Flows: The Industrial Workers of the of capital," Leier suggests. (26) The IWW World in British Columbia (Vancouver: was formed in 1905 to defend, and ex­ New Star Books 1990). tend, workers' control. The syndicalist scheme of industrial organization stood in "THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS of the opposition to the exclusionary craft World has not been treated well by unionism of the American Federation of modern historians," Mark Leier contends Labor, which was too weak to combat in the opening line of this short book on monopoly capital's attack on labour. REVIEWS 265

Boldly proclaiming the 'one big union' ship of the Vancouver Trades and Labor and the 'general strike' as the means by Council and "the professional which society could be transformed, the politicians" of the Socialist Party of IWW reached out to those unable to find Canada (SPC) were reluctant, Leier comfortable niches in craft union con­ claims, to maintain a campaign of direct stituencies — immigrants, the de-skilled, action, preferring instead to negotiate a the unskilled, women — promising im­ compromise with the government. "By mediate aid and future freedom. channelling the protests away from the The IWW played an important role in streets and into government chambers, the BC labour movement prior to 1914. the trade union leaders and SPC sought to Leier recounts the organizing drives con­ restore peace quickly and deprive the ducted, with uneven results, by BC's IWW of its leadership role." (78) The em­ Wobblies among miners, loggers, and phasis placed on parliamentary politics railway construction workers in the by labour statesmen and socialist hinterland, and among longshoremen, luminaries, Leier concludes, "ensured lumber handlers and other labourers in the that the IWW would be weakened and that urban centres. The pinnacle of IWW rank and file militancy would be achievement was reached in 1912 when hampered." (85) the syndicalists led strikes of upwards of That Leier's sympathies lie with the 8,000 railway navies on the Canadian syndicalist ideology is both a source of Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific lines. strength and weakness in his analysis. He But the end of the railway boom and the postulates the IWW's vision of workers' pre-World War I economic slump, com­ control as a realistic alternative to the rise bined with continued employer hostility of monopoly capitalism. By taking the and wartime repression, brought about IWW seriously he avoids a common tend­ the decline of the IWW in British Colum­ ency in Canadian historiography to treat bia. In addition, Leier suggests that politi­ radical movements flippantly, as fringe cal factionalism in the west-coast workers formations not suited, so it is said, to the movement also "played a role in the even­ needs of a working class unreceptive to tual eclipse of the IWW." (53) revolutionary ideas. Leier avoids this pit­ He poses the syndicalist ideology and fall, but in doing so he tends to eulogise IWW practice as a yardstick against which the IWW, assessing the union in a con­ to measure, and reconsider, "the vaunted gratulatory rather than critical manner. radicalism of British Columbia." (ii) By True to syndicalist form, Leier, like fusing practical labour organizing with a the IWW itself, is prone to confuse prin­ revolutionary critique of capitalist ciples with tactics when assessing the ter­ society, the Wobblies, Leier argues, put rain of particular class struggles. In the forward a strategy of working-class resis­ context of the free speech fights, for ex­ tance which bucked "a growing trend to ample, Wobbly willingness to throw conservatism and reformism in labour themselves into the arms of the state was and socialist organisations." In Leier's certainly a measure of their commitment estimation, the IWW was the cutting edge to the struggle, but it was not necessarily of labour radicalism in British Columbia a tactic conducive to building a mass prior to World War I. movement in defence of democratic The Vancouver free speech fights of rights, a movement not so easily co-opted, 1909 and 1912 are used to illustrate the perhaps, by labour bureaucrats and ideological schisms which fragmented socialist sell-outs. Still, Leier does a fine the BC left. While the IWW revealed a job of fleshing out the pre-1914 history of willingness to confront the state, and to the union in British Columbia from the face arrest and imprisonment, in order to limited sources available. The historical defend rights of free speech, the leader­ record of the IWW deserves such serious, 266 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

if more searching, treatment, for as Leier his decision to join the Communist Party concludes, "its dream of workers' control, of Canada (CPC). Yet exactly why Mag­ of a world without bosses or masters, is nuson joined the party, when so many still a powerful one." (124) other workers with similar experiences did not, remains largely unanswered. David Akers Magnuson's recounting of the history Queen's University of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWTU) in he mid-1930s adds little, if any­ thing, to our understanding of the union's Bruce Magnuson, The Untold Story of fate. The LWIU had a long, fighting tradi­ Ontario's Bushworkers (Toronto: tion in its associations with the One Big Progress Books 1990). Union, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist Party (CPC). IN THE FORWARD TO THIS BOOK Ray The affiliation of the LWIU with the Stevenson states that Bruce Magnuson United Brotherhood of Carpenters and "exposes the lies of yesteryear and gives Joiners (UBCJ) in March 1936 as the Lum­ us a history of truth." (xii) Having read ber and Sawmill Workers' Union (LSWU) the book, I am still not sure what 'lies' remains hard to understand. It thus joined Stevenson is referring to, and Mag- one of the most conservative unions in the nuson's 'truth' often looks more like American Federation of Labor, a union myth. Indeed, the 'untold' story remains which would pride itself on its anti-Com­ untold, but therein lies both the lesson and munist activities during the Cold War. the legacy of the book. Why did the affiliation occur? In all There are eighteen chapters, plus Forr likelihood it occurred because Magnuson ward. Preface, and Epilogue; almost all of and other Communist leaders were them are poorly organized. The limita­ directed by the CPC to go back into the tions of the book are evident in the first AFL as part of the Communist chapter, in which Magnuson takes five International's switch from the "left sec­ pages to describe the first twenty-four tarianism" of the Third Period (1929- years of his life. Magnuson was born in 1935) to the Popular Front. Magnuson, the Swedish province of Vermland on 21 however, fails to advance a single reason February 1909. His days working and for it, and the untold story remains untold. playing on his parents' farm are dealt with The decision would bear bitter fruit. summarily, almost as if Magnuson feels In early May 1951 Andrew Cooper and we would not be interested. Included in other union figures from the UBCJ, with the five pages are Magnuson's arrival in the aid of an Ontario Supreme Court in­ Canada in the spring of 1928, the work he junction, ousted the leaders of the LSWU. did on various farms in Saskatchewan, (109) During the summer of 1951 Bruce and his fateful trip to the Lakehead in the Magnuson, Marc Leclerc, Jack Quinn, fall of 1933. and other leading Communists in the Magnuson arrived at the Lakehead LSWU tried to make a go of a new union, during a bushworkers' strike, and became the Canadian Union of Woodworkers, but involved in picketing, publicity, collect­ the strength of the right-wing forces ar­ ing funds, and taking minutes at strike rayed against it literally doomed the effort meetings. Shortly after the strike he was to failure. seriously hurt in the bush and spent Following the section on the destruc­ several months in the hospital and on tion of the LSWU Magnuson presents a compensation. During this time he read chapter on a trip he took to the Soviet The Communist Manifesto, Engels' Union in 1952. In the process The Untold Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and Story of Ontario's Bushworkers becomes Lenin's State and Revolution, and made The Untold Story of Bruce Magnuson. REVIEWS 267

The anecdotes are interesting, but they the Spanish Civil War. More than half of have little to do with the book. This chap­ them did not come back. (38) Here is an ter is followed by a very brief description important piece of history, and Bruce of the murder of three bushworkers near Magnuson is one of the few people left Kapuskasing in 1963, during a strike who can tell their story. So what does he against the Spruce Falls Power and Paper tell us about them? Nothing, absolutely Company. The last section of the book nothing. Another untold story remains un­ involves a critique of Ian Radfortb's told. Bushworkers and Bosses. Much of the I have missed the point, of course. critique makes little sense, but two points Bruce Magnuson does not tell their story emerge: Radforth is on the side of the because he will not, but because he can companies, and he does not pay enough not. The Cold War has never ended for attention to Bruce Magnuson. Bruce Magnuson and the Communists of The irony of this book is that some of his generation. It is not just dishonesty or the more interesting topics have little or egotism which leads Magnuson to play up nothing to do with northern Ontario or the his own role, leave key events unex­ bushworkers. Magnuson's description of plained, or the lives of fellow Com­ the more than two years he spent incar­ munists cast in shadow. It is the product cerated at Petawawa and Hull for Com­ of living with denial, of merely trying to munist activities is interesting and some­ survive. In crushing the Communists times stimulating. Magnuson's trip to the during the Cold War the right took away Soviet Union in 1952 is another case in much more than union positions, it took point, although even it seems lacking in away the history of an entire generation. substance. Not quite everything was lost. Bruce When I picked up this book, I hoped Magnuson's 1944 pamphlet, Ontario's that Magnuson would add to our Green Gold, still stands as a remarkable knowledge of the struggle of the bush­ achievement. Its critique of the greed of workers, the role of the Communist Party multinational corporations, its call for in that struggle, his own role in the Com­ sane treatment of the environment, and its munist Party, and something about the insistence that the workers who fall the other prominent Communist Party mem­ trees get their fair share of the profits bers he worked with. Magnuson fails to remains as relevant today as it ever was. do any of this. He adds nothing substan­ The tremendous strike of 1946, which tial to Ian Radforth's work. In fact, Rad­ was Bruce Magnuson's finest moment, forth sometimes tells us more about will go down in Canadian trade union Magnuson's role than Magnuson himself history as one of the great achievements does. There is nothing new here about the of working-class struggle and ethnic region, the industry, of its workers. There solidarity. is virtually nothing about the CPC or When the short-lived Canadian Union Magnuson's role in it. It is as if the Com­ of Woodworkers was formed in the munist Party did not even exist. spring/summer of 1951 Bruce Magnuson In terms of the other leading Com­ helped draft the constitution. It called for munists in the LSWU, the book can only final control of policy and organization to be described as mean-spirited. We learn be in the hands of the rank and file, rejec­ absolutely nothing about Jack Gillbanks, tion of all forms of discrimination, nation­ Harry Raketti, Marc Leclerc, Jack Quinn, al and international working-class Tom Hill, or Charles McClure; they are solidarity, and the need to abolish hunger just those people around Bruce Magnuson and establish a lasting peace. Bruce Mag­ in the pictures. We learn from Magnuson nuson will never be mistaken for a great that 300 bushworkers joined the Macken- writer, and this book does not even do zie-Papineau battalion and fought during justice to his own contribution. But as a 268 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

legacy to the left, the constitution of the revolutionaries. At a historical moment Canadian Union of Woodworkers will do when free enterprise ideology is being just fine. deified and reified around the globe, Berton's book is a timely reminder of the Peter Campbell social costs of capitalism in collapse. In Queen's University racy, readable prose, he brings to life the passions and struggles of the system's critics and casualties. Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: Those already familiar with the his­ 1929-1939 (Toronto: McClelland and tory of the period are likely to be less Stewart 1990). touched or satisfied by The Great Depres­ sion. Original research in the book is ON 8 SEPTEMBER 1939, CCF leader and limited. It consists of some nuggets from pacifist, J.S. Woodsworth, rose in the the Mackenzie King diaries which reveal House of Commons to oppose Canada's the ex-prime minister at his most insipid imminent entry into World War II. In and ridiculous. Berton also provides some recounting his gripping speech, Pierre moving evidence on horrible working Berton's The Great Depression lists the conditions in the retail trades, culled from social causes which had consumed the 1935 Royal Commission on Price Woodsworth over the previous decade. Spreads, and he introduces Charles Sher- win, the "king" of the boxcar cowboys. All of his years here in the Commons he had This material, however, adds colour, not fought for commoners — for the Communists depth to one's understanding of the decade. (whom he loathed) driven to prison by an un­ speakable law; for the single jobless banished The vast majority of the book treads to the slave camps; for the boxcar cowboys well-worn terrain. Berton draws exten­ riding the freights, beaten by the police; for the sively from published sources (which are helpless victims of the Padlock Law; for the readily acknowledged), and focuses on hungry children deprived of proper nutrition such issues as the founding of the CCF, the by an unheeding government; for the union On-To-Ottawa Trek, the political vic­ organizers, the maverick clergymen, the dust- tories of Aberhart in Alberta, Hepburn in bowl housewives, and all the desperate men Ontario, and Duplessis in Quebec, the and women. (502) Oshawa strike, and the country's Woodsworth's view of the Depres­ deplorable immigration and deportation sion, as expressed in his passage, is policies. precisely that of Berton's. The book's Depression life is portrayed in ex­ central characters are the dispossessed of treme terms: the starving vs the mil­ Canada, and the politicians, businessmen, lionaires, the brutalized vs the baton and assorted bigots who kept workers in wielders, the weak vs the powerful. That chains, farmers eating dust, and Jewish oppression and poverty were painfully refugees out of the country. Reflecting real in the 1930s is incontestable, but both Berton's eye for a good story and his what is missing from this account are humanitarian politics, his book ap­ nuance and subtlety. By portraying the proaches the Depression from the victims as superhumanly courageous, and perspective of the left-wing populist. the country's leaders as inhumanly heart­ One could do worse. If this is the only less, The Great Depression takes on the form of a melodramatic morality play. account of the Depression that Canadians Ordinary life in the 1930s, lived as some­ ever read, it is refreshing to know that thing other than newspaper headlines, is they will encounter, probably for the first unexplored in this gallant "popular" his­ time, such atypical Canadian heroes as tory. The book is thus the latest in strike leaders, boxcar hoboes, socialist in- Berton's long-standing mission to tellectuals, and even communist REVIEWS 269 manufacture Canadian heroes, legends, "la tsarine" Lise Bissonnette, lors du lan­ and myths, an approach to the country's cement d'une série de soupers-bénéfice past which generates entertaining jour­ régionaux à Rouyn, ville natale de Mme nalism and mediocre scholarship. Bissonnette, en mai dernier (voir Readers interested in a more sophisticated l'hebdomadaire L'écho de Val D'or, 14 survey of the thirties will find it in another mai 1991,15). Quant à lui, Le discours de McClelland and Stewart publication, presse que décrit Mme Maryse Souchard Decades of Discord, by John Thompson dans son livre sur le Front commun de and Allen Seager. 1982 se dégage d'un ensemble de "mille There are some other significant cinq cents textes, provenant surtout du omissions in Berton's account. The Devoir, de La Presse et du Soleil ainsi que Maritimes are barely acknowledged, d'une vingtaine de périodiques". (23) women's experience is given short shrift, Mais un survol des notes en bas de page and cultural, intellectual and educational ainsi que des citations établit que seul Le developments are all but ignored. Further­ Devoir est directement en cause. more, Berton's contention that there was D'ailleurs, l'auteur de la préface, no peace movement in the thirties (497) l'ancien président de la CSN Marcel will come as a great surprise to historian Pépin, ne s'y est pas trompé lorsqu'il af­ Tom Socknat who wrote an entire book firme: "Mme Souchard aura eu le mérite (Witness Against War) on the subject I de démasquer certains éditorialistes bien can also testify from my own research on connus qui, sous couvert de university life that, contrary to Berton's et d', sont profondément claim, students circulated anti-war peti­ anti-syndicaux. [...] Elle met surtout en tions and held vigils throughout the cause certains éditorialistes du journal Le decade. Devoir." (8) S'agit-il seulement de Jean- Having said all of this, it is important Louis Roy et de Jean Francoeur? to look at the positive side of Berton's •C'est ainsi que se réalise, une life's work, and by now pointless to harp nouvelle fois avec le livre de Mme on its scholarly limitations. In the twilight Souchard, la situation que Mme Bisson­ of his career, Berton has distinguished nette déplorait à Val D'or, tout en y himself as the country's foremost popular trouvant un motif de fierté. Bien sûr, ceux historian. He is a superb story teller, he qui s'acharnent ainsi sur le seul quotidien has turned many people on to Canadian québécois "indépendant" des chaînes de history, he has made a living as a writer, journaux et autres barons de la presse, and he has done so without the benefit of c'est l'élite — car Le Devoir reste le jour­ tenure. At the very least, this is a respect­ nal de l'élite canadienne-française — et able legacy. en particulier, les intellectuels et univer­ sitaires dits "de gauche" ou critiques. Paul Axelrod Chaque fois que l'un d'entre eux choisit York University de s'attaquer aux médias, il commence par éliminer les médias électroniques parce que c'est beaucoup plus compliqué Maryse Souchard, Le discours de presse sur le plan technique d'étudier le contenu — L'image des syndicats au Québec des médias électroniques que celui de la (1982-1983) (Montréal: Editions du presse écrite. Ensuite, généralement, il Préambule 1989). concentre le tir sur Le Devoir, le quotidien qui assume dans son esprit le leadership du concert des médias. (38-9) "AU DEVOIR, on ne pardonne rien. [...] c'est le journal qu'on veut vierge et qu'on Sans doute que cette déformation s'arrange pour rendre martyr," disait la professionnelle d'un certain milieu directrice de ce quotidien haut de gamme, universitaire est une donnée que le lecteur 270 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL doit avoir présente à l'esprit quand il nomme les éditoriaux ou les commen­ entreprend la lecture du livre de Mme taires. Par là, elle rejoint ce que pensent Souchard, s'il souhaite profiter de sa lec­ les journalistes et les lecteurs ordinaires. ture. Mais ce lecteur doit aussi être Mais la sélection de textes qu'elle étudie prévenu de plusieurs autres choses. Car est composée indistinctement autant le discours de la presse en ce qui a d'éditoriaux, de reportages, de chroni­ trait aux syndicats doit être pris avec des ques et de lettres de lecteurs; son analyse pincettes, autant le texte de Mme ne tient pas vraiment compte de ces nuan­ Souchard est écrit pour un public très très ces du sens commun entre les genres jour­ averti. nalistiques. Déroutant. Un autre élément dont il faut être De la haute voltige averti, c'est que ce livre est le fruit d'un travail "scientifique." Cela veut dire entre LE LECTEUR doit par exemple être averti autres: 1) que son auteure s'est efforcée que ce livre de 263 pages est la version de découper dans le réel, un objet limité: grand public d'un exercice scolaire que 1,500 textes parus dans les journaux à l'on nomme: thèse de doctorat. Il y l'occasion de la ronde de négociations du trouvera donc inévitablement des ingrédi­ secteur public et parapublic québécois en ents plutôt indigestes. En premier lieu, 1982-83; 2) qu'elle a examiné ce "cor­ une multitude de coups de chapeaux et de pus" à la lumière d'une méthode déjà génuflexions à des auteurs et à leurs liv­ essayée sur autre chose, méthode qu'il res: l'étudiant-e doit montrer qu'elle s'agit d'éprouver une autre fois et de connaît bien les écrits savants sur le sujet développer au besoin; 3) qu'elle a bien et l'école de pensée qu'elle a choisie. identifié les affirmations qui lui ont servi Deuxièmement, dans ce genre de de points de départ sans qu'elle ne les ait devoir, on trouve un ensemble de mots démontrées, pour éviter une trop grande spécialisés qui servent d'outils intel-lec- contamination du carré de sable scientifi­ tuels et qui forment parfois un véritable que par les opinions de la chercheure. jargon, pour initiés seulement. Il suffit de parcourir les 11 graphiques et tableaux Les procédés de que contient le livre de Maryse Souchard la séduction intellectuelle et de jeter un coup d'oeil sur le petit dictionnaire des pages 257-259 pour se C'EST POURQUOI, le lecteur est rendre compte rapidement qu'on n'entre condamné à rester sur sa faim en ce qui pas sans efforts importants dans l'univers concerne certaines propositions très im­ des théories et du vocabulaire qu'utilise portantes du livre de Mme Souchard. Par l'auteure. exemple, l'analyse à laquelle se livre la Troisièmement, il arrive souvent que docteure ne démontrera pas que le dis­ ce genre de travail scolaire développe une cours de presse est "fondamentalement façon de classer les objets examinés qui antisyndical." (187) Ce n'est pas son ob­ s'éloigne de ce qu'en disent et en pensent jectif: elle se contente de l'affirmer et de habituellement ceux qui les ont produit ou montrer comment il l'est. D'une manière ceux qui les consomment dans la vie analogue, Mme Souchard va faire comme quotidienne. Ainsi, Mme Souchard fait si la sélection de textes qu'elle examine référence à plusieurs reprises au fait qu'il était représentative de la totalité des mes­ y a une différence dans la presse écrite sages à propos des syndicats qu'a diffusée entre les textes qui ont pour mission de l'ensemble des médias écrits et rapporter les faits et les événements, électroniques à cette époque. Ainsi, elle habituellement désignés par l'expression: pourra parler du "discours de la presse" les nouvelles, et les textes qui offrent des alors qu'elle ne scrute vraiment qu'un commentaires et des conseils, que l'on petit morceau de toute la presse. REVIEWS 271

Une autre généralisation à surveiller, Loi de la presse: L'éditeur est responsable c'est l'hypothèse que la position du de tout ce qui paraît dans le journal. Devoir en 1982-83 face aux syndicats du Bref, il faut lire ce livre avec un esprit secteur public est plus que circonstan- bien aiguisé, aussi tranchant que celui de tielle, qu'elle révèle une attitude con­ son auteure. Alors, on parvient à iden­ stante de ce journal face à tous les syn­ tifier un travail raffiné qui cible un certain dicats, ainsi qu'une attitude identique de nombre de textes parus dans le journal et toute la presse tout le temps, et même le qui les déconstruit à l'aide d'une méthode point de vue de la totalité du discours rigoureuse, qui "les met à plat" pour social. Pour un, Marcel Pepin sent employer cette expression du français de nécessaire de souligner "que pendant la France qu'utilise l'auteure. Son livre célèbre grève de l'amiante en 1949, Le n'est-il pas destiné à tout le marché de la Devoir était du côté des grévistes." (8) francophonie? Ce qui apparaît alors, ce A ce propos, ce qui semble faire sont différents mécanismes (suivre les in­ problème, c'est l'usage que l'auteure fait tertitres qui sont d'excellents signes de de l'idée de "crise." Au début du livre (60 piste) par lesquels les journaux, les jour­ et suivantes), celle-ci se présente comme nalistes et les autres qui écrivent dans les un instrument intellectuel qu'utilisent la journaux, construisent une argumentation partie patronale et les médias pour mieux visant à convaincre le lecteur, quelquefois attaquer les syndicats. A la fin du livre en le proclamant souvent en le cachant, (230 et suivantes), l'auteure écrit comme que leur vision des choses est la meilleure. s'il y avait eu crise véritable, révélatrice Pour les journalistes et pour tous ceux d'une orientation habituellement antisyn­ qui font métier d'écrire, c'est là un travail dicale quoique moins visible des médias. qui peut servir à améliorer le contrôle de Encore une fois, c'est déroutant. En l'écriture et son efficacité. Quant au con­ effet, l'hypothèse habituelle, c'est qu'il y sommateur des écrits des autres, il pour­ a bien eu crise à ce moment-là. Provoquée rait en sortir mieux armé pour débusquer pour les uns par l'impact de la récession les procédés rhétoriques de la séduction de 1981, de certains gestes du gouverne­ intellectuelle. ment fédéral et de la crise mondiale de la dette des Etats sur les finances publiques François Deniers du Québec. Conséquence pour les autres l'Université Laval du virage à droite du gouvernement péquiste au pouvoir qui a ainsi déclenché une rupture avec ses supporteurs socio- Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: démocrates dont de nombreux syndiqués Labor in Nineteenth Century America et une partie de la communauté journalis­ (New York: Noonday Press 1989). tique. Quoiqu'il en soit, comme cette con­ ception de la crise reste marginale par THE LAST TWO YEARS have seen two rapport au propos central de l'oeuvre, elle attempts to assemble the past twenty ne sert qu'à mieux identifier les years of the "new" (American) labour his­ "préjugés" de la chercheure. tory into a more synthetic form. David De la même façon, Mme Souchard va Montgomery's Fall of the House of Labor considérer que dès lors qu'un texte est sparked much debate with his workplace- publié dans le journal, il représente la centred study; and now Bruce Laurie has pensée de ce journal, qu'il s'agisse d'un followed that up with an effort to focus on texte écrit par un éditorialiste officiel, par the politics of the major events of un correspondant d'une agence de presse, American labour history. He has set a par un expert invité ou par un lecteur qui large agenda for himself. He seeks to se défoule. L'auteure raisonne comme la "merge the institutional focus of the old labor history with the social and cultural 272 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL insights of the new." (13) Not only will they acted roughly in kind by organising he describe organized workers, their unions or mobilising labour politics. Yet, politics and their unions, as well as the Laurie's use of ideology seems limited to major labour movements, but he also at­ a socially situated but particular and ap­ tempts to set the organized into the con­ parently autonomous realm of ideas, text of the unorganized (especially seemingly impervious to other social ex­ women and blacks), capital, and the state. periences. Radicalism and free labourism Finally, he tries "to tell us something of float freely above the narrative providing the unfolding of capitalism in the explanations of unity or fragmentation as countryside as well as the city," while needed. While he attempts to ground them also describing how this influenced in work, their relationship to a more America's history. broadly conceived ideology is obscured. The great strength of the book is its And, while we are repeatedly shown the tremendous breadth. While the timespan incorporation of workers' language and largely limits him to the midwest and the politics into dominant centres, there is northern and southern east, it is remark­ little sense of contestation — of a sense able how well he draws from across the of the role popular discourses played in country. Temporally, the work spans one shaping the language of politics. hundred plus years, and, spatially, More than the glue of ideology, what reaches across half a continent of uneven­ really holds this work together is the ly developed and dramatically and con­ course carved through the 19th century tinually shifting terrain. Laurie deftly that Laurie adopts as his master narrative. runs through the work-centred literature As the title suggests, this book's subject, from the pre-industrial household and ultimately, is really organized labour; the early manufacture, through the unorganized — be they blacks, women, proletarian politics of mid-century, to the the Irish, or recent migrants from the Knights of Labor and the AFL in the 1880s countryside — seldom rise above their and 1890s. He draws in something of the role as problems on the supply side of the different experiences which characterised labour market. That transformation, from class formation for blacks and women, as craft production to mass production, well as the varying experiences of remains one of the most important issues Catholics, the Irish and later the continen­ for social historians, and, as Marx em­ tal European immigrants. In the process, phasized, represents a critical turn in the despite the necessary limitations of a sur­ history of social relations in society. But, vey, we see many aspects of the tremen­ while the specific course followed by dous variety of social relations prevalent Laurie may be central, it is not universal. in 19th century America. By the time we reach the final two chap­ Holding all this together are the ters, the book has taken on something of (themselves shifting) popular ideologies a whiggish cast and is almost completely of free labourism and radicalism. Begin­ focused on telling the stories of the ning with that ever-vexing issue of Knights and the AFL. These are, of American exceptionalism, Laurie course, important stories; histories whose describes how contradictory impulses treatment has grown much richer over the within American radicalism pulled labour past ten year. But by this point, Laurie has in different directions. And it is the con­ completely abandoned a wider context; tinuing sway between differing concep­ by this point it is half biographies of Pow- tions of labour, property, and politics derly and Gompers. Thus, getting back to which frames his interpretation. As exceptionalism, we are told why these workers situated their understanding and major figures moved away from socialist expectations in varying proportions on politics, but we don't get the kind of over­ the state, other workers, or themselves, arching description of the place of a more REVIEWS 273

broadly conceived class politics that we phasis added] Undoubtedly this was an might hope to find in a synthesis. important underpinning of women's This traditional approach is best seen place. But here it suggests that the in who acts in this story: for the most part, household of the 1890s was unchanged it is the skilled, the artisans, or anyone since the early 19th century, if not from who might, however temporarily, or­ time immemorial. Many recent writers ganize. But even these actions are fiercely have demonstrated how gendered and constrained by structure. In the early class-based influences co-existed and in­ chapters, agency lies with "the market, teracted in different ways in different transportation, and manufacturing" material and historical contexts. As in­ which bring about the "great transforma­ dustrialization proceeded in the 19th cen­ tion." While the same critique could be tury, older familial distinctions were made of much rural social history, in this strengthened and new ones created. In the book we do not gain a strong sense of early chapters, Laurie rarely draws our what role rural people played in changing attention outside the male artisanal world, rural society. While pointing to the rural completely ignoring the household or at basis of early manufacture in places such best utilizing it only as a location. In­ as Lowell and Lynn, we quickly return to dustrial paternalism was an outgrowth of New York and Philadelphia without ex­ familial social relations, restructured in ploring the relationship between the particular, capitalist, ways. Here, while countryside and the developing labour the connection to the family is acknow­ market (even while noting it was not im­ ledged, it is treated unproblematically as migrants but in-migration from the gender neutral (as if die family could be countryside that was the major deter­ so) and not in turn altering its own model. minant of growth in these cities in the Finally, while heralding a redis­ early century). Clearly if we want to talk covery of the state, Laurie's employment about transformation in work and society, of the term as an analytical category is then this is as important an issue as the seriously underdeveloped. The state disruption of the "traditional" experience played an important role in labour's his­ of workplace activity in the artisan's shop. tory, and labour, both organized and un­ organized, had important consequences The central focus on organized for 19th century state formation. But here, workers creates problems for Laurie's in a surprisingly under-theorized reflec­ handling of issues of gender. If we look tion on the place of the state, we get an at the index, women appear to figure account of the emergence of labour as a prominently. But this is deceptive. First, player in political activities. What we see the index only points us to where women here is politics, in a simplified liberal appear; these passages are thin and there usage, not the state. We need to look fur­ is little development of women's place in ther than obvious demonstrations of the organized labour, except by default. state's coercive capacity to repress class Second, there is no sense of the impor­ organization. Repression was not an in­ tance gendered notions of social relations vention of the bourgeois state, but other had for contemporary understandings of forms of its organization, equally impor­ labour and labour organization, much less tant to workers, were. The various forces of how they changed over the course of which overdetermined North American the century. Laurie is more comfortable social development are extremely com­ discussing "masculine" issues. His ex­ plex, and no one could expect a single planation of women's lower place in volume to cover the subject. Yet, a work capitalist work settings and continued ex­ on the place of labour in American his­ clusion from labour organization seems to tory, especially one that attempts to bring be only that women were "still perceived the state back in, could say something as keepers of the hearth and home." [em­ 274 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

about the broader responses of the state in David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class its struggles with the working class. and Ethnicity in an American Mining In Laurie's history, the American Town, 1875-1925 (Chicago and Urbana: working class is certainly active, but I did University of Illinois Press 1989). not emerge with a better understanding of its role in shaping American history. THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY, to Here, the American working class appear generalize from the author's summary of more to be caught in massive tides than one of ten thematic chapters, is not to historical agents. If the "new" labour his­ retell the history of Butte, but rather, "to tory was, and is, to have any real purpose insert the necessary Irish element, as pre­ it was to expose the role of conflict in the vious accounts have not." (365) Inevitab­ grand narratives, and to resist the mar­ ly, though, a substantial revision of ginal ization of labour history to a role received wisdom about Butte, the so- outside that process. If we are to examine called Gibraltar of western mining labour and class in 19th century America, unionism, is achieved, and a critical point we must be attentive to class formations of interpretation, that "the working class across American society, not only that should not be defined solely in relation to slice that makes for a tight title. Labour capital" (300) is driven neatly home. history must be attentive to such fun­ Especially noteworthy, from the point of damentals as gender formation, the struc­ view of the methodology of mining his­ ture of labour markets, state formation, tory, is Emmons' systematic use of the and the discourses that structured classes' extraordinary ethnic records of the World understandings of their worlds. Museum of Mining, linked with the Moreover, these must be understood as manuscript census and other materials interconnected processes. Laurie leaves that probe beneath the surface of labour- us with a master narrative that strives for capital relations. Only less satisfactory is some totalizing impulse by constantly a relentlessly political fatalism that un­ pointing to all the right places — the derlines the discussion of Irish American countryside, the state, race, gender, a nationalism within the book. labour market, politics, and ideology — Imprisoned by the structures of and then pulling it into an apparently American politics and even foreign policy unified narrative. But too much is miss­ — admittedly, the demands of Irish and ing. Where is the household, urban or American nationalism were often at odds, rural? Where is an understanding of class but a comparative study of the Canadian that begins with more than the stereotypi­ experience might reopen the supposedly cal representations of artisans and fully "non-debatable" point that "American proletarianized white, male, and ultimate­ policy towards England...destroyed what ly, organized workers? Something of this few [radical] options Irish-Americans is here, but is overwhelmed by the narra­ had" (7) — the Butte Irish seem predes­ tive. What's most disappointing about tined to play a conservative role. Ironical­ this book is its complete conventionality; ly, the strongest contribution of this local its apparently conscious, neutral study is to show exactly how and why a pluralism; its ability to allow Joyce Ap­ pivotal group of Irish American workers pleby, sounding somewhat relieved on surrendered their autonomy to a group of the back cover, to call it "a fresh and lucid Irish American capitalists, a story set reinterpretation" — lucid, yes, but not against the backdrop of transatlantic fresh. It is a good synthesis, undoubtedly, migration and the westward movement, but only of one coarsely carved line and the peculiar characteristics of in­ through a much richer story. dustrialization in Butte. Danny Samson No sooner had famine emigrants con­ Queen's University gregated in the eastern cities, than there REVIEWS 275

"began preparations to relocate the Irish had any intrinsic connection with social in the West." (61) The more romantic attitudes in America. He is perhaps too colonization schemes, of people like dismissive of The Patriot Game" in the Francis Meagher, exiled revolutionary more complex environment of 1911- and 'Irish' governor of Montana territory, 1921, when Larkinism flourished on the came to little or nothing. The rise of the margins of Butte society, the Pearse Con­ copper kingdom nevertheless offered nolly Irish Independence Club sharing its practical opportunities for more than one local headquarters with socialist Finns, class of Irish emigrant. Emmons deserves the IWW, and the dissident Metal Miners credit for bringing to light a hitherto un­ Union. Nevertheless, as Larkin himself discovered clan of Celtic hardrock remarked, "I love my native land and I miners, from the doomed mines of West love my race, but when I see some of the Cork, who shared the customary place of Irish politicians and place hunters you the Cornishmen in 19th century Butte, have in Butte, my face crimsons with and for highlighting the Irish ethnicity shame, and I am glad they did not remain and/or kinship ties of Butte entrepreneurs in Ireland." (382) like Marcus Daly and Augustus Heinze. The local balance of forces ensured The Irish, of course, did not have the that the Butte Irish would be, as anti- place entirely to themselves"; neverthe­ Larkinite Hugh O'Daly happily less, "Butte belonged to the Irish in al­ remarked, a "balance wheel against com­ most the same way that Salt Lake City munism." (323) By the 1920s, however, belonged to the Mormons." The majority the community itself was much in decline, of the Butte Irish were former unskilled as Irish entrepreneurialism had been sub­ labourers and their families, who found in merged into a faceless monopoly the copper mines an usual degree of job capitalism, and technological and market security and ethnic protection. Quid pro changes destroyed whatever 'options' quo, the labouring Irish accepted the so­ Irish American miners once possessed. cial leadership of the Irish American elite, The means of production of low-grade including "what to many seemed a witless ores, the open-shop drive, and capital's fidelity to the Democratic party." (41-2, flight to new locales (a quite different 62-3) ethnic experience would be lived by the In chronicling the history of this com­ Spanish-speaking mineros of the US munity, Emmons proceeds with a refresh­ southwest) form, we suspect, a sufficient ingly clear idea of the differences be­ explanation for the historical coincidence tween the overlapping realms of working- of the crisis of the Butte Irish with the class organization and ethnic associational tragedies of the Irish nationalist move­ life. Working-class agency was manifest ment in the era of World War I. in Irish-dominated unions which for several decades successfully balanced Allen Seager needs for a conciliatory approach to pater­ Simon Fraser University nalist capital with miners' demands for improved wages and conditions; his is the first adequate explanation of the com­ Lisa M. Fine, The Souls of the paratively moderate tone of industrial Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in relations in this important corner of the Chicago, 1870^1930 (Philadelphia: mining frontier. The nationalist or so-call Temple University Press 1990). revolutionary organizations, in contrast, were confined to no particular social BETWEEN 1870 AND 1930 Lisa Fine state. Emmons quite properly rejects the describes how office work, originally notion that a 'radical' or 'secular' ap­ seen as "men's work," was socially proach to the national question in Ireland reconstructed into "women's work." Fine 276 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

discusses the contours and significance of tions of eager young women like those this shift through an examination both of she has described. Arguing that clerical the outline of clerical work's transforma­ work was firmly established as a tion (how many and who) and of the cul­ stereotype of women's paid employment tural baggage which accompanied that during the 1920s, Fine finds that becom­ transformation. In effect, she fleshes out ing "women's work" operated in effect to the general picture provided in Margery devalue that work. Fine's clerical workers Davies' Woman's Place is at the thus discovered themselves not in the sort Typewriter. By focusing on the "second of glorious work adventure an earlier city" in the US Chicago, Illinois, Fine has generation had hoped for, but rather in the opportunity to provide a more prosaic — and underpaid—jobs. nuanced picture of the meaning and ex­ In the course of presenting its overall perience of office work for women. story, Souls of the Skyscraper presents Fine divides her study into three two separate collective portraits of female chronological sections. Between 1870 clerical workers. Both of these groups of and 1890, Chicago's offices were still clerical workers are atypical of clerical overwhelmingly filled with men. Fine workers in general, and Fine uses that characterizes the women who entered atypicality to make her points. The first clerical jobs at this time as "venturing into group consists of 54 "public stenog­ a masculine world." (17) She argues that raphers" drawn from advertisements in both men and women themselves at this the 1900 Chicago city directory. These time still viewed the world as divided into women, a sort of entrepreneurial elite separate spheres for men and women, a among stenographers, were older than view which clashed for both groups with most Chicago clerical workers at the time, the concept of women working in offices. and were also more likely to be living on As more and more women began to enter their own or even supporting other family offices in the 1880s, these "business members. The second group consists of women" became more sure of themselves 60 clerical workers who resided in the and more accepted by their male co­ four residences affiliated with the workers and the larger world. "Eleanor Association" in 1910. This or­ The heart of Fine's book is her second ganization was formed specifically to section, covering the years from 1890 to supply respectable housing for Chicago's World War I. During this period women, working women. (Fine notes that a total in Fine's words, "conquered" certain of 175 women lived in the Eleanor houses clerical occupations (29), most notably in 1910. I kept wondering what jobs the that of stenography and typing. 115 non-clerical workers held. Were they Throughout her book, Fine demonstrates also employed in relatively elite occupa­ an admirable sense of the women's own tions of the female job market? Were any agency in entering office jobs. These lar­ of them factory workers? This informa­ gely young, white, and native-born tion might provide further clues about the women first sought out educational op­ office workers among them.) portunities and then gained employment Fine employs these two collective ex­ in the newly "feminized" office occupa­ amples of female clerical workers to tions. In their persistence in doing so, stress the agency of the women workers Fine argues, these women intervened themselves in the process of the feminiza­ symbolically in the on-going cultural dis­ tion of clerical work. These two groups course in the US about the propriety of provide examples of self-discipline and women's new roles in the business world. self-assertion, as the public stenog­ Finally, in the book's third section raphers, for example, dared to carve out Fine discusses the ways in which clerical for themselves a very public — and inde­ work did and did not meet the expecta­ pendent — working existence. The resi- REVIEWS 277

dents of the Eleanor Association's houses virtually no role in the job placement of include a few public stenographers, but women at the turn of the century. Despite most of them are a little closer to the these caveats. Fine's book does add an typical clerical worker of the time in that important emphasis on women workers' they at least are employed in business own agency to the ongoing debates over offices. The intriguing records of the the feminization of clerical work and the Eleanor Association provide a rare look sex-typing of jobs in general. into the personal lives and rituals of such a group of early 20th-century working Ileen A. DeVault women. The kinds of anecdotes provided Cornell University by these records are especially valuable since they are usually only available through oral histories. Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, For the labour historian in particular, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural there are two troubling qualities to Fine's South, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: book. While she does include a brief dis- University of North Carolina Press 1990). cussion of early attempts at trade unionism among Chicago's office work­ AMERICAN LITERATURE on the histori­ ing women, she does not place that dis­ cal construction of masculinity thus far cussion in the context of the larger labour has concentrated on the urban, educated, movement, either nationally or in middle-class of the Northeast. In Subdu­ Chicago. In her brief discussion of ing Satan, Ted Ownby sets out to explore Chicago's clerical worker unions, she an alternative model of masculinity never even alludes to the city's reputation through an examination of religion, at the time as one of the most important recreation, and gender in the white rural centres of trade union and working-class south in the period between the Civil War activity in the United Sates. A more com­ and the advent of a continental "mass" plete understanding of this might provide culture. Ownby poses the apparent insight into why Chicago clerical workers paradox inherent in white protestant mas­ formed the organizations they did. (She culine culture between "the extremes of also begins the discussion of unionism masculine aggressiveness and home- with a reference to clerical workers' centred evangelism that gave Southern professional associations, but she never culture its emotionally charged nature" follows this up or explores the connec­ (14), and concludes that this delicate tions and distinctions between profes­ balance was only possible as long as sionalism and trade unionism.) evangelical culture and rough masculinity The second difficulty with the book were protected by isolation. "Evangelical arises from Fine's emphasis on the agen­ culture" is rather vaguely described as the cy of women clerical workers. This is achievement of self-control and the stressed so strongly that Fine is often in elimination of the animal-like charac­ danger of forgetting that the women by teristics in man and is contrasted with themselves could not simply decide to masculine traits and characteristics such seek office employment. Women could as drinking, hunting, gambling, fighting, have sought forever, but as long as office and swearing. Interestingly enough, this employers did not see it as in their inter­ study virtually ignores the characteristic ests — whether those interests were finan­ that others have regarded as the most cial or cultural — to hire women, the animal-like characteristic of humans — office would not feminized. Fine's rela­ their sexuality. The argument presented tive neglect of the employers' side of the in the book claims that with transporta­ office balance might lead a newcomer to tion and cultural changes, such as the the field to believe that employers played automobile, radio, and movie, the rural 278 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

South lost its equilibrium and these rough work makes it equally impossible for the masculine activities were forced to under­ reader to understand how class was re­ go regulation and restriction by the lated to the experience of the sacred and church, women, and the state. the secular and the way in which class Gender and religion is a fascinating therefore interacted with religion, gender, area of study as many scholars including and race. Ownby have pointed to the important As recreation only makes sense in links between women and the church. The relation to work, masculinity also needs examination of men and religion has some knowledge of femininity to provide received much less overt attention and as meaning. This book actually contains a result Ownby's study offers new insight much more about women than one might into this area, particularly into the tension expect — but the material is rarely ex­ between Christianity and masculinity plicitly connected to the argument. The which existed in late 19th century North compliant, saintly, and pure women who America. That this tension was specific to appear in this book cannot help but seem the rural South is doubtful. Traditional artificial when contrasted to the sinning Christian theology has portrayed both men. Unfortunately, this simplistic repre­ God and Satan as male — each respective­ sentation of women undermines faith in ly embodying either the righteous or less familiar evidence around masculine devilish characteristics associated with activities. masculinity. With such a broad pos­ Race is a constant theme in the book sibility of masculine identities to draw and it is in this area that Ownby provides upon the tension was perhaps inherent. the material for his most important in­ The social and cultural historian who ex­ sights yet ultimately fails to put the pieces amines the practice of religion without in the puzzle together. Ownby links any consideration of even the most basic African-Americans (no gender!) to the theological underpinnings does so at his most dangerous aspects of masculinity — or her peril. loss of control, alcohol, and sexuality. In the same way that he looks at Yet he stops short of making the connec­ religion without theology, Ownby ex­ tion of what it actually may have meant if amines recreation without the context of white Southern men truly constructed a work. Although Ownby touches upon definition of masculinity in such a way class-based recreations such as the elite's that it was epitomized by African- attempt to assume the roles of 1 lth-cen- American men. If white men saw African- tury knights through their ring-and-lance American men as more "manly" than tournaments, the reader is left with very themselves, not simply as a sexual threat little understanding of what the men in the to white women, racism and gender takes book actually did for a living. Obviously, on interesting new meanings. in light of the rural setting, many were Finally, this original topic appears to fanners or engaged in various levels of have been undertaken without much con­ independent commodity production. sideration to the recent literature on However, from the evidence presented it gender. For example, Ownby makes no appears as if others were wage-earners. use of age or marital status and the impor­ Was the responsibility of supporting a tant impact these variables had in forming family not also an important aspect of ideas of masculinity. In the same way, he manhood endorsed by an evangelical cul­ conceptualizes the sharp division of time ture? It is impossible to appreciate the and space (calling it place) between the meaning and significance of leisure sacred and the secular in a manner that choices without any reciprocal under­ will strike historians of women as a standing of what was considered work. modified version of "separate spheres" à Most importantly, the lack of emphasis on la Nancy Cott (1977) but without even REVIEWS 279 some of her preliminary contradictions. some of the synthesizers back to the draw­ In this manner, chapters are organized by ing board. physical settings such as Main street, Cohen begins with an old question: church, fairs, and home. For a book that "Why did workers suddenly succeed in is supposed to be about place, very little the 1930s as both CIO trade unionists and geographical orientation was provided, Democratic Party faithfuls?" Her first except for a disclaimer in the foreword of chapter describes the tragic defeat and areas that he book would not cover such fragmentation of an extremely impres­ as the Appalachians and the dominantly sive, ethnically-diverse labour movement Roman Catholic regions of Louisiana, in Chicago following World War I. What Mississippi, Maryland, and Kentucky. had changed by the 1930s? The usual For all its many problems, this is still answers concern the nature and policies a very interesting book. Ownby's discus­ of the federal government (New Deal sion of picnics, church suppers, circuses, reforms) and changes in the structure and country fairs, harvest celebrations, cock- strategy of the labour movement (the fighting, revival meetings, gambling, CIO). But Cohen argues that "...what mat­ drinking, and swearing are all fascinating ters most" is not these external factors, and often imaginative. The book is further but "the change in workers' own orienta­ enhanced by photographs. Those inter­ tion during the 1920s and 1930s. Work­ ested in gender, religion, recreation, and ing-class Americans underwent a gradual culture, who have some knowledge of the shift in attitudes and behaviour over the general literature will find the material intervening decade and a half as a result rich, original, and rewarding. The reader of a wide range of social and cultural familiar with context will be able to take experiences." (5) You cannot understand from the book far more than it actually the big question without looking at how offers. peoples' lives changed. And in the process of describing and analyzing these Suzanne Morton changes, Cohen confronts several of the key issues for this era: What happened to Queen's University ethnic identity after the era of mass im­ migration? How, if at all, did the rise of mass consumption and mass culture ef­ Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: In­ fect Black and immigrant working-class dustrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 communities? How did workers actually (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge experience and react to the rise of welfare University Press 1990). capitalism? How did they experience the Great Depression and the New Deal's IT WOULD BE A SHAME if Liz Cohen's programs and how did this change their new book on Chicago workers in the era political attitudes? What was the basis of between the two world wars is seen as their strong identification with the new "just another community study." In fact, CIO? it is a fine example of how a case study framed in terms of "big questions" can Elements of 1920s mass culture did provide a new way of looking at a period penetrate ethnic communities, but the and at old problems. She successfully situation in Chicago was fascinatingly bridges analytical barriers between mixed. Perhaps the most striking thing is workers' community, workplace, and the resiliency of traditional ethnic cul­ political experiences and the chronologi­ tures in the face of the mass market cal one between the "quiet" 1920s and the onslaught. Radio stations mushroomed, upsurge of the 1930s. With all the thrash­ but they tended to be sponsored by church ing around for a US labour history syn­ and other community groups and to spe­ thesis lately, Cohen's success should send cialize in ethnic programming. Immigrant 280 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL workers flocked to films, but in small Employers erected this elaborate wel­ neighborhood theatres, not the movie fare system to undercut ethnic and class palaces for which Chicago became solidarity and create a new sense of loyal­ famous. These were distant, expensive, ty to the firm by individualizing the work and vaguely uncomfortable places for experience, but the reforms had un­ most ethnic workers. (Although Cohen foreseen effects. The complicated incen­ does not mention the fact, they were tive pay schemes brought resentment and probably also racially segregated.) The frustration, then stimulated the growth of new movie and old ethnic cultures merged collective efforts to restrict production in the storefront theatres where crowds and "beat the system." The industrial shouted in Italian and Polish to the screen sports leagues, choral groups, and or­ stars and the movies were often preceded chestras, and the company-based thrift, by short foreign language plays. Chain insurance, and pension programs had stores and chain theatres were largely been designed to compete with ethnic or­ confined to more prosperous neighbour­ ganizations and institutions, but they hoods. Most working people still shopped facilitated the growth of a workplace at corner stores run by immigrant small mass culture and collective identity that businessmen. cut across ethnic, age, and skill differen­ Insulated by their ethnic cultures at ces. The company unions spawned a home, these workers toiled in some of the small group of indigenous leaders who world's largest industrial plants and they grew frustrated with their inability to were facing a new situation in the 1920s. generate real change and responded to Some Chicago employers pioneered cor­ early calls for unionization. porate welfare, and virtually all of them When the depression set in, this had jumped on the bandwagon following whole welfare structure collapsed. Facing the massive turnover problems and labour many of the same problems — layoffs, unrest during the war, "a kind of conver­ wage cuts, deteriorating conditions — sion experience." They instituted com­ workers turned first to their families and plex wage incentive and profit sharing ethnic communities. But when these systems; provided vacations, pension, in­ traditional sources of support could not surance, and loan programs; sponsored cope with the magnitude of the crisis, they sports, music, and other cultural ac­ relied increasingly on new federal relief tivities; and lent the whole enterprise an programs and on self-organization and aura of democracy with their company protest, first through unemployed coun­ unions. Many of these programs never cils and later through industrial unionism. touched the large group of unskilled im­ Two key concepts allow Cohen to ex­ migrant and Black workers who drifted in plain this transition. The first is a variant and out of the plants constantly of the notion of moral economy. She ar­ throughout the decade. Even many of gues that in the course of the 1920s, those who stayed long enough to take part workers developed the notion that were wary. Wages, conditions, and treat­ capitalism itself was alright, but that they ment by foremen were still generally bad, were entitled to fair treatment and some while unemployment remained a constant measure of security. The collapse of wel­ worry. But we cannot fathom the upsurge fare capitalism convinced them that that followed in the 1930s without recog­ reform was essential and turned them nizing that employers were serious about toward federal intervention and industrial all this and that many workers par­ unionism. Their adherence to both the ticipated willingly in such programs and CIO and the New Deal was based on this indeed came to think of them as entitle­ notion, which she terms "moral ments. capitalism." The concept remains shadowy, but one comes away with the REVIEWS 281 impression that something like this was periences of several representative happening. Chicago workers. But Cohen goes beyond The second concept Cohen employs these individual experiences by asking to explain the upsurge of the 1930s is the "how the very structure of peoples' lives, idea of a "culture of unity." This was in particularly their relationship to basic in­ part the natural product of demographic stitutions and authority figures in their and structural changes, in part the crea­ ethnic communities, workplaces, and tion of the CIO. It represented the ex­ families, was transformed during the periences and values that more workers crisis." (218) Both ethnic community in­ shared as they moved through the 1930s. stitutions and welfare capitalists had gone In demographic terms, the end of mass out of their way in the 1920s to claim the immigration and the decline of Black responsibility for workers' welfare. If migration in the course of the 1920s they did not, they reasoned, workers meant a more stable population with a would look beyond them to state-spon­ higher proportion of English speakers. In sored programs. In the face of massive economic terms, the class-based ex­ unemployment, the collapse of the bank­ perience of deprivation during the depres­ ing and insurance industries and sion brought with it the collapse of ethnic widespread poverty and suffering, how­ economic institutions and the spread of ever, neither corporate nor ethnic leaders national chain stores, theatres, and radio could deliver on their promises. AU were programming. "Workers of diverse ethni­ eventually overcome by the wave of un­ cities and races succeeded in asserting precedented economic distress. themselves collectively as Democrats and The community and factory-level unionists by the 1930s," Cohen con­ analysis that allows Cohen to make the cludes, because "they had more in com­ link between everyday life and political mon from which to forge alliances." (363) economy has transformed social history On these shared experiences, CIO or­ over the past generation, giving us a ganizers carefully cultivated a new set of richer and more realistic view of working- values emphasizing ethnic and racial class life. Given its diverse economy and equality and class solidarity in the midst population and its rather compelling his­ of social diversity. Give the subsequent tory of class struggle, Chicago is a par­ history of race relations in the city, ticularly significant case study. I am in­ Cohen's reading is perhaps a bit too op­ clined to agree, at least for large industrial timistic on this score. Yet the CIO made cities, that "The most revealing contrasts very real progress in breaking down racial were not between one city and another but and ethnic barriers between workers, and rather between worker communities and one must be careful about reading more factories within a city like Chicago." (7) recent antagonisms back on the depres­ At least Chicago's own staggering diver­ sion years. sity suggests that this could certainly be Throughout, the secret to Cohen's the case. success is deceptively simple. She keeps But I am a bit more dubious of the everyday lives of common people at Cohen's argument that "Despite minor the centre of her story but investigates variations, there was one national story" their own roles in the big changes, (7) and that looking at Chicago's history broadening her scope to the level of politi­ tells it. Working-class life was really cal economy. Making this link in concrete quite different in the small coal towns of terms lends her arguments an impact Illinois, western Pennsylvania, or missing in structural analyses. southern West Virginia, or in the textile The Depression itself is a case in mill villages of the Carolina Piedmont, or point. This chapter begins with a series of in small manufacturing cities around the vignettes — the actual depression ex­ USA. Cohen is undoubtedly right about 282 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the general trends toward mass culture, Commonwealth College (1923-1940). industrial unionism, and greater reliance All three were independent of unions of on the federal government, but the roots universities; all aimed to equip adult stu­ of these trends, how they were ex­ dents with the tools to be effective leaders perienced, and what they meant to in the labour movement; and all sub­ workers probably differed in some work­ scribed to a radical social vision. Alten­ ing-class communities from the situation baugh argues that independent labour in the Black and immigrant neighbour­ colleges alone succeeded in training hoods of a big city like Chicago. Far from workers to lead the movement for radical discrediting the community study ap­ social change, while other worker educa­ proach, however, this simply means that tion efforts failed. (55) While that argu­ we need to ask Cohen's and other "big ment is weak, the story of the schools is questions" about the lives of workers in nevertheless worth hearing. very different sorts of communities Altenbaugh begins with a context for before a credible "national story" can the study of the independent labour col­ emerge. leges, surveying the range of worker Making a New Deal is more than a big education efforts from university-spon­ step in the right direction. What Cohen sored programs to trade union classes. He achieves is a coherent, persuasive ex­ does not make clear, however, how many planation, from the bottom, up, for the independent labour colleges actually ex­ loyalty of working people to the CIO and isted beyond the three under study. His the New Deal Democratic Party. In the next three chapters trace the origins of the process, she describes how workers three institutions, their goals and prac­ moved from a local, ethnic orientation tices, and their student populations (some toward a more cosmopolitan, national tables would have helped here), and their outlook suffused with class interests. By teachers. Chapters entitled "harassment" refusing to read back a clear trajectory and "fratricide" lead to one on "the end of toward integration and conservatism and the labor colleges." A final chapter asses­ instead crafting her analysis on the basis ses their achievements. of workers' own experiences and values Work People's College, in Duluth, over two crucial decades, she has not only Minnesota, had its origins in a Finnish illuminated a whole range of problems religious school whose mission was to and moved us toward a new periodization. train Lutheran ministers for the Finnish She has also restored much of the drama community. Finnish Socialists became in­ to what is afterall a pretty good story. creasingly influential in the school, until 1907 when they gained control and James R. Barrett redefined its purposes: to "preserve Fin­ University of Illinois at nish culture, promote literacy and instill Urbana-Champaign socialist ideals." (65) Achieving its greatest strength before the war with up­ wards of 130 students per year, it was subsequently torn by a struggle in the Richard J. Altenbaugh, Education for Finnish left between the Socialist Party Struggle: The American Labor Colleges and the Industrial Workers of the World. of the 1920 and 1930s (Philadelphia: By 1921, Work People's College had split Temple University Press 1990). from the Socialists and affiliated with the IWW. The resulting alienation from the THIS IS A CLOSE LOOK at three labour mainstream of radical Finnish activity led colleges in the United States: Work eventually to weakness and ineffective­ ness. People's College (1907-1941), Brook- wood Labor College (1921-1937), and REVIEWS 283

Brookwood Labor College grew out grades, tests, nor diplomas. Extracur­ of the short-lived Brookwood School, ricular activities and informal contact founded shortly after World War I in a among the students and teachers were Westchester County, New York mansion important components of the educational by William Finke, a pacifist Yale alum­ exper-ience. nus, and his wife, Helen. In 1921 the Brookwood and Commonwealth took Finkes recruited A.J. Muste, then head of active part in current labour struggles, the Amalgamated Textile Workers, to offering support and at times leadership serve as director, a position he maintained in, for example, the Marion textile strike, until his contentious departure in 1933. the Sacco and Vanzetti demonstrations, Brookwood averaged 40 to SO students and the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union each year, with a total of 600-800 in the organizing drives. Drama played a vital life of the institution. Its radical critique role in their outreach: Brookwood's of mainstream labour organizations led to drama groups toured the country begin­ an investigation of "radicalism" by the ning in the late 1920s, covering 53 cities AFL, which formally condemned Brook­ in 1934, and playing to perhaps 14,500 wood in 1928. While the school continued workers in that year. While there were to function effectively until 1936, it suf­ undoubtedly many inspirational perfor­ fered continuous harassment and stress mances, Altenbaugh's account leaves the until closing in 1937. impression of didactic, one-dimensional Commonwealth College, the "Brook­ melodrama. He gives us "the key phrase" wood of the South," grew out of the of one Commonwealth play, "When the Utopian socialist community, Newllano, farmers learn to organize, their problems in Vernon Parish, Louisiana, in 1923. will be a lot easier for them." (110) Factional disputes between the colony In order to evaluate the impact of the and the school precipitated the school's colleges, Altenbaugh asks, "what did stu­ independent relocation in Polk County, dents learn and how did they use it?" He Arkansas in 192S. Commonwealth com­ answers using case studies of individual prised students and faculty from outside students, supplemented by recollections of the South, and was dependent on weal­ offering generalizations. Successes in­ thy liberal supporters scattered across the volved students who went on to positions rest of the country. Besieged by its fun­ of leadership in unions, in the labour damentalist neighbours, the Klan, and the press, and in other labour education or­ state of Arkansas, it folded in the late ganizations. Brookwood graduates, par­ 1930s, when Northern liberal support ticularly (among them Roy, Walter, and waned. Victor Reuther), played critical roles in Entrance to the colleges was based the CIO campaigns of the 1930s. Alten­ largely on experience in and commitment baugh also provides an example of what to trade unions. Most of the students lack­ he considers a "failure" from Common­ ed formal schooling beyond grade school wealth: the student who, after four years (Commonwealth students were somewhat at the College, "enrolled for graduate more educated, WPC's somewhat less). work in sociology and labor history at the There were practical courses in organiz­ University of Wisconsin" rather than ing and public speaking as well as more "selflessly serving workers." (253) This theoretical subjects, including seems an ironic judgement foran assistant economics, labour history, and sociology. professor at Northern Illinois University, The schools attempted to avoid what is in a work directed towards a labour- now called the "hidden curriculum" of oriented academic readership. conventional education: aiming for a non- This anecdotal evidence of students' hierarchical, egalitarian relationship be­ subsequent careers is insufficient to prove tween students and teachers, they gave no Altenbaugh's claim for the unique and 284 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

exclusive success of the small, inde­ tory, have the opportunity to go to their pendent, residential labour colleges. Still, union hall and vote by secret ballot for the independent, residential structure of their officers. This historic occasion is a the colleges did make them uniquely vul­ consequence of a March 1989 out-of- nerable. Brookwood and Commonwealth court settlement of the Racketeer In­ differed from most labour and radical or­ fluenced and Corrupt Organizations ganizations in that they had no com­ (RICO) civil suit filed by the US Depart­ munity base. Participants shared ment of Justice against the IBT. For 87 ideological orientation with each other, years prior to the settlement the union's but not neighbourhood, work, family or top officers were elected by the delegates community. The mixture contributed to to the IBT's conventions, a practice that the educational experience: a Midwestern originated in the belief that only conven­ miner was reported to remark upon arrival tion delegates were in a position to watch at Brookwood, "What are these Jewish the actions of the various candidates from girls doing here? There ain't no Jews in across the country and make an informed the labor movement." (141) However, choice, but evolved into a mechanism to such a structure very likely contributed to assure the domination of the union by a the fragility of the colleges. few. Now, with the rank-and-file voting Acknowledging the lack of hard in a few months, a host of candidates have evidence of the "success" of the labour declared for the presidency, including colleges, Altenbaugh nevertheless offers R.B. Durham, supported by the outgoing a summation, 'This study has been about president William McCarthy; Ron Carey, that 'militant' minority which made the president of the 7,000 member Local 804 crucial difference, which persevered in New York City; Walter Shea, a former against formidable odds to seek radical assistant to Jackie Presser; Lou Riga of solutions to economic injustice." (268) California; and William Genoese of New That the odds were formidable is clear York. Adding more drama to the upcom­ from this story. That the graduates of the ing event, on 21 February 1992 James P. schools made a contribution to the labour Hoffa, whose infamous father was IBT struggles of the first half of the 20th cen­ president from 1957 to 1971, announced tury is also clear. Unfortunately, despite that he too was ready to throw his hat into Altenbaugh's adulatory tone, what fails to the ring once questions about his emerge from this work, except in fleeting eligibility were settled by the court ap­ glimpses, is the sense of excitement and pointed election officer. commitment that must have sustained the Thus, Dan La Botz's Rank-and-File colleges through the chronic underfund- Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic ing, the fractional in-fighting and the Union appears at a very timely moment, head-on opposition which they faced particularly considering that the throughout their existences. Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) endorsed Ron Carey for IBT president at Peter Seixas its November 1989 convention. La Botz, University of British Columbia himself, was a TDU activist in the 1970s before moving on to a career as a leftist journalist (and authorship of The Crisis of Dan La Botz, Rank-and-File Rebellion: Mexican Labor, 1988) and received the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (New "cooperation" (xv) of the TDU Interna­ York and London: Verso 1990). tional Steering Committee in preparing this account of the organization's history. IN JUNE, 1991 MEMBERS of the Interna­ At one level, then, Rank-and-File Rebel­ tional Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) lion must be read as part of the campaign will, for the first time in the union's his­ literature of the upcoming election. The REVIEWS 285

book lays out the evil doings of the IBT of the union as simply the natural conse­ old guard in alliance with the Mafia, quence of "business unionism." (138) He government officials, and businessmen; it both misuses this well established con­ presents the TDU's stance on a number of cept, and fails to point out that most key membership concerns including TDUers only want their union to be better deregulation, pension reform, drug test­ at "business unionism." ing, double-breasting, ESOP's, and two- tier wage scales; Ron Carey is hailed as With all this said, labour scholars will the reform candidate; and TDU is given still find much of value in La Botz's treat­ well-deserved credit for working long- ment of TDU's rise "from a dissident min­ and-hard for the open election of IBT of­ ority into an opposition party." (327) He ficers. Equally important when consider­ has mapped out the key benchmarks in ing the book as a "political document" is TDU's short history: various Teamster lo­ the way it treats its subject. One leams cals breaking away from the International much about rank-and-file participation in in the 1960s; the formation of The Frater­ TDU but little of the organization's struc­ nal Association of Steel Haulers (PASH) ture or governance; biographical portraits in 1967 with its dual union strategy; the of numerous grass-roots leaders are fea­ 1970 Wildcat strikes and the founding of tured but background material on national Teamsters United Rank and File (TURF) organizer Ken Paff is less highlighted; in July 1971 as the first national reform and, finally, each constituency to which organization within the IBT; the forma­ TDU appeals is given coverage — blacks tion of the Professional Drivers Council, and women, southerners and Califor- Inc. (PROD) that same year to fight within nians, steelhaulers and Mexican- the union and with various legislatures for American female food packers. This is better health and safety codes for road not to say that these are not appropriate drivers; the creation in August of 1975 of topics, but only to point out that a certain Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC) to selectivity is going on. generate rank-and-file pressure on Teamster leaders to stand up to employers Whatever the contribution of Rank- during the 1976 contract negotiations; the and-File Rebellion in advancing the cause transformation of TDC into Teamsters for of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the a Democratic Union in 1976; and the book's value to labour scholars is mixed. TDFU's advancing presence in the union Certain key questions are glossed over as it fights for democratic bylaws at the local level, advocates both stronger con­ such as why a number of reformers in the tracts and majority rule on contract accep­ union, including Carey himself, shied tance or rejections, campaigns for offices, away from joining TDU, and also why a wins some established local officials to its number of people who identified with side, merges with PROD, and takes up Hoffa are responsive to TDU. Moreover, causes, like the plight of the Watsonville La Botz' s knowledge of US labour history Canning and Frozen Food employees, and his powers of interpretation are faul­ which are snubbed by the established ty. Given space limits, two examples will leadership. Also of great value are the have to suffice. On the factual front, La numerous biographical sketches of TDU Botz informs the reader that "the AFL was activists, often conveyed in their own at the peak of its power in the 1920s..." words, presenting their perceptions of (88) when, in actuality, as Irving working conditions, IBT leadership, and Bernstein and countless others have docu­ the struggle to build TDU. When labour mented, these were the "Lean Years" scholars commence writing the history of when trade union membership declined. the reformation of the teamster's union, As for interpretation, La Botz superficial­ as Paul Clark and George Hopkins have ly explains organized crime's penetration 286 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL done for the Mine Workers, La Botz's Dissenters gravitated decisively to the volume will clearly be an asset. political opposition in the 1770s, severing their former ties with the government. Warren R. Van Tine Hence, Bradley argues, one cannot at­ Ohio State University tribute the political dissidence of Dissent to its marginal social status. Even from a comparative perspective, no correlation James Bradley, Religion, Revolution and can be made between nonconformist English Radicalism: Nonconformity in radicalism and its exclusion from local Eighteen-Century Politics and Society power. Rather the new activism was a (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press response to the deteriorating situation in 1990). America, to which nonconformists had strong ties, and to the increasingly JAMES BRADLEY RECENTLY WROTE a authoritarian 'Toryism' of church and significant monograph on the English state. The American crisis, in other domestic reaction to the impending words, reactivated the noncon-formists' American war. This book is very much its ideology of resistance and social ex­ sequel. Whereas the first focused upon clusion, held in abeyance during the Whig the petitions of 1775, showing that per­ supremacy of 1714-1760, and propelled haps a third of the 'political nation' was them along the path of radicalism. opposed to coercion in America, this one Bradley is not only interested in ex­ explores the nonconformist contribution plaining the radical orientation of the to that agitation and, more generally, to nonconformists in the 1770s; he is also late 18th-century radicalism. Bradley is eager to stress their contribution to not simply interested in the well-known popular radicalism. In his view noncon­ intellectuals of Dissent, men such as formity was the midwife to radical politi­ Richard Price and Joseph Priestly, whose cal behaviour and in a more limited sense attitude to reform and America has been to class, mobilizing the artisan against the quite thoroughly researched. He is inter­ establishment in ways that anticipated the ested in the lesser luminaries of the resurgence of democratic ideals in the provinces and, above all, in the power of 1790s. Bradley elaborates this argument nonconformist congregations in local through a series of electoral case studies politics. On these matters he has some and a detailed social analysis of the 1776 important things to say. petitioners. While he admits that the op­ In part, Bradley confirms what we positionist stance of the Dissenters was already knew. Although Dissent declined more clearly expressed in the petitions numerically during the 18th century, it than at the polls, where clientage and retained a resilient and substantial venality were sometimes important presence in the larger towns. In some non­ mediating forces, he none the less em­ conformists were as well represented in phasizes the crucial role that Dissent professional, wholesale and retail posi­ played in fostering a critique of the tions as their Anglican counterparts, and Anglican-dominated social hierarchy and were certainly as economically mobile. advancing the cause of structural political Indeed, despite their second-class citizen­ reform. ship and the statutory impediments to There is much to commend this political office, nonconformists did ob­ analysis, particularly its measured tain aldermanic office in towns such as criticism of the Namierite and neo-con- Bristol, Colchester, Coventry, Norwich servative dismissal of English radicalism and Nottingham and positions of trust in the age of the American revolution. But elsewhere. At the same time, Bradley it is a little overblown. In invoking the shows, echoing John Phillips, that the importance of nonconformity, Bradley REVIEWS 287 downplays other features of the radical dislocations of war might or might not movement. As John Brewer has shown, have affected local economies. Without the radicalism of the post-1760 era built some attention to these issues, and to the upon earlier traditions of political inde­ ways in which the politics of ideology and pendence, refashioning the Country criti­ interest intersected, one cannot recapture que of oligarchy to appeal to men of the social dimensions of city politics mobile property smarting from draconian during this crisis of empire. Bradley oc­ debt laws, heavy taxation, intrusive casionally recognizes this (243 with government and a legal system that respect to Bristol) but the methodological privileged the landed elite. These power­ strategy he adopts for tackling it scarcely ful solvents to political deference, par­ allows for a subtle materialist analysis of ticularly attractive to the middling sort of urban politics. The result is that his the larger towns, are marginalized in analysis of political behaviour in terms of Bradley's account, as are the clubs and religious (Dissenting) affiliation, more societies that helped to sustain them. easily identifiable and measurable, in­ Radicalism was articulated through the evitably comes to the fore. predominately secular medium of jour­ One of the potential ironies of this nalism as much as through the pulpits of book is that while Bradley is keen to dis­ nonconformist congregations, and it took tance himself from J.C.D. Clark, his inter­ place against a background of rising pretation might well be hailed by Clark prices, precarious living standards, and and his supporters as vindicating the portentous changes in productive rela­ primacy of religion over class in 18th- tions, challenging conventional notions century politics. Such a conclusion would of both political and economic inde­ be crude, for Bradley has disclosed im­ pendence in ways that appealed to a portant socio-economic divisions in his broad, and by no means exclusively analysis of the 1775 petitions as well as propertied audience. In insisting upon the demonstrating the ideological purchase of importance of religion to radical en­ provincial Dissent in strengthening the deavour, Bradley ignores too much. rights of resistance to constituted Particularly problematic about Bradley's authority. Whether this finding merits the account is his failure to recognize that claim that Dissent spawned an alternative successive waves of political reformism politics that was radical, popular and in 17th-century England, including those class-based remains debatable. Dissent prior to 1760, were synchronized to im­ fuelled opposition to the North regime, perial crises. Issues of national destiny and was an important inspirational focus and economic advantage were linked with for radicalism, at least in those towns those of popular political accountability, where it managed to disengage itself from particularly as the Atlantic economy grew proprietorial or corporation politics. But in importance and seemed threatened by the political independence of Dissent, for forces within Britain and without. How years the bulwark of Whig oligarchy, was these were played out during the comparatively recent, and largely American war remains central to any un­ detached from the rough-and-tumble derstanding of the social bases of extra- demotic politics that had characterized parliamentary radicalism, yet Bradley's earlier opposition movements. That liber­ analysis of urban politics tends to sidestep tarian tradition, sharpened by labour un­ these issues. His electoral analysis, in par­ rest and hostility to impressment, ticular, is vitiated by this neglect of the remained a potent force in the American economy of the towns he chooses to dis­ war as the widespread demonstrations of cuss. It is surely important to know which 1779 in favour of Admiral Keppel made constituencies were towns with an impor­ clear. Such a volatile, impassioned tant stake in American trade, and how the politics co-existed with the moral, ration- 288 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

al politics of Dissent and the sober as­ Koditschek's achievement. This is a sociations of the disgruntled gentry in the major scholarly work. protean, and deeply contradictory, radical Bradford felt the full shock of the first movement of the 1770s. Some reassess­ industrial revolution. It was a small in­ ment of this bewildering constellation dustrial city, not a large factory town. In seems necessary before the Dissenting the second quarter of the 19th century contribution to radicalism can be com­ Bradford grew faster than any other prehensively contextualized. That said, urban-industrial city in the world. The Bradley has made an important interven­ key force in its evolution was the tion in the historiography of 18th-century switchover from proto-industrial to fac­ popular politics: first, by pointing to the tory organization in the woollen worsted rich connotative language of liberty used industry. Unlike the really large industrial by Dissenters during the American crisis, cities — Manchester, Birmingham, and one that proved a tonic to radical en­ Newcastle — Bradford's economy was deavour beyond their chapels; and tied almost completely to this single sec­ second, by comparing Dissenting ac­ tor. The multifarious elaborations of the tivism in important provincial towns, worsted industry notwithstanding, the life refining in the process our understanding of the city's inhabitants was like that of a of the social foundations of urban mouse sleeping next to an elephant whose politics. Upon these insights historians nocturnal restlessness was a source of will be able to build profitably. perpetual danger. In this sense, Bradford was a crucible in which urbanization and Nicholas Rogers industrialization as well as the formation York University of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can be studied in a particularly unalloyed form. Bradford's urban-industrial society Theodore Koditschek, Class formation grew violently; its passages were the sub­ and urban-industrial society: Bradford, ject of contestation which pitted four dif­ 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge ferent social visions — the gentleman- University Press 1990). capitalist, the cottager and his proto-in­ dustrial family of primary producers, the STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS of a parvenu bourgeoisie, and the proletariat giant is a time-honoured method of gain­ — against one another. Not even the vic­ ing a good view. This book benefits from torious, liberal non-Conformists who its author's heightened perspective. Writ­ made up the parvenu bourgeoisie emerged unscathed or unchanged from ten as a hommage to E.P. Thompson, and this confrontation. This, in a nutshell, is quite literally traversing much of the Koditschek's project; it is informed by ground he surveyed, Koditschek's book is both a Thompsonian concern for a significant contribution to a long-stand­ 'making' and a quite un-Thompsonian at­ ing, and often vitriolic scholarly debate tention to quantitative analysis. — now about to enter its fourth decade — that followed the publication of The Koditschek covers the period from Making of the English Working Class. It the rise of cottage industry in the middle is also, it should be stressed, a quite dif­ 18th century through its protracted death ferent book and this difference is a testa­ rattle and ultimate demise in the second ment to the ways that social history has quarter of the 19th century. He devotes evolved since 1963. If some of my later considerable attention to the transforma­ remarks are critical I want to make it clear tion of the early modern moral economy that these relate to minor blemishes and of the proto-industrial cottagers and its are occasioned by my recognition of replacement with contending visions of bourgeois and proletarian political REVIEWS 289 economy. The author's decision to go presented with a monolithic monster of beyond Thompson's chronology provides oppression but rather a series of fragmen­ his story with a less truncated ending and, tary groupings which are contending for in particular, draws the struggles of the power amongst themselves as well as first and second quarters of the 19th cen­ against the mushrooming proletariat in tury into a single field of vision. In addi­ their midst. Similarly, the working-class tion, Koditscbek is also alert to the is analyzed in terms of both is com­ politicization of personal life and the monalities — largely deriving from sub­ central role of family in constructing both jection to wage-labour and subjugation to social identities and reproducing social the most horrific environmental depreda­ classes. tion — as well as its diversity which is the In contrast to some other recent writ­ product of the labour process quite as ing on this period, Koditschek subor­ much as the life-cycle of family formation. dinates gender analysis to a more or­ I was particularly impressed with thodox form of class analysis in which Koditschek's frank recognition of the im­ modes of production and social relations mense creative power of capitalist ac­ interact on a public stage from which cumulation and, in particular, the way in women were largely excluded. But if which the business cycle drives his narra­ women were marginalized in the political tive of historical change. In reading struggles of 19th-century Bradford, their through this story one senses the role of role in other forums is constantly brought history itself in the creation of contradic­ to the readers' attention; indeed, tions and their resolution. As well, the Koditschek is very sensitive to the contingency of the historical present is balance between the public and private never forgotten. The reader is not forced struggles for power and the disciplines to ingest a structural analysis devoid of which energized both. While he nods in change and continuity; Koditschek is the direction of the "technology of the simply too subtly intelligent to lead us self — and has a lot of very great interest into this trap. His quantitative analysis of to say in this regard — Koditschek never census materials is seamlessly incor­ allows the Foucauldian line of analysis to porated into the story. Moreover, overwhelm the public struggles for Koditschek has a keen eye for the use and power, domination and control. Politics abuse of statistics for which I was grate­ on a public stage were essential features ful. of Bradford's history in this period. Al­ Class formation and urban-industrial though the personal was political; the society is thus a long, thoroughly re­ political was public. searched monograph. It is based on The narrative flow in Class formation voluminous local archival materials and a and urban-industrial society is always in­ seeming plethora of local, unpublished formed by attention to the two-edged doctoral dissertations which have looked process of capitalist-industrialization and at various aspects of early industrial proletarianization which combined to set Bradford's history. The attention to detail Bradford's social system in motion. and the skill with which Koditschek uses Koditschek's analysis of the transforma­ these primary and secondary sources are tion is masterful and it is impossible to do exemplary; his sensitivity to both the long it justice here. Suffice it to say that it is historiographical heritage and the recent within this dialectical materialism that pluralism of historical interest is likewise topics relating to family, gender, and per­ even-handed and judicious. Moreover, he sonality are located. If there is a fence is at pains to subordinate these concerns here, Koditschek does not choose to sit on to his larger narrative which is structured it. Futhermore, Koditschek is careful to by his analysis of local events and proces­ deconstruct the bourgeoisie: we are not ses. Indeed, this very localism which is a 290 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

great strength of this book is also some­ — the foremost of which is the sacrifice thing of a weakness. In this sense, I think of individual experience for that of the that Robert Coils' The pitmen of the group or sub-group to which individuals northern coalfield is rather more success­ can be assigned — and its benefits which ful in its explication of the many dimen­ have made us aware of the need to specify sions of the class struggle in the age of the representativeness of social ex­ Chartism. There is, of course, a trade-off perience. Yet, perhaps, the pendulum has in deciding on either a local or regional or swung too far in favour of aggregation. national focus. But, allowing for that, I My other criticism of this book is that was rather taken aback that the English despite its immense length — and the state, its policies, and its armed men play author's massive labours — we never get such a negligible role in Koditschek's inside the skin of the historical actors. Is story. I had to pinch myself to remember this problem caused by the lack of ap­ that it was in this very same West Riding propriate evidence? Are there no local of Yorkshire that vast numbers of troops autobiographies? I came away wondering were barracked to police an insurgent about the individual lives of Bradfordians proletariat struggling to define itself both and the ways that they accommodated within and against industrial capitalism. themselves to the cataclysmic changes The multi-faceted publicity of the politi­ that took place in the formation of urban cal stage is undervalued by the narrow industrial society. If Class format ion and focus on Bradford. urban-industrial society does not supply At the risk of suggesting that such a answers to some of these questions, it long book could have been made even nonetheless provokes the reader to ask longer, I found that this resolutely tunnel them in order to understand the nature of vision served to dissipate the impact of social life — "painted grey in grey" — at this meticulously-crafted local study. the particular moment when urban in­ Coming to the end of this book on page dustrial society came into being. 582, I felt that I had learned a lot about Bradford; however, my knowledge of David Levine early industrialization was not challenged Ontario Institute for Studies in Education but rather enlarged. The individual parts of Class formation and urban-industrial society are very, very good; but, taken George R. Boyer, An Economic History of singly, they are rather better than the the English Poor Law, 1750-1850 (New whole. In his "introduction" Koditschek York: Cambridge University Press 1990). is very careful to situate his study in rela­ tion to the historiographical swirl around THIS BOOK is an examination of the The Making, but he does not satisfactorily economic role played by poor relief in conclude this discussion by considering England during the period of industrializa­ Bradford's experience in relation to the tion. In particular, Boyer is concerned to growing body of similar studies which understand and evaluate the contribution have proliferated in the wake of of out relief — assistance given to the Thompson's magisterial work. To be poor in their own homes rather than the sure, this would be a substantial undertak­ workhouse. He says this form of assis­ ing but it would have greatly enhanced tance became widespread in England's this local study of the transition from rural rural south-east in the late 1770s, and then proto-industry to urban factory industry declined after 1834 with the passing of the by placing it in a wider context. Poor Law Amendment Act. As such, its The social-scientific turn in historical rise and fall constitutes the major trend in studies is now well-entrenched and this poor relief during the early period of in­ book is a good example of both its costs dustrialization, and consequently merits REVIEWS 291

examination. The book explores the dif­ south-east because they were politically ferences in relief administration between dominant in most country parishes, and the south-east and the industrial north­ hence able to impose their will. west, and analyses the effects poor relief Boyer also concludes that the use of had on birth rates and migration, and on out relief — especially child allowances profits and wages. which he says became widespread after Boyer says his book is an extension 1795 — significantly increased birth rates of what he calls the revisionist school — during the first two decades of the 19th consisting principally of Daniel Baugh, century. In this, he differs sharply from Mark Blaug and Anne Digby. He focuses James Huzel, who has claimed that out on the reasons for the adoption and exten­ relief did not increase population, but was sion of out relief, which he says were not associated with low birth rates. With well-developed in their explanations. respect to migration, Boyer does not Boyer believes that rural parishes in the believe that out relief retarded the move­ south-east adopted out relief in response ment of redundant able-bodied workers to to two changes in the economic environ­ urban centres. ment: the decline of allotments of land According to Boyer, the New Poor which agricultural labourers had used to Law of 1834 was imposed on reluctant grow food, and the decline of cottage in­ labour-hiring farmers by a Parliament in dustry. These changes resulted in a which they did not have the dominant serious loss in income for agricultural voice. The New Poor Law eliminated out labourers, and parishes responded by relief to the able-bodied and reduced the adopting out relief policies. ability of tenant farmers to control local This kind of relief was preferred over administration of the system. In the face other methods for dealing with this prob­ of these changes, Boyer says labour- lem because it best suited the needs of hiring farmers had two options in trying labour-hiring farmers. Indeed, according to minimize their labour costs. In parishes to Boyer, out relief functioned principally where they retained political control, the as a kind of unemployment insurance: it provisions of the new act could be replaced, but did not increase labourers' evaded. Where this was impossible, wages at certain times of the year. This farmers had to offer year-round employ­ was especially so in grain growing areas ment to their laborers in order to retain an in the south-east since the demand for adequate workforce during peak seasons. labour in this kind of farming varied This did not mean, however, that wages greatly over the crop cycle. Using data for agricultural labourers changed. from the 1831 census, and from the 1832 Rather, Boyer maintains that they Royal Commission's Rural Queries, remained more or less unchanged (unlike Boyer found that grain growing farmers K.D.M. Snell who thinks they fell). Boyer could minimize their labour costs best by believes this because he says labour was laying off redundant workers during slow very mobile at this time. seasons, and offering them out relief. Finally, Boyer looks at out relief prac­ Since not all rate payers were labour- tices in northern industrial towns. He con­ hiring farmers, this meant, in effect, that cludes that textile manufacturers — like the rest of the community subsidized the southern grain farmers — used out relief fanners' labour costs. Thus, through the as unemployment insurance. Workers not use of out relief, these farmers could needed in downturns were put on short- retain a labour force sufficient to meet hours or laid off, and the difference in their needs during the busy seasons, while earnings was made up by out relief. passing part of the cost of maintaining it on to the rest of the rate-paying com­ Boyer puts forward some very inter­ munity. Farmers could do this in the rural esting ideas in this book, especially with respect to labour-hiring farmers. Indeed, 292 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL the book is written largely from the point Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, éd., New of view of the farmers, and seeks to Times, The Changing Face of Politics in portray the problem which they faced: the 1990s (London: Verso 1990). how to maximize profits while retaining an adequate workforce. Nevertheless, the AT A LONDON CONFERENCE entitled argument is not always clear. Boyer in­ "New Times, New Thinking" in the sists repeatedly that the main purpose of autumn of 1989, Marxism Today publicly out relief was unemployment insurance. launched the "New Times" project of He also maintains, however, that after socialist renewal. At one of the seminars 1795 child allowances became very a story was recounted of single working widespread, and that most labourers at mother from Sauchiehall street in the some point in their lives received this heart of the old industrial city of Glasgow, form of assistance. As he himself says, who was asked what she thought of the these allowances were determined by "New Times." "New times," she family size, and were given to employed answered skeptically, "All I've known is and unemployed alike. Thus, one is left hard times." This was one worker's per­ wondering why farmers who were con­ ception of the changes being wrought in cerned to minimize costs, and who were late 20th-century society as capitalism politically dominant in their parishes, seeks to restructure industry and national would have supported this kind of assis­ states attempt to recast their relationships tance when it acted to increase sig­ with civil society to survive in the in­ nificantly the number of children (for creasingly competitive atmosphere of whom there was little work). As a pos­ world capitalism. But is this a deep-seated sible justification, Boyer estimates that transformation requiring a fundamental farmers were able to lower annual wages theoretical and strategic reorientation? by almost a pound per labourer where this For a decade now, Marxism Today form of assistance existed. The cost to the (MT), the theoretical and discussion jour­ parish for each child who qualified for nal of the Communist Party of Great this assistance, however, was usually 31. Britain (CPGB), has been the cutting edge 18s. a year. Since Boyer estimates that of the Marxist revisionist account of these labour-hiring farmers paid on average be­ changes. As Communism is in terminal tween three-quarters and four-fifths of the decline the world over, including the poor rate, it is difficult to see how this CPGB's brand of Eurocommunism, MT policy minimized costs — especially enjoys popularity over a broad spectrum where more than one child in a family of political opinion. Indeed, it often fea­ qualified. In any case, the very persist­ tures interviews with Conservative MPs ence of child allowances would seem to and its pages are regularly adorned by undercut claims that the main function of pieces written by Financial Times out relief was unemployment insurance. writers; it even finds itself lining up with It may well be, then, that maximizing the right wing of the Labour Party against profits was not the only motivation in the those dinosaurs such as Tony Benn who dispensation of out relief. That the see the working class as central to socialist economic role of the poor law merits ex­ politics. amination, goes without saying. That changes in the poor law can be understood After popularizing the concept of wholly in terms of its role in the economy "Thatcherism" in the early 1980s, MT set does not. itself the ambitious task of redefining the whole period. The result is the New Times, a compilation of 30 short essays by Lynn MacKay a diverse range of broad left-of-centre York University political commentators and several ex­ cerpts from the CPGBs Manifesto for New REVIEWS 293

Times. Most of the articles appeared in MT market [which] lie at the heart of the from October 1988 to September 1989. debate over our vision of the future of The book includes sections on the general socialism." (160) This is heady stuff com­ shape of the period, the new politics of ing from a socialist: consumers replace identity, globalization, the changing workers, individualism supplants collec­ political culture and, in a thoughtful ges­ tive emancipation. ture, the response of two critics. Today, Beatrix Campbell adds, According to New Times' theorists, unions are becoming increasingly ir­ the world is "increasingly characterized relevant. Since "work is no longer the by diversity, differentiation and fragmen­ crucible of class consciousness" (284) the tation rather than homogeneity, stand­ political culture emanating from the shop ardization and the economies and or­ floor, the shop stewards meeting, the ganizations of scale which characterized union hall and the picket line is modern mass society." (11) Unlike the anachronistic. A cursory examination of Fordist regime of the past where wider a few cities with a declining or weak social forces including the labour move­ labour movement leads her to believe that ment and the Labour Party were reflec­ the labour movement is on its last legs. In tions of the mass production industries, Swindon, militant "self-help groups are the new post-Fordist times of flexible replacing the traditional labour production systems and the rise of com­ movement's social role in the com­ puter-based informational industries and munities; in Basingstoke, vast company the service sector have produced "new welfare schemes preclude a unionized social divisions, new forms of inequality fight for wages, bonuses, and health and and disempowerment which overlay the safety. (294, 296-7) old ones." (17) As a result of the changing material Central to the post-Fordist argument conditions and the emergence of new so­ is the notion that the working class is no cial divisions, a supposedly novel ap­ longer the principal protagonist of proach to left politics is advocated. Inter­ socialist struggle. In the context of the estingly, the political conclusions drawn profoundly changing material conditions, from the "New Times" are in fact not that a plurality of new social movements and new. The bold proclamations of the post- an individualistic consumer culture are Fordist analysis give way to a decidedly social forces which have thrust their way orthodox program of change. In fact, it on to the agenda of left politics. The tradi­ becomes a solution of Eurocommunism tional, "male" labour movement based in going back to the 1930s. Although the large industries has become estranged unions and the Labour Party along with from the emerging "personal politics" of the new social movements are considered post-modernity (Feminism, the Green important components of any progressive movement, consumer groups) and is too change, all constituent elements are to narrowly associated with the Left, when keep their strict autonomy and in order to such Left-Right distinctions are no longer defeat Thatcherism it is imperative that valid. (450-1) Echoing the 1979 election the Labour Party must form an alliance slogans of Thatcher, the Manifesto with the other opposition parties. It is not believes the unions became "increasingly clear what the role of the Communist distrusted in the 1970s as unrepresenta­ Party is in this broad Labour Church. tive, sectional interests, acting for their The main problem with the "New members against the interests of society Times" analysis is that it is far from clear as a whole." (366) To mesh with the new that the restructuring taking place under consumer age progressives, Frank Mort capitalism represents such a decisive argues, should come to terms with "the break with the past. Numerous commen­ twin issues of consumerism and the tators have pointed out that an identifica- 294 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

tion of a paradigm of post-Fordism is not tessentially Fordist is also misleading. empirically sustainable. Mass production There have always been non-manufactur­ and mass markets in world capitalism are ing workers such as transport and build­ thriving. There are now proportionately ing workers essential to capitalist in­ more manufacturing workers in the world dustry whose work was not organized than ever before. Even in the advanced along Fordist lines. And company welfare capitalist countries where post-Fordism is schemes are not peculiar to the 1980s; said to be near ascendant, extensive re­ they have always been an available search has shown that changes in work strategy of employers and the state to organization, new technologies and thwart unionization and the politicization flexible production systems are results of of labour. To read off Fordist social rela­ a shift in the balance of class forces and a tions in the whole social formation from renewed state offensive against workers' the organization of the auto industry is too rights. There is no determinate relation­ simplistic. Like the post-Fordist, post-in­ ship between the technological changes dustrial, post-X,Y,Z theories such an of advanced capitalism and supposedly analysis mistakes superficial appearances new forms of social relations. for deep fundamental change. As the critical contribution by "Post-Fordism" as a form of produc­ Michael Rustin emphasizes, technologi­ tion and a type of society seems more a cal changes should not be seen in isola­ dream of former socialist intellectuals to tion from "strategies of capital" and "the resolve the contradictions of capitalism. resistance presented to its activities." "Rather than trying to resolve inherent (308) Post-Fordism, flexible specializa­ conflicts of interest," as Geoff Mulgan tion and other new forms of manufactur­ puts it, the future socialist state "would ing are strategies of the capitalist class to instead try to create a new balance be­ revive or establish industries susceptible tween them." (387) There is more than a to the vagaries of the world market. But whiff of Utopian socialism in this for­ they still co-exist with older forms of mulation. One wonders what all this has mass production. Thus, the modern "in­ to do with Marxism. dustrial districts" of Emilia-Romagna in Writing off the working class as the Italy and Baden-WUrttenburg in Germany agent of socialist change has proven to be complement the traditional, low-wage, extremely dangerous, especially in the often female, ghettos of the Maquiladora face of the concerted class conscious as­ in Mexico, Sao Paulo in Brazil and the sault of the Thatcher years. A denial of the garment district in Toronto. The cause centrality of the working class in creating célèbre of flexible specialization socialism led MT in 1984-85 to argue theorists, Benet-ton, is international in against mass pickets by the miners and to more ways than one. Besides being a try and win "public opinion." It is becom­ (oose supra-national conglomerate of ing increasingly clear that the success of flexible franchising systems, the produc­ Thatcher was in many ways less a result tion side of the business relies on sweated of her authoritarian populist hegemony labour from South Asia. Moreover, many than the acquiesence of those in opposi­ of the firms touted as the glaring success tion to her. Hence, it is not coincidental stories of the computerised, flexibly spe­ that Marxist revisionism has proceeded cialized 1980s — in Britain, for example, hand-in-hand with the rightward drift of the clothiers Burton, Next and Richard many socialist academics and the social Shops — are now facing financial dif­ democratic parties. ficulties. The Britain of 1991, without By characterizing the history of 20th- Thatcher, without the poll tax, with a century capitalism to the 1970s (produc­ deteriorating economy, the "home- tive forces and social relations) as quin- owning democracy" collapsing under the REVIEWS 295

weight of bank foreclosures, widespread guild, did group employers with common discontent ready to erupt around the occupations and economic interests into a crumbling health and welfare system and common institution, but the motive for the apparent electability of a Labour such grouping was related more to the government seems a far cry from the political needs of the state than to the politics of the 1990s which this book economic interests of the organization's claims to theorize. members. For Epstein a more substantial continuity was the emphasis Roman law Sean Purdy placed on contract. Precisely because the Queen's University idea of contract was fundamental to the development of wage labour in medieval Europe, Rome provides an engaging foil: Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor & Guilds so much seems the same yet so much more in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill and is different. London: University of North Carolina Chapter two deals with the 12th-cen­ Press 1991). tury origin of guilds. The author defines the guild as an association of employers STEVEN A. EPSTEIN HAS WRITTEN a asserting exclusive rights over the very ambitious book. It is ambitious in production and distribution of com­ several ways. The most evident is its tem­ modities. Banding together allowed the poral and geographical scope: the work members of the guild to enforce the covers most of western Europe in the mil­ sought-after monopolistic privileges lennium from the Roman empire to the while at the same time offering a means transformations caused by the Black of appropriating power by collective ac­ Death, and even includes a brief excursus tion from feudal and urban authorities. on Byzantine and Muslin guilds. Both of Coalescing with this movement was the its chosen themes — medieval labour and rapid development of the idea that labour guild history — have problematic his- was a rentable commodity, and that in­ toriographical traditions that make syn­ dividuals had the right to contract for its thesis difficult; the author wisely chose to disposition. Apprenticeship, created by incorporate substantial primary research the guildmasters, fosters a quid pro quo in his quest for synthesis. Finally, it tack­ mentality of payment for work, even if les these themes using a "total history" payment often took the form of food and approach that utilizes methodologies cur­ shelter. rent in political, religious and cultural his­ In the following chapter Epstein tory as well as in social and economic treats the internal organization of the history. guilds. Claiming to deal directly with the The work consists of five chapters, "re-invention" (Epstein's own term) of divided chronologically. The first chapter wage labour, the chapter is in fact a covers the period to AD 1000. Opposing hodge-podge of material, divided into those who see antecedents of the sections on the special organization of the medieval guild in the Roman world, guild merchant, apprenticeship, wage Epstein argues that Roman institutions rates, and the relative status of the various and economic developments are best seen guilds. It is difficult to find a unifying as alternate models rather than as direct theme to the chapter. The subsections are forerunners. Some wage labour was interesting in and of themselves, but do known, but it was inconsequential in the not provide the clear formulation of the face of slave labour as a means of produc­ rise of wage labour that the book claims tion, and in any event it did not survive to offer. (191) the barbarian invasions. Likewise the col­ How guilds and labour were seen by legium, often viewed as ancestral to the other members of society is the subject of 296 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

chapter four. The church was interested in timately associated. This is not a novel guilds both because of its own influence finding. There are obvious causal rela­ on social relations and because the guilds tions between these phenomena, but to commonly performed religious as well as bind wage labour to guilds as strictly as economic functions. In a stimulating dis­ Epstein advocates requires both more cussion of several influential church evidence and a more closely-reasoned ap­ thinkers, Epstein points out that contem­ proach than one finds in the book. Con­ porary understanding of the situation of siderably more attention, for example, guildmasters and wage labourers was should be given to agrarian history: surprisingly underdeveloped. Political Epstein concedes at one point that "the authorities, the other external body con­ first wages may actually have been paid sidered, had to deal with these groups in in the countryside" (258), but pays this a much more concrete manner. The suc­ crucial fact no other attention. Wage cess of the guilds in asserting political Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe is, power varied greatly depending on local in reality, two books, one on labour and circumstances. Overall, guild political in­ one on guilds. As befits the historiog­ fluence was probably more apparent in raphy of the two subjects, the book on the corporate ideology with which it was guilds is more successful than the book on bound up than in practical affairs. wage labour. Both parts are interesting The final chapter traces the history of and well-researched, and both should be labour and guilds through the vicissitudes quarried in future research, but the book of the 14th-century economy. Economic as a whole is less than the sum of its parts. difficulties in the early 14th century found expression in stricter guild James Masschaele entrance requirements and in a decline in Rutgers University the standard of living of most wage labourers. The plague had a dramatic ef­ fect on both these factors, and the change David Kaiser, Politics and War: wrought by rapid depopulation provides European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler insights into the social and political stand­ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University ing of guild-masters and wage labourers. Press 1990). Epstein relates these changes to attitudes to technological change, arguing that WAR IS A FUNCTION of politics; and, not guildmasters were the motors rather than surprisingly, the rationale of war has the brakes on such change, and to the changed as politics has changed. As various expressions of social protest that David Kaiser puts it in the introduction to characterize the later 14th century. his wide-ranging study, "the sources and On balance, one must conclude that consequences of European international Epstein's reach exceeds his grasp. conflict differ radically from one era to Several sections of the book are excellent another" and "can be understood only in — notably the descriptions of appren­ the context of contemporary European ticeship and ideologies of work — and the domestic and international politics." He entire text makes exemplary use of com­ identifies four distinct periods in parative history. The book fails, however, European history — 1559-1659, 1661- to make its central point, that one should 1713, 1792-1815, and 1914-1945 — in turn to the guilds to discover the origins each of which "general war reflects a dis­ of wage labour. All that Epstein really tinct stage in the political development of demon-strates is that the two phenomena modern Europe — a stage in which states became prominent at roughly the same fought wars for particular ends, with time, during the 12th-century commercial specific means, and with particular conse­ revolution with which the pair are in­ quences." Most of his book is devoted to REVIEWS 297 an explication of the distinctiveness of of international politics, as expressed each of these stages. (1-2) through standing armies (France) or great The first phase, between 1S59 and navies (Britain). Beyond Europe wars 16S9, was characterized by conflicts were fought largely for trade and booty; within the aristocracy and between within Europe they were fought more for powerful aristocrats and the monarch. prestige and glory. The damages from war The crown was often insecure and its were much reduced. The conduct of war authority contested; mighty subjects ceased to be more or less all-devouring, fought amongst themselves, resisted the as it had been during the wars of religion royal will, and sometimes rebelled and and the Thirty Years War. brought a ruler down, or at least purged Warfare came to be fuelled by larger some realm of that ruler's presence. goals and (to some degree) abstract prin­ Centralized authority was generally ciples during the French Revolutionary fragile, state machinery weak, and politi­ and Napoleonic wars, the third stage in cal violence commonplace. Monarchs Kaiser's account. Traditional political laid claims to power but great aristocrats boundaries were erased; feudal vestiges challenged this power, repeatedly and were eliminated; and ambitious parvenus bloodily. European social orders were ar­ strove for more and more power, of whom ranged especially to serve these aris­ Bonaporte was the most celebrated and tocratic interests and war was not only the the most insatiable. With the revolution in sport of kings, but also the sport of nobles, France, military careers were more open geared to their ambitions and made more to talent, or at least to talented adven­ violent by the 16th century rupture of turers. The almost continual armed con­ Christendom. This was a period when flict during this generation further making war was partly a matter of private strengthened the institutions of the central enterprise; war was designed in part to state, not least in plutocratic-oligarchical yield personal fortunes, though in prac­ Britain. "Armed with the ideas of the en­ tice it often yielded mutiny, desertion, lightenment as well as larger armies, chaos, and financial exhaustion. David European states continued their expan­ Kaiser's interpretation of this century sion and their attempts to impose a more puts little stress on the balance of power, uniform, regular authority over their sub­ the pursuit of state hegemony, or other jects and territories." (264) Kaiser dismis­ such themes of modern international ses the importance of nationalism in the politics. Given the limited reach and ef­ struggles of these years, a judgement that ficacy of these monarchies, whose actual would surely be challenged by many his­ sovereignty he downplays, "even the fun­ torians, including those of both France and damental distinction between internal and Britain. international conflict only occasionally applies to the wars of the late sixteenth After the long peace of 1815-1914 and early seventeenth centuries." (135) (mostly peace for Europe, though not for Africa and parts of Asia), came the enor­ It was only from the later 17th century mously destructive wars of our own cen­ that effectively integrated states imposed tury, fuelled by popular nationalism themselves on many European societies. (often linked to racism) and economic State power was consolidated and civil imperialism. "Man's belief in his ability wars mostly disappeared; unruly nobles to reshape his destiny is probably the were brought to heel and their class as a single most enduring legacy of the whole was disciplined and domesticated; eighteenth century," thinks Kaiser, and and as the financial resources and domes­ "the key to an understanding of the two tic clout of monarchs enlarged (this was world wars." (267) The ambitions and made manifest in the theatricality of their manoeuverings of European political elaborate courts), so too did their control elites now had to be broadly compatible 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

with the yearnings and dispositions of the he argues, have been less important to the masses, many of whom were to varying making of modern revolutions. degrees enfranchised. Public opinion had He is far from celebrating war. In­ to be managed. Consent or at least ac­ deed, he stresses its tragic and sterile con­ quiescence had to be sought. Promises sequences and the crude passions and ir­ were made and expectations created, and rationality that have driven people into failure to deliver could be politically cost­ combat. Moreover, war has often not ly, as several states learned in 1917-1919. enabled governments to secure their One of the essential beliefs of modern political goals, and its social costs have politics is "that governments fight wars frequently been severe or even on behalf of the whole people, and that the catastrophic, especially before 1660 and people share an enormous stake in the after 1900. Kaiser concludes with an apt outcome. But this belief has also made criticism. "Overall, historical treatments wars extremely difficult to stop, and has of European war have suffered from an in the long run posed insoluble problems excessive idealization of the state, an for the governments that fight them." overestimation of its powers, and a (280) War was eventually made in pursuit penchant for exaggerating the wisdom of of unconditional surrender of the enemy; its acts. This tendency takes the specific total victory was sought by means of ever form of presuming that every great war more lethal weaponry. The belief in war involves great stakes... and that historical as a means to a better peace, as a tool of outcomes have been in some sense useful policy, was almost universal in 1914; and and preferable to other possible out­ it flourished later on the fascist right and comes." (418) As the 1991 Gulf War (at times) on the Stalinist left. Other ob­ demonstrated, such intellectual deference servers drew different and bleak lessons to the military state remains alive and from the graveyards of Verdun, well. Politics and War is concerned to Leningrad, Dresden, and Hiroshima. reveal the sources, efficacy, and out­ Twentieth-century warfare in Europe comes of political violence. And in doing has usually weakened the established so, lucidly and informatively, it has a lot order, with much more far-reaching con­ to say about the pretensions and am­ sequences than in previous wars. Empires biguous powers of the sovereign state it­ collapsed; indebtedness expanded vastly; self. trade and commerce unravelled. Germany in 1917 had lost badly enough to feel Robert Malcolmson resentful but not badly enough to feel Queen's University humbled; and in the 1930s a brutally revi­ talized and resolutely imperialist Nazi Germany willed a second world war. William Lazonick, Competitive Ad­ Hitler's aims were revolutionary and he vantage on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, came close to realizing them. His attempt MA: Harvard University Press 1990). and failure left Europe in ruins and at the mercy of its American and Soviet THIS STUDY is a proving and thought liberators. For David Kaiser war has been provoking comparative history of in­ the great catalyst of modern history. War, dustrial relations systems in Great he asserts, "rather than the consequences Britain, the United States, and Japan. Wil­ of industrialization, has proven to be the liam Lazonick has covered an enormous supreme test of modem political systems amount of geographical and chronologi­ and the source of almost every major cal territory in his effort to uncover the modern European revolution." (411) reasons why world industrial leadership Nationalist and class-based movements, has passed from Europe to America to Asia over the past two centuries. Along REVIEWS 299 the way, Lazonick also makes a number ning roughshod over management, al­ of insightful observations about the though the tenacity and solidarity of the relationship between history and spinners' unions was certainly one key economics in explaining the past and un­ factor in shaping labour-management derstanding the present industrial rela­ relations. Using a combination of archival tions systems of the world's most records and innovative economic models, advanced economies. Lazonick also demonstrates that other Lazonick begins his book with an in­ reasons, such as the fragmented nature of troduction and two chapters devoted to the industry and the hierarchical division exploring how Marx and Marxian of labour often enforced by the workers economics both misunderstood the themselves, all contributed to a shop floor specific ramifications of the Industrial environment where managers saw real ad­ Revolution in Great Britain, and yet vantages (at least in the short term) to fashioned a mode of economic and his­ letting skilled workers essentially run the torical analysis which remains far more factories to get the most out of the cheap useful than most classical economic cotton being spun. models for explaining the complex inter­ In the second part of his book, action of technological change and social Lazonick begins with the British in­ power in the industrializing workplace. dustrial system — organizationally frag­ Lazonick particularly applauds the Mar­ mented and technologically outmoded — xian efforts to place historical analysis at being surpassed by the mechanical and the centre of their economic theories. He managerial innovations of the American argues that "compared with the deductive mass production industries. He concludes and static methodologies currently in with contemporary American firms — vogue among Western economists, his­ themselves trapped in an industrial sys­ torical analysis can provide much more tem based on tum-of-the^century tactics powerful economic theory because it of deskilling and scientific management, derives its fundamental propositions from post-war job classification systems, and the historical records and because it can collective bargaining arrangements with comprehend the process of change — a large, bureaucratic industrial unions — process that continually renders static being outmaneuvered and outproduced equilibrium theory irrelevant for analyz­ by Japanese manufacturers. The Japanese ing real-world phenomena." (10-1). Thus, have a more skilled and flexible Lazonick calls forcefully for the return of workforce embedded in an industrial rela­ history back into the work of economic tions system emphasizing the mutual historians. commitments of employees and True to his word, Lazonick devotes employers towards each other and the the remainder of his book's first part to a company. Though how much cooperation meticulous historical reconstruction of there is in Japanese industry, and how industrial relations in the 19th-century much power workers actually exercise British cotton spinning industry. over the direction of the corporations, is Lazonick is clearly in command of his the subject of much more debate than sources and analysis in these chapters. He Lazonick acknowledges in his final chap­ develops a rich and highly nuanced ters. portrait of this industry, and carefully un­ Part two of Lazonick's book thus covers many reasons why British textile gives us a more synthetic treatment of managers yielded so much control over comparative economic history — based the shop floor to their employees — the mostly on secondary sources — and its skilled mule spinners in particular. lessons for contemporary forecasters and Lazonick goes far beyond any simple ex­ planners. But this part lacks many of the planations of an all powerful union run­ original historical findings and insights of 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the first section, which had a more narrow scholars, debates which might be better focus on the cotton spinning industry as a placed in extended footnotes or left to the case study for the 19th-century British letters sections of journals, is indicative economy. The concluding chapters offer of the central weakness of the book. Al­ little that is new to scholars in the fields though this study is chock full of very of American or Japanese history, as op­ insightful analyses of Marxian posed to Lazonick's earlier chapters economics, the British textile industry, which seem to be a real contribution to the and overall patterns of change in 20th- scholarly literature. century industrial relations from an inter­ The one exception may be chapter national comparative perspective, it often eight, where Lazonick proposes an in­ reads more like a collection of essays triguing explanation for the decline in (which many chapters started out as) than labour turnover in the United States a coherent scholarly monograph. The during the 1920s. Lazonick disagrees reader is often jarred and disconcerted by with Sanford Jacoby's hypothesis "that an the disjunctions between the theoretical excess supply of labor available to discussions, the detailed history, and the manufacturers ... made workers reluctant broad portraits of industrial relations sys­ to quit their jobs in search of alternative tems. There is not always a clear sense of employment." Lazonick argues for the how all these individual chapter-articles need to look behind Jacoby's theory of an come together to make a single historical excess supply of labour, and to see that study. the "'pull' of internal employment prac­ tices" helped to create that labour surplus Lazonick makes a good effort in the "by providing blue-collar operatives with final chapter to bring back a historical and stable and remunerative jobs." Such "ef­ comparative perspective to his discussion fective personnel management increased of shop floor relations. And he makes a the incentive of workers to remain at­ strong case for using historical analysis as tached to firms ... dramatically reduced an educational tool to teach policymakers labor mobility and created discipline on about the importance of cooperative in­ the shop floor." (252) In challenging dustrial relations for maximizing the Jacoby's explanation, Lazonick argues productivity of technological innova­ for the real influence of "dominant in­ tions. His definition of what comprises a dustrial firms" on both the American cooperative industrial relations systems, economy and on the dissemination of however, may not strike everyone as "progressive employment policies in the being all that cooperative.) But his argu­ 1920s." (265) Yet even this chapter — the ments for Marxian economics, historical most original in part two — often reads analysis, and cooperative industrial rela­ more like an extended private scholarly tions all would have been strengthened argument with Jacoby, rather than a key had he made the connections between component of the book's presentation as each strand of his overall project more a whole. (On pages 90-4, Lazonick explicit and logically developed. engages in another seemingly personal debate with Mary Freifeld about the ex­ Despite these structural flaws. Com­ clusion of women from the mule spinning petitive Advantage on the Shop Floor trade. This argument quickly bypasses remains a sophisticated and insightful any broader discussion of gender and the book which reaffirms that importance of transformation of work, and devolves into history to the study of economic change. a highly technical discourse on various It reestablishes the need to apply the long- components of the self-acting mule.) range perspective which economic his­ tory affords us in order to gain a real Lazonick's tendency to get carried understanding of the present situation and away with arguments against individual REVIEWS 301 future opportunities — particulary for continuum. It turns out that most of the workers — on the shop floor. Japanese factories have more 'organiza­ tion-oriented' employment relations than David A. Zonderman their British counterparts, although the University of Wisconsin-Madison pattern is not as clear as the stereotype would suggest. First, the two smallest Japanese factories were clearly 'market- D.H. Whittaker, Managing Innovation: A oriented.' Second, the average length of Study of British and Japanese Factories employment was about the same in both (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press countries. Third, in the British firms blue 1990). collar workers were more likely to be promoted and managers to have a blue THIS BOOK ADDRESSES two issues of collar background. Fourth, blue collar current interest to industrial sociologists: inter-department mobility was as likely in Japanese employment relations, and the the British as in the Japanese factory. effects of innovation on skills. Whittaker However, controlling for size, blue reports research on employment relations collar pay was less a function of seniority and innovation in matched samples of in the British plants. Unions in Japan were British and Japanese factories using enterprise rather than occupation based. numerically controlled machine tools. And, except for apprentices, blue collar The factories varied in size from less than recruitment in the Japanese factories was ten employees to almost two thousand. more systematic and involved a heavier His research is organized around component of orientation meetings Dore's concepts of 'organization-oriented' designed to socialize the new recruits. and 'market-oriented' employment rela­ Indeed, one of the major differences be­ tions. The former, common in Japan, in­ tween the British and Japanese factories volve lifetime employment, pay and was that even where there was little dif­ promotion tied to seniority, and enterprise ference in actual employment relations unionism. The latter, common in Britain, (length of employment) or the British involve hiring for specific jobs, pay sen­ plants were more 'organization-oriented' sitive to the balance of supply and (promotion, inter-departmental demand for the particular skills involved, mobility), the larger Japanese factories and occupation-based unions. Whittaker tended to identify these traits as part of the hypothesizes that the introduction of norms of company policy, whereas the numerically controlled machined tools is British ones did not. So even if, for ex­ less likely to deskill by narrowing tasks ample, Japanese managers rarely moved and reducing training where employment workers between departments they still relations are 'organization-oriented' than claimed job rotation as a policy. In con­ where they are 'market-oriented.' The trast, a British manager who often did most important reason for this is that, in move workers said "We don't have 'organization-oriented' factories, workers' planned rotation. We don't like window security of employment and seniority- dressing terminology. We move workers based pay reduces the managerial incen­ where conditions demand it, and we tell tive to deskill a particular job. them so." (62) Before testing the hypothesis direct­ Either in practices or norms, then, the ly, Whittaker examines where his 18 fac­ larger Japanese factories were more 'or­ tories can be assigned with respect to the ganization-oriented' than their British two types of employment relations and, in counterparts. What were the effects of particular, whether the Japanese and this on the introduction and use of British factories cluster at opposite ends numerically controlled machine tools? of the 'organization/market-oriented' Whittaker found no association between 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

score on the organization-market-orienta­ patterns to differences in the kind of tion scale and training. In fact the British labour available in the two countries. In factories did more training than the Japan the apprenticeship system largely Japanese ones. Nor was there any associa­ disappeared after World War II so the tion with task range, although the task kind of skilled machinists sought by ranges were generally a bit wider in the British employers were simply not avail­ Japanese factories. (Remember that or- able. But educational levels, particularly ganization-/market orientation scores at the lower end of the ability distribution, were assigned to factories and were not are higher in Japan. So it was more perfectly correlated with nationality.) In feasible for Japanese employers to hire fact the best predictor of both training workers without machining experience (positively) and task range (negatively) and assume that the workers could be was size. Whit taker's research hypothesis taught, or use manuals to teach themsel­ was not supported. ves how to use the new equipment. In both However he reports a number of inter­ countries, then, numerically controlled esting things about the implications of machine tools did not reduce the need to numerical control for skill levels in the find workers with the kinds of abilities two countries. In the British factories that would command a wage premium. there was a preference, apparently be­ Early in the book Whittaker specu­ coming more pronounced over time, for lates that 'organization-orientation' may using skilled workers trained on conven­ be more likely where the influence of tional equipment to operate numerically private ownership is restricted. The idea controlled machines. The familiarity with seems to be that it is easier to build a the machining process of these workers, community of interest between employers it was thought, allowed them to identify and managers where the short-term inter­ problems as they started to develop. ests of shareholders can be partially dis­ These workers were not closely super­ regarded. (43) But he has no data that vised and tended to stay with their would allow him to test this. The value of machines while they were operating. In this book is not in grand interpretations of the Japanese factories there was some­ this sort. It is, however, an excellent what less emphasis on craft skills. More source of data on Japanese factories and workers trained for the machines by read­ on deskilling, all the more valuable be­ ing manuals and textbooks. They were cause it goes well beyond the standard closely supervised, but often left the stereotypes so prominent in the literature machines to operate on their own. This on each subject. made the operation of multiple machines by a single operator feasible and more Michael R. Smith common in the Japanese factories. McGill University In neither country could these chan­ ges be described as deskilling. In the British factories numerical control Susan N. Houseman, Industrial Restruc­ changed the way traditional skills were turing with Job Security: The Case of used (from setup and operation to use of European Steel (Cambridge, Mas­ experience to monitor the machining sachusetts: Harvard University Press process), and added some new ones (a 1991). certain amount of, often informal, programming). In Japan operators had to BETWEEN 1974 AND 1986 the output and be literate and numerate enough to under­ capacity (both in tons) of the steel in­ stand manuals and, more often and exten­ dustry in European Community (EC) sively than in the British cases, to pro­ countries declined by some 30 per cent gram. Whittaker relates these national and its employment halved. The problems REVIEWS 303

created by this decline were accentuated tinental countries and the UK. In part, this by the fact that the steel mills were fre­ was offset by changes in working hours. quently the major employers in their com­ But that was not the only result of job munities and regions and their workers guarantees. Another was to prevent the were rather immobile. reallocation of production to more effi­ Using data at die plant and higher cient (newer and larger) plants and loca­ levels of aggregation, the author analyses tions and to reduce the pace of technologi­ this process of restructuring with par­ cal change. Since there were major dif­ ticular emphasis on the job security ferences in the age, size, and provisions of the several countries in­ transportation costs of raw materials and volved (Germany, France, Netherlands, products between plants, firms, and Belgium, Luxemburg, and the UK) and, in countries, there were major gains in the UK and France, changes in these productivity and cost reductions to be provisions after 1980. achieved by such reallocation. In general, in the continental As the author points out, although job countries workers enjoyed much stronger security thus resulted in losses in techni­ rights to their jobs than those in the UK. cal efficiency, it is not clear that there In consequence, work force reductions on were necessarily losses in economic or the continent generally avoided mass social efficiency of wellbeing. When layoffs and plant closures and relied in­ workers value their existing jobs and stead on early retirements, voluntary job locations, as those in European steel ap­ buyouts — especially for foreign "guest parently did, and not simply their incom­ workers," reassignment of workers to es, giving them rights to their jobs and other work (and other employers, includ­ avoiding plant closures is not simply a ing public works). Shorter work weeks transfer from firm to worker but preserves and work years were also substituted for something of value. This gain may offset reductions in employment as they were the loss of technical efficiency in whole not in Britain. Further, some continental or in part. Similar arguments have been workers accepted concessions on wages made with respect to regional locations of and other conditions of employment. production in this country, and, more Once it was realized that the recently, with respect to industrial industry's problems were structural and restructuring and firm mobility more not merely cyclical — initially firms con­ generally. tinued to increase capacity to position In European steel, Houseman reports, themselves for the recovery — the EC so firms could not have afforded the solution declared (1977) and implemented the obtained without government help. This Davignon Plan which controlled prices, is also the case with regional and some production, and deliveries within the EC structural allocation in Canada. The and imports into it. It also assisted problems that such help, in turn, gives rise capacity limitation and restructuring by to are beyond the scope of Dr. permitting (normally prohibited) govern­ Houseman's book and of this review. ment subsidies to firms and workers. One consequence of these arrangements was S.F. Kaliski to leave market shares of firms and Queen's University countries virtually unchanged by the process. The general results of the study show employment reductions to be negatively related to the strength of job security provisions, as one might expect. The con­ trast is particularly striking between con­ 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Charles Brown, James Hamilton, and machines, Taylorism and mass produc­ James Medoff, Employers Large and tion, are likely to continue along a vicious Small (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Har­ circle of de-industrialization, employ­ vard University Press 1990). ment instability and concessionary bar­ gaining. ONE OF THE MAJOR ideological features The slight monograph by Brown, of the 1980s has been the return of the Hamilton, and Medoff, curtly titled 'cult of small business.' In contrast to the Employers Large and Small, is a useful 1960s when the 'technc-structure' of the rejoinder to an array of these often super­ large corporation was seen to be the back­ ficial assertions on the role of small bone of market economies, the New Right employers (at least in the US case). Their has heaped praise on entrepreneurship argument is straightforward: the and the freedom of all members of society 'entrepreneurial thesis,' that small firms to individually exploit the potential of the provide superior employment oppor­ market. Not just is it claimed that small tunities, wages and working conditions, businesses are technologically and does not hold up to careful scrutiny. A product innovative, they are alleged as series of empirical chapters, ranging well to be the source of employment widely from the composition of new job growth. In one of the most widely cited if growth by firm size to wages and benefits extremely dubious statistics, it is claimed to the political power of small firms, in­ that eight out of ten new jobs are created dividually assess the claims of small firm by small business. The implications efficacy. In the main, the results are pre­ drawn are simple: create the appropriate dictable: large employers tend to provide incentive structure, roll-back the state, better wages and more stable employment and let the magic of the market decimate than small employers; when total firm unemployment. size, and not just plant size, are accounted These sympathies for small business for and short-term jobs eliminated, the have not been confined to neo-liberals, contribution of small employers to however, and in various ways also have employment growth is modest compared found a prominent place on the Left. to claims; working conditions in general Notably, the fashionable thesis of flexible tend to be superior in large employers; specialization, associated in particular owners of small firms tend to enjoy in­ with Michael Piore's and Charles Sabel's come and asset levels well above the The Second Industrial Divide (1984), has American average; and small businesses suggested that an ascendant craft produc­ do possess extensive political resources tion in small, technologically-sophisti­ by any variety of measures. Occasionally cated firms is the means to re-establish a the data even reveals some startling in­ vibrant manufacturing sector and to main­ sights. For example, the image of small tain 'good jobs.' A progressive political business as a dynamic creator of new jobs project to overturn the New Right resides and innovations leaves the impression in an attempt to generate regionally-based that employment in business of smaller economies, modeled after the Emilian scale is disproportionately increasing. region of Italy or Route 128 of the 'Mas­ But American data shows, whether calcu­ sachusetts Miracle,' where employment lated for firms with fewer than 100 or 500 stability and good wages could be employees, that in fact the share of total provided by re-building workers' skills employment in small business has and using flexible manufacturing systems declined since at least 1958 and the to supply specialty goods to market decline continued into the 1980s. The niches. A surprising corollary to the rebuff to conservative policy-making is themes of the New Right arises: large direct: "There is no evidence that con­ corporations, being wedded to dedicated centrating tax benefits or regulatory relief REVIEWS 305 on small business rather than concentrat­ Indeed, by posing the issues at hand as it ing it elsewhere will generate more new does, between the benefits of small as jobs." (28) opposed to large employers, the book is These are, in their way, useful it not fundamentally misleading. The kinds of terribly enlightening results. Many of the attacks launched against workers in North fragile myths of the 1980s — from the America during the 1980s have been as benefits of small firms for new jobs much a feature of large corporations as of claimed by the New Right to the view that small firms. After all, the dramatic assault economies of scale are now of little im­ on PATCO, or the rollbacks of wages and portance argued by the adherents of benefits in the auto industry, or the bitter flexible specialization on the Left — are feuds in the coal fields, have not been led efficiently de-bunked. It cannot be as­ by local shopkeepers! Workers in large serted with such ease that capitalism has firms have been no more isolated from the somehow changed its stripes, and that insecurities and threats from industrial smaller units are displacing the impor­ restructuring than workers in small busi­ tance of economies of scale or historical nesses. Answers to fundamental ques­ trends of capital concentration. At least as tions about the evolving industrial and far as employment data in the US is con­ employment structures of modern cerned there is no reason to believe capitalism will have to be found in a quite capitalism is becoming more disor­ distinct theoretical position, and, ul­ ganized. As Brown, Hamilton, and timately, a radically different political Medoff observe: "The prevailing wisdom project. This realization might even about large and small firms should be penetrate the sheltered confines on either reexamined because in at least two instan­ side of the Charles River — the intellec­ ces, job creation and political power, it is tual home of the authors and many of their wrong. Perhaps the most widespread mis­ protagonists — where this narrow debate conception about small business in the over small and large employers might be United States is that they generate the vast best left. majority of jobs and are therefore the key to economic growth.... Overall the Gregory Albo economy is not becoming more depend­ York University ent on smaller firms for employment." ( 1 ) This is a particularly odd text to as­ sess. Its clearly stated evidence sweeps Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: aside much popular rhetoric to present a Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth- more adequate assessment of the differen­ Century French Trades (Cambridge, ces between small firms and large cor­ England: Cambridge University Press porations. It returns us, in a sense, to 1989). things we knew quite well in the 1970s before fashionable assertions about the THIS BOOK IS BOTH encyclopedic, like a wonders of small firms or the return of thèse d'état and tightly argued, like a craft production pushed aside more em­ good English-language monograph. The pirically grounded discussions of changes combination does not make for easy in contemporary industrial and labour readability. Sonenscher presents an enor­ market structures. The small questions mous quantity of evidence that he has being addressed provide useful but equal­ gathered over decades of painstaking re­ ly small answers. search; but no fact is offered, no event or Yet, it is incumbent to conclude that episode described, without allusion to ap­ a social science that is serious about propriate dimensions of analysis (and analysing present employment conditions usually there are four or five, rather than has little to gain from this contribution. two or three, such dimensions at work); 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL often as not these allusions lead on to the two most important elements of the further evidence packed into dense foot­ economy of the bazaar: information and notes. The scope of the work is truly na­ workers. (27) tional; there seems to be hardly a region The bazaar was by no means the same or city that Sonenscher has not studied thing as the corporate order, which was a sufficiently to be intimate with the details legal fiction that only poorly described of local trades, although he has con­ the social reality. This was already widely centrated on Paris, Rouen, and one or two suspected from evidence like the redis­ other places. Sonenscher endeavors as covered autobiography of Jacques-Louis well to provide a complete picture of the Ménétra (Journal de ma vie, edited by world of work, with innovative statistics Daniel Roche [Paris 1982]). But on job-turnover rates and career patterns, Sonenscher's evidence confirms the detailed investigation of complex court suspicion, and with his analysis he cases, careful discussion of technical and provides a new conceptual framework to economic conditions. The result is a book replace at last the threadbare idea of the that will take some time for those in the "decline of the guilds." field to digest, but that will inevitably Sonenscher even challenges effec­ change the field permanently and tively the notion that corporate language decisively. had a hold on the public ideology of The argument Sonenscher has built political struggle and litigation. Rather his panoramic presentation around is than being under the exclusive sway of original and persuasive. His reading of notions of trade solidarity, of hierarchies the evidence leaves him impatient with of qualité, of subordination and custom both economistic approaches and cul- (although these did exist), Sonenscher's turalist ones. The following comment is artisans were cognizant of the tradition of characteristic: natural right, regarded themselves as free The dichotomies between morals and markets, individuals contracting as equals with or custom and competition that have informed employers. In certain trades of the larger a long historiographical tradition have, to be towns, a core of sedentary journeymen explicit, little relevance to a world in which did not hesitate to defend their natural transactions between masters and journeymen liberties in prolonged court battles. were both moral and commercial, customary Everywhere, workers were quick to and competitive, exploitative and co-opera­ denounce anything they regarded as tive, in ways that ensured that questions of smacking of "slavery," and to insist upon domination and subordination were never set­ their rights as free individuals. This idiom tled, were always potentially contentious, and were only contingently related to the idiom of was at least as prevalent and as influential class. (256) as that of the privileged communautés or the ornate, secret compagnonnage In Sonenscher's view, the 18th cen­ brotherhoods. tury French trades were dominated by The final chapter offers a wide-rang­ neither a moral economy nor a market ing rethinking of the origins of sans­ economy. Their structure is likened to culotte ideology. Sonenscher traces the that of a bazaar, a concept he derives from geneology of specific concepts — derived some of the lesser known works of Clif­ from boulevard theatre, English law, ab­ ford Geertz. These bazaar economies solutist political theory, natural-right were jurisprudence, religious imagery — that were melded into a single idiom "in a long an order in which relations between kin, neigh­ process of political improvisation" (362) bours, patrons and clients were the ground as clubs and politicians sought to appeal upon which the evanescent arrangements and fleeting transactions of small-scale to the Paris artisan public. Here, too, entrepreneurs were based, for they provided Sonenscher is impatient with both Mar- REVIEWS 307

xist interpretations and revisionist at­ farm production by satisfying their needs tacks: for consumer goods at an affordable price. For NEP to work, there had to be There is little reason, therefore, to assume any labour harmony and cooperation between fundamental division between Parisian Jacobins and Parisian sons-culottes. There is agriculture and industry. The problem, equally little reason to characterize the however, was that the Bolshevik leaders rhetoric and imagery associated with the sans­ were impatient with the consequent slow culottes as particular to a restrictedcircl e of pace of industrialization. Within the cot­ wealthy employers, or indeed to any single ton mills, as elsewhere, they were dis­ section of Parisian society. The rhetoric of the posed to press for higher productivity year II was no more instrumental than any norms. After experimenting unsuccess­ other political rhetoric. It was addressed to a fully with alternative means to achieve public made up mainly of men and women their goals — such as capital investment associated with the trades. Some of them were from abroad and Taylorist innovations — very wealthy, others were not. (362) they turned in desperation to labour inten­ Altogether a remarkable work that sification. Workers felt betrayed by this qualifies and rethinks everything that has turnabout and responded with passive, been done heretofore in the field of 18th- and not so passive, resistance. This in turn century labour history. Sonenscher's con­ convinced the authorities that more coer­ tribution will be a central resource for cive measures were required. research and discussion for many years Ward's focus is upon working day life into the future. It will offer many reasons on the shop floor of the Russian cotton to pause and reconsider, to protagonists mill under NEP. He provides background on all sides of the "reality vs. discourse" for the historical connection between the or the "culture vs. class" controversies, no British experience with mechanization of matter what country they work on. the cotton industry a hundred years earlier and Russia's at the end of the 19th cen­ William M. Reddy tury. We learn that during the relatively Duke University brief 30 years or so of its development up to the 1920s, the Russian industry managed to establish a "mill culture" of Chris Ward, Russia's Cotton Workers its own which was quite resistant to state And The New Economic Policy control mechanisms. Thus attempts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press during the years of NEP to rationalize 1990). production, cut costs, and mobilize and discipline the work force met with a SUBTITLED SHOP-FLOOR culture and variety of obstructions on the shop floor. state policy 1921-1929, Chris Ward's Looking in depth at "the diversity of book is conceived as a microcosm of the workers' lives" in the cotton mills, Ward relationship between the cotton industry provides vivid illustrations of the many worker, state policy and technology ways in which workers deflected and during the first decade after the Russian frustrated decrees of management which Civil War. In the wake of the 10th Com­ they found particularly distasteful. Their munist Party Congress (1921), the young non-cooperation set important limits Soviet government adopted the New upon the power of the Soviet government Economic Policy (NEP) and shifted away to control the pace of industrial develop­ from the command principles of War ment. In addition, Moscow's plans were Communism towards reestablishing frustrated by a lack of standardization market ties between the Russian among the mills, local mores more ap­ countryside and industry. The idea was to propriate for the village than the shop give the peasants an incentive to increase 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

floor, and the relative inexperience and with its coercive agricultural collectiviza­ immaturity of the industrial work force. tion and massive industrialization. Ward's depiction of the Russian cot­ Ward's narrative keeps to a basic ton mill departs from certain aspects of chronological order and contains much the more familiar Western models: he useful information and detail. Its chief shows that the Russian experience was accomplishment is in providing the reader not a simple reflection of the equation with a feel for the daily life of the worker between industrialization, urbanization in the Russian cotton mill. But Ward's and proletarianization; and he analysis of how policies were designed downgrades friction and conflict as and their place in the overall priorities of necessary characteristics of relations be­ the young Soviet state is inadequate. In tween town and country. In addition, he addition, the book is poorly written and has some interesting things to say about disorganized. It is a struggle to get the impact of traditional rural culture through its pages. Valuable observations upon the mentality of the cotton workers, are obscured by the author's overblown even if his observations add little to what rhetoric and awkward syntax. The work is is already known from the works of T.H. organized into thirteen chapters, a con­ Friedgut, R.E. Johnson, and H. clusion, an appendix (that is a glossary of Kuromiya. all the trusts and mills covered by the According to Ward, by most stand­ research), a bibliography which lists ex­ ards the cotton industry was doing well tensive primary and secondary sources, during NEP, as new recruits flocked to the and a index; there are also nine plates and mills from surrounding villages. But the eleven tables. government's resort to a series of ad-hoc measures, including labour intensifica­ N.G.O. Pereira tion, speed-ups, sudden unplanned in­ Dalhousie University creases in workloads, and uplotnenie — "tightening up the working day" — deep­ ly alienated the workers. By September Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, Choos­ 1923, about half the textile labourers were ing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept on piece-work schedules, and that trend (Boston: South End Press 1988). intensified. Many others were forced to live and work under a three shift schedule IN THE ADVANCED ECONOMIES of the which completely upset the accustomed world, the scramble for better positions in pattern of life in the factory barracks and the competition for global markets made it extremely difficult to get ade­ centres increasingly on innovations in quate rest. labour-management relations at the level Workers' resistance took many spon­ of the workplace. No manager can be taneous forms, but among the most typi­ unimpressed with the productivity ad­ cal were the spinners and weavers in vantages enjoyed by Japanese firms that Bogorodsk who deliberately slowed their use the "team concept." In this model of work rate as a protest against pressures workplace organization, small groups of from above. By 1928-29 the Soviet a dozen or so workers do their jobs government was facing serious opposi­ together as a single production unit. Team tion from within large segments of its members can do several jobs so that work traditional constituency, the industrial can be easily re-allocated among the work force, as well as the threat of resur­ group in case of absenteeism, tardiness or gent capitalism in the villages. This com­ speedup. The teams take on many of the bination was enough to convince the party functions of first-line supervisors and the leadership to abandon NEP in favour of workers are expected to make improve­ Stalin's brutal revolution from above, ments in productivity by constantly cut- REVIEWS 309 ting out inefficiencies in their work prac­ bers and front-line supervisors at the same tices. time. Team leaders are often also union The team concept is now found in leaders. The authors maintain that the almost every sector in Canada and the US, team leaders act as "an important vehicle but it is most highly concentrated in auto for management to convince a key section assembly plants. This is the focus of Mike of the workforce to adopt its goals and Parker's and Jane Slaughter's Choosing implement its programs." Sides. The authors present an extensive Worker struggles which have taken analysis of the team concept, the place recently, after the publication of concept's origins, its role in Japanese in­ Choosing Sides, indicate that Parker and dustrial relations, and its implications for Slaughter were right to highlight the criti­ unions. They provide fourteen case cal role of team leaders. There are several studies analysing the operation of the examples of workers struggling to take team concept in auto assembly plants in away the power of management to ap­ the US and one case study of its operation point team leaders. The demand at the in Mexico. Most significant is the case Mazda plant in Michigan and at the GM- study of the General Motors-Toyota joint Suzuki (CAMI) plant in Ontario is for team venture at the NUMMI (New United leaders who are elected by the workers. Motors Manufacturing Inc.) auto assemb­ This struggle has the potential to heighten ly plant in Fremont, California. the contradiction between the role of the NUMMI's productivity and quality team leader as supervisor and as worker. ratings are so high that it has massive The authors argue the NUMMI advantages over all other North American workers are conditioned by peer pressure auto plants. NUMMI attained these ad­ to think like managers. Because managers vantages in a plant which GM had former­ do not provide regular replacements for ly shut down due to low profits, and, as absent workers, it is the responsibility of Parker and Slaughter point out, NUMMI the team leader to fill in. As a result, the has a "conservative approach to technol­ team leader has less time to help others, ogy" instead of a high-technology ap­ so peer pressure against absenteeism is proach to obtaining higher productivity. thereby built into the team concept. Team As well, NUMMI employs many of those meetings in the plant and athletic and who worked at the plant before it was shut social events outside the plant also rein­ down. A main source of the plant's high force this peer pressure. In addition, productivity and quality ratings appears management instructs the group leaders to be its use of the team concept and and team leaders how to reinforce team related managerial innovations. cohesion through various "P.T." ("per­ The lowest level of official manage­ sonal touch") techniques. Team members ment at NUMMI, the "group leader," is in are expected to help each other deal with charge of two to six teams, each of which personal problems. has four to eight workers who work Parker and Slaughter dub the team together with a "team leader." After con­ concept "management by stress." sulting the teams, the group leader makes Managers use speedups to find out which the final decisions about such issues as workers can take an increased workload work methods and standards, the hiring of and then "re-balance" jobs so that a high new workers, and the assessment of level of work intensity is spread more probationary employees. The authors uniformly across the plant, eliminating argue that it is the team leader, however, the easier jobs. NUMMI also uses "just-in- who is "key to the functioning of the time" production, another innovation bor­ NUMMI system" since it is the team leader rowed from Japan. In essence, just-in- who straddles the union-management time refers to the coordination of each divide. The team leaders are union mem­ step in the production process so that 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

there is the least possible excess of labour The union is weak and divided at and capital used. Materials are used and NUMMI. The authors argue that there is the jobs done just as they are needed. "no room in management-by-stress for a Since workers cannot "bank ahead" and union which sees itself as representing the cannot slow down without seriously dis­ interests of workers and actively or­ rupting production further down the line, ganizes its members to achieve their own they are pressured to make great efforts to interests." However, Parker and attain ever tighter production schedules, Slaughter believe that workers can take irrespective of machinery breakdown and advantage of the promises of the team ' other obstacles. Management makes the concept to forward a "humanized model" assumption that "kaizen" (continuous im­ of work and they outline strategies for provement) — defined in management's local unions to educate and mobilize their terms — is always possible. members though the teams. "Given the Contrary to the belief that team-based low level of attendance at most union production provides an alternative to the meetings," they point out, "this is an op­ breakdown of jobs into tiny, meaningless portunity for the majority of union mem­ tasks through "scientific management," bers who aren't active to get together in Parker and Slaughter argue that manage­ an organized way." They also emphasize ment-by-stress allows managers to the need to build a shop-steward system "specify every move a worker makes in based on the teams and they recommend far greater detail than ever before." Jobs the establishment of a "Code of Conduct are not designed by the teams but by en­ Becoming to a Union Member." gineers, supervisors and team leaders, and The authors maintain that in some it is managers who decide all the "proces­ respects the team concept makes manage­ ses, basic production layout, and tech­ ment control more vulnerable. For ex­ nologies to be used." ample, "just-in-time" could be made into While some worker resistance to a recipe for increasing workers' power management-by-stress exists at NUMMI, through "quickie stoppages" or slow­ it has been ineffective and lacking in downs. Since production is so interdepen­ union support. The UAW is obligated dent and buffer stock are lacking under through the collective agreement to "just-in-time," a few workers have a great "promote constant improvements in deal of disruptive potential. Unions have quality and productivity." Strikes are il­ also been able to win gains using "insider legal for the duration of the collective strategies," that is, by remaining on the agreement, and instead of a grievance job after a contract expires and carrying procedure, the collective agreement out numerous acts of informal resistance. provides for a "problem resolution proce­ One of the many strengths of this dure." A worker with a "problem" first book is its examination of plants where approaches the team leader or the group workers have been trying to subvert the leader. The next steps are to see the team concept for their own ends. "union coordinator" and then the union's Unionists will be particularly interested district committeeperson and NUMMI's in the account of factional infighting over "human resources representative" who the team concept at GM's plant in Van share the same office. Thus far, managers Nuys, California. (For more information have resolved most of the problems about this campaign, especially regarding through compromises at early steps in the the role of union alliances with com­ procedure, and workers blame most of munity groups in blocking the shutdown their difficulties with management-by- of the plant, see Eric Mann's book Taking stress on the groups leaders and union on General Motors, published by the In­ leaders (who are sometimes the same stitute of Industrial Relations, University people). of California, Los Angeles.) REVIEWS 311

Another case study of worker resis­ dustrial relations and the sociology of tance to the team concept focuses on a labour. It is a major help in challenging new Ford plant in Hermosillo, Mexico. the plethora of management-oriented ar­ Workers found out that their $138.36 ticles and books which espouse the team monthly pay was 40 per cent less than concept as a "win-win" solution to what Ford paid workers at two other problems of international competitive­ plants in Mexico, but Ford was not ness. responsive to the pay issue nor to job overload complaints. When they saw Don Wells through the illusory promises manage­ McMaster University ment had made about harmony when in­ troducing the team concept, the workers decided to turn the groups into a vehicle Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Dis­ for union organizing. Each of the teams course: The Reification of Language and elected a union representative, and the the Writing of Social History (Philadel­ workers insisted on direct membership phia: Temple University Press 1990). control of collective bargaining. In response to Ford's defiance of a govern­ IT IS SOMETHING of a historical puzzle ment order to raise its wages by 20 per why, what Eugene Jolas as long ago as cent as a cost-of-living adjustment, the 1929 called 'the revolution of language' workers went out on a 39-day strike and (the preoccupation with language as an won a 54 per cent raise. Union members autonomous self-referential process so who are being told that militant unionism characteristic of 20th-century Western is incompatible with increasing global Culture), should have taken so long to competition will find this case study of penetrate the Anglo-American academy. worker resistance in the Third World Perhaps it is the belated reception of this especially encouraging. cluster of ideas as recently as the 1970s While this book is primarily about the and 1980s which helps explain why impact of the team concept on labour in themes adumbrated by Nietzsche and by the US, it is relevant to Canada as well. the great Modernists of the beginning of The Canadian Auto Workers has recently the century should be treated by signed a contract at the General Anglophone academics as novelties an­ Motors/Suzuki (CAMI) assembly plant in nouncing a distinctly 'postmodern' con­ Ingersoll, Ontario — a plant run accord­ dition. ing to the team concept. There are three Anyway, once the revolution of lan­ non-union auto plants in Ontario which guage hit the English-speaking world — also use the team concept. Should these mainly in the shape of 'poststruc- plants attain anything approaching the turalism,' the label attached to certain productivity of the NUMMI plant, they French writings since the 1960s (notably will be a model not only for other General those of Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida) Motors plants in Canada but also for other — it did so in a big way. For one involved auto producers and for management in primarily in the philosophical and politi­ other sectors. cal arguments provoked by this body of Choosing Sides is written in a clear, work it comes as something of a surprise informal style, with short chapters and a to discover how far poststructuralist as­ lot of funny graphics. It is a very fine sumptions have penetrated so robustly an educational tool. The Canadian Auto empirical discipline as social history. But Workers are using Choosing Sides to edu­ Bryan Palmer's book, itself a response to cate members at several locals. This book this development, leaves one in no doubt can also be an important addition to of its existence: subjects as old as the university courses in labour studies, in­ social history of the French Revolution, 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL as new as the exploration of women's the dominant way in which poststruc­ history, have been infiltrated by what has turalism has been received in the English- come to be known as 'discourse theory.' speaking world — as a sort of linguistic For many historians, among them some of Kantianism, in which the limits of my the ablest and most innovative, the study discourse provide the limits of my world. of the past is no longer the narration of While there is a fair measure of truth in events or the exploration of how social such a reading of Derrida, it throws little structures and human agency interact but light on the much more robustly the unravelling of the organizations of Nietzschean strain of poststructuralism symbols which form the inescapable practiced by Foucault and Deleuze from boundaries of experience and action. the late 1960s onwards. Palmer calls The Now Palmer is forthright in this op­ Archaeology of Knowledge "an un­ position to this development: "Much writ­ ashamed statement of authorial immer­ ing that appears under the designer label sion in language, conceived as primary of poststructuralism/post modernism is, and decisive." (25) In fact, it marks the quite bluntly, crap" (199) But his own beginning of Foucault's movement away standpoint is not that of a defensive em­ from any treatment of language as piricism but of a critical, anti-Stalinist autonomous. His preoccupation with the Marxism: "historical materialism remains 'rarefaction' of discourses, the limits set the foundation upon which studies of the on what utterances may actually be made, past must be erected." (xiii) And, while led Foucault to the analysis of the non- following Goethe and Trotsky in the discursive practices on which they are belief that in the beginning was the deed, articulated, and thence to the idea of not the work, Palmer is ready to acknow­ 'power-knowledge,' the assemblage of ledge that discourse theory "contains in­ institutions and utterances forming the sights and guides capable of opening new domain of the social. By the mid-1970s he doors of understanding to historians com­ could declare that "the history that bears mitted to a materialism that recognizes and determines us has the form of a war the need for a rigorous reading of docu­ rather than a language: relations of power, ments and texts/contexts." (189) In line not relations of meaning." Foucault's kin­ with this general stance, he provides a ship with Derrida lay in their common critical survey of 'the reification of anti-realism, the denial that sentences are language' which begins with the Russian true or false in virtue of the state of the Formalists, explores the philosophical world, not in a shared "insistence on the development culminating in Foucault and structural determinations of language." Derrida, and traces the vulgarization of (28) their ideas by historians working in the Palmer is right, nevertheless, to see an fields of politics, gender, and class. anti-humanism according to which sub­ The results are admirable, a notable jects lack any inherent coherence or addition, focused on, but extending autonomy as also present in all strains of beyond, history, to such philosophical poststructuralism, and to want to reject critiques of poststructuralism as Jilrgen this. At one point, however, he goes too Habermas's The Philosophical Discourse far in the other direction. Challenging the of Modernity and Peter Dews' Logics of reduction by Gareth Stedman Jones et al. Disintegration. The relatively minor of class as a discursive construct, Palmer character of the disagreements I now wish writes: "class relations are, in origin, to express should merely underline the economic relations rooted in the capitalist extent of my sympathy with Palmer's process of accumulation, whereby one so­ overall arguments. cial stratum expropriates surplus from The first point is one of interpretation. another." (138) The implication is that Palmer is too willing to fall in line with "class as an objective economic reality is REVIEWS 313 not present before the arrival of industrial not the end of history, but the present as capitalism." (139) Attached apparently in history. support of this last statement is a refer­ ence to G.E.M. de Ste Croix's great work Alex Callinicos The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek University of York (GB) World — surprisingly, since Ste Croix's purpose is to demonstrate that class as an objective relationship reflecting the ex­ Gillian A. Walker, Family Violence and traction of surplus-labour is present in the Women's Movement: The Conceptual pre-capitalist societies characterized by Politics of Struggle (Toronto: University an absence of overt class consciousness. of Toronto Press 1990). Perhaps, like Edward Thompson before him, Palmer has reacted to the dissolution A MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT of contem­ of agency into structure by underestimat­ porary feminism has been to make the ing the objective déterminants of subjec­ 'private,' 'personal' violence that women tive action. The lapse is all the odder since experience in the domestic, familial realm he takes Thompson and Raymond Wil­ into a public, political issue. Gains in­ liams to task for abandoning the metaphor clude the establishment of battered of base and superstructure. (209-11) women's shelters and shifts in social and This treatment of class provides the legal policies. At the same time as in other key to Palmer's answer to the question movements questions are being raised with which this review began — namely, about the way in which the aims of the why this fin-de-siècle craze for post- grass roots feminists who organized structuralism among the English-speak­ around these experiences of social power, ing intelligentsia? "[C]lass," he argues, violence and dependence have not been "takes on its most clear-cut objective realized in the ways in which professional presence in the epoch of classical in­ and state agencies have taken up this dustrial capitalism, stretching from the issue. Gillian Walker asks a crucial ques­ triumph of the Industrial Revolution in tion that also faces those of us involved in the mid-nineteenth century to the high- other progressive movements and in water mark of monopoly capitalism just working-class organizing. prior to World War II." (138) By contrast, we live now in an epoch where "[t]he How is it that in the women's movement we socio-economic formation of Western seem to get what we want, we achieve some Capitalism reconstitutes itself in ways measure of success, we appear to have some impact, yet we find that the process that advan­ that seemingly destabilize the values and ces our cause also incorporates it into the very perspectives of Marxism and historical institutions against which we struggle? Con­ materialism and supposedly undercut and trol slips away and what we get turns out not displace the mobilizations and politics of be what we wanted after all. (206) a 'progressive' past orchestrated by class as both an historical pressure and a pre­ Walkers' Family Violence and the eminent category of analysis." (216-7) It Women's Movement is a groundbreaking is not clear whether Palmer thinks this analysis of what has too often been 'retreat from class' is merely a temporary, glossed as 'cooptation' in left discourse. conjunctival setback for the left, or repre­ This has been understood as a lack of sents a profound structural shift, in which moral or political commitment and not case we Marxists are mere Canutes seek­ analyzed as a social process. Asking how ing to hold back the tide. But here we this works through a process of institu­ move beyond my minor quibbles with a tional regulation in which our own ac­ fine book and rejoin the great debate on, tivities are implicated Walker's particular problematic is the transformation of feminist organizing against male violence 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and gender inequality as it enters into the the sense of being removed from actual terrains of official discourse. She ex­ social experiences and articulated to the plores how this transformation was ac­ relations of ruling) through which social complished in the 1970s and 1980s in practices and policies actively get or­ Canada by activists, professionals and ganized. These concepts come to organize state agencies, and how activist concerns social relations regarding 'social have shifted and are transformed as they problems.' Disputes over whether 'family are increasingly articulated to violence' or 'male violence against bureaucratic ruling relations. women' are the best concepts are not Furthering the insightful work of simply semantic disagreements. They or­ Patricia Morgan ("From Battered Wife to ganize social relations in different ways Program Client: The State's Shaping of and participate in defining what the 'so­ Social Problems," Kapitalistate, 9 cial problem' is. [1981], 17-39) and using the method In order initially to be heard and taken developed by marxist-feminist Dorothy seriously, feminists raised their concerns E. Smith, Walker elaborates an eth­ in ways attuned to already existing nographic analysis of the interactions be­ professional conceptualizations of 'fami­ tween feminist organizing as it names the ly violence.' This conceptualization coor­ issue of women being battered in the dinates the work of social services in rela­ home by the men they live with and the tion to 'problem' or 'dysfunctional' various state and professional agencies families operating to obscure from view that feminists try to get to respond to this the gendered and 'normal' character of issue. Rather than viewing 'the state' as this violence and inequality. Partly in an entity or 'thing' she sees the state as a response to these limitations, feminist ac­ set of social relations with which social tivists and professionals articulated a dif­ movements engage as part of our struggles. ferent conceptualization defining the Walker writes as an active participant problem as male violence against women. in these struggles, developing an insider's They began to define the problem as wife knowledge of the social relations of assault. This identified the problem as one feminist organizing as it engages with of 'assault' which articulated this ap­ state and professional relations. She proach with the criminal justice system. shows through her careful and detailed The problem then became not so much analysis how the original intent of 'dysfunctional' families as it became the feminists — locating the violence women illegitimate use of violence by individual face in the home in patriarchal social rela­ men against women in the home (as op­ tions and as a grass roots political ques­ posed to the 'legitimate' state violence of tion — was depoliticized and diffused the police and military). While this con­ into an administrative issue of state and ceptualization of the 'problem' had the professional provision of services and advantage of being able to more clearly legal practices. While important gains name the gender of the person committing have been won the social relations which the violence it dealt with the problem as allow for male violence in the domestic, one the existing criminal justice system familial realm have not been fundamen­ should deal with, once again obscuring tally questioned or transformed. from view the broader social relations or­ ganizing these problems for women in Walker's analysis focuses on the so­ patriarchal capitalist societies. cial organization of knowledge and on the textually-mediated character of ruling in Walker points out that in some this society. She highlights how concepts government investigations concep­ operate in ruling relations not simply as tualizations of 'family' and 'male' descriptions that name a phenomenon but violence have been merged to provide as ideological procedures (ideological in ways for coordinating the responses of REVIEWS 315 social work and the criminal justice sys­ struggles being appropriated through our tem. The link is provided through interactions with ruling institutions and 'violence* as both a social work and a our own participation in these relations. criminal problem. Through these social These are dilemmas that confront all processes aspects of feminist critique movement, working class and socialist have been lost and feminist rebellion has activists. It poses questions of how we can been accommodated. Men's social power organize differently so that our struggles in families is not being challenged and do not get transformed and absorbed in transformed; only their 'abuse* of this this way. power is challenged when it goes too far. In our existing struggles where we are Walker's investigation is part of a forced to engage with ruling institutions new critical concern among activists over we cannot completely abandon 'issue' how organizing can get accommodated to politics or engaging with conceptual or­ ruling institutions without really trans­ ganization. Instead we need to become forming situations for the oppressed. At­ much more aware of how we name tempting to recover the original political 'issues' and how we participate in the context and mobilizing capacity of deal­ construction of 'social problems.' This ing with experiences of this violence highlights the importance of struggles raises important questions for all activists over how issues are defined and contex- about the construction of social 'issues.' tualized and how they are associated with When we organize in this society we other related struggles. One possible solu­ are often forced to construct our concerns tion is to try to use 'concepts' in our as 'issues' to be able to get our concerns struggles where we can control the inter­ registered as we articulate them to dif­ pretation. This would help illuminate the ferent bureaucratic ruling institutions in social relations that organize problems in order to demand action. We are forced to people's lives, much as Marx attempted fight on a professional and state terrain to develop categories and analyses that which is not our own. We often have to expressed and made visible social rela­ use the language that is available to us — tions rather than obscuring and mystifying what can be described as using the them. oppressor's language. This means we Regarding men's violence against often participate in uprooting experiences women in the home we also need to ad­ from the social relations in which they are dress broader questions of the need for embedded. We draw boundaries around economic independence for women, shar­ experiences and problems. We work them ing domestic labour, quality and available up as separate single issues in order to get childcare, and the social construction of them responded to. We isolate them from sexuality. We also must address class other aspects of oppression and exploita­ relations and how women's oppression is tion. What this does is produce them as organized differently along class, race 'issues' already uprooted from the social and sexuality lines. Women in shelters relations organizing (in this situation) the can come to be defined as a welfare prob­ problems of male violence for women in lem and no matter how much safety shel­ the home. There are important traps in ters provide for women they can almost this process of issue formation which we become new 'poorhouses,' as one of need to be more aware of. Walker argues Walker's 'informants' suggests. that while aspects of the issues do get addressed, the social basis of oppression Walker also suggests how crucial remains unchallenged. professional and state relations are to the contemporary social organization of Walker's book puts on the agenda the class, especially in pointing us towards crucial question of how to organize to the dispersal of class and other social transform social relations without our struggles across numerous bureaucratic 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

state and professional sites of regulation. ethics retreat and the company holiday This is one of the ways in which contem­ (both management sponsored), and porary class and social struggles are frag­ through her observations of shopfloor mented, de-politicized, and professional­ routines, conversations, and family ized. Within the feminist movement itself relationships, Kondo seeks to elaborate the process of professionalization con­ postmodern insights into questions of verts domestic violence against women identity, power, and resistance. Her into a terrain for the construction of descriptions of her coworkers, of discipli­ careers. Some "women's movement rep­ nary action, or of amusing incidents resentatives come to be professionalized during her stay, are closely interwoven as experts speaking for and about battered with explanations of semiotic theory, women." (213) This becomes part of the critiques of humanist and structuralist construction of class divisions between theoretical approaches, and brief sketches women and subverts feminist attempts to of Japanese history. The overall effect is empower women who face violence and rich — Kondo has a close feel for her assault. There is a long history to this subjects, a sensitivity to the effect of her professionalization and institutionaliza­ presence as an anthropologist as well as tion of social and union movements to the possible imposition of her values which socialists must continue to devise and interpretations as a Japanese- strategies to resist, subvert and transform. American, and brings to her study a well- This book is an important contribu­ considered and innovative theoretical tion to critical analysis of the social rela­ approach. tions of movement organizing and state The most serious issue raised by her and professional regulation opening up study, therefore, is the value of the post- insights for all movement and working- modem theoretical approach for her work class activists. It poses crucial questions and for anthropological study, more regarding the conceptual organization of generally. In legitimating this approach, ruling and how we can begin to analyze, the book is less steady than it may first resist and transform it. Walker's book appear. Kondo's stated intention is to does not provide the answers but it poses portray the experience of the various crucial questions as it "attempts to move members of the factory in sufficient our efforts forward by uncovering a fea­ detail, specificity, and complexity, that ture of how our work come to be or­ one reaches the point where "experience ganized against us by the processes we and evocation can become theory." (9) engage in." (219) That is, one of the strengths of the postmodern position, in her view, is its Gary Kinsman capacity to overcome the traditional Acadia University Western binary opposition between em­ pirical and theoretical work. To make this point, she contrasts her approach with Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: others where theory is marked off from Power, Gender, and Discourses of Iden­ empirical fact-gathering, and where the tity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago theoretical model determines in advance and London: University of Chicago Press the significance of what is examined. My criticisms of this presentation and jus­ 1990). tification of postmodern theory and of Kondo's work are two fold. First, she DORINNE KONDO PROVIDES a post­ misreads much of traditional empirical modern reading of her experience and ob­ theory which is often reluctant to admit to servations as an anthropologist in a small any theoretical predetermination of its family-owned factory in Tokyo. In her factual discoveries, frequently claiming evocative accounts of events like the REVIEWS 317

to "let the facts speak for themselves." Kondo states it, "what is conventionally There is, indeed, a remarkable similarity considered 'theory' is always already a in this respect between traditional theory position in which a positioned subject has and Kondo's desire that the postmodern 'personal' stakes" (303) — in other approach, in evoking a multiplicity of ex­ words, the writing of theory is always a periential details, will provide an accurate motivated act. Postmodern theory is reflection of reality. What Kondo ignores thereby justified as strategy. In its dis­ or seriously underestimates is that the ad­ placement of the dominant discourse, its mission of a fact/theory dichotomy is attention to shifting levels of analysis, often a valuable starting point for self- and its sensitivity to language and mean­ reflexive critical theory and counter-En­ ing, postmodern theory presents its own lightenment thought, including much of theoretical work as a site of resistance. Its Marxist and feminist theory. subversiveness is also related to its My second concern is that postmod­ linkage with not just the concepts of ern theory may not be as innocent of "marginality" or "otherness," but with determining the direction and discoveries real actors (women, people of colour, of its empirical applications as Kondo non-Westerns, workers) who are mar­ would wish. Indeed, she seems curiously ginalized and made "other" by the unaware of the ways in which her study, dominant economic, cultural, political, too, appears to reproduce in its investiga­ and social practices. tion of the Japanese workplace all of the It seems fair, then, to inquire into the "truisms' of postmodern theory — that value of Kondo's study for questions of power is everywhere, the identities are social change. And it is in this arena that fragmented and dispersed, that resistance the limitations of postmodern analysis are is never pure, that language is productive perhaps most evident. The strategy of her of its referents. Repeatedly, one finds in project, as she outlines it, is as follows: the book such statements as "selves are rhetorical assertions, produced by our lin­ In its writing strategies and its explicit guistic conventions, which we narrate and theoretical message, Crafting Selves is an at­ perform for each other" (307) and "no tempt to reconsider definitions of the self, at levels we would call collective and individual. deployment of meaning has a single ef­ There can be no radical rupture with the fixity fect, rather any action produces a multi­ and essentialism of our narrative conventions, plicity of sometimes paradoxical and but emphases on potential conflict, ambiguity, creative effects." (225) These assertions irony, and the workings of power in the very of postmodern theory are, not surprising­ process of constructing identities could yield ly, then confirmed by Kondo's investiga­ other insights and other rhetorical strategies to tions. Surely, it would be ironic if explore. Rather than bounded, essential en­ postmodern theory, with its elaborate tities, replete with a unitary substance and critique of representation should resort to consciousness, identities become nodal points implicitly justifying itself on the basis of repositioned in different contexts. Selves, in this view, can be seen as rhetorical figures and a superior referentiality. performative assertions enacted in specific But there is another justification for situations within fields of power, history, and the use of the postmodern theoretical ap­ culture. (304) proach besides those mentioned above (that is, its claims as an alternative to Much of the book consists in an dualist thinking, or its implicit self- elaboration of the discursive production presentation of greater referentiality). If, of selves as the site of potential conflict as the postmodernists assert, knowledge or struggle. For example, Kondo indicates is power, then the knowledge claims and the ambiguity in discourses such as "com­ interpretations of postmodernists can be pany as family," which are used both by warranted by their effects. Moreover, as management to exploit workers and to command their loyalty, and also by 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL workers to claim privileges and recogni­ choice of discourse can be made; as long tion from management. The "artisan as as the subject is produced in the creation mature human" is a discursive site of of his/her identity, then it is not clear how other conflicts: the most skilled artisans the subject could choose identities work inhumanly long hours (up to 22 a strategically. And yet, periodically, day in the busiest seasons), a hierarchy of Kondo reverts to understanding power as workers is guaranteed, gender divisions something which has a material basis. are reinforced (only men are artisans, and the women who work 8-10 hour days are This "politics of classification" shows how different actors can reclaim and redeploy cer­ called "part-timers," and considered less tain idioms in ways they perceive to be just and than fully human), yet the artisans also justifiable. ... But it is also clear that the benefit from this hierarchy, and the part- shacho's (company head and owners') at­ timers enjoy greater work flexibility. The tempts to define the meanings of uchi (com­ problem is that explorations of discursive pany as family and centre of emotion attach­ ambiguities do not themselves reveal why ment) could be effective, for he had the certain discursive uses take precedence material means at his disposal to enforce those over others. Further, Kondo is reticent to meanings. (206) make normative judgments about any of the exploitation of workers which she ob­ In its inability to theorize further serves, partly because of the relativist im­ around such questions as the "material plications that all discourses serve means" of determining identities and dis­ everyone somehow. Nor is this method of courses, it is possible to identify the understanding the equivocacy of discour­ limitations of Kondo's and of postmodern ses or identities particularly helpful in analysis generally. The question which questions of strategy. What are the power remains, after reading Crafting Selves, is implications involved in claiming, or not whether postmodern theory could incor­ claiming particular discourses or iden­ porate a material understanding of power tities — those of a worker, for instance — or whether materialism and postmoder­ for projects of social change? As long as nism are necessarily antithetical. power is perceived as the product of dis­ course, no strategic questions concerning Eleanor MacDonald Queen's University