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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 8-9, 1981

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/llt8_9rv01

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Publisher(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

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

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Cite this review (1981). Review of [Reviews / Comptes Rendus]. Labour/Le Travailleur, 8-9, 349–422.

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A.B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era by William Westfall / 351 Serge Gagnon, Le Québec et ses Historiens de 1840 à 1920: La Nouvelle France de Garneau à Groulx by Date Miquelon / 352 George Rude, Protest and Punishment: The Story of the Social and Political Protesters Transported to Australia 1788-1868 by F. Murray Greenwood / 353 George Raudzens, The British Ordnance Department and Canada's Canals 1815-1855 by Ruth Bleasdale / 355 John McCallum, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Quebec and Ontario Until 1870 by Donald Harman Akenson / 356 Raymond Boily, Les Irlandais et la canal de Lachine: la grève de 1843 by Robert Tremblay / 358 Beth Light and Alison Prentice, eds.. Pioneer and Gentlewomen of British North America, 1713-1867 by Anne Filiaci / 360 Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 1867-1892 by David Brody / 361 Paul Craven, 'An Impartial Umpire': Industrial Relations and the Canadian State, 1900-1911 by Ian McKay / 364 Michiel Horn, The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Democ­ ratic Left in Canada 1930-1942 by Allen Mills / 370 Gregory Baum, Catholics and Canadian Socialism: Political Thought in the Thirties and Forties by Richard Allen / 373 Leopold Infeld, Why I Left Canada: Reflections on Science and Politics, Translated by Hellen Infeld, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Lewis Pyenson by Chandler Davis/ 374 Marcel Fournier, Communisme et anticommunisme à Québec (19201950) by Michel Pratt / 376 Robert Both well, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics and Provincialism by John Herd Thompson / 378 Michel Pratt, La grève de la United Aircraft, Collection histoire des travailleurs Québécois, no. 8 by Jean Letendre / 380 James Lorimer and Carolyn MacGregor, eds., After the Developers by Michael J. Doucet / 381 Catherine Wismer, Sweethearts: The Builders, the Mob and the Men by John Bullen / 383 Femand Harvey, Le mouvement ouvrier au Québec by Bernard Dionne / 385 Louise B. Lavoie, Les Débuts du Mouvement Ouvrier à Sherbrooke, 1873-1919 by Gail Cuthbert Brandt / 387 349 350 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Benoît-Beaudry Gourd, et al.. De l'abbittibbi-témiskaming 5 by David Millar / 388 Warren Caragata, Alberta Labour: A Heritage Untold by W.J.C. Cherwinski / 392 David J. Elkins and Richard Simeon, Small Worlds: Provinces and Parties in Canadian Political Life: and Carlo Caldarola, Society and Politics in Alberta: Research Papers by Allen Seager / 394 Donald H. Akenson.ed., Canadian Papers in Rural History, Vol. I; and, CF. Wilson, A Century of Canadian Grain by F.J.K. Griezic/ 397 Raymond L. Foote, The Case of Port Hawkesbury: Rapid Industrialisation and the Social Unrest in a Nova Scotia Community by John A. Watt / 398 The WPIRG Reader: Case Studies in Underdevelopment by David Frank / 400 J. Donald Wilson and David C. Jones, eds., Schooling and Society in 20th Century British Columbia by Chad Gaffield / 401 F.T. Denton, A.L. Robb, and B.G. Spencer, Unemployment and Labour Force Behav­ iour of Young People: Evidence from Canada andOntario; and P. Osterman, Getting Started: The Youth Labor Market by Morley Gunderson / 402 Frank R. Anton, Worker Participation: Prescription for Industrial Change by Gerry Hunnius / 404 Robert Comeau, Bernard Dionne, Les communistes au Québec 1936-1956 by Norman Penner / 405 Alice Hanson Jones, Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution by Lewis F. Fischer / 406 Allen Pred, Urban Growth and City-Systems in the United States, 1840-1860 by James T. Lemon / 408 Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Herman Daems, eds., Managerial Hierarchies, Compara­ tive Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise by Robert D. Cuff / 409 Philips. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume V, The AFL in the Progressive Era. 1910-1915 by W.M. Dick / 411 John W. Briggs, An Italian Passage: Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-1930 by John E. Zucci / 413 Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States by Paul Axelrod / 415 Harvey Schwartz, The March Inland: Origins of the ILWV Warehouse Division, 1934-1938 by Stephen J. Randall / 417 Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Houston Plan: Jane Sanders, Cold War on the Campus: Academic Freedom at the University of Washington, 1946-64; and Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to the Present by Stephen J. Scheinberg / 418 ToddGitlin, "The Whole World Is Watching" : Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left by Cyril Levitt / 420 REVIEWS 351

A.B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelli­ dewar and mostly Scottish philosophers gence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian move through a changing world led on by Thought in the Victorian Era (Montreal: their faith and a sober and rational intelli­ McGill-Queen's Press 1979). gence. The romantic side of Victorian cul­ ture, that is so evident in literature and art, A DISCIPLINED INTELLIGENCE studies the retreats into the background. labours of a group of Protestant intellectu­ While the book adds to a growing con­ als who tried to confront at a broadly philo­ sensus, it also moves significantly beyond sophical level a crisis of moral authority in the mainstream of Canadian historiogra­ the Victorian period. The crisis, according phy in general and Canadian intellectual to McKillop, grew out of a tension history in particular, and these attributes between the imperatives of rational inquiry mark the real importance of this work. The and the need for religious certainty. As standard criticism of intellectual history intellectuals these men participated in the argues that this genre is narrow in scope expanding world of rational observation and questionable in significance. Intellec­ and experimentation, but as men of faith tual history is little more than the history of they were also aware of the way this intellectuals — at best a branch of biog­ approach to knowledge was undercutting raphy, at worst a study of the impotent and the morality that it was supposed to reveal unimportant. While McKillop discusses in and sustain. The intellect was forced to considerable detail a number of intellectu­ abandon the formerly secure foundation of als, his work is not in essence biographical Scottish common sense and Paleyite natu­ for the central character is in fact the struc­ ral theology and to set out on a long and ture of the intellect itself. In his hands the tortuous journey towards Hegelian ideal­ mind takes on a life ofits own as an internal ism, and its manifestation in real life, the logic drives it down seemingly conflicting Social Gospel. paths. Furthermore, he tries to place the intellect (and this particular tension) at the This interpretation deepens and centre of Victorian society by arguing that amplifies what is coming to be a generally a broadly accepted moral system (North­ accepted understanding of Victorian rop Frye's myth of concern) is a necessary thought. McKillip's work builds directly prerequisite for a sense of social cohesion. on the Irving's study of philosophy in Can­ While the social system which this moral ada, his sense of crisis, or disorder, is pre­ mythology should sustain remains frustrat- sent in other studies of the period {Bliss ingly vague, McKillop's concern with the and Shorn for example), and his search for form and function of the intellect certainly a new vision that could transcend the ten­ places intellectual history upon a much sions of the present dispensation comple­ surer foundation. ments Carl Berger's interpretation of imperial thought. Nonetheless, McKil- Beyond this A Disciplined Intelligence lop's study adds to this picture in at least is a strong affirmation of the importance of three important ways. It elevates the qual­ idealism in Canadian historiography. The ity of Canadian intellectual life; it sets out dynamics of the intellect lead on to an the institutional context of that life (the idealist synthesis that becomes the spring­ University); and it analyzes in some detail board for reordering the material world two specific issues: the reaction to Darwin through social action. It is Hegel turned and the Canadian origins of the Social Gos­ right side up. Indeed the book becomes a pel. The latter issue is especially valuable part of what it has beheld. McKillop uses for understanding the intellectual roots of an idealist framework to describe the ori­ radicalism and reform. The image of the gins of the idealist tradition in Canada — a intellectual that emerges from the book is tradition to which McKillop himself con­ highly rational and moral. A host of rather forms. 352 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

And this symmetry provides, at least by The content analysis is always fascinat­ implication, a commentary upon the ing, and the writer unfailingly picks out the proper character of the historian and intel­ threads of reasoning that lead straight to lectual in Canadian life. The intellectuals the heart of nineteenth-century French McKillop describes are moral and broadly Canada's preoccupations: its fears, its humanistic; they are concerned with broad ambitions, and its conception of itself. One philosophical questions in their fullest of Mr. Gagnon's most clairvoyant investi­ social and cultural setting. He treats the gations is of religious biographies. These, intellectual as a moral philosopher rather he finds, were really not history or biog­ than a professional disciplinarian. In the raphy at all, but hagiography, catalogues same way that these men had to confront of virtues and providential interventions the limitations of empiricism and common intended to speed canonizations, sense in order to achieve an idealist synthe­ strengthen faith in the supernatural, and sis, so McKillop has tried to overcome the provide models for right conduct. The narrow objectivity and anti-philosophical models thought suitable for emulation say bias of Canadian historiography in order to a great deal about the writers' society. elevate an intellect and study it in a fine Foremost is the strong churchman, the cultural context. The book itself is McKil- defender of the Church against the lop's own testimony to the role of rational encroaching state, a role sometimes filled intelligence in the field of Canadian histor­ by women with manly voices. But there is ical scholarship. also the obedient religious or lay person, in particular manual workers and women, William Westfall submissive in their God-given roles. Secu­ York University lar biographies are similar; heroes such as Cartier and Champlain are presented as Serge Gagnon, Le Québec et ses Histo­ collages of virtues, religiously motivated. riens de 1840 à 1920: La Nouvelle France de Garneau à Groulx (Québec: Les Presses Of particular interest to the readers of de l'Université Laval 1978). this journal is the demonstration of how history was used to preach due subordina­ SERGE GAGNON has analysed the works of tion to workers. There is the example of 16 Quebec historians (the group includes Jouve's Didace Pelletier (1910), the story one assimilated Frenchman and one of a manual worker who knew his place, French kindred spirit) who wrote on the 10,000 copies of which were distributed history of New France between 1840 and free to the subscribers of a popular review. 1920. His aim is not to illuminate the his­ There is Rousseau's Maisonneuve ( 1886), tory of New France; with few exceptions, which shows that élites must lead nobly so he does not discuss the veracity of the that the people will learn "supporter avec works considered. Rather, these historians patience et résignation les misères de leur are his primary sources for an investigation condition." And it is clear that in the ful­ of the intellectual history of nineteenth- some praises of the farmer and the severe century Quebec. He is particularly con­ strictures against coureurs de bois in so cerned to elucidate the relation of the intel­ many of these works, the writers are con­ lectual product of his historians with the templating with fear and distaste the movement and metamorphosis of their nineteenth-century lumberjack and factory society in time — the relation of history to worker. Gagnon includes one maverick. History. So this is a book for the Benjamin Suite, the most agriculturist of nineteenth-century specialist, although the all historians, but one who recognized the New French aficionados will be grateful to history of his day as elitist propaganda. learn, at last, what is in all these books they "Nous défendons ici une cause — la cause never read. des Habitants," he wrote. REVIEWS 353

Here it is not possible to outline alt of renversement de la conjoncture and to the Gagnon's historiographical demonstra­ profound stress on structures in the period tions, which proceed from biography to 1800-40, limiting his analysis to a per­ histories of professions and institutions to functory recognition of the rise of the petit the major syntheses of the period. The his­ bourgeois. Perhaps more important, he torians are shown to have mirrored in vary­ takes no account of what French Canadian ing measure, after Garneau, the triptych society may have been before 1760, which that Michel Brunet has made familiar: is the essential starting point. Finally, not agriculturism, messianism, and a distrust everyone will have his confidence that the of the state. Brunet*s codification can be enlistment of Albert Memmi et al con­ expanded: this is history as part of a pro­ stitutes science to the rescue, however gramme of social action in support of an helpful their models of social development ultramontane, clerically-dominated soci­ might be. The author's touch becomes ety without ideological divergence, a soci­ surer after 1850, in the handling of the ety of harmonious hierarchy without class themes of urbanization and indus­ antagonisms, a society based upon family, trialization. farm, traditional institutions, and French The present work gives rise to two language. reflections on much of our current histori­ cal writing. The first is that the con­ The point of the exercise, of course, is juncture! approach can be excessively to relate history writing to social and eco­ mechanical, ideas popping in and out of nomic change. In many ways, Gagnon is peoples' heads with the rise and fall of very successful in doing this. Gameau's price series. Secondly, the neo-nationalist liberal synthesis stands out clearly related approach invariably leaves an image of the to the rise of the bourgeoisie of liberal pro­ French Canadian after 1760 as being acted fessions in the first half of the century, and upon rather than acting. This dehumaniza- the ultramontanism of almost everything tion of the subject is a danger in social and that came after is quite correctly related to economic history, and we will no doubt see the failures of the bourgeoisie in 1837-38 more of it in histories of Indians, immi­ and the subsequent derealization of soci­ grants, workers, and women. ety. The most shrill agriculturist paeans arc skillfully co-related with the rise of The faults that the present reviewer urbanization and industrialization. This imputes to this work are reflections of our extends even to the pairing of Suite's purist present historiography. They should not agriculturalism to the depression years of obscure the very real virtues of the original the later nineteenth century. There is, how­ research represented by this volume. ever, still plenty of work in this particular vineyard. And all of this new wine will not Dale Miquelon sit well in the old nationalist bottles. University of Saskatchewan Mr. Gagnon opts for the neo- George Rude, Protest and Punishment: nationalist (Séguin-Frégault-Brunet) The Story of the Social and Political Pro­ explanation of French Canadian social and testers Transported to Australia economic development after 1760. In this 1788-1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press scenario, because of the Conquest French 1978). Canadian society develops in a diminished and one-sided manner, seeking in compen­ PROFESSOR RUDE ANALYZES the patterns of sation myths and unhealthy solidarity to protest in England and Ireland from the save its nationality: la survivance but at a late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth cen­ cost. Mr. Gagnon accepts nationalism at a tury and in the Canadas during the Rebell­ cost too. Because he finds his explanation ions of 1837-38. The second half of the ready-made, he pays little attention to the book examines the experience in Australia 354 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR of those protesters transported. The author jobs. The Canadien patriotes, in New defines protest as a collective resistance to South Wales, during their period of assign­ perceived oppression. A wide range of pro­ ment, were sometimes permitted to search testers are, at least summarily, inves­ out their own employers. A few general­ tigated: food rioters, machine breakers, izations on this question would have trade union militants, demolishers of turn­ increased our knowledge of the convict pikes, Chartists, Scottish Jacobins, United system. Irishmen, Fenians, Canadien patriotes, Professor Rudé's main concern in the Upper Canadian rebels and their American Australian portions is to show that if the supporters, and many others. The author traditional and flattering "village also includes groups of what he calls mar­ Hampden" thesis of early Australian set­ ginal protesters, that is persons who car­ tlement can no longer be taken seriously ried out individual acts but with a sense of when applied to all the convicts trans­ social grievance rather than for personal ported, it still makes sense if restricted to gain or to settle purely personal scores. those transported for protest offences. This Examples include poachers who were is proved by literary evidence of the pro­ asserting "common rights" and Irish testers' generally good behaviour and by arsonists acting in the context of anti- lower rates of recidivism among protesters landlord agitation. Overall Professor Rude than among the convicts as a whole. This estimates that about 3,600 of the persons finding, while useful, is hardly startling, transported (approximately 162,000) were given that protesters, compared with say protesters. thieves, were unlikely to repeat the crimes Given the diversity of the phenomena for which they had been transported and studied, it is not surprising that few general were less inured to crime as a way of life. themes emerge. After all, the Newport Not one of the 58 patriotes sent to New Chartists had little in common with Eng­ South Wales, for example, had been con­ lish food rioters, Irish cattle-maimers, or victed of an offence prior to being found Canadien habitants holding land under a guilty of treason. It is not altogether sur­ modified feudal system. We do leam that prising, then, that they managed to avoid the incidence of protest in industrializing any secondary punishments during their England shifted from the agrarian south to period of confinement and to impress Gov­ the manufacturing north, but what else ernor Gipps with their exemplary behav­ could be expected? There is little here iour. One can also question the signifi­ about the nature of oppression or the psy­ cance of finding that most protesters chology of rioters, beyond what we deserve the title of "village Hampdens." already know, much of it from Professor Could a group of about 2 per cent of all Rudé's earlier, excellent scholarship. The convicts transported have had much impact marginal protesters remain statistics and on the Australian character? vague ones at that. The Canadian portions of the book are Nor do we leam much of a general particularly weak. Professor Rude has nature about the experience of the protest­ made little use of the proceedings before ers in Australia. There is no attempt made, the courts martial in both Canadas for example, to explain to what degree, if (1838-39) and none at all of the com­ any, the protesters were treated as political prehensive, day-to-day journal kept in prisoners rather than ordinary convicts. New South Wales by the patriote We do know from previously published François-Maurice Lepailleur (held by the accounts that there was some recognition Archives nationales du Quebec) or the accorded political motivation. The New­ massive and well organized "Événements port Chartists, transported to Van de 1837-38" series (ANQ) of depositions Dieman's Land, were allowed to keep their and voluntary statements. The accounts of own clothes and were given supervisory the Rebellions are based almost entirely on REVIEWS 355 secondary sources. Less than half a dozen George Raudzens, The British Ordnance pages are devoted to the patriotes in New Department and Canada's Canals South Wales and the Upper Canadians/ 1815-1855 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Americans in Van Diemen's Land. In Press 1979). neither case is the emotional dimension of QUESTIONS OF DEFENCE rarely involve mili­ the ordeal brought out. tary considerations alone. As Britain There are also numerous blunders, of moved to safeguard her North American which a sample follows. William Lyon possessions following the War of 1812, Mackenzie, we surprisingly learn, never defence strategies impinged on every returned to Canada after 1837. (47) The aspect of colonial life. George Raudzens' 1838 rebel leader, Dr. Côté, is called study of one little-known department of the Charles instead of Cyrille-Hector-Octave, imperial administration suggests the mag­ (48) while the powerful seigneur of Beau- nitude of this military impact. In charge of harnois, Edward Ellice, MP, emerges as military property, arms equipment, and Robert Ellice in the text (97) and Robert fortifications work, the Ordnance Depart­ Ellis in the index. (262) The General Court ment provided a wide range of technical Martial, held at Montreal, is made to open and scientific services both to the armed a week earlier than it did. (83-4) Notary forces and to civil departments of the state, Hyppolite Lanctôt's claim of non- helping to shape social and economic involvement is accepted at face value development in the process. Though (98-99) whereas in fact Lanctôt served as attempting to give at least a passing refer­ rebel officer at the battle of Odelltown. A ence to most aspects of the Ordnance's more serious error is attributing a British, influence, Raudzens is primarily con­ as opposed to a republican, constitutional cerned with the Department's role in the ideology to the patriotes. (44, 46) The construction of the military cana;s along assertion (82, 96) that the repression in the Ottawa-Rideau waterway, particularly Lower Canada after the 1838 troubles was the Rideau Canal. He traces the adminis­ mild compared to the excesses of the previ­ trative side of construction from the early ous year seriously distorts the atmosphere attempts to secure official approval and of the times. Widespread burning and pil­ adequate funding of the canals, through the laging by the troops and volunteers, rapes, petty deceptions and financial wrangling beatings, mass arrests without trial, which carried them to completion. derogatory demands for the total eradica­ tion of the Canadien way of life, the exe­ In the thick of the conflicts with impe­ cutions following a farcical and illegal rial and colonial officials and at the centre Court Martial, and the transportation of of Raudzens' study is Colonel John By, respectable men to the ends of the earth far known to most Canadians as an heroic vi­ exceeded anything after 1837 and were sionary, exposed here as a mediocre and dis­ long remembered in French Canada. honest bureaucrat who exploited defects in This book may prove useful to special­ the imperial administration to pursue his ists as a source of detail on a wide variety of own grandiose schemes. The attack on By subjects. Corroboration is, however, rec­ is finely-detailed and convincing. More ommended. For the student or general than a revelation of one man's weaknesses. reader interested in protest or in the convict it points to serious deficiencies in the type system, the previous works of Professor of history which produces giants like By. Rude on the former and the seminal studies Yet Raudzens' conclusions require qualifi­ of Professors L.L. Robson and A.G.L. cation. Problems endemic to the construc­ Shaw on the latter are to be preferred. tion industry and exacerbated by condi­ tions in the Canadas were sufficient in them­ selves to send costs skyrocketing beyond F. Murray Greenwood the most generous projections. Problems University of British Columbia 356 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

with contractors and the whole contract technological, and scientific expertise. system, troubles in securing materials and Given no consideration at all is the role supplies, and the difficulties associated of the Sappers and Miners in overseeing with a labour intensive enterprise in a soci­ and disciplining civilian labourers on the ety lacking a smoothly-functioning labour Rideau. In ignoring this. Raudzens misses market — consideration of these problems the military's crucial role in labour con­ would have produced a more balanced trol. a role not covered by his reference to evaluation of By and the Ordnance. "benevolent peacekeeping." He also The imbalance notwithstanding, the misses the irony of the Ordnance experi­ book is a careful administrative study of an ence in the Canadas. From the 1820s. important department of the imperial Ordnance officers consistently opposed administration. However. Raudzens' hope improvement of the Si. Lawrence water­ that he will go beyond a study of one way on the grounds that it would render the department to shed light on the role of the Canadas vulnerable to American attack. military in post-1815 Canada is barely Yet as Britain began her hesitant retreat realized. Trapped by an underlying from Empire, and Montreal merchants assumption that the imperial country was realized their dream of a commercial rendering a service to her colonies, Raudz­ empire, the Ordnance joined other ens treats the Ordnance and the military in branches of the military in suppressing general as benefactors, ignoring the fact labour unrest along the St. Lawrence that as instruments of British imperialism, canals. In fulfilling its military commit­ the military served specific class interests ment to labour control, the Ordnance ulti­ in the colonies as well as in Britain. Sec­ mately was forced to go against its defence tions of the book read like a catalogue of objectives, and aid in developing the lines "services rendered" to the civilian popula­ of communication between the Canadas tion, while the entire book is lacking in and the United States. analytical distinctions between those civil­ More than simply a matter of choice. ians — Canadians, colonists, as he vari­ the omission of these aspects of the ously refers to them — who benefitted Ordnance contribution to development directly from military activity and those grew from Raudzens' narrow definition of who did not. imperialism and from the false dichotomy This superficial approach fails to con­ of soldier and civilian on which his sider that an integral part of the military's analysis hinges. Much clearer delineation contribution to social and economic devel­ of divisions within colonial society and opment was its role in the process of social within the military itself is necessary if his­ class formation and in the conflict between torians are lo answer the question which emerging classes. This is nowhere clearer Raudzens poses for himself: "How and than on the canals of the Canadas. The use why did the military establishment of regiments of Royal Sappers and Miners impinge on provincial life in its multiple to perform much of the skilled labour on facets? And to what ultimate effect ?" (11) the Rideau is one clear example of the widespread use of both existing and spe­ Ruth Bleasdalc cially created military units to provide dis­ Dalhousie University ciplined and regimented labour, the advan­ tages of which were not lost on colonial John McCallum, Unequal Beginnings: officials such as Lord Elgin who dreamed Agriculture and Economic Development in of organizing all Irish immigrants into mil­ Quebec and Ontario Until 1870 (Toronto: itary labour units. However, this aspect of University of Toronto Press 1980). the Ordnance's contribution to develop­ ment is given little consideration in a study ANYONE WHO VENTURES into the vexed which emphasizes the benefits of military, field of Quebec's agricultural history REVIEWS 357 deserves high marks for courage. The between the staple wheat economy and the argument surrounding the "Ouellet thesis" commercial and urban development of and the "Naylor thesis" has been remark­ Ontario which initially challenged, and ably acrimonious and the bloodletting in ultimately destroyed, the economic domi­ the Canadian Historical Review (March nance of the province by Lower Canadian 1974 and June 1975) by Drs. LeGoff and interests. Second, he links Ontario and Paquet and Wallot would frighten any but Quebec into a single system of production the most venturesome from the field. To and distribution, which he feels accounts his great credit, John McCallum has pro­ both for their regional disparities and their duced a balanced and civilized study which economic integration. Even readers who presents a clear thesis without being ill- are not convinced by his argument will tempered or needlessly aggressive in tone. respect its clarity and certainly it will play a The book is a revision of his 1977 McGill significant part in the continuing debate on doctoral dissertation and is a model of how Quebec agriculture. a thesis should be transformed into a book. The weakest part of this book occurs The result is a succinct and readable work, not in the centre of the field the author spot- comprehensible to the general reader and tights, but along the periphery. This book challenging to the specialist. implicitly contains a number of compari­ McCallum's work is fundamentally sons between Quebec and Ontario, the right-headed in that he recognizes that if most important of which is the bald fact one is to be true to historical reality one that in the years before Confederation, the must treat nineteenth-century Quebec and cash income of the average Ontario farmer Ontario as full-fledged agricultural, not as was reported as three times or more that of proto-industrial, societies. At the time of his Quebec counterpart. Why? McCallum confederation both provinces were only ascribes it all to climatological, soil, and one-fifth urban and agriculture produced market factors and refuses to take into not only the bulk of the cash income of account any cultural variables. most of the inhabitants of both provinces '* Altogether too much importance has been but dominated export trade as well. attached to the alleged conservatism, back­ wardness, ignorance and other unen­ Concerning Ontario, McCallum makes terprising qualities of the unfortunate hab­ the important points: that not only was itant" (5), he states, and to the extent that agriculture in general the dominant eco­ certain cultural characteristics (anti- nomic sector but that wheat in particular commercial attitudes, or whatever) have was prepotent; that in terms of cash income been more asserted by scholars than actu­ wheat was more important to the Ontario ally demonstrated, one cannot disagree. farmer of the 1850s than it is to the Sas­ However, there are certain cultural charac­ katchewan farmer of today; that at least teristics which are both relevant and empir­ until Confederation half or more of this ically definable. For example, there is Ontario wheat production was exported some evidence that the family structure of and that wheat was the dominant export the French-Canadian family was consider­ product from Ontario. In Quebec, in con­ ably different than that of the English- trast, the wheat economy was relatively Canadian family as it evolved in Ontario. moribund. In part, this was because of less In particular, the French-Canadian family congenial climatic conditions, in part carried more dependants, longer. Obvi­ because of limited domestic markets, and ously, this has a bearing on any comparison in part because of transportation diffi­ of Quebec and Ontario, for it is possible culties in reaching external markets- that the lower cash income of the habitant was in large part a result of his having a Employing what he describes as "a smaller farm surplus to dispose of, not of modified staple approach," McCallum his being any less productive. argues for two sorts of linkages. First, 358 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

By focusing on income, rather than officiels relatifs à la commission d'enquête upon actual output data, McCallum makes de 1843, instituée par les autorités gouver­ a valid comparison of the Quebec and nementales "pour s'enquérir des troubles Ontario economies difficult, if not impos­ qui ont éclaté sur la ligne du canal de Beau­ sible. And it is on this matter, productivity, hamois" (et non pas du canal de Lachine that the future of the debate on Quebec comme le titre a tendance à nous le faire agriculture will hinge. Prof. Martin Mcln- croire). Après un bref rappel historique, nis is presently engaged on a quite remark­ sur lequel nous reviendront plus loin, able revision of the agricultural data for l'auteur nous livre les dépositions des prin­ nineteenth-century Quebec and his work cipaux acteurs (journaliers, entrepreneurs, indicates that confusion as to units of contremaîtres, officiers de police, etc.) des measurement (acres and arpents, bushels événements de Beauhamois, de même que and minots) has resulted in a considerable les recommandations émises par les trois under-estimation of the actual production commissaires chargés de l'enquête. Bien in that province. Until a county-by-county que cette investigation gouvernementale, revision of the figures is completed, the extraite des Journaux de l'Assemblée légis­ debate on Quebec agriculture will remain lative de 1843, soit déjà connue de quel­ largely a dance upon quicksand. ques spécialistes qui y font allusion dans leur travaux, elle n'en demeure pas moins Donald Harman Akenson un document précieux, en tant que premier Queen's University cliché officiel sur les antagonismes de classes au Canada, dont on n'a pas encore Raymond Boily, Les Irlandais et la canal épuisé la signification historique. de Lachine: la grève de 1843 (Montréal: Malheureusement, l'auteur, un diplômé en Leméac 1980). ethnologie, n'a pas toujours su tirer le meilleur parti de cette source, pourtant LE DÉBUT DES années 1840 inaugure une riche en informations. période nouvelle dans l'histoire du mouve­ ment ouvrier au Québec; en effet, les Il convient de dégager, à ce stade-ci, le formes "primitives" de la résistance ouv­ cadre général de la grève des travailleurs rière cèdent graduellement le pas à des irlandais du canal de Beauhamois. En luttes plus articulées parmi les travailleurs 1842, à la suite des pressions exercées par de la base. Le rôle exercé par la Société les commerçants de Montréal, le Bureau bienveillante des charpentiers de navire de des Travaux publics du Canada-Uni avait Québec, durant la grève de 1840, témoigne pris en charge l'aménagement de la voie de la capacité d'une première génération maritime du Saint-Laurent et avait entre­ de prolétaires à se doter d'une organisation pris de construire plusieurs canaux, dont autonome qui ne soit plus essentiellement celui de Beauhamois. L'année suivante, dirigée vers des objectifs de secours l'État confiait l'exécution des travaux de mutuel, mais qui soit davantage orientée canalisation à des entrepreneurs privés au vers une formule de véritable syn­ moyen de contrats de sous-traitance. Pour dicalisme. De même, la grève des terras­ réaliser les excavations sur la ligne du siers du canal de Lachine et de Beau- canal de Beauhamois, on avait fait appel à harnois. survenue en 1843, nous fournit plus de 2,000 ouvriers irlandais venus l'exemple d'une cohésion ouvrière qui a principalement des États-Unis à la suite de rendu possible la mobilisation massive des la cessation de l'activité sur les chantiers travailleurs dans ces deux chantiers de con­ publics. Dès leur arrivée, les entrepre­ struction d'envergure, près de Montréal. neurs, regroupés au sein de six firmes, C'est précisément ce dernier conflit que mirent sur pied un système d'exploitation Raymond Boily a tenté d'étudier. Il s'agit sans précédent à l'endroit des journaliers en fait d'une reproduction de documents travaillant sur les 13 sections du canal. Au REVIEWS 359 mois de mars 1843, les employeurs rédui­ employés au canal remirent en bloc leurs sirent les salaires de 3 shillings/jour, mon­ outils aux divers contremaîtres et signifiè­ tant attribué sous la direction du Bureau rent leur intention d'arrêter toute activité des Travaux publics, à 2 shillings/jour, et tant et aussi longtemps que leur gage ne ils élevèrent la périodicité des versements, serait pas porté à 3 shillings/jour. Aussitôt, de deux semaines à un mois. Ces gages, les entrepreneurs fermèrent leurs maga­ inférieur au prix accordé par les entrepre­ sins, provoquant ainsi la colère des neurs pour la location de chevaux, faisaient ouvriers. Le lundi 12 juin 1843, l'armée dire à Martin Donnelly, un terrassier à intervint à Beauharnois; les actes de vio­ l'emploi de la firme Crawford, que le tra­ lence et les fusillades firent six morts chez vail quotidien fourni par chaque homme les grévistes, si bien que les autorités rapportait aux capitalistes une somme ordonnèrent une enquête officielle sur les variant de six à sept shillings par jour. événements de ce "lundi rouge." Celle-ci Quant à la journée de travail sur les chan­ conclut à l'absence d'un pouvoir civil tiers, elle fut prolongée de 12 à 14 heures, satisfaisant, capable d'imposer le respect à probablement afin de pallier les nombreu­ un corps considérable d'ouvriers. Néan­ ses interruptions occasionnées par de mau­ moins, les ouvriers de Beauharnois obtin­ vaises conditions climatiques. Ainsi, rent d'être désormais payés en argent tous l'incertitude du travail chez les journaliers les 15 jours; pour sa part, le Bureau des rendit encore plus dérisoire leur maigre Travaux publics s'engageait à régler lui- salaire. Profitant de l'isolement géogra­ même le taux des salaires et à obliger les phique qui mettait les ouvriers du canal de employeurs d'abolir le système de maga­ Beauharnois en situation de dépendance à sins sur les chantiers. l'endroit des moyens de subsistance, les employeurs avaient ouvert des magasins, Le principal reproche qu'on peut for­ dans lesquels le prix des denrées était plus muler à l'auteur est son manque de per­ élevé qu'ailleurs, et ils avaient construit spective et d'articulation historique; son des baraques infectes de 12 pieds carrés, exposé sur la grève du canal de Beau­ lesquelles étaient louées à des prix exorbi­ hamois, en guise de présentation, ne tants. En raison de cette cherté artificielle dépasse guère le récit linéaire et demeure de la nourriture et du logement, les travail­ dans les sentiers battus de l'historiographie leurs du canal devaient s'endetter auprès traditionnelle. Plutôt que de transformer des compagnies qui tes avaient embau­ une série d'approximations imparfaites de chés, ce qui fournissait une occasion rêvée la réalité en une connaissance structurée de pour celles-ci d'exercer des prélèvements l'objet déterminé d'analyse, comme exige sur tes salaires et de faire circuler en vase toute démarche scientifique, l'auteur s'en clos les capitaux investis- Ce système de tient à une problématique positiviste qui vol organisé (communément appelé "truck consiste à éviter les débats de fond pour pay") à l'égard de la force de travail fut à laisser au lecteur le soin "de porter lui- l'origine de la grève de Beauhamois en mai même le jugement qui s'impose sur ta con­ et juin 1843. Déjà la résistance ouvrière dition ouvrière au Québec au milieu du siè­ s'était-elle manifestée puisqu'en août cle dernier." (10s) Pourtant, la matière his­ 1842, on avait nommé un magistrat afin de torique "sécrétée" par le commission maintenir l'ordre parmi les travailleurs du d'enquête de 1843 constitue en soi un canal, et, en mars 1843, le gouvernement excellent point de départ pour une étude du Canada-Uni ordonnait à William Erma- systématique des antagonismes de classes, tinger, directeur de la police à Montréal. dans la production et le discours d'organiser une force constabulaire provi­ idéologique, à l'aube du capitalisme indus­ soire de dix hommes pour patrouiller sur le triel au Québec. Par ailleurs, on se chantier de Beauharnois. Quoi qu'il en demande pourquoi l'auteur a délibérément soit, à la fin du mois de mai, les travailleurs évité d'effectuer les rapprochements qui s'imposaient avec ta grève du canal de 360 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Lachine, déclenchée en janvier 1843; àcet l'anéantissement de "l'insubordination égard, les travaux de H.C. Pentland et ouvrière" sur les chantiers, afin d'assurer l'enquête menée sur ce conflit par les les conditions d'existence à l'accumula­ autorités militaires auraient pu constituer tion capitaliste. Dans leur rapport sur les un pôle intéressant de référence.1 Il est événements de Beauharnois, les commis­ également curieux que l'auteur n'ait pas su saires ne proposent-ils pas "l'organisation exploiter davantage les renseignements d'un corps de police assez fort pour com­ inédits, fournis par deux témoignages primer des rassemblements [. . . ] sur toute devant la commission (128-31), à propos la ligne du canal" (190), et l'établissement d'une grève survenue au canal de Chambly d'un système de délation parmi les ouv­ entre 1839 et 1842. Pour saisir l'enjeu riers, lesquels souhaits seront réalisés par véritable de la lutte des travailleurs de l'Acte pour prévenir les émeutes sur les Beauharnois, il aurait fallu chercher en chantiers des travaux publics, voté par définitive des explications au sein de l'Assemblée législative du Canada-Uni en l'infrastructure (organisation du procès de 1845.* Cette stratégie de surveillance du travail sur les chantiers) et de la superstruc­ pouvoir d'État à l'endroit de la nouvelle ture (mise sur pied d'une dispositif de force sociale des travailleurs organisés sera répression ouvrière). d'ailleurs complétée par la mise en place En ce qui concerne l'organisation du de comités de vigilance sous la direction de travail productif" pour la construction du prêtres catholiques; ces "auxiliaires du canal de Beauhamois, les contrats notariés pouvoir policier" joueront un rôle déter­ (actes d'engagement et conventions de minant dans l'encadrement moral de la marché) auraient pu servir d'indicateurs masse des travailleurs employés à la con­ précieux pour cerner les rapports sociaux struction de canaux. qui se sont établis entre les agents de pro­ Plus qu'un événement ponctuel, la duction dans cette unité à forte concentra­ grève du canal de Beauhamois constitue un tion de main-d'oeuvre; ainsi, il aurait été moment historique de ta lutte de classes au possible de recueillir des informations per­ Québec, et il est regrettable que l'auteur ait tinentes sur la division technique du travail occulté cet épisode important de la entre les ouvriers qualifiés (maçons, char­ mémoire collective pour le réduire à une pentiers, forgerons, etc.) et les man­ formule d'"histoire-marchandise." oeuvres (terrassiers) dans les chantiers, sur l'autorité exercée par les contremaîtres et Robert Tremblay les recruteurs au service des firmes con­ Université Laval tractantes, et en même temps sur la disci­ pline puis les cadences imposées aux Beth Light and Alison Prentice, cds.. équipes de travail. Une fois cette étape Pioneer and Gentlewomen of British accomplie, il aurait été facile de cir­ North America, I7I3-IH67 (Toronto: New conscrire les modes d'appropriation de la Hogtown Press 1980). force de travail par le capital et de dégager l'ensemble des facteurs qui ont engendré la THIS COLLECTION OF documents on Cana­ résistance massive des ouvriers du canal de dian women's history is a source of consid­ Beauharnois. erable value to the student of women's his­ tory, and to the beginning researcher in this Dans un autre ordre d'idées, l'auteur field. The wide range of primary source n'a pas su mettre le doigt sur le véritable documents which have been compiled but visé par l'enquête de 1843, à savoir, include legal papers such as wills, appren­ ticeship contracts, bills of sale, inventories 1 Les documents relatifs à cette enquête sont and petitions, published sketches of daily conservés aux Archives publiques du Canada, dans ie fonds RG 8, I. C series (British military * Canada, prov. du, Assemblée législative, Sta­ records), Al, vol. 60. tuts, 1845, c. 6. REVIEWS 361

life and travelogues by and about women, fact of change through time. songs, letters, journals and diaries, school Moreover, the source purports to be an compositions, catalogues and inspection anthology of British-American women documents, newspaper articles and adver­ from 1713 to 1867. It is in actuality a col­ tisements, narratives and autobiographies. lection of documents on women who lived Each section is introduced with an during the first half of the nineteenth cen­ essay containing relevant historical infor­ tury. Of the 123 selections, almost 100 are mation. Each excerpt is preceded by an from this period. The few eighteenth- introduction which explains its origin, century documents that are utilized tend to gives biographical information on the cloud rather than elucidate the texture of author, and, most importantly, provides nineteenth-century Canadian women's the student with an indication of the docu­ lives. Ironically, the format of the collec­ ment's value to historians. The researcher tion would have been much more effective is provided with archival information pre­ (and more historically valid) if the editors ceding each selection in addition to the bib­ had been more sensitive to the limited liography appended to the collection. The scope of the documents under consider­ selections are arranged according to the ation. If Light and Prentice had concen­ life cycle of women. The editors first cover trated solely upon early nineteenth-century childhood, then youth, education, and sources and had attempted to present "spinsterhood." Following these are selec­ women's life cycle within this more lim­ tions on married women and their work, ited milieu, the need to point out and define widowhood, and old age. The final section change over time would have been contains documents on women's role in the minimized. public sphere, and on the ideology which structured the private and public lives of The fault with Pioneer and Gentle­ Canadian women. women of British North America lies not in what it is, but rather in what it purports to be. It is an excellent teaching and research This format is valuable for providing tool for students of early nineteenth- the student of Canadian women's history century Canadian women's history. It is with a knowledge of the texture of the lives not an anthology on the lives of Canadian of these women. The selections as women from 1713 to 1867. arranged document women's productivity and their recognized importance to the Canadian economy, as well as showing Anne Filiaci how women utilized their moments of lei­ State University of New York at Buffalo sure. However, given the wide span of time under consideration, the format clouds his­ Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Workers torical process. The editor's concentration Respond to Industrial Capitalism, on the life cycle of women over a 150-year 1867-1892 (Toronto: University of Tor­ period undercuts any sense of change in onto Press 1980). Canadian women's lives over time. There is, according to the format of this text, lit­ DURING HIS TENURE at Rochester a decade tle difference between the lives of or so ago, Herbert G. Gutman built up a eighteenth-century Canadian women and remarkable graduate program in American nineteenth-century Canadian women. working-class history, The fruits of that There is little indication that historical activity have now begun to appear, includ­ events, combined with the activity of ing this study of Toronto workers during Canadian women, changed the texture of the late nineteenth century. Gregory their lives overtime. The fact that there are Kealey's book bears the marks of what so many categories of documents within might be termed the Gutman school. It is a each section further obscures the historical community study, richly detailed, highly 362 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

specific, thoroughly grounded in the local their artisan culture, on their resistance to sources. Kealey has read systematically in the factory system, on their struggle for the Toronto press, but he also makes good shop floor control. But a close reading of use of the Canadian manuscript industrial ihe text and notes reveals that virtually all census for 1871 and the local records of the of this refers to events that occurred outside Orange Order and the Toronto labour of Toronto. We discover ourselves reading movement. He draws from these sources the findings of Dawley, Faler, Montgom­ basic historical data presented in a form ery. and John Hall, not Kealey. This, of useable for other historians — strike statis­ course, undermines the principal reason tics, industrial data, electoral returns, the for doing a case study. Equally trouble­ social composition of the Orange order, some is Kealey's inclination to make us see capsule biographies of Toronto labour more than meets the eye. On p. 39, he leaders. Kealey thus lays the foundation, begins a discussion of shoemaker resist­ hitherto largely lacking, for a history of the ance to the sewing machine. There are ref­ Toronto labour movement and, in so erences to Montreal. England, Lynn, doing, for a fully satisfactory history of Quebec. When he gets to Toronto, it is not Canadian labour. shoemakers, but the journeymen tailors who in 1852 go on strike against the sew­ It is in the interpretation of this infor­ ing machine. Then Kealey says: "Toronto mation that the book founders. During the shoemakers did not resist the sewing past decade, something of a consensus has machine but used their organization to emerged about how to think about maintain wage rates." (40) Nothing in the working-class development during indus­ succeeding discussion of strikes suggests trialization. From E.P. Thompson we got that they were reactions against the sewing the notion of a pre-industrial artisan cul­ machine. Kealey does find one instance of ture transforming itself into working-class machine breaking, but it occurs during a consciousness, from Harry Braverman strike in 1871. long after the introduction (among others) the idea of shop-floor con­ of the McKay machine, Kealey cautions us trol as the central issue in the battle not to make too much of this incident between workers and employers. These, in (which, the evidence suggests, was as turn, can be Fitted into a larger Marxist likely the work of the employer as of the framework of class struggle. All this. Crispins), and then goes on to do precisely Kealey tells us, he finds in Toronto. He that. The next reference to it speaks of "the chose "the mid- to late-nineteenth cen­ Crispins' Luddism" (S3), and at the end tury ... in order to capture the Toronto Kealey sees it as "building on traditions of working-class at its inception. The 'mak­ craft pride and solidarity. . . ." (292) ing' of this class lay in industrialization and in the workers' response to that pro­ Kealey concludes his chapter by saying cess." (xiv) Kealey's Introduction ends that "'the history of the shoemakers' with this ringing statement: "The work response to industrial capitalism consists will have succeeded to the extent that it of much more than strikes and trade-union provides convincing evidence that the organization." (52) But those subjects working class was not just 'made' but were, in fact, all that Kealey's digging rather was the result of a dialectical actually yielded. It maybe that the Toronto interplay of class forces in which it was one shoe industry does contain "a history of of the actors." (xviii) cultural adaptation of old forms to counter By that criterion, unfortunately, the the pressures of factory production." (52) book does not succeed very well. Kealey's But Kealey has not found such a history. difficulties are most apparent in his treat­ and other evidence in the book suggests ment of the shoemakers. The chapter why not. Among Kealey's most striking includes a full measure of information on findings is the speed of Toronto's indus- REVIEWS 363 trialization after the 1840s. By 1871, 36 ing in the preceding discussion had shown per cent of Toronto's workers were that ethnicity had ever spilled over into the employed in plants of over 100 workers, "economic sphere," and the two para­ fully two-thirds in plants of 30 or more, a graphs leading up to the conclusion say just scale of production certainly comparable that — the Orange-Green conflict existed to that in the United States at the time. The "mainly in the realm of politics," and no 49 Toronto shoemakers of 1846 had been examples are to be found "of ethnic or reli­ succeeded by 1,174 shoe factory opera- gious riot at the work place...." Because tives 25 years later. Given the small base it is so transparent, this interpretive over­ and the swiftness of the industrial growth, reaching is on the whole harmless. The why should Kealey assume that the shoe careful reader will separate the fool's gold workers of 1871 felt any "organic link with from the real thing in the book. But Kealey a past artisanal world "(41) or that they had had paid a price for his determination to ever exercised "control... over pre- assert bigger meanings than his findings factory production and over their own will bear. time?" (45) On p. 217, Kealey remarks on the Fortunately, Kealey is not able to sus­ extent to which Toronto labour leaders tain this ambitious approach throughout made political careers for themselves. He his book. The brief chapters on other work gives a number of examples, and con­ groups are, with some lapses, a good deal cludes on this opaque note: "This is only to more straightforward and modestly stated, elaborate on a few of the socio-economic probably for lack of a secondary literature ramifications of party ism for Toronto comparable to that for the shoemakers. working-class leaders." (217) In his zeal to The chapter on the printers is a very nice say things about Toronto labour politics replication for Toronto of the classic beyond what his evidence will sustain analysis done by George Barnett many (such as, in the preceding paragraph, "that years ago. The book opens with two sound these political struggles were dialectically chapters on Toronto's industrialization, [?] intertwined with the economic one dealing with the successful fight for activities and workplace struggles of the protection, the other describing the indus­ trade-union movement" [216]), he fails to trial growth itself. There is a fine account explore a theme that actually was within of the Orange order in Toronto. The final his range, namely, the impact of trade- two-thirds of the book consists of a union careerism on the character of Toron­ detailed narrative treatment of Toronto to's labour politics. One senses, indeed, a labour in politics and of the rise and fall of series of missed opportunities in the the Knights of Labor in the city. lengthy political narrative that occupies over half the text. Almost from the outset, The careful reader will, however, want Toronto labour seemed to have developed, to separate these substantive accounts from for al! the ideological and institutional con­ the meaning that Kealey superimposes on nections, along different political lines them. Every strike signifies "class con­ than the labour movement across the bor­ flict," every labour involvement in public der. In Toronto labour was a palpable con­ life "class politics." Kealey can so desig­ stituency (although divided ethnically nate these events if he pleases, but he could between Orange Toryism and Irish- as well do so for the contents of the most Catholic Liberalism) resistant to the kind old-fashioned of labour histories. The of absorption into the two major parties reader will also want to discount such con­ that one sees in the United States. Now the cluding remarks as that the winding down explanation for that phenomenon is a task of the Orange Order by the 1880s meant that Kealey might profitably have set for that "in the economic sphere at least class himself. had triumphed overethnicity." ( 123) Noth­ 364 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

At the start of this review, I remarked "social theory" and his "philosophy" of that this book shows the influence of Her­ industrial relations? bert Gutman. In one crucial way, unfortu­ Of course we do, because no one doing nately. it does not. In all his writings, twentieth-century Canadian labour history Gutman invariably has drawn his ideas out can avoid King. Certainly anybody who from the evidence he has amassed. This is wants to understand the early Canadian true even of so grand a piece as "Work. labour movement should read this thor­ Culture and Society in Industrializing ough and scholarly study, based on the America." (1973) One may disagree with author's 1978 doctoral dissertation. This is the argument, but one cannot fail to see an important, well-researched, innovative how it arises out of well-marshalled and book. It is in fact too important to be con­ abundant evidence. Had he adhered to the signed to the amiable commendations of prudent craft of his mentor, Kealey might the standard review. Since I think the fun­ have written a powerful book. Having over­ damental theses of 'Impartial Umpire' are reached himself, he has produced only a invalid, I shall first summarize what I think useable one. Craven is saying, and then try to show why this very important empirical and theoreti­ David Brody cal work inspires respect but not agree­ The University of California at Davis ment. Craven's study is divided into two Paul Craven, An Impartial Umpire': parts. In the first, he looks at the back­ Industrial Relations and the Canadian ground of industrial relations policy; in the State, I900-I9II (Toronto: University of second, he discusses the policy in practice. Toronto Press 1980). Craven explains that he is blending three distinct approaches: intellectual history, WHILE ENTIRE CITIES, industries, and fairly orthodox Marxist theory (in which regions languish in historical oblivion in state policy has a brokerage function in the Canada, the Mackenzie King industry pro­ struggle between labour and capital), and duces book after book. The discriminating neo-Marxist theories of the state, which shopper may select from a wide assortment stress the tensions existing between the of styles tailor-made for every budget: "legitimation" and "accumulation" func- from the bargain-basement popular biog­ tionsof the state and its relative autonomy raphy, to the more substantial collection of from the economic base. This "methodo­ essays, or the rather belated attempt at logical complexity" means that Craven has psychoanalysis, and all the way up to the had to simplify things a bit by sacrificing deluxe (if microfiche) edition of the some of the detail. His most serious famous Diaries, the ideal present for the simplification consists of relying on the masochist who has everything. Actually, Trades and Labour Congress

1 much of his policy, however reactionary it Craven has (wisely, 1 think) dropped the depic­ may appear in hindsight, was "the belated tion of King as a "non-revolutionary socialist" if usually partial realization of demands that he used in his critique of Whitaker's work. that the labour movement had been making See Paul Craven. "King and Context: A Reply to Whitaker," LabourIU Travailleur, 4 (1979), for some time." (236) This is a drastic 179. 366 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

revision of the evaluation of King's career their organization to cover most Canadian as deputy minister of labour put forward by workers in their industry during the period the muck-raking team of Ferns and Ostry. of the Act. With a host of qualifications Only in the ninth chapter do we get to and reservations. Craven seems to argue the heart of the matter: the Industrial Dis- that lne IDIA uas bénéficiai for the unions pûtes Investigation Act of 1907. First most directly affected by u. and that had it aimed solely at the coal mines, the Act was ™l been for misguided judicial interpreta- broadened to cover railways and other ,ions ,,f ,he Act. the labour movement modes of transportation, and public might well have not changed its mind about utilities. The IDIA provided for the investi- the efficacy of state involvement. Sur- gaiion of disputes by a tripartite board, prisingly, Craven thinks that the IDIA, not- consisting of one representative nominated withstanding its compulsory fea- by each contending party, and a chairman tures, represented "a contraction in the chosen by these two or. failing that, by the range of the state's involvement in indus- government. No strike or lock-out could trial relations." (370) What he means is take place until the board's report had been 'hat the IDIA hive off part of large-scale handed down; this report, while not bind- industry for special treatment, and that the ing upon the parties, could be made public federal government's activities corre- if the parties did not accept it as a basis for spondingly narrowed to that sector. King. agreement. Labour was initially impressed '" tact, was so suspicious of the state that with the Act, with the exception of the run- he missed valuable opportunities to ning trades. It turned against it in 1911, enlighten business. He was misreading the says Craven (others put the date several situation: he thought that employers would years earlier), because of unfavourable accept "responsible " unionism but his lib- legal judgments which made the Act more eral philosophy provided him with no way anti-labour than the federal government *)f making this acceptance more likely. had wanted it to be. Craven considers two Had King not bcen s« suspicious of state contending interpretations of the Act. The intervention, he might have laid more than first, put forth by H.D, Woods and C.B. 'usl tne elementary bases of Canadian Williams, holds that the IDIA was aprecur- 'ar)°ur policy.

sorof the modern system of collective bar- This is a compressed version of a dense gaining and compulsory recognition and difficult argument. Hither because he (which came into full effect with Canadian is interested in large theoretical questions acceptance of the principle of the Wagner or because he has exposed himself to Act); the second, held by Stuart Jamieson. nearly lethal levels of King's sophistries, suggests that the IDIA cannot be construed Craven writes in a prolix and opaque style. as an aid to modern collective bargaining Weighty theoretical terms (such as the because it took away workers' freedoms Althusserian "overdetermined") make but imposed few restraints on employers, their appearance unannounced and Although Craven does not seem to reach a unexplained. Craven's "methodological conclusion about this debate, it seems that complexity" itself makes this a difficult he objects to both positions on the grounds book to understand, since this allows him that they present "mature collective bar- to present three possible explanations of gaining" with minimal direct state involve- changes in labour policy without giving us ment as the fore-ordained end of labour any idea which one he prefers. Was it pri- policy. However, he devotes most of his marily caused by changes in the economy? energy to refuting Jamicson's contention By changes in intellectual life? Craven that the IDIA was a hindrance to labour by does not say. It leaves one with the effect noting that unions like the United Mine of hearing three separate papers at a col- Workers of America were able to extend loquy of the deaf, followed by a longnarra- REVIEWS 367

live film. This approach seems to combine cratic unions, shrewdly appraised the con- the faults of both neo-Marxist and tradi­ servatizing effects of large defence funds tional historiography: we have all the diffi­ and the growth of the labour bureaucracy, culties of sociological style without any and praised the large-scale organization of notable advance on the methods of the industry. Both King and the Webbs "life and times" school of narrative his­ thought in terms that equated industrial toriography. Is this diffuse eclecticism that problems with the arrangement of govern­ much more penetrating than the average ment. Most crucially, both positions were historical account, with its randomly heavily imbued with the spirit of posi­ interacting "factors"? tivism: the Webbs in Industrial Democ­ But if this summary of Craven is fairly racy. which was an overwhelming and bril­ correct, I think I can show that his book liant study of trade unionism, and King in suffers from extremely serious flaws. I Industry and Humanity, which was not. shall quickly make five objections to What else was in the LabourGazette if not Craven's position, in ascending order of the Positivist faith in objective data, a reas­ importance. suringly solid measurement which could Easily the most accomplished and turn the workers' unpredictable activities interesting sections of this book are those into graphs? What better way to look at the which deal with the intellectual formation social limits of objectivism than the debates of Mackenzie King. However, even in between the Department of Labour and comparison with the much shorter treat­ strikers over when a strike should be struck ment accorded the subject by Whitaker, off the books? Craven's interpretation of this account seems narrow and pedantic.2 King ideology has real merits, but it would This is an almost completely theoreticist have benefitted from a more ample consid­ interpretation of King: he seems to resem­ eration of the positivist tradition — which, ble a disembodied brain, roused to life only after all, is reflected in the emphasis King by the lectures of his professors. Craven placed on impartial investigation. seems to imply that King's outlook was I find Craven's portrayal of the econ­ almost created by his university education, omy a very difficult one to accept. A minor forgetting that most professors, even when problem is the emphasis he places on scien­ they are exposing the fallacies of Ricardian tific management — the one occasion on economics, have a limited impact on their which he ventures out into the real world of students. This would be more forgivable, working-class life — does not help explain had Craven not announced that he was con­ the genesis of federal labour policy. The sidering "a profound sociological prob­ IDIA was aimed at those areas of the econ­ lem" ( 18) and wanted to look at the links omy least affected by scientific manage­ between ideas and society. ment — whose impact anyway has been It seems strange to devote all this atten­ seriously inflated. But this objection is not tion to King's absorption of economic the most important one. doctrines and so little to his lifelong devo­ What I understand to be Craven's eco­ tion to the crudest form of Positivist nomic argument proceeds in five steps: ( 1 ) Sociology. Even though King came to dis­ The Canadian economy in the early twen­ like the Fabians, and certainly diverged tieth century remained staple-based, and from their vision of state socialism, the therefore highly vulnerable to external parallels between his thought and that of economic forces. (2) With the shift from a the Webbs are striking. Like the Webbs, British to an American metropolis the King extolled the large, steady, bureau- integrity of the national market came under attack, particularly the infrastructure of 2 Reginald Whitaker. "The Liberal Corporatist transcontinental transportation. (3) This Ideas of Mackenzie King." Labour /Le Travail­ leur, 2(1977). 137-169. transportation sector was historically put 368 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

in place by the state and protected by it. (4) by noting that what he has done amounts to Consequently, when the state came to "reification," but he defends the principle intervene in industrial relations, "it was to of focussing only on the TLC and the CMA the infrastructure that most of the original by claiming that to do otherwise would initiatives were directed." (91) (5) Also as entail an endless accumulation of detail. a result of the peculiarities of the staple This seems to be a reasonable defence: no economy, workers viewed state interven­ one can criticize Craven for not integrating tion more favourably than their American material on working-class communities counterparts. into his analysis, when such material is Now, the jury is still out on the question only just being compiled. But in fact this of the long-term compatability of the defence does not hold. Craven could have staples tradition and historical material­ retained his pristine institutional approach ism. If some labour historians have made by examining the records of a few more too simple and dogmatic a response to the unions and trades councils and regional work of Innis, surely Craven here is guilty bodies. In truth, he had to do this if his of the opposite sin of uncritical accept­ central theses were going to hold. Every­ ance. It seems strange to have the National thing he writes about the tariff and the Policy touted as a distinctively Canadian working class would be subject to the most device (not to mention the alleged serious and penetrating criticisms east and "codicils" of union legalization) when in west of the Ontario border. The stock fact many industrializing countries adop­ response to all this is to say that such addi­ ted high tariffs in the nineteenth century. tional details from the periphery would Surely Craven is simply misguided in dis­ qualify but not change the essential argu­ missing the merger movement as an ment. But for Canadian labour the peri­ ephemeral phenomenon involving bits of phery of the economy is the heartland of the paper and not production — as though the class. It was against this heartland, and interpénétration of banks and industry most especially the coalfields, that federal were not a crucial factor in the period just labour policy was aimed. Craven's focus before World War I. Few economic histori­ on a few Ontario labour bureaucrats is ans would go along with so unreconstruc­ wrong, not on the basis of some querulous ted a staple interpretation of the early twen­ demand for equal regional representation, tieth century. And finally, how well- but because it misconstrues the object of founded is Craven's insistence that the his research and consequently produces a Canadian working class was distinctive in false resolution of a badly posed question. its attitudes to the state because of the staples economy? How does this stand up if we compare it to the experience of work­ A related objection is that Craven, by ers elsewhere — such as the British work­ relying so much on the "official voice" of ers and their extensive series of factory the labour movement, credulously reforms? As to the IDIA and the transporta­ assumes that this "voice" spoke for tion sector, reductio ad absurdum surely "labour." This ironically comes close to makes the point: if Canada had had a fully accepting King's own definitions of the industrialized economy in which staples labour movement. When he comes to dis­ production for metropolitan markets was cuss the IDIA, for example. Craven never unheard of. would the state have regarded considers whether such men as Frank labour unrest on the railways with benevo­ Sherman of the UMW might not have felt a lent neutrality? bit flattered to be thought "labour statesmen" and even pursued contacts with A third set of problems concerns the King, encouraged by the lively expectation treatment of class. Craven has already of a tangible reward. Again it would have anticipated this criticism of his procedure been appropriate to look at a far wider REVIEWS 369

range of unions and industries — empirical admirers and detractors are inconclusive. work which would have weighed far more Craven is surely right to object to the tele- heavily than pounds and pounds of "meth­ ological undertone of much of the writing odological complexity." on this subject. Workers did not suffer Craven's approach is highly mislead­ cruel wrongs and countless deprivations ing when he discusses the IDIA. Craven until some point in the 1940s when they does establish a number of new and impor­ suddenly emerged into the bright future as tant arguments here — particularly about certified bargaining units. But his own the doctrines of fairness which had so big alternative seems to be that of even more an impact on workers — which deserve to state intervention. The real resolution of become permanent parts of labour his­ this debate lies in the refusal of the terms in toriography. But such arguments are a which both sides have asked the question. breath of realism in a parched theoreticist Did the IDIA assist "modern collective bar­ wasteland. Craven reconstructs the IDIA as gaining?" Certainly: it made "responsi­ a theoretical gesture; he never tries any ble" unionism more secure and radical actual assessment of its real impact on vari­ unionism more vulnerable, it deprived ous industries. His argument that the IDIA thousands of workers of the possibility of represented a contraction of federal spontaneous self-activity, it provided a involvement in industrial relations would powerful ideological impetus for the never have survived such inquiry. By any growth of a labour bureaucracy secure measurement, the IDIA was a massive from the importunities of the rank-and- extension of the power of the state in the file. All these modern aspects of "collec­ most important sectors in the economy. tive bargaining" can be traced back, in our Surely Craven is merely being provocative major industries, to the early twentieth when he fails to see that there is all the dif­ century. To the extent that "collective bar­ ference in the world between the ad hoc gaining" functions to consolidate the hold interventions of the boy minister flitting of capital. King surely deserves a large part from one adventure to another, and the of the credit; to the extent that it still, after routine involvement of conciliation boards everything that has occurred, occasionally after 1907? How is it that one can tell the defends the rights of workers, shows that story of collective bargaining in Maritime even the best-laid schemes of philosopher coalfields after 1907 as the story of one Kings go awry. conciliation board after another after another? And Craven's mistaken view of the IDIA is compounded by the simplistic There is a final point, and the most seri­ and formalist insistence on only looking at ous one of all. Craven tells us half the story the letter of the law. Craven never dis­ of state labour policy. The other half of cusses the emergence of contracts them­ Canadian labour policy was made by the selves — except in passing, as when he militia. Craven seems to have forgotten — notes that King foisted an unfavourable almost — that most of the story of " Indus­ one on the miners in Rosstand or that the trial Relations and the Canadian State majority of miners in Nova Scotia in 1909 1900-1911" can be understood only in were working under agreements brought terms of actual or potential violence. When about by IDIA boards. Craven does not even Craven recognizes the huge role played by note the provision whereby a report under state violence in these years, it is with an the IDIA could be made a binding Rule of almost audible yawn: "In some respects, Court. the dispute on the Grand Trunk railway system in the summer of 1910 was a very ordinary strike. It had its quota of riot Because he misses these essential fea­ scenes and organized strikebreaking, sus­ tures, Craven's assessment of the IDIA and pected sabotage and military intervention, his "resolution" of the debate between its 370 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

but in this it was little different from any of policies had on actual industries or people.1 a score of other industrial disputes in those At his best Craven has shown how the IDIA years." (318-319) This rather jaded dis­ was supposed to work, but what we need to missal of state violence stems from know is how it actually changed things, at Craven's earlier theoretical decision to the bargaining table and on the picket lines. exclude coercion as an essential constitu­ Craven remarks in 'Impartial Umpire' that tive function of the state. There must writing about Canadian labour policy with­ surely be more room, however, for a more out Mackenzie King would be like mount­ traditional view of the state and its ing a production of Hamlet without the monopoly over the legitimate access to prince. But he himself has given us Mac­ violence; and coercion, actual or implied, beth: as a long disquisition about modes of was present in the IDIA, in Industry and succession in feudal societies, but without Humanity, and (most importantly) in the the knife. streets. Under the IDIA union organizers Yet it will not do to end without recall­ could be put in jail for feeding striking ing the positive features of the book. workers who had not conformed to the Act; Craven deserves to be commended for and Craven's interpretation of this aspect introducing new concepts and questions to of the IDiAasamistaken judicial interpreta­ the study of Canadian labour history. He tion seems to overlook the portions of the has carefully analyzed the intellectual for­ IDIA which justified this procedure and mation of King and has decoded, in new which endured long past their judicial and crucial ways. Industn and Humanity. "misinterpretation," How can one write This is important reading for historians and the history of industrial relations and the militants. Canadian workers now confront Canadian State and not once refer to the a heavy burden of state control and bureau­ fact that from 1895 to 1904 the militia were cratization; the iniclleciual origins of this called out I I times (71 days) and no less situation deserve careful study. By begin­ than 17 times (1232 days) from 1905 to 3 ning debate on the ideas of King, Craven 1914? How can one reconstruct Ihe has implicitly raised a host of questions attitudes of the labour movement towards about alternative positions. His work the state, without at least once acknowl­ deserves, and doubtless will receive, care­ edging that the alternative to the accept­ ful consideration. ance of state interference was violence? One might almost think that Mackenzie King has pulled the wool over the eyes of Ian McKay his most sophisticated interpreter. Dalhousie University

Michiel Horn. The League for Social This failing stems from the ethereal Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the quality of the book. Only if the IDIA and Democratic Left in Canada I930-I942 King are seen primarily as artifacts of intel­ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press lectual history can we forget the actual 1980). conduct of industrial relations in this way. The account never seems to touch ground; ON THE INTELLECTUAL Left the reputation in comparison with Keith Burgess's study of the League for Social Reconstruction of British industrial relations, we never find has of late not fared particularly well. Reg out what impact any of these ideas or Whitaker clearly includes the LSR when he criticizes the early CCF's proclivity for eco­ :i Desmond Morton, "Aid to the Civil Power; nomic regulation, social engineering, The Canadian Militia in Support of Social planning, and public ownership. According Order, 1867-1914." in Michiel Horn and * Keith Burgess. The Origins of British Indus­ Ronald Sabourin. eds.. Studies in Canadian trial Relations: The Nineteenth Century Experi­ Social History (Toronto 1974). 429. ence (London 1975). REVIEWS 371

to this social democratic image of the state, League was characterized by a number of far from being socialist the LSR was an other intellectual positions: an insensitiv- exponent of a state capitalism that was ity towards Quebec nationalism and arrogantly centralist and technocratic. regionalism in general, an exceedingly AIvin Finkel in Business and Social centralist account of Canadian federalism, Reform in the Thirties levels similar a disdain for the League of Nations as a charges but is also more personally pointed league of capitalist powers, and correla- in his criticism. The LSR. he says, was lively support for a highly neutralist and irremediably infected by the class origins isolationist view of Canada's role in the of its members. Mainly they were middle world. class do-gooders with an aristocratic mien Horn argues that the LSR. perhaps who insisted on intruding their "genteel because of its overblown optimism regard­ hands and bleeding hearts" into a radical ing the rationality of the middle classes, political process no doubt requiring much never quite fulfilled its self-defined man­ more horny-handed qualities. Michiel date as the educators of a democratic mass Horn's finely written and meticulously movement. Branches of the League came researched history of the LSR will correct and went with alarming rapidity, and only many of these conceptions as it will con­ in Toronto and Montreal did it have any firm some others. So complete and bal­ significant membership. Finally it began to anced are his claims that future historians founder with the outbreak of World War II. will have to argue most capably if they Horn concludes that once Canada decided wish to disagree with him. to fight alongside Britain the LSR*s viabil­ ity was badly compromised by its uncon­ Horn's book is both an account of the cern for the British connection and its neu­ fate of the LSR as an organization and a per­ tralism. The LSR was finally given an hon­ ceptive analysis of its ideas, particularly ourable burial in 1942, with most of its those contained in the major intellectual remaining members more or less content to product of the League, Social Planning/or throw in their lot with the CCF. Canada (1935). The League was hatched in the fertile imaginations of Frank Under­ bill and Frank Scott in August 1931. Its All of the LSR's members were, accord­ official beginning was in Toronto in Janu­ ing to Hom. intellectuals: university pro­ ary 1932. Among its most gifted, early fessors, teachers, social workers, students, members were Harry Cassidy, Eric Have- and clergymen. Using the theory of the lock. J.F. Parkinson. Irene Biss. Graham Belgian socialist. Hendrik de Man. author Spry. King Gordon. Eugene Forsey, and of The Psychology of Socialism (1928). David Lewis. Founded at the height of the Horn provides a suggestive account of the Depression, the LSR conceived its purpose social origins of the radicalism of the LSR. as the educating of mainly middle class Those that deal with the world of ideas opinion to appreciate the desirability of a view their vocation as one requiring intel­ wholly new economic and social order, lectual freedom and occupational integrity. one in which the satisfying of basic mate­ features of their life-world that are under­ rial needs would replace the imperative of mined by late capitalism: private profit. The League's distinctive De Man cites dislike of attempts in industrial contribution to democratic socialism in the enterprises to bureaucratize and specialize the 1930s was its minute elaboration of the functions of the "brain worker", the dismay that a procedures of public planning in the new professional man or artist may feci in view of the society. Hence arose its reputation for indignity involved in having to sell his skill or elitism, social engineering, and technoc­ talent, usually to persons incapable of under­ racy, a reputation that Horn argues was not standing its true worth', and the sense that altogether undeserved. Of course the administrative personnel may have that their desire to serve the public is being subordinated 372 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

to the wishes "of others whose sole interest is and the welfare state, and the saving of the acquisitive'. (32-3) Canadian Forum. Finally, whatever suc­ What prevented the members of the LSR cess the CCF had in Canadian politics was from being lonely, perhaps anarchic vic­ in some part due to the LSR. Horn estab­ tims of such a fate was their almost univer­ lishes that the Regina Manifesto was sal experience of Christianity in their early derived more or less directly from the LSR's years. Many of them were either cler­ original 1932 manifesto and thereafter the gymen like King Gordon or sons of the likes of Underhill. Lewis. Scott, and For­ manse like Forsey, Scott, and F.scott Reid. sey were very significant in the CCF'S inner From this background they were able to circles. develop a sense of social sympathy that generalized from their individual predi­ One point of criticism I would make of cament and led them to socialism. Horn's work. His monograph is sub-titled, "intellectual origins of the democratic left Horn provides 1 think a plausible argu­ in Canada, 1930-1942." The impression ment for the view that the LSR did expound might easily betaken from this that the LSR an assuredly socialist critique of society. was mainly if not solely responsible for the Their view of small businessmen and farm­ development of democratic socialist ideas ers may, admittedly, be seen as out of step in Canada either before, during or after the with much socialist theory, Marxist and 1930s. This is of course misleading. Hom otherwise, but if one refuses to see Marx­ himself admits that the basic form of the ism as the sole bearer of socialist truth, and LSR's ideas were already extant before it if one defines socialism as a commitment was even formed. There is I think a veiled to planning, equality, public ownership. central Canadian and intellectualist bias. and fraternity, the LSR had as much right to rather similar to the LSR's for that matter. the title of socialism as others. One mis­ in Horn's account of the intellectual ori­ conception that Horn does lay firmly to rest gins of the social idea in Canada. He seems is the notion that the LSR held that every to believe that apart from some weak undifferentiated measure of statism was excrescences of Marxism and pockets of one step further on the road to socialism. In social gospel thought in the Methodist and fact it recognized very clearly that such United churches there was really nol much policies as Bennett's New Deal were all socialist theory in Canada before the too likely to stabilize and reinforce the founding of the LSR. But there was. in dominance of monopoly capital and thus urban areas in British Columbia. Alberta, had to be rejected by socialists. Manitoba, and the Maritimes. Such think­ ing may not have been conceptualized by Because this was the general character individuals pursuing the specialized role of of the LSR's world view, Horn's conclusion intellectual, but we cannot overlook the is predictably that the League largely profound, honest-to-goodness thinking of failed. It did not convert many to the goal urban workers before 1930. They may not of the cooperative commonwealth. And have produced a single work of coherent with the introduction of Keynesianism and socialist doctrine to equal Social Planning the welfare state after 1945. the Canadian for Canada but that is not to say that they state discovered a new means of legitimiz­ did not produce a myriad of tracts, pam­ ing the continuance of a capitalist econ­ phlets. and speeches that in their own way omy. What successes it did obtain were were as intellectually credible and influen­ small, although not altogether historically tial as anything produced by the LSR. The inconsequential: a legitimizing of the role formulating of socialism in Canada has not of the intellectual in politics, the establish­ been the sole preserve of intellectuals. ment of academic freedom in universities, In any event, this is a fine book, thor- the popularizing of economic intervention REVIEWS 373 ough in its scholarship, elegantly written, ton — are restored to memory as men who and balanced in its judgments. refused to accept their bishops' pronounce­ ments that papal social teaching forbade Allen Mills Catholic participation in Canadian labour University of Winnipeg parties or democratic socialist politics. These figures were a distinct minority in Gregory Baum, Catholics and Canadian the church, but Baum argues convincingly Socialism: Political Thought in the Thir­ that they and not the forbidding bishops ties and Forties (Toronto: James Lorimer were right. 1980) Alongside these dissenters, were Quebec Catholics like Esdras Minville and ATLASTCanadian Roman Catholics, not to Paul Gouin, concerned to formulate a mention the rest of us, have a substantial broadly reformist programme for the book at hand which attempts to recover a depression-stricken province, and the bet­ largely lost history of radical Canadian ter known efforts of the Antigonish Co­ Catholic social criticism and social action. operative and adult education movement Gregory Baum, its author, needs no intro­ among fishermen and farmers of Nova duction as undoubtedly the best-known Scotia. Baum's careful analysis of both Canadian interpreter of the new currents developments lays bare the underlying pulsing through the church since the Vat­ ironies marking Canadian Catholic social ican Councils of the mid-1960s. thought and action at the time. The haphazard efforts of the École Sociale The book follows hard upon the heels Populaire in Quebec to document a case of Baum's recent book. The Social against the CCF produced a document, Imperative of the Gospel, and takes up the Pour la restauration sociale au Canada. challenge to abandon the age-old tactic of That document, in turn, however, provided framing idealistic blueprints for a Catholic the basis for Gouin and his colleagues to social order in favour of the discovery in formulate a programme of considerable local conditions of social struggle the economic radicalism — a "purified ver­ terms and structures in which a Catholic sion of the CCF" for Quebec, as Baum puts (or Christian) response to social disorder it, which had a notable success in its first and injustice may be made. Baum there­ electoral trial. And it was among conserva­ fore undertakes to rehabilitate for tive, Scottish Catholic settlements in Nova Catholics the central tradition of Canadian Scotia that Moses Coady, promulgating socialism, subjecting it and papal social social teachings well in advance of the teaching alike to a searching analysis, social thought of the church anywhere before passing on to a revealing scrutiny of prior to World War II, galvanized his fisher the reasons for the official rejection by and farmer listeners into a formidable Canadian bishops of the CCF, Canada's social and economic movement. social democratic party, in the 1930s. We learn of little known local Catholic papers Unfortunately, not all the figures in the sympathetic to reform, like the Prairie book — which include a fascinating anar­ Messenger in Saskatchewan, and the chistic communitarian, Catherine de efforts of editors of the Beacon in Mont­ Hueck — are as susceptible as Coady is to real and the Catholic Register in Toronto substantial analysis of their social thought. to cast the CCF party in a favourable light. Not surprisingly in so preliminary a ven­ Catholics long forgotten by most — E.J. ture, the results are uneven, somewhat Garland of Alberta. Joe Burton and episodic, and occasionally Baum's hand is Eugene Cullinane in Saskatchewan, Henry heavily didactic; but the treatment is Somerville in Toronto, Murray Ballantyne always fair, and the commentary illuminat­ in Montreal, Clarence Gillis in Cape Bre­ ing, drawing as it does on his broad knowl- 374 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

edge of social theory and Catholic social fills out their context. What was Leopold and religious thought. The Canadian Infeld's life in Canada, and what can we hierarchy in the 1930s, he concludes, led learn from this view of it? its people into a land of political illusion He was a conspicuous figure on the from which they have only recently begun Canadian scene. Not so much as a leading to escape thanks to Christian-Marxist mathematical physicist — for his scientific dialogues and liberation theologies in the work had more resonance in Princeton and second and third worlds. But these are exo­ Dublin than in Toronto at that time. But tic imports and no substitute for home Infeld was also (in English, his fourth lan­ grown traditions. More recently the guage) one of the supreme explainers of Canadian Catholic bishops have opened up science to the non-scientist. During his the social and political options available to years at Toronto appeared his joint book Canadian Catholics. But Baum has effec­ with Albert Einstein The Evolution of tively cleared a Canadian space on which Phvsics, which may not have sold more Catholic social activists on the left can than any other non-technical account of stand without compromise; he has added modern physics but has likely taught more; notably to that roster of Canadians for his unusually contemplative autobiog­ whom the claims of social justice stood raphy Quest; and Whom the Gods Love, first; and he has broken the broadly Protes­ his extraordinary biography of the 19th- tant stranglehold in the annals of Christian century mathematician and revolutionary social reformism in English Canada. On all Evariste Galois. these counts the book can be widely com­ mended, Another respect in which Infeld stood out was politics. As co-founder with Barker Fairley during World War II of the Richard Allen Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society, later McMaster University as one of two professors — the other was Fairley — to work for the defence of those Leopold Infeld. Wh\ I Left Canada: accused as spies by Gouzenko, and still Reflections on Science and Politics, Trans­ later, as a prominent public speaker lated by Helen Infeld. Edited with Intro­ debunking the synthetic "secret of the duction and Notes by Lewis Pycnson atomic bomb" scare, Infeld fit the niche of (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University the radical professor. But did that niche Press 1978). exist then? If it did, it was more comforta­ bly occupied by someone like Barker Fair- THE SHADE-: OF Leopold Infeld does not ley, with his long presence in the Canadian haunt the University of Toronto and the cultural world and his deep involvement in Canadian scientific community, to which specifically Canadian social movements. he belonged for 12 years, 1938-50. Leopold Infeld, who came to Toronto after Perhaps it should. Perhaps a stimulus to forty years spent in Krakow, Lwow, renewing the sense of his life may come Cambridge, and Princeton, was a sitting from this attractive book, with Infeld in target for the Red-hunt. mid-sentence gesturing to us from its fron­ Post-war official Poland was eager to tispiece. build a scientific research effort where the These are essays Infeld wrote for a gen­ pre-war government (as Infeld remem­ eral audience in Poland, during the 1 %0s. bered well) had offered almost no support; after his return there. They have been it was natural that Infeld should be invited translated by his widow, Helen Infeld, and to assist Polish physics, and ultimately to carefully edited for the Canadian reader by organize and direct the first institute of Lewis Pyenson, who supplies an introduc­ theoretical physics in that country. Post­ tion which briefly but most perceptively war official North America was center- REVIEWS 375

ing its international policy on anti- uted, is one from which he became an out­ communism and nuclear weapons: this cast. What is its memory of the crisis? could not help making Toronto feel less comfortable to Infeld than it had at first, G. deB. Robinson, the professor who There were both a pull and a push impel­ best spans this whole period, has written a ling him to leave Canada, and he describes history of the Department (published by both with cool hindsight. It was curious the Department, 1979). In it he reprints the how the push and the pull conspired. Infeld obituary he wrote for the Proceedings of himself, willing though he was by 1949 to the Royal Society of Canada following revisit Poland and lo counsel the few math­ Infeld's death in 1968. Duly parading ematical physicists there, fully intended to Infeld's academic honours, and recalling remain a Toronto professor the rest of his his kindness and help to students and col­ life. But his plan to spend 1950-51 on leave leagues, this ungrudgingly appreciative in Warsaw drew a strident right-wing and friendly essay ends its short passage on attack in the Canadian press. (After all, he his last year in Toronto with the conclusion might have told the Reds that E equals me2.) that "we who knew him considered his President Sidney Smith and Dean Samuel involvement in the politics of the day Beatty of the University put strong pressure unfortunate but inevitable and the pub­ on him not to make the visit. As a last lished attacks on him without foundation." resort, they cancelled his leave: he was Unfortunate that "He did what he could to suddenly obliged to choose one country or fight Naziism?" Unfortunate that "he the other. Slightly panicked, and feeling struggled against the evils of our day?" perhaps more bitterness of rejection than Unfortunate that "Together with other sci­ he displays in this retelling, he chose entists he signed the Einstein-Russell Poland, and wrote Dean Beatty from War­ appeal that gave birth to the Pugwash saw resigning the Toronto position. Movement for peace and against the arma­ Emboldened by his departure (and con­ ment race?" Or unfortunate that he was firmed: the immigrant shows his basic attacked by sections of the press and finally unreliability, you see?), the Canadian right by the Government? Though the memory passed on to higher levels of obloquy and of Infeld's presence is preserved and harassment, going to the length of revoking valued, still the memory of his departure is the citizenship of the two Canadian-bom not fully faced. There is more to be learned Infeld children. about how it happened and what il means. Infeld's reminiscences, gentle and anec­ dotal though they arc, will serve well as a Now an institution like the Department starting point. of Mathematics at the University of Tor­ onto has some real existence through time This review till now has gone along (not that an institution lives independently with the somewhat unjust impression given of social reality, but that it is part of social of Infeld's book by its title. The subtitle is reality). I joined the Department twelve more accurate. These essays are not all years after Infeld left it. I work in a new about Canada and the Red-hunt, but about building, and Sidney Smith and Samuel many other things as well: memories of his Beatty never administered me. Still, I have life as teacher in a Jewish secondary school colleagues and friends who were in the near Krakow, his friendship with Einstein, Department throughout Infeld's years what it was like to return to Poland after the here, and one who was his thesis student. war, and more. Always the calm but not There is enough link that I can rightfully dispassionate observer, his opinions often claim Leopold Infeld as part of my tradi­ give one to think. One is interested in them tion, and I gladly do. Yet the institution in not just as opinions, but (since one knows which he lived, and to which he contrib­ him rather well, through his writing) as his 376 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

opinions. Especially striking perhaps is sufferer from their move in 1950 to a coun­ this crisp statement: "Had I had any idea try whose language and culture she did not what was really happening during the know. Then aftcrhis death, deprived of the Stalin period, which I learned only after status of a leading citizen's wife, she was the Twentieth Congress, I would not have left with no other status she could assume. gone to Poland." He is not addressing us in In time she forged a new life as an editor Canada. I wish I knew what more he would and translator in Warsaw, and her unique have had to say to us on this subject. To his perspective on all these events. She too has Polish readers, who had their own first­ much to teach. But this is Leopold's book. hand knowledge, he merely alludes to the major evils of Stalinism, and deals at Chandler Davis length with only that minor tendril which University of Toronto stung him: the attack on his work — espe­ cially on the discussion of relativity in The Marcel Fournier, Communisme el Evolution of Physics — as philosophically anticommunisme au Quebec (1920-1950) "idealist" and hence anti-Marxist. His (Montréal: Éditions coopératives Albert account is circumstantial as to incidents where the criticism was made, and clear Saint-Martin 1979). and definite (though brief) as to his view of the philosophical issues. One finishes with MARCKL FOURNIER publie une vulgarisa­ gratitude for what has been said and full of tion d'une thèse de maîtrise effectuée au questions which it is now too late to ask. département de sociologie de l'Université He writes freely about the anti- de Montréal en 1969. L'auteur était déjà Semitism he contended with in his youth; connu pour sa participation à la revue Pos­ nothing about anti-Semitism at the Univer­ sibles et certains articles publiés dans sity of Toronto (which he must have found Recherches socio graphiques. M. Fournier painful too but which is not part of this avait déjà abordé le thème du Parti commu­ story); and only a few sentences about the niste dans un article publié dans la revue brief flare-up of anti-Semitism in 1956 Socialisme 69. L'histoire du Parti commu­ Poland. Again, one wishes unreasonably niste, section québécoise, n'avait jamais to continue the conversation. These are été entreprise si ce n'est d'un article assez eyes through which one would wish to dense dans le défunte revue Mobilisation view the new and worse recrudescence of (vol. 4, no. 4). Le choix du sujet constitue anti-Semitism there after 1968. Would he donc un apport nouveau dans l'historio­ have re-assessed the realism of Einstein's graphie du mouvement ouvrier au Québec. warning to him before he left for Poland? Nous devons reconnaître que M. Four­ nier a fait un véritable travail de bénédictin [ cannot help being very doubtful about the sta­ en dépouillant systématiquement les rares bility of conditions there [Poland], After some sources et en les complétant d'interviews time the evil men may emerge from the mouse- avec les premiers militants du parti. Nous holes in which they are now hiding — not much déplorons cependant que le livre ne com­ different from what happened in Germany in the porte aucune bibliographie et que les twenties. nombreuses notes de référence soient The experience would not have shaken reportées à la fin du livre. Le texte est Infeld's devotion to humanity, to science. concis: 128 pages plus les annexes. Le and to Poland, but his response to the chal­ style est clair et les extraits d'interviews lenge would have had something more to ajoutent même une certaine dynamique à la teach us. lecture. One offers thanks for this valuable Puis qu'il s'agit d'un historique, book and especially thanks to the trans­ l'auteur commence par les origines du lator, Helen Infeld. She was far the worst mouvement communiste. Nous appren- REVIEWS 377

drons sans surprise que le Parti communiste "L'action politique ouvrière au début du nait d'une division du mouvement 20e siècle" dans Le' mouvement ouvrier au socialiste. Il eut été pertinent de faire ici le Québec, dirigé par F. Harvey et L'action rapprochement avec la situation inter­ politique des ouvriers québécois, collectif nationale en spécifiant que c'est au début publié aux Presses de l'Université du Qué­ des années 1920 que naissent la plupart des bec, portaient sur la période antécédente. Partis Communistes (PC) des pays indus­ La ligne politique est conforme aux directi­ trialisés. Bien que l'auteur mentionne que ves de l'Internationale Communiste: stra­ les statuts du PC canadien étaient con­ 3 tégie d'affrontements de luttes de classes formes à ceux de la 3 Internationale, il avant 1935 puis participation stratégique n'insiste pas assez sur la subordination des avec la petite bourgeoisie après cette PC nationaux envers les décisions période. Le PC, sous l'étiquette du Parti politiques de la "métropole," Moscou. La Ouvrier-Progressiste remportera, via Fred représentation russe à l'Internationale était Rose, une victoire surprenante aux élec­ écrasante et la direction contrôlait, et le tions fédérales de 1943 et 1945 dans le terme n'est pas fort, l'ensemble des orien­ comté montréalais de Cartier. tations idéologiques et politiques. L'auteur escamote d'ailleurs l'important Nous saisissons cependant très mal les débat entre les éléments trotskystes et liens qui existaient entre le Parti Commu­ stalinistes sur la stratégie du mouvement niste Canadien et l'aile québécoise. Cette communiste international. lacune nous semble très importante. Par ailleurs M. Fournier englobe beaucoup Les premières années sont à la fois dif­ trop la période 1935-47 à l'époque Duples- ficiles et empreintes d'un certain sis. Le gouvernement libéral de Godbout optimisme. Difficiles à cause de la censure prit le pouvoir en 1939 et ne le perdit qu'en et la répression, optimistes parle degré rel­ 1944, après avoir lui-même institué les ativement important de mobilisation que premières balises de ce qui deviendra en susciteront les communistes. L'expérience 1964, le Code du Travail. la plus connue des années 1920 est certes De plus, l'auteur est très avare de "la celle de l'Université ouvrière d'Albert ligne à suivre" de 1939 à 1941. On connaît Saint-Martin: véritable lieu de rencontre l'existence du pacte germano-soviétique, où plus de cinq cents personnes pouvaient s'entasser des soirées de week-end pour du partage de la Pologne, de l'annexion par entendre des conférences sur les sujets les les armes de la Lithuanie, de la Lettonie et plus variés. Le livre de Claude Larivière, de l'Estonie. Quelle était la position du Albert Saint-Martin, militant d'avant- Parti Communiste, section québécoise, sur garde (même maison d'édition) est à ce ces questions? Parallèlement, le PC met sur sujet plus explicite. Mais cette partie nous pied des comités de solidarité féminine, laisse perplexe parce que l'auteur avoue travaille activement à l'organisation syndi­ lui-même que Saint-Martin n'était pas cale et met l'accent sur les intérêts immé­ véritablement communiste. De fait les diats. membres canadiens-français étaient plutôt Puis 1947. Année fatale. C'est le début rares: une trentaine au début des années de la chasse aux sorcières, de l'expulsion 1930, soit pourtant en pleine crise écon­ des communistes dans les syndicats. Mais omique. On aurait pu s'interroger sur cette c'est en outre au Québec la scission sur la stagnation puisque les masses ont tendance question nationale. Le débat n'est pas nou­ à joindre les solutions politiques veau. Le nationalisme québécois français extrémistes en temps de crise. est-il compatible avec le nationalisme canadien anglais? Oui, dans la seule Dans un second temps M. Foumier mesure où ces nationalismes seraient dresse un bilan de l'action politique des d'abord anti-capitalistes-américains. Mais années 1930. L'étude de Jacques Rouillard le pc n'osait pas véritablement, malgré les 378 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

interventions de l'eminent Stanley B. academy have donned armour and entered Ryerson, attribuer le qualificatif de nation the lists with the Grays and Bertons to bat­ au Québec. Le parti se divisa. La répres­ tle for the book budgets of the tiny percent­ sion monta. Il faudra attendre les années age of Canadians that buys and reads seri­ 1970 avant que certains québécois donnent ous books. une nouvelle impulsion aux idées commu­ Most of those who opt for Bothwell nistes. rather than Berton should not be disap­ L'auteur termine par une postface en pointed. Canada Since 1945 reviews the émettant la thèse que le PC aurait dû conso­ past 35 years of Canadian history from a lider ses assises provinciales avant de se national vantage point and succeeds in lancer sur la scène fédérale. Comme s'il touching most of the bases. To quote the fallait que le NPD attende que le Québec le dust jacket acclaim of Mitchell Sharp, the porte au pouvoir avant de conquérir une authors provide "a comprehensive, fac­ trentaine de sièges au fédéral! tual, lively and opinionated account of the le livre de M. Fournier n'a rien de com­ transformation of Canada during the post­ parable aux livres parus en anglais sur le PC war period." One suspects that Sharp, a canadien (Buck et Avakumovic). Mais il former Liberal finance minister, would nous apparaît présentement comme une agree with most of the opinions which are source intéressante et unique sur l'histori­ vigourously expressed throughout the que de l'idéologie et de l'action politique book. Resolutely whiggish, committed to et sociale de la section québécoise du Parti progress, the authors are without nostalgia Communiste canadien de son origine à la for the vanished past. "The 'golden age' of scission de 1947. the past," they make clear at the outset, was "'a pretty tamished piece of silver plate with a large admixture of base metal." (25) Michel Pratt Because of the economic growth produced CEGEP Saint-Hyacinthe by our capitalist economy the "great masses" have been provided with "an Robert Both well, Ian Drummond, and escape from a life of grinding poverty." John English, Canada Since 1945: Power, The period since the war's end "was one of Politics and Provincialism (Toronto: Uni­ almost uninterrupted economic growth versity of Toronto Press 1981). whose benefits were widely shared among all levels of Canadian society and in all No PREVIOUS UNIVERSITY press publica­ regions," leading to today's "unpre­ tion, certainly not an historical survey writ­ cedented abundance of material prosper­ ten by an academic, has been launched ity." (457) with the fanfare which heralded this book. To supplement the usual notices in schol­ The subtitle of Canada Since 1945 — arly journals and direct mailings to college Power. Politics and Provincialism — and university teachers, Canada Since accurately encapsulates the perspective of 1945 was featured in large ads on the the authors. They have considerable Saturday book pages of major English- respect for "power," especially when they Canadian dailies. Both its promotion and feel it is wielded competently by the cen­ its presentation make evident that the Uni­ tral government of the federal Liberals of versity of Toronto Press and Professors the pre-Trudeau era. "Provincialism," on Bothwell, Drummond, and English mean the other hand, is always bad, whether the this history of Canada from Gouzenko to word describes the behaviour of provincial Gzowski to reach a wider readership than governments, the attitudes of Canadians in their colleagues and those captive students the 1940s, or the economic nationalism of compelled by a university course reading Walter Gordon. "Politics," especially list. At last historians trained in the national politics, is what written history REVIEWS 379

should concern itself with, and Both well, prose. Mel Watkins is described as a Dmmmond, and English profess the tradi­ renegade who "discarded the muted busi­ tional trinity of Canadian historiography. ness suit of the academic liberal econ­ Political history is the father, economic omist" for "the open-shirted, leather- history the son, and social history a very jacketed garb of a theorist of the New pale ghost. Left;" Robin Matthews, we are reminded, In the section titled "The Pearson "had begun but not completed his doctoral Years," to provide one example, 65 pages studies." (260) The movements in which of political and economic history are fol­ they were active are collectively described lowed by six on "Nationalism and Cul­ as "gaseous bubbles that resulted during ture," which student activism and the de­ the Trudeau years." clining birth rate must share with Margaret Readers of Labour/Le Travailleur will Atwood and the Watkins Report. Of the 15 be especially interested in the authors' photographs which illustrate the text, only treatment of the working class and labour three are not pictures of politicians. history. As a general category, economic Among the non-political personalities are class does not really exist in Canada Since John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but instead of 1945. The primary cleavage factor in depicting their "bed in" for world peace at Canadian society is French-English; Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel, the regional division comes a distant second in authors have chosen a photo which shows importance. Labour unions, however, are them in conversation with Prime Minister given efficient if cursory treatment. The Trudeau! important milestones in the development This concern with things political does of the labour movement — the vast not extend to provincial politics or to par­ increase in trade union membership, the ties of the left. The only province which CCL-TLC merger, the creation of national receives any attention is Quebec, presuma­ and provincial labour codes — can be bly because of the importance of extracted with careful use of the index. The separatism as a national issue. The social authors' attitude to organized workers is democratic governments which came to best summed up, however, in the conclu­ power in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and sion to chapter 2, "Economic Growth and British Columbia are pointedly ignored. Change." "Why has Canada done so well The CCF — "a minor electoral sect" — and for more than thirty years?" they ask the NDP — "the retreaded version" — are rhetorically. Because of "all-important presented throughout as irrelevant to the efficiency, up-to-date technology applied course of Canadian affairs. T.C. Douglas correctly ... despite the dislocation that a and Ed Broadbent each appear but twice in new machine or a new production process the text; M.J. Coldwell is mentioned only or a new arrangement may entail." (24-5) in a sarcastic aside that Canadian socialist Canadian workers, the implication is leaders " are so powerless that it is no fun to blunt, had better continue to "adapt" make them look ridiculous." (251) themselves to such changes, lest Canada catch the dreaded "British disease" of low The only sympathy the authors express growth and stagnant or declining living for the NDP comes when "the forces of standards. moderate democratic socialism" are attacked by those further left, "the External as well as domestic affairs Marxist-nationalist Waffle." (333) When have preoccupied post-war Canada and the discussing the ideological ferment of the authors' collective line on Canadian for­ 1960s, Both well, Drummond, and English eign policy may be surmised from the temporarily abandon the witty cynicism book's dedication to Colonel C.P. Stacey. with which they usually express their deri­ Proud of Canada's world role, they defend sion and resort instead to kidney-punching NATO and NORAD and reject the "old 380 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

fashioned isolationism" of those who have Professeur du sciences politiques au been critical of the ready acceptance of par­ CÉGEP de Saint-Hyacinthe et chargé de ticipation in American-dominated military cours en histoire à l'Université de Mon­ alliances. (282) Less than enthusiastic tréal et à l'UQAM, l'auteur n'hésite à mon- about America's adventure in Vietnam, trer ses couleurs: la United Aircraft "sym­ they nonetheless stigmatize Canadian bolisa tout ce qu'il y a de plus méprisant abhorrence of the war's brutality for its non seulement envers les travailleurs de "derivative quality." (279) Those who ses usines à Longueil, mais aussi face à oppose Canada's acquisition of nuclear l'image du Québec." (2) Ce "préjugé défa­ weapons or who advocated disarmament vorable à la partie patronale" (3) s'assortit were "the optimistic and the naive." (245) d'une charge à l'État capitaliste, et au gou­ Bothwell, Drummond and English certain­ vernement libéral de Robert Bourassa qui ly do not wish to be counted among their se montre antipathique à la cause des tra­ number. vailleurs, Pratt s'efforce d'identifier les But to criticize the authors for their moyens dont dispose l'État capitaliste au point of view and for what they leave out is service des firmes transnationales, pour a little like railing at Milton Friedman for ainsi mettre en évidence la fragilité du refusing to be a Marxist economist. mouvement ouvrier. Pour ce faire, il choi­ Although occasionally infuriating, Can­ sit de se pencher sur un conflit ouvrier ada Since 1945 is engagingly written, majeur: la grève de la United Aircraft almost never dull, and extremely useful. It (aujourd'hui Pratt and Whitney). Le sujet has an extensive and reasonably accurate se prête certes aux objectifs de l'auteur, index and a bibliography which includes puisqu'il représente un des événements clé Levitt's Silent Surrender and Laxer's The du mouvement ouvrier au cours des derni­ Energy Crisis even if it does warn the inno­ ères années. cent that such books "can mislead." It is On ne peut cependant espérer que Pratt attractive, well-organized, and by today's livre une marchandise nuancée; c'est une standards not outrageously expensive. The position rigide qu'il adopte. On ne saurait book deserves to be a financial success and s'en surprendre; inspirés de certains lea­ Bothwell, Drummond, and English ders syndicaux de l'usine, invité par le syn­ deserve praise for their effort to write for a dicat à assister à une "séance" de négocia­ non-academic audience. More historians tion à huis-clos au bureau du ministre du should join them in making that effort, if travail, l'étude se caractérise par un parti- only to demonstrate that there is another pris évident et une prise de position pro­ version of Canadian history in addition to syndicale et ouvrière. En outre, c'est tout the one they have presented. un système politico-socio-économique qu'il remet en question: "accepter les John Herd Thompson règles du jeu fixées par l'État capitaliste, McGill University c'est reconnaître, à l'avance, que l'on se conformera aux ordres des agents du capi­ Michel Pratt, La grève de la United Air­ talisme. La firme profite donc d'un allié: craft, Collection histoire des travailleurs l'État bourgeois." (80) Québécois, no. 8 (Montréal: Les Presses de l'Université du Québec 1980). Pratt développe sa thèse en quatre cha­ pitres. Dans un premier temps, il fixe les LES ANNÉES 1970 au Québec ont été mar­ caractéristiques sociologiques des acteurs: quées de conflits ouvriers majeurs qui ont la compagnie et ses actionnaires, le syndi­ amplifié l'image d'une société québécoise cat et ses palliers nationaux et internatio­ en pleine mutation. L'ouvrage de Michel naux, et finalement, l'État. Cette partie, Pratt, La grève de la United Aircraft, tente indispensable, permet d'insérer le conflit d'en dévoiler un volet important. dans son contexte propre en plus de dépis- REVIEWS 381

ter les tonnées historiques qui sous- Car ces stratégies, énoncées par les élites, ten dent le conflit. Ces traits esquissés, il ont une influence déterminante sur les établit le rapport de forces entre la firme et négociations, sur la pertinence de poursui­ la syndicat. Selon lui. la transnationale vre la grève, elles engendrent des actes de dispose d'un avantage grandissant sur les violence que l'auteur ne manque d'ailleurs travail leurs, en vertu surtout des ses assises pas de signaler. Les extirper ainsi d'un économiques puissantes. Les syndiqués, contexte pourtant bien documenté, serait- réduits à de minces rémunérations syndi­ ce pour satisfaire une théorie explicative, cales, se voient vite acculés au pied du mur. nous apparaît donc regrettable. Ces bases établies, Pratt plonge dans le Pratt aura néanmoins fait oeuvre utile. vif du sujet; le déclenchement, le déroule­ Comme il le signale, l'étude, amorcée ment et l'issue du conflit sont abordés, ali­ dans le vif de la grève, aura permis de récu­ mentés par des sources syndicales et patro­ pérer de nombreux documents qui s'avè­ nales. par des rapports gouvernementaux. rent aujourd'hui introuvables. C'est là par des coupures de journaux ou de revues. l'apport essentiel de l'ouvrage de Pratt. S'il établit une démarcation entre la base Pour le reste, on aurait souhaité un étalage des syndiqués et l'élite dirigeante. Pratt se moins évident d'une opinion (légitime) éri­ montre néanmoins peu enclin à signaler les gée jusqu'à la théorie, au profit d'une réactions de cette majorité silencieuse. Les observation plus approfondie de ceux fluctuations dans les pour-cent lors des qu'elle désire défendre: les travailleurs de votes de grève ne sont pas commentés, la la base à travers leur comportement, leur participation effective aux assemblées et prise de position réelle, leurs aspira­ leur représentativité ne sont jamais signa­ tions. ... Car si l'on ne veut pas déclencher lées, malgré les récriminations de la com­ une révolution ouvrière malgré les pagnie à ce sujet. La démobilisation pro­ ouvriers, il faudra d'abord les rejoindre au gressive des travailleurs demeure donc à niveau de leurs préoccupations propres. notre avis absente du schéma explicatif de Pour cela, il faut d'abord savoir les accep­ Pratt, malgré certains efforts ménagés en ter dans toute leur diversité. conclusion. N'amenons qu'un exemple; l'auteur signale que l'emprisonnement et Jean Letendre la surveillance serrés des leaders syndi­ Drummondville. Québec caux explique la défaite rapide des grévis­ tes. puis, du même souffle, affirme que "le conflit de la United Aircraft s'insère dans James Lorimer and Carolyn MacGregor, cette prise de conscience des travailleurs eds., After the Developers (Toronto: contre l'oppression du système capita­ James Lorimer 1981). liste." (8?) De quels travailleurs parle-t-il donc alors'.' La démobilisation d'une masse FOR ALMOST A DECADE James Lorimer, as ouvrière privée de ses élites ne prouve-t-il author, editor, and publisher, has been an pas plutôt que cette prise de conscience important source of insight into the inner tarde à se manifester parmi la majorité des workings of contemporary Canadian grévistes impliqués? cities. At his best Lorimer has contributed penetrating analyses of both civic govern­ Dans un dernier chapitre, l'auteur se ment and the property-development indus­ penche plus à fond sur les stratégies des try. After the Developers does not live up opposants, comme pour mieux tirer les to this earlier standard and can best be leçons de l'expérience vécue. S'il est described as a rather uneven and poorly important de dégager les tactiques des par­ focused collection. ties qui s'affrontent, on se demande les This slim volume contains an introduc­ motifs qui ont amené Pratt à ne pas en insé­ tion by Lorimer and twelve papers which rer les composantes chronologiquement. are grouped under four headings; namely, 382 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Cities in the Economy: The Industrial in the professional geographic literature). Strategy Issue (two), Shopping and Cities Academics, on the other hand, will find the (five). Reform and Power at City Hall lack of documentation and analysis in sev­ (three), and City Planning: Expanding the eral of the papers less than satisfactory. Art of the Possible (two). Only the middle For example, the essay entitled "Main two of these receive more than cursory at­ Street: Can It Survive the Shopping tention. In fact, the first section really con­ Centre?" by architects George Baird and tains one paper and the text of an address Barry Sampson explores a crucial issue by Toronto Mayor John Sewell, while the facing many smaller Canadian urban last section contains a useful report on a centres, but is loose in its use of terms conference of Canadian radical planners (malls are not the same as shopping and a brief discussion of a large co-op centres) and provides the reader with no housing project in Montreal. This lack of concrete sense of the retail structure in the both balance and substance is a shame, for three places chosen for discussion — as Lorimer notes in his introduction "Can­ Napanee, Brockville, and Brantford. The ada's cities have entered a new period in blame for this unevenness and lack of their history. The era of the developers . . . direction, however, clearly rests with the is over." As a result "we badly need to editors of the volume. At best, the papers analyze the experiences of the last decade represent a brief glimpse at where Canadi­ and the present situation in order to work an cities have been with respect to a few out our position on the question of what is issues. There is precious little here con­ to follow the developers' era and in order to cerning the future directions for the Cana­ fill the intellectual and political semi- dian urban system except for some of the vacuum that now exists in urban policy in observations made by Lorimer in his intro­ Canada." (6) Unfortunately, there is not duction. much in Afterthe Developers that will con­ tribute in any meaningful way to the debate The fullest section of the book is that over the future shape of Canadian cities. dealing with Shopping and Cities. Lorimer Too many of the papers are either re­ notes that "shopping centres have been the worked versions of earlier efforts, or last of the prototype projects of the corpo­ impressionistic and speculative. Too few rate city to fall under the scrutiny of citizen provide the penetrating insight that has activists and others concerned about urban come to be associated with James Lorimer form." (8) The five papers in this section at and Company. The overall impression is least raise some of the important issues one of a book that is decidedly premature. associated with retail development in One of the real problems with this book Canadian cities. These issues include the is that its intended audience remains process of shopping centre development unclear. The length, depth of analysis, and (which is documented in a fine essay by level of research vary widely from paper to Graeme Lang entitled "Shopping Centres: paper. On the one hand, politicians and The Case Study of Comer Brook"), the other non-academics will be confused by impact of shopping centres on downtown the use of both undefined economic geo­ retail areas, the difficulty of locally based graphical jargon (market potential, city- merchants compared to chain stores in serving employment) and maps with a gaining access to shopping centre space, zenithal equidistant (square root trans­ and the general need to regulate shopping formed) projection in the paper by Michael centre growth and development. There is Ray and Roger Roberge on "The Pattern of indeed a need to comprehend better these Post-War Urban Growth: Multinationals as issues in urban Canada. While the papers City and Regional Planners" (some of in this section do make a contribution in which has appeared several times already this regard, tighter editorial control could have produced a much better package. For REVIEWS 383

example, the title of the section, "Shop­ Toronto, I'm not so sure that that era has ping and Cities," is misleading. These passed. We need to assess, for example, papers deal, for the most part, with shop­ the role that foreign capital will play in ping centres. More papers on the various keeping that era alive. (Who really benefits other trends in retailing or an introductory when offshore money drives up the price of essay which places shopping centres housing?) One almost wishes that Lorimer within the larger Canadian retail context would recall all of the circulating copies of would have been useful. No real attempt is this book, put more thought into its direc­ made to map out the future retail structure tion, commission several more essays, and of urban Canada, yet in two separate places reissue a volume of some substance and the role of the Ontario Municipal Board is importance. spelled out in some detail. While the analyses of shopping centres in such all- Michael J. Doucet too-often-neglected provinces as New­ Ryerson Polytechnical Institute foundland and P.E.I, are most welcome, the section ignores several important Catherine Wismer, Sweethearts: The trends in central Canada. There, and espe­ Builders, the Mob and the Men (Toronto: cially in the major cities, older shopping James Lorimer 1980). centres have had to be upgraded to remain competitive with the newer and larger FOR A 20 year period beginning in the early regional centres that appeared in the 1950s, the cityscape ofToronto underwent 1970s. For many centres this has meant a dramatic restructuring as suburban hous­ enclosure (often accompanied by expan­ ing developments, high-rise apartments, sion) of the existing structure and a search and shopping centres sprang up almost for an appropriate tenant mix. For exam­ overnight like mushrooms in a well- ple, Dixie Plaza in Mississauga to the west fertilized yard. This massive urban devel­ of Toronto was forced to adopt a discount opment demanded the involvement of big orientation in order to remain as a viable business, big money, and a large labour alternative to Etobicoke's massive Sher- force. Catherine Wismer claims that hers is way Gardens. In North York, older the first study to reveal the real story Bayview Village found itself sandwiched behind this construction boom. As indica­ between two large regional malls — ted by the book's subtitle, Wismer weaves Yorkdale to the west and Fairview to the the tale around three main threads: the east. To carve a niche for itself in Toron­ builders, the mob, and the men. The "builders" refers to a group of profit- to's retail structure, the plaza was enclosed seeking opportunists, many of whom and the majority of the shops were leased attended Harbord Collegiate in the 1930s, to independent retailers. This revitaliza- who recognized a good thing when they tion process deserves some scholarly atten­ saw it and directed their business interests tion, for it is subtle changes in the existing towards land development in the early retail structure of our cities such as the 1950s. The "mob" includes a number of examples described above that are likely to figures from the world of organized crime, direct consumer behaviour over the years such as American gangsters Salvatore to come. "Lucky" Luciano and Meyer Lansky, For many reasons then, After the whose laundered casino savings found Developers is a disappointing book. From their way into legitimate, if dubious, time to time it teases the reader about the development schemes in Toronto. Many of future of Canadian cities, but most of the these charming characters also turned to papers merely describe what happened union organizing for purposes of extortion during the developers' era. And looking at and under-the-table agreements with the construction activity evident today in 384 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

builders, known as "sweetheart" con­ none of whom can be considered objective tracts. The "men" are the massive num­ bystanders to the events depicted in this bers of immigrant Italian workers who suf­ book. The author believes that she was fered at the hands of ruthless employers "placed by chance in a position of trust" by and self-serving union leaders. When tied her contacts. This may be true, but the pos­ together, these threads expose a pattern of sibility remains that some of these mysteri­ exploitation and corruption which charac­ ous characters used her as a vehicle to cast terized the growth years in Toronto. favourable light upon their own roles in Wismer writes in a clear and agreeable this controversial drama. Wismer accepts journalistic idiom. She begins the study by much of this personal testimony at face rotating chapters on each of the three major value. But without stronger corroboration, themes. While this approach provides a her case sometimes lacks a convincing air. neat and tidy introduction, the important Wismer's reluctance to look beyond connections between the three areas the immediate horizons of her sources emerge too slowly. By the middle of the results in a couple of careless statements. book the mixture is more apparent, In the foreword to the study, the author although at this point Bruno Zanini. one of declares: ""At times it seems that some the few honest union organizers to appear unions are little more than branches of in the study, dominates centre stage. Near organized crime." While it is undeniable the end of the work, the connections that mobsters have penetrated the higher become a little tangled and, despite the echelons of some large unions, this general sometimes exciting pace, the reader must statement unjustifiably implies that rank- struggle to keep the story's various and-file workers tacitly support under­ branches sorted out. Although the study world activity. Union manipulators may foeusses primarily on characters and benefit from the apathy of regular mem­ events directly connected with the Toronto bers, but they do not receive endorsement. building trade, the book ends abruptly and Referring to the effects of environment on inappropriately with the reminiscences of behaviour patterns, Wismer offers this American mobster Meyer Lansky. assessment of the main characters in the book: "if you sec people in the context of Organization aside, the author's the world they are part of, it is possible to motives and methods deserve close understand the true logic of their actions." scrutiny. Wismer states that she decided to This statement is a genuine attempt at pursue this topic after someone "in the empathy, but it is too generous. Thousands apartment business" approached her with of individuals suffered through "poverty. his story. Although she does not identify depression and prejudice" without suc­ this character, the slant of the book cumbing to the calls of a violent business suggests that it was union organizer Bruno world or organized crime. Mobsters such Zanini, or someone sympathetic to him. as Luciano and Lansky in particular are as This is purely speculative, but Wismer much the makers of their own world as they quotes Zanini at length throughout the are the products of it. work and much of the story is devoted to vindicating this thief turned worker turned The book's most serious shortcoming, union man who, we are led to believe, has however, lies not in what it says, but in been unjustly accused of illegitimate activ­ what it fails to say. Although Wismer's ity. Although Wismer consulted a number treatment of the story's central figures of periodicals, government inquiries, and sometimes lacks conviction, she accurate­ secondary sources, she relies on oral his­ ly and powerfully describes the routine tory formuchofthe narrative. Her findings nature of corrupt business practices and the cannot help but be coloured by the opini­ horrendous living and working conditions ons of the individuals she interviewed, of the workers. Yet nowhere does she use REVIEWS 385 this information towards a systematic a choisi de ne retenir que deux des six analysis of the institutions and traditions textes de l'édition de 1973, le sien sur les which created and prolonged these injus­ Chevaliers du travail et celui de Louis- tices. This perhaps exceeds the author's Marie Tremblay sur "l'influenceextragène stated objectives, but the universal value of en matière de direction syndicale au the book would have increased substan­ Canada," d'ajouter sept autres textes et tially had she attempted these judgements. d'inclure une annexe sur les effectifs syn­ The inefficiency of the early housing dicaux, le tout dans une présentation schemes reveals the inability of free renouvelée et fort attrayante du no. 10 des enterprise to provide essential social ser­ éditions du Boréal express. vices. The creation of monopolies and the Proposant davantage une "histoire thé­ common use of rigged bidding procedures matique" du mouvement ouvrier québé­ destroy the myth of the competitive mar­ cois qu'une histoire linéaire- ket. As Terry Coppand Michael Pivahave chronologique, Harvey nous avertit dès le demonstrated for an earlier period in départ, dans une introduction fort intéres­ Canadian history, it is painfully clear that sante et complètement renouvelée, que workers do not necessarily share in the for­ sont exclus du recueil des textes portant sur tunes of economic expansion. Wismer's la condition ouvrière ou sur la législation revelations expose the failure of govern­ du travail (à l'exception du texte de Jean ment, police, and union bureaucrats to reg­ Boivin). On pourrait ajouter que la ques­ ulate a violent and exploitative industry. tion des femmes et de la place de leurs The author prefers narrative to analysis, revendications dans le mouvement however, and examines none of these fac­ ouvrier, la question de l'action politique tors within the larger context of historical ouvrière après 1920, en particulier le rôle development. Like a fickle jury, Wismer des communistes et des sociaux- muses over volumes of incriminating evi­ démocrates, et enfin la question des orga­ dence, but defaults on delivering the hard nisations syndicales marginales et indé­ verdict. pendantes ont été mises au rancart; ces questions commencent à peine à faire Sweethearts is an informative and pro- l'objet de recherches historiques qui, il vacative study of one important area of faut bien le dire, s'en tiennent pour la plu­ urban development. It adds a new and part bien plus à l'étude des mouvements enlightening dimension to the impression institutionnalisés qu'à celle de la classe created by labour history texts that white- ouvrière proprement dite. collar and public service unionism domi­ nated the affairs of labour in these years. D'ailleurs, Harvey a bien raison de The study's storybook character and lack of signaler que l'avènement tardif de l'histo­ historical analysis, however, limit its riographie des travailleurs québécois academic usefulness. "reflète la difficulté d'être de la cons­ cience historique de la classe ouvrière" au John Bullen Québec. (44) Le caractère périphérique de University of Ottawa la société québécoise, la superposition Fernand Harvey, Le mouvement ouvrier au d'influences extérieures et la série d'allé­ Québec (Montréal: Boréal express, coll. geances contradictoires (ethnique, reli­ Études d'Histoire du Québec no. 10, gieuse versus l'appartenance de classe) 1980). proposées à l'ouvrier québécois de même que l'absence relative d'événements histo­ IL NE FAUDRAIT PAS s'y tromper: la second riques marquants expliqueraient ainsi la édition de ce recueil de textes sur le mouve­ faiblesse pour ne pas dire l'inexistence ment ouvrier québécois a bien peu à voir d'une tradition de gauche au Québec selon avec la première. En effet, Fernand Harvey Harvey. (44-48) Par ailleurs, le renouveau 386 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

des années soixante-dix dans la recherche l'action politique ouvrière, mais comme le historique sur les travailleurs québécois signale fort justement l'auteur en conclu­ trouve ses fondements dans l'évolution his­ sion, "sans le support financier des organi­ torique du Québec moderne (industrialisa­ sations syndicales, le Parti ouvrier était tion accélérée après la Second Guerre condamné à végéter. . . ." (213) L'article mondiale), dans l'évolution même de la de Robert Babcock, "Samuel Gompers et méthodologie historique {apport de l'école les travailleurs québécois, 1900-1914" des Annales, recherches de J. Hamelin à soulève bien des problèmes. L'auteur cher­ l'Université Laval, essor de l'approche che à démontrer à tout prix que la division marxiste, recherche en relations industri­ du mouvement syndical canadien repose elles, etc.) et bien entendu dans l'émer­ sur une base ethnique et que la cause gence d'une conjoncture sociale qui révèle majeure en est "l'ambition de Gompers de clairement les rapports conflictuels sur les­ réunir tous les travailleurs de l'Amérique quels repose notre société et qui redonne du Nord sous la bannière de VAmerican par conséquent toute sa validité à la recher­ Federation of Labor." (148) La scission de che sur les classes "oubliées" par l'histo­ 1902 au congrès de Berlin du Congrès des riographie nationaliste traditionnelle. métiers et du travail du Canada qui expulsa de ses rangs les Chevaliers du travail alors Le recueil lui-même rend compte de majoritairement implantés au Québec et ces progrès, compte tenu des limites que l'incapacité des unions américaines à tenir nous avons indiquées plus haut. Le texte de compte des traits culturels propres aux Harvey lui-même sur les Chevaliers du tra­ Canadiens français auraient contribué à vail demeure la meilleure introduction à cette division du mouvement syndical l'étude de ce mouvement négligé dans le canadien. Or c'est là ne pas tenir compte passé. La recherche de Margaret Heap sur du fait majeur que c'est le clergé et la "la grève des charretiers de Montréal, petite-bourgeoisie au Québec qui ont con­ 1864" illustre bien cette nouvelle tendance tribué à diviser le mouvement syndical de la recherche historique qui rejette l'apo­ canadien sur une base ethnique en s'atta- logie ou la relation épique pour retenir le quant au caractère étranger des syndicats sense historique et les manifestations américains et en dénonçant leur •neutra­ sociales révélatrices de l'agir collectif lisme" et leur soi-disant "socialisme;" d'une classe; il s'agit ici d'une grève des c'est également reléguer au second plan les artisans-charretiers en lutte contre la prolé­ victoires importantes remportées par le tarisation et la victoire du capitalisme CMTC au Québec après 1902, victoires que industriel à Montréal. Il faudra bien Babcock mentionne sans les expliquer; d'autres recherches de cette qualité pour c'est finalement négliger les efforts réels, que nous puissions mettre à jour l'idéolo­ malgré une indéniable incompréhension à gie, la conscience et la pratique sociale l'origine des traits culturels canadiens- réelle de ce que l'on appelle, parfois trop français, du CMTC qui embaucha Joseph rapidement, la classe ouvrière québécoise Ainey comme organisateur en 1909 malgré au XIXe siècle. des ressources très limitées. Gompers a e beau ne pas inspirer confiance, il ne fau­ Pour le début du XX , le recueil nous drait pas retomber pour autant dans les tra­ propose un texte revu de Jacques Rouillard vers de la propagande clérico-nationaliste sur l'action politique ouvrière qui rem­ du début du siècle en guise d'explication place avantageusement le très subjectif historique. article d'Alfred Charpentier ("Le mouve­ ment politique ouvrier de Montréal [1883-1929]", pp. 147-168 dans l'édition Deux articles proposent des éléments de 1973): les courants socialiste et travail­ de synthèse fort pertinents sur l'évolution liste sont bien campés, et on comprend que de laCTCC/CSN et de la FTQ: Jacques Dofny cette période ait été " 1 'âge d'or" de et Paul Bernard, "L'évolution historique REVIEWS 387

du syndicalisme au Québec" et Louis- canadiens sous l'égide du Parti commu­ Marie Tremblay, "L'influence extragène niste canadien de 1929 à 1935. en matière de direction syndicale au Sommes toutes, ce recueil nous invite à Canada." S'ajoutent les deux articles bien reprendre les termes d'une histoire de la connus de Hélène David, le premier, "La classe ouvrière au Québec, histoire du grève et le bon Dieu," remettant en ques­ mouvement et histoire des hommes et des tion les interprétations de Pierre-EIliott femmes qui composent tous les jours la Trudeau et de Jacques Cousineau sur les réalité complexe et multiforme de cette rapports entre la grève de l'amiante de classe ouvrière- 1949 et la société québécoise en suggérant que la grève a marqué "l'émancipation de Bernard Dionne l'État... de la tutelle idéologique de CEGEP de Saint-Jérôme l'Église;" (182-183) ce qui est certain et peut-être moins ambitieux comme thèse, Louise B. Lavoie, Les Débuts du Mouve­ c'est que "l'échec de l'Église à imposer sa ment Ouvrier à Sherbrooke, 1873-/9/9 vision du monde dans les relations de tra­ (Université de Sherbrooke: Groupe de vail" (intro. de Harvey, 34) aura été con­ Recherche en Histoire Régionale, Dépar­ sommé lors de cette grève. Le second arti­ tement d'Histoire, 1979). cle, "l'état des rapports de classe au Qué­ bec de 1945 à 1967," fournit une analyse très fine de la conjoncture de cette période, THIS SHORT VOLUME sets out to trace the décortiquant celle-ci en six moments diffé­ early development of organized labour in rents et concluant que la révolution tran­ the city of Sherbrooke and thus provide the quille n'aura été qu'un "intermède" pour foundation for a general history of the le mouvement ouvrier qui reprendra sa pra­ workers' movement in the Eastern Town­ tique de militantisme et de lutte qu'on avait ships. The author views it as a pioneering connue vers la fin du régime duplessiste. work in local history: external factors (248-255) therefore are to be discussed only when they bear a direct relation to the local union Un dernier mot sur l'article de Jean movement. (8) This statement of purposes Boivin, "Règles du jeu et rapport de force presages the strengths and weaknesses of dans les secteurs public et para-public qué­ this study. bécois:" il s'agit d'une excellente mise en Les Débuts... is a pioneering work in situation des paramètres de la négociation that it brings together in a systematic collective dans ce secteur suite à la publica­ fashion little known information about the tion du rapport Martin-Bouchard. Mais le early years of organized labour in this caractère nettement engagé des conclu­ important regional industrial centre. Ms. sions de l'auteur, les appels à la "raison" Lavoie is to be commended for undertak­ et l'approche technocratique qu'il véhicule ing a difficult task for there is little docu­ nous font nous interroger sur la pertinence mentation for the period. As a result, she de ce texte dans un recueil d'histoire du has been forced to rely primarily on the mouvement ouvrier. scattered and sketchy information con­ Il faudra certes modifier le titre de la tained in local newspapers, the published première annexe qui porte sur les centrales census, and a few related government doc­ syndicales au Canada et au Québec de 1873 uments. The heavy reliance on these (et non de 1882) à 1980 et y ajouter la Cen­ sources no doubt explains to a considerable trale des syndicats canadiens (CSC) du extent why this work, in a methodological regretté Kent Rowley qui compte au moins sense, is not as innovative as one might un syndicat au Québec, de même que la wish. Much of the volume is given over to a Ligue d'unité ouvrière (LUO) qui regroupa simple listing of which unions existed in a près de 40,000 travailleurs et chômeurs given year. While acknowledging the scar- 388 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

city of sources, the reader is entitled to discussion of health-impairing working greater analysis. conditions is predicated on the belief that To begin with, the author tends to such conditions were a factor likely to pro­ create the image of a monolithic male mote the growth of unions. Evidence for workingclass in Sherbrooke. Even if one is this view is drawn exclusively from the restricted to using census data, it is still writings of middle class observers whereas possible to provide a breakdown of the the subsequent discussion of workers' working population by sex. ethnic origin. strikes, and of the opinions of union and age for the last decade under examina­ organizers such as Narcisse Arcand, indi­ tion. We are told that the study begins in cates that salary, and not work environ­ 1873 because that year appears to mark the ment, was the issue around which workers first concerted action on the part of work­ organized. ers when 25 young women went on strike Finally, the author concludes that cleri­ at Paton's woollen mill. Nonetheless, cal opposition was the principal obstacle to women receive virtually no discussion in union organization in Sherbrooke prior to this book. 1919. She thereby implies that the workers According to the 1911 census, one were submissive servants of the Church quarter of the work force in Sherbrooke's who only embraced union membership in manufactures was female. One would like an important way once Catholic unions to know how the substantial number of were formed. Such an interpretation takes female workers affected, or was affected no cognizance of the fact that it may have by, the local trade union movement. been as much the form the Catholic unions Equally important, how did the ethnic took (industrial unions as opposed to the composition of the labour force influence earlier craft unions), as their religious organization? Were not several of the most affiliation, which accounted for the sub­ successful early unions, such as the stantial increase in union membership after machinists, predominantly British in their World War I. membership*.' Notwithstanding these shortcomings. The significance of fluctuations in the this volume will serve as a useful reference fortunes of union organization in particu­ work. The section dealing with salaries lar. and of worker militancy in general. and prices is particularly interesting and could be more clearly established within a informative. No doubt this work will also larger context. There are several points at serve the author's goal of encouraging which the author might have related her additional local studies. own findings to provincial trends. The local focus is applied too rigidly, and the Gail Cuthbert Brandt failure to draw upon other studies for sig­ Glendon College nificant comparisons only aggravates the York University cursory nature of the discussion. Benoît-Beaudry Gourd, et al., De A more rigorous theoretical framework V abbittibbi-têmiskaming S (Rouyn: Col­ is also needed to allay the descriptive qual­ lège du Nord-Ouest, Cahiers du Départe­ ity of this work. The author's concepts of ment d'Histoire et de Géographie no. 5, class and class consciousness, and their 1979). application to Sherbrooke's workers, remain unclear. On page 65. she suggests IN MANY WAYS, the eight years of work by that certain economic factors facilitated Benoit-Beaudry Gourd and his colleagues the emergence of a class consciousness at the CEGEP of Rouyn*Noranda constitute while 20 pages later, she concludes that it a model enterprise in Canadian regional was difficult to find common ground and oral history. This series, which they among the various unions. Similarly, the call an "étude de fond," will help us pro- REVIEWS 389

ceed to the levels of analysis exemplified annual (and essential) cash stake; they by History Workshop, Mouvement Social', were "foiseurs de terre neuve et leur mis­ Labor History, or Tamara Harevçn's study ère était à bout de bras." of Franco-Americans in Amoskeag. Reported missionaire-colonisateur Abbé Minette in 1946: "On défriche The Gourd series includes a bibliog­ comme au temps de Champlain, c'est raphy, acalalogueofpublicchurch, union, comme si la mécanique, la gazoline, les family, and newspaper archives, and oral- tracteurs, les essoucheuses, les outils sav­ history taping of the living memories of ants n'étaient inventés que pour les gens des pioneers, priests, and workers. The five villes." (189) Here the women had no wool volumes of Abitibi-Témtscamingue (or to spin. They helped the men pull stumps l'abbittibbi-témiscaming) used confer­ with their bare hands. There was no capital ences, CEGEP seminars, and other work in to buy machines and their horses found­ progress. The have established the basic ered in the desperate rush of winter structure within which more detailed narra­ pulpcutting in order to eam cash. When tive, biography, theory, map and photo they had to abandon the homestead, it was collections are planned. Some gaps, how­ the end of a traditional way of life, "la fin ever, are apparent: the series so far has d'une rêne" — a silent revolution which been short of class, élite, and stratification removed almost two-thirds of Canadian analysis; of family history; and of studies farmers from the soil in the 1960s, and on the changing role of women. which must be analyzed in a continent-wide context, with the rise of agribusiness. It is by comparison with other regions that the strengths, weaknesses, and future Common to the twin region in Ontario potential of the series may best be shown. and Quebec, according to Asselin, Gourd, Maurice Asselin's "Le rôle de la frontière and Glenday are: dans les relations entre le Nord-ouest I ) the two great waves of colonization. québécois et l'Ontario" in this volume 2) the role of miners' unions in a multi­ argues that the open frontier has been a lingual workforce. determinant in the twin region. Forest, mine, and agricultural industries {in that 3) a reserve army of labour located in mar­ order) developed on both sides, in Quebec ginal or under-capitalized agriculture, and Ontario regions sufficiently similar available at all times for seasonal logging, that social, cultural and economic com­ and occasionally for strikebreaking. (Gov­ parisons may be sharpened to a fine point. ernment regulations ensured that timber Gourd's study of the French press, and and mineral rights did not go with the Dan Glenday's of unionism, are a step in homestead. Pioneering in the mid-north this direction. Moreover, Abitibi- thus became a trap.) Temiskaming is central in the "bilingual 4) questions of ecology: pollution, resource belt" (described by Richard Joy over a management, control of the means of pro­ decade ago) that stretches from S au It Ste duction, and their rationalization by Marie/Hearst to Moncton: it is in this belt "timber wolves" and "mining barons." that the major questions of francophone 5) the colonial development of towns (Stel- rights or their converse, assimilation, are ter) and of the region as a whole under met­ of critical importance. ropolitan Montreal or Toronto (Are they not colonies of a colony? Thus the creation This belt was largely created by two of ghost towns during downswings in the major waves of colonisation, in 1885-1917 trade cycle, and of a regional mentality of and in 1932-1939: French Canada's ver­ abandonment, separatism and protest.) sion of the "last best west." Like home­ 6) the perennial shortage of local capital, steaders elsewhere, the colons had to work affecting farmers, small business, ethnic for rail, mine, or logging wages for their stratification, and the region as a whole. 390 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

(Recent research by Leo Johnson suggests a rich popular culture; but their elites, dis­ that the low-wage economy of the Ottawa trusting the ease with which they "sink Valley dates from as early as the 1840s. On their nationality and pass off for what they a world scale, the region's crises and are not," mounted a coup that in 1910 uneven growth are part of a general "devel­ separated the French schools, caisses opment of underdevelopment.") populaires, parishes, and voluntary associ­ 7) the economic inferiority of Québécois, ations. The Clay Belt was to be a new fron­ Franco-Ontarians, and Franco-Americans, tier of Laurentia; according to nation­ a poverty cycle of low income and low edu­ alistes, it was an "autre Québec ouvert à cation. notre action." (189) Throughout the area 8) the multiple bind in which cheap-labour pulplogging, as in Jean Rivard, Menaud ethnic groups find themselves: ethnocul- Maître-draveur, Nuages sur les brûlés, or tural, educational, class and sex discrimi­ Mon Oncle Antoine, was so essential that it nation. was difficult to tell whether the people 9) Nouvel-Ontario developed as a frontier were small-holding colons or wage- of labour mobility around transportation earning bûcherons. This cheap, docile lines, Québec Nord-Ouest as a frontier of labour force was ideal for the growth of group immobility based on parish and lot. pulp and hydro empires. In 1934 Témiscamingue still had no roads It was an uneasy symbiosis. Disputes to the Ottawa or St. Lawrence valleys, and over Sunday work, tires, and other disas­ was cut off entirely in spring and fall; its ters showed how fragile the social and dependence on Ontario's T&NO Railway, as ecological balance could be; an Abitibi Asselin shows, made it vulnerable to both Paper dam, built without Quebec govern­ economic and cultural assimilation. Now it ment permit, in 1922 ruined 100,000 acres suffers twice the unemployment rate, mas­ of homesteaders' land. Premiers of sive depopulation, and a consequent threat Quebec and Ontario spent years, alter­ of much greater assimilation. nately bonusing the newsprint and hydro 10) attempts by Quebec workers to better barons, and trying to rationalize the indus­ their economic position put their culture at try to keep wages above starvation level. risk. Part-time farmers gradually become Frustrated by the newsprint cartel's refusal full-time wage-workers; those who to observe quotas and wage decrees, one sojourn seasonally in Ontario mining Quebec leader said, "I have never met a towns eventually stay, and induce their group of men so disloyal... the agree­ families to move. As many as a third of the ments between them are mere scraps of workers went to Ontario in the 1950s. paper." In Ontario, the Reesor siding mur­ Unionism, which must emphasize class ders of 1963 and the Boise Cascade strike solidarity over ethnicity (at least in of 1979 show that big paper companies are Ontario) speeds anglicization. Meanwhile, still able to cut wages and break unions by the educated youth is drawn to Ottawa or recruiting dependent contractors among the South, leaving the 35 per cent Franco- the colons. Ontarian population with a truncated elite. Capitalism was equally unchecked in The chronology of French-Canadian the mining industry, where the Western colonization and of industrial change is Federation of Miners, ancestor of Mine common to both regions. Between 1880 Mill, was beaten in a series of strikes from and 1910, two generations of Quebec 1906-1919, Relatively high wages, a colons followed the railway and logging seven-day week, and silicosis after five industry up the Ottawa to Lake Temiskam- years, were the miner's lot. The mineown- ing, and west to Sudbury. Originating ers soon learned the strategy of playing from Joliette and the lower St. Lawrence, "white" workers against "Reds." When isolation made them a distinct group, with the big Hornepayne mine opened in the REVIEWS 391

1920s, local promoters of colonization "individualisme." too little "solidarité." became drumbeaters of the boom: "Quel­ ques centaines de milles habitants de plus! The precarious life of the colon family Les vastes usines à côté des fermes was also a powerful predisposing force. canadiennes-françaises. Pourquoi pas?... While mining, power, and paper com­ Sous le soleil du bon Dieu présentement, panies strode across the frontier like col­ l'or et le cuivre semble reluire davantage." ossi, the settlers were sunk in the "mus- But colons did not enter mining in any kai." After some bumper crops in the number: indeed, they protested racial dis­ 1920s, a family could support itself for a crimination by the mine foremen. (54) Not year here on $500 in the 1930s; in Montreal until the desperate foreigners' strike mere subsistence was $1,200. But a rich against wage cuts in 1934, in which half to farmer was "unique en Abitibi." Even if a third was blacklisted by the mineowners, pulpwood was as high as $4.50 a cord, the did the foremen shout "Come on, Fren- merchants only paid in truck, not cash, in chies." Oui in the back concessions the the Val d'Orof the 1930s. The colon had to missionnaires noted; "Duval Rodolphe — leave the land "la majeure partie de parti sans raison aux mines." The tactic l'année" — and the reliefers who were would be used, with the open support of brought here on the plan Vautrin were in Catholic Action, in the 1941 Kirkland Lake strike, the 1943 Sudbury union drive, desperate straits. Roadwork earned them and in the Cold War. Obviously, such $15 a month, they ruined their horses. industry-wide phenomena cannot be freight charges were $2.40 on a bag of explained from the viewpoint of one lin­ flour. $2.55 on a bag of potatoes that sold guistic group. It is not only canadien for 85(t in Montreal. Michel Chartrand workers, recent migrants from a conserva­ remembers, furious, how they died of tive rural milieu, who manifest too much typhoid and the polluted meat on the plan Vautrin: $100 of supplies a year, $10 a Telos a quarterly journal of radical thought No. 49 Fill 1961 No. 60 Winter 1981-82 Special Section: The Role of Habemaa: Dialectics of Rationalization the Intellectual in the 1980s BenfcaMb: Modernity and Critical Theory Radaoti: On Benjamin's Aesthetics Pfccone, Zaslavaky: The Socio-Economic Lowy: Marxism and Romanticism Roots of Rearmament Zenao: Origins and Meaning of WWI Arato: Poland 1981-82 Balile: E.P. Thompson and his Critics Miaalty: The 1960s Policy Synthesis Kogawa: Japan as a Manipulated Society Groat: Time, Space and Modern Culture Dubiel: Origins of Critical Theory WUtebook: Saving the Subject: Freeae: On Benjamin and Brecht Modernity and the Individual MerakHa: Bulgaria Poetx: Nietzsche and Critical Theory

Subscriptions are $18 per year for individuals; $38 for institutions. Foreign orders add 10 percent. Checks must be in U.S. funds. No Canadian checks can be accepted. Back issues prior to No. 40 cost $4.50 each; No. 40 and subsequent issues are $5.00 each. Institutions pay $10.00 each for all back issues- For a full list of available back issues and to subscribe, write: Telos, Box 3111, St Louis, MO 63130 USA. 392 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

cleared acre: "It was then that I realized it British Columbia frontier. She juxtaposes wasn't the English or the Jews that were the standard pictures oflocal notables like killing us. . . ." the "first druggist on Main Street," with What needs to be explained, then, is comment from the women who worked for how working-class solidarity grew. Glen- him, and why, and how their work (paid or day emphasizes the periods of the rise of unpaid) was essential both to the family Mine Mill in 1937-1948, the Steelworkers' and frontier. Drake's A Matter of Doing raiding in 1950-1957. and the bosses' Something to Live (video from Women in defeat of union security for the years up to Focus, Vancouver) is an approach that 1964. We need to correlate these with the cries out to be applied to the "gens" as well gold boom of the 1930s, the company as the "notables" of our "villages et vis- houses, company control of every aspect of ages." municipal life, the infamous Bedeaux "bonus" system that had entered all mass David Millar industries. By 1937 the speedup, graft, and University of Winnipeg tyranny had discredited the foreman sys­ tem. We need to know more about the fac- Warren Caragata, Alberta Labour: A Heri- tors that led to union success after decades lage \jniold (Toronto: James Lorimer of failure: organizing on the cell or 1979). "Anyox" system, recruiting organizers from each ethnic group, winning over key ALBERTA HAS BEEN and remains, like its crafts, the wartime labour shortage, pat- topography and climate, a province of con- riotism and production, health and safety, siderable variety; the contrasts and diver- Was the curé still "quasiment un dieu sur sjty jt presents have long challenged the la terre" in 1943? And in 1948 when he serious observer. As the birthplace of the denounced equally the Reds and the Social North American version of Social Credit, Credit for preaching "class war?" What for example, it set both New York finan- subtle shifts in class structure had occurred ciers and Mackenzie King atwitter; yet, at in five years? The government's policy of the same time it accommodated some of evasion and delay, and mineowners' use of the most Neanderthal-like enterpreneurs police and paramilitary Frontiersmen to and politicians in the country. Likewise it awe unionists in both provinces needs offers both opulence and poverty, examination. So do the subtle but massive restrained good taste and garish over- shifts in public opinion: the rise of social statement. One of the reasons for these Catholicism, the Bloc Populaire, the manifold contrasts is that the opportunities Union des Electeurs, the CCF, and the role for employment and resource exploitation of the Church in relation to each. That the have held magnetic attraction for thou- rise of the Creditistes, regional separatism sands around the globe. Its society reflects (the call for an "eleventh province" from this fact. Us population has been consis- the Soo to Manicouagan), the final col- tently among the most transient in Canada lapse of the subsistence farm system, and with roots stretching back to virtually every tremendous out-migration to Ontario, all cornerofthe world. Consequently, Alberta occurred together, requires some cxplana- has been able to absorb both American- tion. Above all, we need a deeper, richer style fundamentalism and old world piety exploration of the human experience. Two as well as strident ethnic expression examples of such research must suffice: benevolently supervised by probably the the NFB'S magnificent film on the workers' most unrepentantly WASP leadership of any takeover of a shutdown plant in Temiskam- in the prairie provinces. ing (1979); and Joanne Drake's examina- Since most early residents of Alberta tion of the heroic age of local history on a came to work, the labour force offers simi- REVIEWS 393 lar variety. For example, those employed discourses on affairs often far removed in extractive industries were as far removed from the province or the region. culturally from the urban bureaucrats who By comparison with the book as a claimed to serve them, as were the lone­ whole, the early chapters dealing with the some farm labourers from the workers in a origins of trade unionism in Alberta pos­ manufactory in Edmonton or Calgary who sess some directional focus but the theme produced the overalls for the agricul­ is unfortunately simplistic and shallow. In turalists to wear. Consequently, the ten­ Caragata's view union organization sions and divisions within the "working emerged from weak, vulnerable workers class" are obvious challenges to objectiv­ rising up spontaneously in response to ity for anyone working in the history of the large, oppressive corporations like the CPR region and the province. backed up governments and police, and each instance of exploitation is hammered Another challenge to the researcher has home with unnecessarily long quotations. always been the large void due to a paucity (The ones on page 70 are typical.) Conse­ of serious work undertaken on Alberta's quently, radical organizations like the iww history outside of the political sphere. and the Western Federation of Miners are Hence, any major contribution on a subject glorified out of all proportion, as are the as large as Alberta labour was sincerely romantic communists between the wars welcomed simply for its potential to fill whose sole aim Caragata sees as the better­ many gaps in our understanding of the ment of the condition of the Alberta toiler. province. Since no one had attempted a Perhaps this "them versus us" interpreta­ project of the magnitude of Alberta tion is what the contemporary unionist (for Labour: A Heritage Untold, (since one of whom the volume was obviously designed) Eugene Forsey's research assistants tried wishes the past was like but once placed to chronicle the development of Alberta's within the proper context it can be seen to trade unions a decade and a half ago) the be erroneous. The past must be viewed on results were eagerly anticipated. The pro­ its own terms and with the realization that duct of Warren Caragata's pen, however, changing technology and attitudes have has proved to be an example of opportunity contributed as much to the present condi­ lost as what appears within its glossy 162 tion of labour as did the strikes and strug­ pages falls far short of expectations. gles Caragata so laboriously portrays.

The book is disappointing in several One suspects that more assiduous use respects. Its scope is one of them. The title of the documentary collections to which promises a discussion of Alberta labour; his footnotes refer would have produced a (he text deals only with the trade union more sustaining account. For example, the movement and forgets the majority of the author cites the CLC collection in the Public province's workers who were involved in Archives of Canada and yet he obviously non-union sectors. This major omission missed the voluminous correspondence aside, however, even the discussion of there concerning the almost heroic day-to- Alberta unionism leaves a lot to be desired. day struggle of dedicated organizers in the There is no apparent theme to the book 1940s against not only recalcitrant employ­ apart from a closing cliché that there had ers but also tight budgets imposed by union been progress for some workers and none brass more concerned with spending the for others. Caragata does not say why money in Central Canada. (Volumes 127 Alberta unionists deserve special treatment and 136 contain cases in point.) Even some in a book. One can only assume, therefore, of the secondary sources available but not that nothing was particularly unique about consulted might have tempered Caragata's the movement's development, an assump­ view. A.A, den Otter's M.A. work on the tion strengthened by Caragata's detailed social development of the Coal Branch and 394 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

the sense of community which prevailed employers. Almost the entire collection there is one such study. Similarly, these shows Alberta labourers either enjoying like Frank Karas* on the miners in the social pursuits current in the period, or Crow's Nest area and the W.R. Askin's more often, proudly assembled at their examination of press reactions to labour work places. Most are well turned out and activities in Edmonton in 1918 and 1919 well fed and appear indistinguishable from could have been used to good advantage. other people. These scenes spotlight a sim­ Other glaring omissions include John H. ple fact, entirely ignored by the author: Thompson's Harvests of War and David workers attached great importance to their Bercuson's Fools and Wise Men. Both jobs and that this sense of pride contributed books could have rewarded the author with considerably to working-class awareness, a much needed perspective on prairie soci­ a fact that is captured in many of the photo­ ety during the years before, during, and graphs. Unfortunately, the subtitle of the after World War I. book remains as valid now as on the day Caragata began to write his text. Surprisingly, despite its simplicity, Caragatas interpretation is extremely dif­ ficult to follow. His story jumps about W.J.C. Cherwinski chronologically and wanders aimlessly Memorial University of through a seemingly unconnected series of Newfoundland events and incidents. The chapter on the David J. Blkins and Richard Simeon, depression, for example, requires a par­ Small Worlds: Provinces and Parties in ticularly alert reader to trace the narrative Canadian Political Life (Toronto: line through the maze of forced transitions. Methuen 1980); and Carlo Caldarola. Added to this frustration are the irritations Society and Politics in Alberta: Research caused by numerous typographical errors, Papers (Toronto: Methuen 1979). beginning with the first sentence of Chap­ ter 1. No doubl the Communist historian of the next The single bright spot in Alberta tentury will point to this curious eagerness of Labour: A Heritage Untold are the photo­ Canadian political scientists to focus their atten­ graphs which constitute fully half the tion upon their federal political institutions book. Many have never been published instead of upon their capitalist economic institu­ before. Their reproduction is first rate, a tions as merely another variation in the escape tribute to the skill of the technicians. technique adopted by timid intellectuals in a rev­ Unfortunately, once the author becomes olutionary period. involved there are problems. Some of the Frank Underhill, Address to the Canadian Poli­ captions are (deliberately) misleading like tical Science Association, 1935. the one accompanying the picture of Pre­ WITH ITS JUXTAPOSITION of an underlying mier Brownlee (121) which attributes "crisis of capitalism" and a perceived greater power to the province than does the "crisis of federalism" the current scene in BNA Act. Similarly, a tum-of-the-century Canada bears some resemblance to the photo (100) of deportees is used to illus­ situation so well described by Underhill in trate the fact that numerous immigrants 1935. As in the 1930s moreover, the mod­ were sent home for being public charges ern political crisis has called forth, along during the 1930s. with a new crop of what Underhill called What strikes the reader most vividly "Canadian Calhouns." a new "outburst of about the photos Caragata has chosen is scholasticism" on the traditional and that they unintentionally undermine his related topics of federalism, provin­ basic premise that Alberta's working-class cialism, and regionalism. Within this tradition was rooted in the deprivation genre may be considered two new offer­ resulting from worker exploitation by ings in Methuen's Canadian Politics and REVIEWS 395

Government Series, each of them weighty cal science is some means of informing us compendia of essays, probably slated for who are non-specialists — not least the use as university textbooks: Small Worlds; hapless student — what it's really all Provinces and Parties in Canadian Politi­ about. The stark fact is that only a trained cal Life, edited, and, to a large degree, statistician with a solid grounding in authored by, Elkins and Simeon; and Soci­ upper-level mathematics would be able to ety and Politics in Alberta: Research read this book intelligently, or comment Papers, edited by Carlo Caldarola. thereon. It represents the "latest" in meth­ If my hunch about Small Worlds odological precision, but also, unfortuna­ (which includes contributions, most of tely, a case study in academic sec­ them collaborative, by Richard Johnson, tarianism. Donald Blake, Mike Burke, and Robert At least half of the tables and charts Miller) is correct, freshmen in Poli-Sci 101 cannot be understood without a knowledge may expect a very rigorous introduction to of the formulae which accompany them their subject. They deserve, in fact, our (that is, calculus). Some are more sympathies, for this anthology is not rec­ straightforward. Some of these re-in force a ommended for the non-specialist. True, visceral suspicion — born of ignorance of the Introduction and Conclusion are con­ the mysteries of the art — that the method­ cise and useful (though prosaic) sum­ ology masks a fair degree of obfuscation. maries of the major issues in contemporary In "Dimensions of Variation in Electoral "federal-provincial relations," broadly Coalitions," Mike Burke informs us that defined. However, these pieces are curi­ New Brunswick is "the most unusual of ously abstracted from the eight essays provinces;" this because the Liberal and sandwiched between, which can better be Conservative Parties receive a much larger described as methodological exercises in percentage of their votes from the "work­ the use of the most sophisticated new quan­ ing class" than in other jurisdictions. titative techniques than substantive discus­ Burke calls this "surprising," with no edi­ sions of any of the issues. Seven structure torial comment given. A few pages later, themselves around complex regression however, he admits that the New analyses of survey results; while the eighth Brunswick data is skewed by the fact that does the same basic exercises with data on "over 70 per cent of New Brunswick resi­ government expenditures. It may seem odd dents classify themselves as working to write about provinces, parties, and poli­ class," far above the Canadian norm. So tics without mentioning any politicians, or much for the "Control Variable" of social citing a platform, a campaign speech, a class: his tables merely compare apples parliamentary debate, an editorial, or a and oranges. Any other result than the one piece of legislation. Nevertheless, this is cited concerning "class voting" in New what the contributors have done. For those Brunswick would have been most surpris­ who might wish to sample the methodol­ ing — indeed, a mathematical impossibil­ ogy without purchasing the book, two of ity. the essays have been republished from the Canadian Journal of Political Science (Elkins and Simeon, "Provincial Political It should be added parenthetically that Cultures in Canada," and Elkins, "The three-quarters of New Brunswickcrs do Structure of Provincial Party Systems"), not classify themselves as "working with minor revisions. class," but rather, a certain percentage of a survey sample which nowhere in the article Well over 100 tables and charts grace is clearly identified as to its size or repre­ the 300 page volume, and form the core of sentativeness. Throughout the book, the the scholarship which informs it. What is reader is asked to take all the basic data on needed, however, from this "new" politi­ faith. 396 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

At one point, the editors make the some light, some heavy, some conven­ remarkable confession that some of the tional, others non-conventional, still findings are "anti-climactic." This is true of others quite unproved. certain of them that one knows, intuitively. There is evidence here of the same to be correct: for instance, Elk ins' mind-numbing empiricism and banalité painstakingly-constructed index of iden­ which mars the work discussed earlier. I tification with the "national" interest — regard such a statement as "Peter call it an index of patriotism if you will — Lougheed's mean score of 7.7 on the ten- which appears in his lead article "The point scale indicates just how successful Sense of Place." Quebec's stolid this man was in projecting himself to the "anglophones" come first on the index, public in a positive manner" in the context followed by the people of New Brunswick of" a supposed analysis of "The Conserva­ — the only province where they stand to tive Takeover" (by Elton and Goddard) as "Oh Canada" in the cinema (on the basis just short of an insult. Is it too much to ask of Burke's survey, can this be seen as a that the general degradation of Canadian peculiarly proletarian ritual too?)- The public life to the level of personal popular­ Québécois and the Newfoundlanders natu­ ity contests not be reflected in academic rally come last on the list, in that order, political commentary? with the Albertans not far behind as national slackers, but is there anything On the other hand, there is also evi­ here which could not be deduced by any dence in the collection that survey research reasonably intelligent observer after a can be used imaginatively and fruitfully. good camping trip across the Dominion? I Sweeney and Schenck's article on "Politi­ should think such an expedition would be cal Attitudes of Middle Business Managers of vastly more educational value than in Alberta," where the sample group is grinding out sometimes meaningless statis­ clearly outlined, its relevance explained, tics. and the results sifted through a coherent In some Alberta campgrounds, the thesis, immediately comes to mind. These migrant worker predominates as a social writers carefully examine the phenomenon type — one of the reasons for the recent of modern Toryism in the province through abolition of that fine old populist institu­ their research, concluding that a "new tion, the free government campsite. middle class," not the premier's popularity Alberta is one of the "small worlds" which (and he is hardly the most engaging of poli­ has changed radically in its character and ticians), lies at its heart. Skogstad's status, which forms the immediate back­ "Farmers and Farmers' Unions in drop to the publication of the Caldarola Alberta" is another case in point: here the collection; 400 oversized pages with a survey work has been supplemented by score of articles on various aspects of the socio-historical research into the changing provincial experience, written by not less structure of the agricultural community than 23 contributors, 12 political scien­ with good results. This piece, among tists, 4 sociologists, 2 professors of busi­ others, reminds us of the existence of other ness, 2 historians. 2 civil servants, and a people in the Wild Rose Country besides lone economist. Only four of them, inci- the politically hegemonic fractions of the dently, list their residence as east-of- bourgeoisie, with autonomous concerns Regina. Evidently writing in and about and problems (in this case, the problem of "Western Canada" is a growth industry; survival) which are muted by the general equally sois the impossibility of doing jus­ din. It is obviously important to note the tice or otherwise to such a large anthology "end of ideology" in Alberta's farm com­ in such a short review. Generally speaking munity, but the struggle continues. Today the articles are like the petroleum reserve, one hears news reports of "redneck" farm- REVIEWS 397 ers arming themselves against the Donald H.Akenson,ed,Canadian Papers encroachments of the Seven Sisters. in Rural History, Vol. I (Gananoque: There are obvious gaps in this anthol­ Langdale Press 1978), andC.F. Wilson, A ogy: much discussion of Alberta "aliena­ Century of Canadian Grain (Saskatoon: tion" but none at all of real alienation, of Western Producer Prairie Books 1978). native Indians, of the new immigrants, of women, and so forth. Workers and the THE IMPORTANCE OF agricultural society workplace, urban problems, and other and the rural community has been empha­ issues of import are conspicuous by their sized frequently and written about by many absence. A good deal of plain old "false notable figures such as Marx, Engels, consciousness" infuses the work, not­ Lenin, Lukacs, Wallerstein, Thompson, withstanding its merits. Mousnier, Porchnev, C.B. Macpherson, Historians will want to read Society and others. This element of society has not and Politics in Alberta, but selectively. lost its significance even though govern­ L.G. Thomas's "The Liberal Party in ments, like the Canadian, prefer to ignore Alberta, 1905-21" provides a useful syn­ or at best de-emphasize it. These two thesis of his old monograph on the subject, books deal with aspects of that society: long since disappeared off most library Akenson's volume contains four articles shelves. Betke's "The United Farmers of by economists, geographers, and histo­ Alberta, 1921-35" does much the same rians; Wilson's tome deals with govern­ things with the author's excellent Masters' ment policy to 1951. thesis on the topic. Caldarola's "The According to Akenson, the purpose of Social Credit Party, 1935-71," on the other the essays is to fill a gap in an area that hand, scarcely does justice to its subject, "traditional historians" are loath, or at and contributes little to the extensive, but least reluctant, to fill. This is a most lauda­ still inadequate, literature on the Socred ble objective, although many academics phenomenon. Myron Johnson's "Failure specializing in certain aspects of of the CCF in Alberta: An Accident of His­ agrarianism or rural society might be rather tory," however, is a real addition to the lit­ surprised by this assumption. Does this erature on Prairie social democracy, and is group of articles fulfill the objective? The one of those rare works on political history piece by R.E. A nidi and R.M. Liu is the which delves into the thorny question of most interesting of an uneven collection. party organization. Similarly Flanagan's They note the problems confronting econ­ "Ethnic Voting in Alberta Provincial Elec­ omists trying to understand the cost and tions, 1921-75" is unique in its sensitivity type of economic growth of prairie agricul­ towards the local dimensions of the ture. In admirably attempting to recon­ Alberta political tradition. struct the financial burdens of agricul­ Readers of this journal will be disap­ turalists, they have perhaps too naively pointed by Masson and Blaikie's "Labour accepted a journalist's collection of oral Politics in Alberta," a patently token effort history without critically realizing that at taking into account the province's labour time tends to distort memories. K. Kelly's past, and probably the worst of the lot. Pro­ study of eastern Simcoe county and the fessors of politics who describe the "Inter­ evolution of the marketing agencies and national Workers of the World" [sic] as the competition between centres has fas­ "antieastern" might think of enrolling cinating potential which the long themselves in Labour Studies 101 next chronological narrative almost destroys. J. term. Little, on the other hand, briefly compares the social and economic development of different races — Scots, English, French Allen Seager — in two Quebec townships. There are Simon Fraser University 398 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

some problems with the consistency in the ing the review: is this an example, thinly number of French-Canadian farmers and disguised, of governmental efficiency? landholders, but the major difficulty is that Did the fact that the review was dedicated the conclusion which attributes the to Otto Lang condemn it to the oubliettes? French-Canadian problems to wanting to There is little for academics in Wilson's remain in their country — Quebec — is review. Grain fanners would have diffi­ inconsistent with the whole tenor of the culty ploughing through this, but if they article. K.H. Nome writes on that delight did, they might recognize their problem — of academics, the National Policy. He an insensitive government and bureau­ attacks the tariff, the prairie west's sacred cracy. cow, and suggests that the federal govern­ ment policy was in fact beneficial to the F.J.K. Griezic prairie farmers. Indeed, he concludes Carleton University "that there is an important difference between actual out of pocket transfers and Raymond L. Foote, The Case of Port a failure to appropriate capital gains when Hawkesbury; Rapid Industrialisation and the regional equity aspects of the National the Social Unrest in a Nova Scotia Commu­ Policy are at issue," (29) The argument is nity (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates buttressed by innumerable assumptions, 1979). hypotheses, implications, and estimates; thus the reader is confronted with one of the most glittering productions of an eco­ THIS BOOK IS THE eighth in the multi- nomic scientific "argument;" stripped of disciplinary Canadian Experience Series the glitter, the result is specious at best. which offers "inexpensive and readable accounts of life in Canada." (v) It is a use­ Wilson, a retired civil servant, in over ful complement to Matthews' (1976) ear­ 1,100 pages, purports to write "such a lier study of the relocation of Newfound­ review" (my emphasis) as "to compile a land outports. Both books examine, continuous record of the decision-making through the use of informal interviews and process, and thereby make the background in-depth participant-observer analysis of material readily available for the policy­ local communities, the social impact of maker." The review is replete with charts, imposed economic change. Whereas tables, and appendices, and, as mentioned Matthews analyzed the effects of policies on the cover, "a wealth of material from which relocated local communities into original sources." The review contains larger, "more viable" settlements, Foote that, albeit mostly undigested. There is, examines the implication of moving "the too, a lack of perspective. The periodiza- work to the workers." tion is only one example: 231 pages deal The Strait of Canso region, with its with the beginning to 1930; 258 pages with centre Port Hawkesbury, was subjected to the period 1930-5; 294 pages for 1935-43; substantial economic change during the and 260 pages for 1944-51. Does this sig­ 1960s and 1970s through development of nify that the federal government had little the ice-free, deep water harbour potential, grain policy in the first 60 years of confed­ and the arrival of several large-scale indus­ eration? If so, why not state it? Another tries. The period of industrialization is major complaint; the review is defensive. It divided into two phases: the first involved is written from the vantage point of a civil the establishment of a Swedish-owned servant and one is constantly aware of civil service perspectives. There is no attempt to pulp mill, and the second, more dramatic understand the grain growers and their period, was highlighted by the construc­ plight. Thus the review's value is limited. tion of an oil refinery, a heavy water plant, Two questions recurred constantly in read­ a thermal power station, and deep water harbour facilities. REVIEWS 399

The author introduces the book with mine workers' value systems to the nature chapters on the theory of community and of construction work in the new growth social change together with a detailed centre. description of the methodology used. The book is a most readable account of Compact histories of the Strait of Canso the impact of large-scale industry on a region and the Cape Breton labour move­ small community. It fails, however, ment are offered. Foote goes on to examine despite the goals of the Series, to set these the local effects of the two phases of indus­ changes within a wider economic and trialization in Chapters 5-7. The core of the social context, in this case that of regional book is formed by analysis of the impact of underdevelopment in Canada. This weak­ economic change on employment patterns, ness stems partly from the fact that the decision-making processes, and social research appears to have been completed at stratification in the community of Port least ten years ago, even though the book Hawkesbury. Foote concludes that the ear­ was published in 1979. The Department of lier phase of industrial development was Regional Economic Expansion, for exam­ successful because the local community ple, is not mentioned until the three-page was able to control the process of change Epilogue, which is somewhat inexcusable and that the new developments were for a study published a decade after the absorbed without the destruction of tradi­ inception of that organization. The tional communal relations and value sys­ restricted outlook is also due to the meth­ tems. During the later phase of more accel­ odology which stresses very detailed, erated industrialization, local community parochial investigation of endogenous infrastructure was unable to cope. The change. The question of why the region influx of large numbers of construction might be underdeveloped in the first place workers, the influence of migrant profes­ is never really addressed. sional classes, and increasing provincial Recent contributions to theories of and federal government intervention led to uneven regional development suggest that social unrest, divisions within the commu­ underdeveloped regions play an integral nity, and the loss of domestic decision­ role in the process of economic develop­ making power. The contrast between the ment. In the period of capitalist develop­ two phases parallels Pross's (1975) com­ ment, underdeveloped regions are first parative study of the planning and develop­ created and then exploited. The latter pro­ ment processes in Bridgewater and Port cess occurred in the 1960s with the loca­ Hawkesbury. Both authors make a plea for tion of large, often multinational, capital regional development planning to be sensi­ in lagging regions to take advantage of one tive to local cultural conditions, and con­ or more local attractions in the form of demn external interference through the unemployed labour, lower wage rates, lack imposition of planned change. of union organization, and state subsidiza­ One of the most interesting chapters in tion. It is the local social ramifications of Foote's book examines the social unrest this phase of capitalist development that which plagued the construction phase of Foote is describing, though he does not put the industrialization process. Periodic it in these terms. By failing to examine this wildcat strikes, absenteeism, violence, context, the author attributes the loss of and alleged closed-shop hiring practices local decision making to state intervention upset the traditional stability of the local and not to the nature of modern multi­ community. The author attributes the national capital. Foote is forced to argue, cause of the unrest to the large-scale influx therefore, that the apparently easier of previously unemployed miners from the assimilation of earlier industrialization is Sydney region, to the historical militancy due to the absence of external interference of these workers, and to the unsuitabilityof rather than to a slower and smaller scale of 400 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

change. The less obvious increase of fortunes of the industry and fate of the dependence on externally-controlled capi­ community were always beyond local con­ tal is not examined. trol. Ernie Regehr argues that Canadian Readers of a more Marxist persuasion military spending not only contributes to a will find the methodology unsatisfactory deadly arms race but also aggravates some because no class analysis is made. An of Canada'scharacteristic economic weak­ alternative analysis would examine com­ nesses. And in a discussion of modern munity change in terms of the penetration Africa, Jan Jorgenson explains how of the capitalist mode of production into a innovative strategies have enabled multi­ peripheral region where pre-capitalist national corporations to maintain their eco­ remnants still persist. Much of the chal­ nomic power. In each lecture the author lenge to local value systems stems from the has challenged conventional wisdoms and implantation of a comprador class, and the offered an alternative approach to the incorporation of the working class into a topic. Specialists will find little that is new more strict capitalist industrial discipline. here, but as a modest exercise in popular education The WPIRG Reader succeeds in Nevertheless, Foote does offer a read­ reminding us that "underdevelopment is a able and useful insight into how industrial global phenomenon, by no means limited change affects the daily lives of local peo­ to the Third World." ple and makes a good case for examining the sensitivity of local cultural systems. I read these lectures with one large mis­ While stressing the importance of local giving, however. Too much "radical" pol­ control of political decision making how­ itical economy is written with an exclusive ever, he fails to examine the loss of local eye on the baneful influence of "outside" economic control and avoids evaluation of forces. In this kind of analysis local the consequent dependence. It would be responses often remain an absent category. interesting to see a follow-up study now The lectures in The WPIRG Reader share that one of the major industries has fallen this common weakness. In discussing mo­ victim to the current economic crisis. dern Africa, for instance, it needs to be said that neocolonialism is a response to John A. Watt modern liberation movements. And in the University of Waterloo Canadian context, the authors seem to forget that under various names (the latest The WPIRG Reader: Case Studies in Under­ is "regional disparity") the problem of underdevelopment has been familiar for development (Waterloo: The Waterloo Pub­ several generations. The authors might lic Interest Research Group, University of have given us some useful glimpses of how Waterloo 1980). Canadians have responded to this problem. For instance, it may be that one reason THIS SHORT BOOKLET presents four public Canadians accept a large and costly mili­ lectures sponsored by the Waterloo Public tary sector is that young people in the hin­ Interest Research Group in 1979. The terlands see the armed forces as an attrac­ unifying theme is the concept of underde­ tive road to economic security and social velopment, and each lecture throws light mobility. Also, it seems clear that the on one part of a world-wide pattern of eco­ prominence of the state in dependent nomic dependency. John Watt gives a use­ regions is in part the outcome of attempts ful historical sketch of underdevelopment to gain greater control over local industries in Atlantic Canada, describing how the and resources; for instance, the history of region has been progressively colonized by Sydney Steel since Black Friday in 1967 private capital and the Canadian state. has been one of considerable frustration, Terrence Downey examines the rise and yet the achievement of public ownership fall of uranium mining at Elliott Lake: the REVIEWS 401 was the outcome of a long struggle on the wars. Three other essays focus on specific part of the steelworkers and their commu­ topics: Diane L. Matters examines the nity. Unfortunately, the authors of The Boys' Industrial School; Jean Barman WPIRG Reader missed the opportunity to analyses the Vemon Preparatory School; provide a more difficult but also a more and Gillian Weiss explores the debates sur­ optimistic analysis. rounding the establishment of kindergar­ tens in various areas of the province. In David Frank addition to these essays, the volume also University of New Brunswick includes a very useful bibliography pre­ pared by Frances M. Woodward and a J. Donald Wilson and David C. Jones, stimulating introductory essay by J. eds., Schooling and Society in 20th Cen­ Donald Wilson. tury British Columbia (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises 1980). The essays are generally written with a good deal of pioneering fervour and the SINCE THE LATE 1960s, the history of edu­ tone of the collection is set by Wilson's cation has proven to be one of the richest introduction. Wilson sees a developmental fields of critical inquiry. In the context of process at work in the recent writing of new concern for theory and method, histo­ Canadian educational history. Over the rians found a wide variety of subjects past 15 years, Wilson perceives a three- which had been ignored or inadequately stage progression in which the traditional addressed: school attendance patterns, perspectives of those such as F. Henry educational ideology, and literacy, to name Johnson were first replaced by Wilson, only a few. Much of the best work was pro­ Robert M. Stamp, and Louis-Phillippe duced by graduate students who came to Audet and then by the radical revisionism educational history with a sense of excite­ of Michael Katz and his students. The ment and challenge. As a result, a series of Schooling and Society essays generally excellent masters and doctoral theses laid reflect the Katz influence and some authors the foundation for a new understanding of attempt to advance this context, most nota­ today's most important institution. bly Jones' emphasis on the '"myth of the land." However, none of the essays offer The focus of research was initially any critique of sources or the kind of sys­ south central Upper Canada/Ontario but in tematic analysis germane to recent social recent years historians have turned their historical writing. The traditional focus on attention to the Prairies and Western Can­ educators and policymakers rather than on ada. As earlier, graduate students are con­ teachers and students is also apparent. In tributing significantly to this development. the future, historians will undoubtedly Schooling and Society is a well-produced study the women and children who actu­ collection of six essays based on masters ally lived British Columbia's educational and doctoral research done at the Univer­ history, and as this occurs, pioneering fer­ sity of British Columbia. The topics of vour will indeed be justified. The general these essays range quite widely over the strength of the collection is in its contribu­ history of schooling in the province. tion to the history of ideas. All the essays Timothy A. Dunn addresses the public attempt to establish a broader theoretical school expansion of 1900-1929 while context for these ideas and it is this fact David C. Jones relates educational thought which supports the claim of innovation. to the ideology of land settlement during the same period. The careers of G. M. Weir The one unfortunate aspect of the and H.B. King are considered by Jean otherwise exceedingly helpful introduction Mann who raises questions about the is Wilson's surprising underestimation of nature of progressivism and its meaning for the role which educational historians have schooling in British Columbia between the played in advancing "mainstream" histori- 402 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

cal thought during the past 15 years. Wil­ torical and sociological literature on young son suggests that, in recent years, educa­ workers. His chapter 4 on the evaluation of tional historians have been struggling to the youth labour market is one of the most catch up with other Canadian scholars. In interesting in the book. There Osterman fact, it was educational historians who argues persuasively that the youth labour were often responsible for drawing atten­ market emerged as a distinct labour market tion to the importance of topics such as the in the early 1900s, and that this transforma­ history of ethnicity, labour, and women, tion resulted from increased enrollment in and, thereby, it was they who breathed new schools, a reduction in the demand for life into a sometimes moribund discipline. unskilled young workers, and an increase It is simply not accurate to suggest that in the supply of other unskilled workers educational historians had to learn theory notably from immigration and from the and methodology from their mainstream pool of unemployed during the depression. counterparts; rather, the reverse was gener­ Denton, Robb, and Spencer (hereafter ally true. Similarly, Wilson seriously DRS), on the other hand, apply econometric downplays the impact which research on techniques to existing data sets, (mainly the educational history of Canada has had for Ontario, and where that is not avail­ internationally and he is unnecessarily able, for Canada), their objective being apologetic about accomplishments to date. "not to explain unemployment among While Schooling and Society is in many young people but to describe it in helpful ways only a tentative first step in terms of ways." (5) Their emphasis is on finding the educational history of British Colum­ empirical regularities in the data, not on bia, its general focus and analyses immedi­ establishing cause and effect or investigat­ ately carry it near the forefront of current ing the historical origins and evolution of historical thinking about the province. the youth labour market.

Both studies provide substantial origi­ Chad Gaffield nal empirical work and not just a review of University of Victoria existing literature or a description of pub­ F.T. Denton, A.L. Robb, and B.G. lished data tabulations. Both utilize econ­ Spencer, Unemployment and Labour ometric techniques that may be difficult for Force Behaviour of Young People: Evi­ some readers. (Osterman uses logit dence from Canada and Ontario (Toronto: analysis and simultaneous equation University of Toronto Press for the Ontario estimates as well as conventional regres­ Economic Council 1980); and P. Oster- sion analyses; DRS utilize logit analysis, man, Getting Started: The Youth Labor spline functions, and transitional prob­ Market (Cambridge, Mass.: MET Press abilities as well as conventional regression 1980). analysis). This raises the question of whether such material is not more appro­ THESE TWO STUDIES are an interesting con­ priate for refereed academic journals trast in methodologies that are typical of where it would reach a wider audience and labour market research. In the tradition of be subject to more scrutiny. My preference dual and segmented labour market would be to have this material written as analysis, Osterman utilizes data from journal articles, or at least as self- interviews of employers and younger (usu­ contained appendices or sections in the ally minority) workers in the Boston labour text, and the results discussed in a non­ market, as well as some national data sels technical fashion in the text itself. such as the National Longitudinal Survey In spite of the different methodologies, of Young Men. In addition, in an attempt data sets, and countries analysed, the two to place the issue in a broader and more studies provide a remarkably similar pic­ historical perspective he examines the his­ ture of the youth labour market. Both REVIEWS 403 studies indicate that the problem of youth the econometric results of DRS indicate this unemployment is not unique to North to be a major determinant of high youth America, nor to the 1960s and 1970s. His­ unemployment. torically and internationally youth unem­ ployment rates have tended to be higher Both studies find that the high youth than adult unemployment rates. They unemployment rate appears to prevail emphasize that the youth labour market is a mainly because of the transitional nature of very dynamic market with youths con­ employment in the youth labour market, as stantly changing jobs and moving in and younger workers engage in job search and out of the labour force and unemployment. enter the transition between school and For most youths, unemployment tends to permanent employment, and as employers be of short duration and it reflects a fill the temporary jobs with younger work­ rational search for a suitable job or a ers. Though insufficient aggregate rational transition between school and demand, the minimum wage, and unem­ eventual longterm commitments to career ployment insurance may have contributed and family. As emphasized by Osterman, somewhat to a worsening of youth unem­ however, for a small number of youths ployment in the 1960s and 1970s, the (notably blacks in the United States) unem­ youth unemployment rate would still have ployment is not a temporary and transi­ been high relative to the adult rate due to its tional experience: these young people bear higher transitional component. a disproportionate burden of youth unem­ ployment and this may have serious long- Neither study was intended to provide a term effects on their labour market behav­ comprehensive treatment of youth unem­ iour. ployment and the youth labour market; hence, they do not provide a comprehen­ Both studies also emphasize that just as sive review of the literature nor even a com­ with unemployment in all age groups, there prehensive bibliography. Important issues is no unique cause of youth unemployment that are not given full treatment include the nor a consensus in the literature concerning relationship of youth unemployment to the relative importance of various contrib­ female unemployment, the impact of pub­ uting factors. Insufficient aggregate lic policies, the substitutability of younger demand is a contributing factor, and is workers for other workers, and the extent emphasized by Osterman as the single to which an early period of unemployment most important factor for the high unem­ has a permanent effect on the labour mar­ ployment of black youths who are last in ket behaviour of young workers (although the hiring queue. The large supply influx Osterman provides some evidence on this of baby-boom youths who entered the point suggesting that the permanent effect labour market in the 1960s and 1970s is not serious for teenagers but it is serious (competing with the influx of women, for older youths, especially blacks). especially married women) certainly con­ While neither study is a comprehensive tributed. Both studies tend to minimize the analysis of the youth labour market, both importance of minimum wage legislation are invaluable inputs into our understand­ which the economics literature suggests ing of that market. They are especially use­ can have a disproportionate adverse ful because they illustrate that similar con­ employment effect on youths. The avail­ clusions emerge from the quite different ability of unemployment insurance, espe­ methodologies that are employed in the cially in Canada where the benefits are two books. fairly high, may also enable some young people to remain unemployed longer than they otherwise would; nevertheless, Morley Gunderson neither the existing empirical literature nor University of Toronto 404 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

Frank R. Anton, Worker Participation: impressive economic performance of that Prescription for Industrial Change (Cal­ country and the declared policy of the Ger­ gary: Detselig 1980). man Trade Union Federation (DGB> to sup­ port the capitalist system. It is unfortunate WORKER PARTICIPATION is one of the more that the author has excluded Sweden and useful additions to the growing number of Norway from his survey. The inclusion of books and articles dealing with the subject. these two countries would allow the reader The increase in literary output is matched to evaluate both bi-partite and tri-partite by the growing interest among employers, decision-making and to explore options governments, and to a lesser extent, beyond the free enterprise model since the unions. Worker and union participation in capitalist/socialist debate is still very much the management of workplaces and union alive in both countries. While the author's involvement in various bipartite and tri­ approach to the subject does not depart partite bodies at the provincial and national from previously published material, the level raises profound political questions, presentation is well organized and easy to that go beyond the narrow confines of read. The aims of participation are charac­ industrial relations. terized as ethical/psychological (develop­ Given the political nature of the sub­ ment of personality, job satisfaction, ject, the reader should be clear about the reduced alienation), political/social assumptions and aims of the author which (extension of democratic principle to the are stated frequently throughout the book. economic and industrial sphere), and eco­ Anton begins with the unsatisfactory state nomic (more effective utilization of human of labour-manage ment relations in Canada resources leading to increased efficiency citing the fact that Canada has had the sec­ and profitability). ond worst work-stoppage record among The forms of worker participation are industrial nations during the past decade. separated into direct and indirect partici­ Increased cooperation between labour and pation with considerable emphasis given to employers is seen as essential. If it is not the latter which includes collective bar­ arrived at voluntarily, Anton believes that it gaining, works councils, and worker rep­ will be imposed by governments. While resentation on enterprise management and the author sees the need for government supervisory boards. An important require­ initiatives, he clearly favours limited gov­ ment, according to Anton, must be the ernment intervention with the emphasis on satisfaction of perceived needs of labour as voluntary bi-partite arrangements between well as those of management. Since most labour and capital, in contrast to more mas­ innovations in direct participation, such as sive government intervention through Quality of Working Life (QWL>, are in fact extensive legislation and tri-partite bodies. initiated by management we need not The overriding concern of the author is to worry too much about the perceived needs preserve the free enterprise system which, of employers being jeopardized. Indirect in his view, can only be achieved through participation, such as the proposed tri­ worker participation in decision-making partite National Council for Social and coupled with a redistribution of power in Economic Planning or the bi-partite major favour of employees and unions. projects task force (the "Blair-Carr Task Force"), tend to be initiated by business or Anton uses evidence from West Ger­ governments although the CLC'S Labour many, the Netherlands, the United King­ Manifesto/or Canada comes to mind as an dom, and the European Economic Com­ exception to this rule! munity to support his advocacy of worker participation in Canada. His particular One of the situational factors discussed interest in the West German system of co- by the author would seem to be of particu­ determination is understandable given the lar relevance to Canada. The participatory REVIEWS 405

potential may be affected by the extent to more in the near future. Like Marcel Four- which an enterprise is free to make manag­ nier's Communisme et Anticommunisme erial decisions. Multinational enterprises, 1920-1950, this publication is sympathetic which dominate the Canadian economic but critical; its major weakness is that it scene, may well be restricted in their devotes too little attention to the way in decision-making on issues of importance which the Communist Party handled the to either direct or indirect participation. national question. Evidence from Norway would tend to sup­ Most of the book is devoted to the port this view. One of the premises of the activities of the Quebec section of the CP author, however, must be challenged. which were identical to the activities of all Anton argues that the introduction of the other provincial committees across the worker participation in Canada will result country, except for the fact that important in a redistribution of power in favour of documents issued in Toronto at the Party's labour. If we restrict ourselves to a strictly national office, or even by the provincial formalistic interpretation of participatory committee in Montreal, had to be transla­ innovations, it is possible to argue that ted into French. In other words, while it decisions previously made solely by the had to use the French language in Quebec employer must now be shared with labour. from time to time, the politics of the The political reality as well as the evidence Quebec party were definitely not French. from Europe, however, does not support Neither was the leadership. Even though such a claim. The case of Sweden is of French Quebeckers did hold important interest here. In order to advance their positions, at least in the titular sense, they goals of worker participation, organized were always outvoted and dominated by labour in that country felt compelled to the Anglophones in the Quebec organiza­ press for supportive legislation to curtail tion and, of course, by the national leader­ the prerogatives of management. Even the ship in Toronto. On all vital questions of West German system of co-determination, interpretation, it was the English view that apparently favoured by the author, is won out without exception. Every new turn firmly anchored in national legislation. in the Party's line on French Canada was Advocates of worker participation in created by the English comrades, often Canada will find this book useful- The against strong disagreemenl from the material is well researched and persuasive French. Comeau and Dionne say as much for those sharing the basic assumptions and in the issues which Ihey deal with, but they aims of the author. The discussion of deal with only a few of them, and thus we obstacles to worker participation in Can­ are denied a more intensive examination of ada, particularly those related to the intro­ what is really the key question about the duction of worker representatives to com­ communists in Quebec. pany boards, will be of interest to "pro­ gressive" employers and interested unions. The main issue they discuss is the Par­ ty's position on the national question dur­ ing the period after 1941 when, as a result Gerry Hunnius of the Soviet Union's participation in the York University war, the CP of Canada changed from Robert Comeau, Bernard Dionne, Les opposing the war to supporting it. In the communistes au Quebec 1936-1956 period from 1939 to 1941 the CP in Quebec (Montréal: Les presses de l'unité 1980). made common cause with the most extreme French Canadian nationalists in THIS IS THE second book on communism in opposition to the war, but this is dealt with Quebec in less than a year, and very briefly. In supporting the war the judging by the theses referred to in both Quebec party had to spend a considerable books, ihere will probably be at least a few effort to denounce these same nationalists 406 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

who continued to oppose the war and espe­ documents of this period such as Joseph cially to oppose conscription. The parly's Starobin's American Communism in theoretical position had to be altered to fit Crisis, 1943-1957 and Fernando Claudin"s in with this new task. Its publications now The Communist Movement from Comin­ stressed that while Quebec was a nation, it tern to Cominform, and many others, show had already won its main political demand, that Browder and Buck took this line the right of self-determination. What directly from Stalin. The mistake that remained was to win economic equality Browder made was not changing after the with the English! war, even though this was no longer the After the war, the Party took a stronger position of the Soviet Union. line on the right of self-determination, but The last section of the book deals with immediately got involved in a bitter debate the crisis that shook the party in 1956-57, with its French members over two basic after the revelations about Stalin made at questions; the Francophones demanded the 20th Congress of the Communist Party more autonomy for the Quebec section of of the Soviet Union and the invasion of the Party, and opposed Buck's position Hungary by the Soviet Army in October that the Party should demand that social 1956. It is regrettable that the authors did policy be taken from the provinces and not examine or refer to the wide ranging given to the federal government. The Party debate that took place at the time, for in leadership in Quebec and in Toronto fact this is the one instance in the Party's decided that the position taken by the history, that all points of view were able to French comrades was "bourgeois nation­ get published in the party press. This was alism" and expelled or pushed out almost due to the fact that almost from the begin­ the entire French section. This happened at ning of the debate to the Convention of the 1947 provincial convention, and the 1957, the dissidents had a majority on the fact that the Party had lost at one blow prac­ National Executive Committee. Instead of tically its entire French membership, did giving us the main lines of the debate, the not upset the leadership at all. Instead, it authors limit themselves to brief inter­ issued several ultimatums, stating that views with some of the dissidents, whose each individual would have to publicly views, as given, are incorrect or incom­ declare that he or she was wrong and the plete. party correct, in order to be re-admitted to the ranks. The authors have wisely made no attempt to find an overall explanation for The authors cite a few other examples the failure of the Party to establish itself where the Party reversed its positions, even among French-Canadian workers. Several while denying that it was changing. The explanations by others are presented, but major example given is the period of the none are endorsed. The book gives a fair war when the Party adopted the "Browder account of both the positive and negative line" which supported the position of the sides to the efforts of the Party, but does leader of the CPUSA that the post-war world not make the mistake of suggesting that would be one of partnership and harmony without the errors, the Communist Party between the Soviet Union and the major might have become a mass organization in imperialists who had become allies against Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. Germany. But the authors make the mis­ take of accepting the position of the then Norman Penner leader of the B.C. section, Fergus Glen don College McKean, who accused the party of going York University against Stalin by advocating this line. Here is another place in which the authors are Alice Hanson Jones, Wealth of a Nation to too skimpy in their research. The major Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of REVIEWS 407 the Revolution (New York: Columbia Uni­ such records were not complete, particu­ versity Press 1980). larly in the South, the author supplemented them with a wide variety of other primary DURING THE PAST DECADE, cliometricians sources. Dr. Jones hoped to be able to draw have done much to illuminate dark corners what is known as a "self-weighting sam­ of the past. By sensitively applying statisti­ ple," but when this proved impossible for a cal methodology, such historians have number of technical reasons, she designed been able to tell us a good deal about topics a series of rather ingenious controls to which previously were either unexplored ensure that her picture of wealth holding or approached imprecisely. Their contribu­ was as accurate as possible. For example, tions have been especially noteworthy in she needed to take into account the wealth the study of the American colonial era. holding of the large mass of individuals Scholars such as Kenneth Lockridge, Rus­ whose estates were never probated, as well sell Menard, Philip Greven, and John as controlling for bias introduced by the fact that individuals were generally McCusker have utilized techniques drawn wealthier at later stages in their lives. from the social sciences to enrich our understanding of the period. The results are seminal. Dr. Jones has But cliometrics by themselves do not been able to estimate that the total physical necessarily enlighten. Indeed, when used wealth of the thirteen colonies in 1774 was without adequate concern for historical approximately £88 million sterling, reality, these techniques can often obscure excluding the value of slaves and servants, as much as they reveal. The obvious case in or about £37.4 sterling for every man, point is Time on the Cross, but Fogel and woman, and child, whether free or slave. Engerman's study of slavery is not alone in She has also been able to demonstrate that this category. The use of statistics and wealth holding was not equally distributed modelling does not absolve the historian of regionally. With slaves excluded, the Mid­ the responsibility for being sensitive to the dle Colonies were the wealthiest on a per particular conditions in the period under capita basis; when slaves were included, study. the South was by far the wealthiest region- By any standard, however. New England By and large, Alice Hanson Jones falls emerged as the least wealthy region. There into the category of those cliometricians also was inequality between urban and who have not done disservice to the past. rural locations. In the South, rural resi­ The publication of American Colonial dents tended to be wealthier than the urban Wealth, a three-volume collection of docu­ compatriots, but north of Virginia, the ments based upon her Chicago PhD disser­ situation was generally reversed. Dr. Jones tation, immediately thrust her to the fore­ was also able to determine discrepancies front of economic historians of the colonial based upon occupation, although the situa­ period. In that work, Dr. Jones dealt not tion in this regard appeared to be relatively only with a number of basic questions fluid. about wealth holding patterns in the imme­ diate pre-Revolutionary period but also All of these pieces of information are posed a host of questions for further of great importance in understanding the analysis. Wealth of a Nation to Be deals colonies on the eve of the Revolution. Yet brilliantly with most of these. there are several problems with the book. The core of this new volume is based, First of all, by applying a cross-sectional as was her earlier work, upon a detailed analysis (analyzing wealth holding in only study of the wealth holding of 919 indi­ one year), Dr. Jones failed to give us a viduals resident in 21 sample counties sense of change over time. This is rectified throughout the thirteen colonies. Probates partially by comparison with studies of the were the most important source, but where post-Revolutionary period, but it is less 408 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

satisfactory tor the colonial period, where w ish that this important work had been pre­ her stud) is the first of its type. Had she sented more felicitously. concerned herself more with change over Lewis R. Fischer time, she might have been able to throw Memorial University of Newfoundland greater light on the continuing controversy over the nature of the Revolution. Were Americans on the eve of Independence Allen Pred, Urban Growth and City- growing more or less wealthy? Did Systems in the United States, 1840-/860 wealth-holding patterns exhibit any evi­ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press dence ot an economic "crisis,'* particu­ 1980). larly among merchants and planters'' Were How CITIES ARE organized into systems the urban poor becoming increasingly and how they pull together regions have impoverished? These all would have been engaged geographers, economic histo­ important questions. but the work will rians, and historians for some decades. have to be done by others. Best known to Canadians is the Laurentian The nature of Dr. Jones' sample also metropolitan model of Innis, Creighton, leads to a bit of dissatisfaction. She chose and Careless strongly connected to export to stratify her sample by county, which staples. Recently James Simmons has been allows her to generalize about wealth hold­ working toward an evolving model for ing on a colony to colony basis. Unfortuna­ Canada based on quantitative data. As tely. her generalizations are less secure for reviewed by Pred (3), several approaches other variables, such as occupation. With­ to U.S. nineteenth-century city systems out an adequate census from which to build have emerged in recent years. Although in weighting schemes, the author's con­ Pred finds wanting idiosyncratic and clusions about the patterns of wealth for abstract views, it is clear after four books various occupational groupings are not on that he himself is still going around in cir­ very firm ground, since there is no evi­ cles with the same feedback model as he dence that her sample adequately meas­ developed in his first book of 1966. He ured average values of wealth for the vari­ does, however, contribute new insights ous groups in societ) . based on new empirical data, and further, he is now more cautious in attempting to One final warning. Although Dr. Jones deal with four questions: "How simple or clearly displays the sensitivity of an histor­ complex were the economic interdepen- ian. she presents her results in the manner dencies of major centers within the U.S. of a social scientist, taking her readers step system of cities and its various regional bv step through the analytic process. While city systems during the 1840-1860 period? this is fascinating, it is also likely to be dis­ How did the economic interdependencies turbing tor man\ historians. Not until the of that period interact with the feedback final summary chapter does the author pull processes that apparently affected popula­ all the strands together to paint a global tion growth within major centers and other picture of wealth holding in the colonies. individual cities? How can those same Unfortunately, there are many who are not interdependencies be related to the ongo­ likely to persevere to that point, largely ing processes of national and regional because the author's prose is often a chore city-system growth and development? to read, and there is little evidence to Why was major-center rank stability solid­ suggest that her editors have done much to ified or maintained?..." help. This is a pity, because the author has much to say both to specialists and general Considering the last question first, readers interested in the period. A careful Pred continues to stress the stability of the reading of the volume will more than repay system or, as he put it in 1966, the "initial the student, but this does not preclude the advantage" of places. Against his critics REVIEWS 409 who suggest somewhat more variability, power are hardly mentioned. British capi­ Pred criticizes the U.S. census definitions tal invested heavily in American technol­ of urban as running counter to his view. ogy as it had through "credit" in the colo­ While the period under discussion is still nial era. In all his works pre-1790 develop­ seen as that of the most rapid urban growth ments are not discussed. Third, teleology in U.S. history (compared to 1891-1913 in creeps in. The 1790-1840 city system was Canada), he argues that the census skews in an "infant" state, and therefore it seems the data by admitting only places of 2,500 not as complex as between 1840 and 1860 to the urban category. Hence, far too many and later. Even if one were to accept "new" places are actually old, and in the (wrongly) the biological analogy, infants aggregate appear to contribute more to are hardly simple! Throughout there is not urban growth than do larger places. much sense of people acting here. Through his analysis, Pred argues that But to conclude on an upbeat note. His larger cities attracted relatively more 1973 volume on 1790-1840 offered immigrants and generated more employ­ gratuitous advice to the third world, and ment than what appears on the surface. dismissed the empirical historical geogra­ Stability and the strength of large phy to promote his "time-geography." places is also stressed through an empirical This time around he not only uses the work discussion of interdependences among of historical geographers, he concludes places. Complexity emerges from this skeptically and cautiously that " the state of view, more so than in the 1790-1840 period knowledge concerning ... urban growth (as discussed in his previous book) but less (and decline) is still much too rudimentary than in the post-1860 era of corporate for scholars to accept unquestioningly industrialization. From this discussion he either my model formulations or those of develops a typology of five "interdepen­ anyone else." (171) dence dyads" between large, intermediate and small places regionally and inter- James T. Lemon regionally, and then his oft-described feed­ University of Toronto back probabilistic model. Spatial biases result from uneven Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Herman regional development and skewing within Daems, eds., Managerial Hierarchies, the urban system. The final discussion Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of deals with "specializedeconomic informa­ the Modern Industrial Enterprise tion" through newspapers, postal services, (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University business travel (by rail (hen coming into its Press 1980). own), and telegraph. New York and other large places enhanced their control. This is WHY DID the managerial hierarchies of an interesting chapter stressing the speed­ modern corporate enterprise arise when ing up of flows. and in the way that they did in the United States, and how and why did their evolu­ Because of his behavioural language tion diverge and converge with corporate and perspective, Pred does not discuss or growth in Great Britain, Germany, and sidesteps a number of issues. First, France? Why, for example, did large-scale although he touches on capital flows he managerial enterprise dominate major sec­ pleads that another kind of book would be tors of the American economy before necessary. Perhaps instead of refining the World War I but not become a major force model for yet a fourth time, he might well in the British economy until the 1920s and have taken this tack. This might have led 1930s, and not until after World War II in him also to consider political power and the case of France? And why did the shift even labour. Further, empirically, as from market to managerial mechanisms of before, London and British economic coordination occur in some particular 410 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

industries in a country and not in others: in increased economic activity to a speed and mass-produced machinery in the United volume that superseded market mecha­ States, but not in cotton textiles? And why nisms of coordination. When volume was in a particular industry in one country but small and marketing requirements fairly not in the same industry in another country: simple, manufacturers had few incentives in food-processing in Britain, but not in to integrate distribution with production. France or Germany? And how is one to Coal energy and the railroads and tele­ weigh such diverse factors as market size, graph transformed this situation in the mid energy and transportation technologies, to late nineteenth century. Older organiza­ social attitudes, and legal institutions in tional forms persisted in such labour- explaining the results? These are the kinds intensive industries as wood, cloth, of questions that guide this ambitious foray leather, and specialized goods, but entre­ into comparative institutional history. preneurs in new-product industries inte­ Because the essayists take as their grated production and distribution pro­ point of departure Alfred D. Chandler's cesses and established hierarchical levels findings for the United States, the collec­ of salaried managers to co-ordinate the tion possesses a degree of conceptual clar­ flow and allocate expanding resources. ity and intellectual coherence unusual for a Once in place, these managerial hierar­ collective enterprise of this sort. Emphasis chies became their own sources of eco­ upon the Chandlerian framework will dis­ nomic growth. Mangers, determined to appoint some students of labour history to keep their organizations profitably be sure. It focusses upon business manage­ employed, increased the speed and volume ment, not factory management; on why of their activities, absorbed more business and how managers manage other manag­ units, and internalized more and more mar­ ers, not how they manage their labour ket decisions. Chandler refers in passing to force. Chandler studies the organization of the cultural and legal factors that might the firm, not the organization of produc­ account for European contrasts with his tion technology, to repeat a distinction that model, a theme which Morton Keller Oliver Williamson draws in a thoughtful explores in a chapter on the regulatory review of The Visible Hand (1977) response to large-scale enterprise in each included in the volume. Following this tra­ country. But technology and markets, not dition, the volume's six other contributors cultural patterns, and certainly not entre­ omit any reference to labour's role in the preneurial personality, are the central origins of modern enterprise, or in the determinants in Chandler's formulation. spread of those managerial techniques designed to recruit, train, and control an It is not possible to summarize all the industrial work force. The seminal nature data and hypotheses that Leslie Hanna, of Chandler's work on business organiza­ Jtirgen Kocka, and Maurice Lévy-Leboyer tion is not in doubt, however, and this vol­ introduce in their essays on Great Britain, ume joins Evolution of International Man­ Germany, and France respectively, but the agement Structures (1975), edited by greater persistance of marketing middle­ Harold F. Williamson, as an example of men in Europe as compared to the United his spreading influence. States is certainly worth noting. Leslie Hannah argues, for example, that a In the opening chapter, Chandler sum­ "highly developed and efficient British marizes the views he has developed at system of markets for commodities, skills length in Visible Hand and elsewhere. He and distributive and financial services, as argues that the multiunit, multifunctional, well as for final products" (63-4) obviated managerially-coordinated firm emerged in the need for internal management hierar­ the United States when technological chies in that country, despite the accelera­ breakthroughs and market growth tion of economic flows occasioned by the REVIEWS 411 application of coal and steam to industrial Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor processes and by the growth of a railway Movement in the United States, Volume V, network. In other words, the conditions The AFL in the Progressive Era, that Chandler argues necessitated vertical 1910-1915 (New York: International Pub­ integration in the United States did not pro­ lishers 1980). duce that outcome in Great Britain. Levy- Leboyer also finds for France that mer­ THE FIFTH VOLUME of Philip S. Foner's chant control over wholesaling impeded History of Labor in the United States fol­ forward integration. In a concluding essay, lows the same style as its predecessors. Herbert Daems argues that such national Written from a traditional left-wing per­ differences in marketing makes an under­ spective, it contrasts with most general sur­ standing of when, where, and how market­ veys of the subject including the "progres­ ing mechanisms became hierarchically sive" J.R. Commons' edited volumes — integrated with production a key question the only other multi-volume history of for future comparative study. American labour. But, like Commons, Managerial hierarchies emerged at dif­ Foner writes "old" labour history. He is ferent times in different economies, but concerned with central leadership and with when they did appear, these authors argue, nationally significant strikes. Readers they clustered in the most technologically interested in ideas about working-class advanced industries in all four countries. culture or in new methods of statistical The American and German cases are most analysis will have to look elsewhere. Still, comparable both in timing and in large- even if there is nothing particularly novel in scale concentration in chemicals and Foner's account, one is constantly electrical machinery. Kocka finds that the impressed by the wide range of his sources distribution of the largest manufacturing and by his ability to compress them into a firms among industrial groups was similar well written survey. The momentous and in both countries before World War I, a often horrific events he describes lose finding that suggests that technological nothing in the retelling. factors predominated over legal differ­ ences as a force for integration. Even when The years covered by this volume, German managers had the option legally to 1910 to 1915, seem rather arbitrarily cho­ choose a cartel form of coordination, in sen. In discussing labour's relations with contrast to their American counterparts "progressive" movements, for instance, who nervously eyed anti-trust laws, they (in some ways the best part of the book), chose to integrate. Foner reaches back to the turn of the cen­ tury. Meanwhile, vital subjects like "sci­ The evidence is hardly definitive for entific management" and "relations the wide variety of comparative questions between the AFL and the iww," which are that Alfred Chandler's work in institu­ essential to an understanding of the period, tional economic history has stimulated, but appear in other volumes. It is therefore dif­ Managerial Hierarchies suggests both the ficult to treat this volume in isolation from force of the questions and the important others in the series. implications of the accumulating results. Still, a pattern of sorts does emerge. The work opens with the highly dramatic Robert D. Cuff McNamara case, in which the lawyers York University defending the two brothers accused of per­ petrating the Los Angeles Times building explosion tried to use the trial to bring about a grand reconciliation of labour and capital through confession by the accused. Instead of forgiveness all round, as they 412 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

had planned, the result was a harsh sen­ remark that the struggles merely "made it tence. The story describes the period in clear that the U.S. ruling class had failed to microcosm. Thus, in the first half of the extend completely its hegemony over the volume. Foner explores the AFL's attempts working class," seems curiously mild. It is to create a more just society through partic­ tantamount to saying that capitalist ipation in progressive politics, and the hegemony was almost complete. rejection of independent labour or socialist It is worth considering the range of pos­ politics that was apparently favoured by an sibilities about worker consciousness. The increasing number of the rank and file. phrase "transformation of workers' con­ Success for the AFL leaders seemed to be at sciousness" comes from David hand with the election of Woodrow Wil­ Montgomery's seminal article in the Jour­ son. his appointment of a trade unionist as nal of Social Hislory (1974) dealing with Secretary of Labor, and his passage of the some of the same strikes as Foner. In using Clayton Act which was supposed to free this phrase, Montgomery is obviously labour from the horrendous power of court referring to class consciousness but what injunctions based on anti-trust legislation. has forced it upon the workers, in his view, Samuel Gompers considered it a noble vic­ is the increasing loss of "control" over the tory — labour's Magna Carta. But it was work place as a result of the rise of scien­ all a sham. As the courts were soon to tific management. The result, according to show, the Clayton Act gave labour noth­ Montgomery, was a series of strikes ing. The efforts to achieve fairness through including the one by the machinists on the class collaboration proved futile. Mean­ Harriman system and the series by immi­ while, the harsh realities of American grant semi-skilled workers in the garment industrial life were evident in the moment­ trades. Although within the orbit of the ous strikes of the period. These "revolts," AFL. these strikes really constituted a "syn­ which Fonerexamines in the second half of dicalist" upheaval, that is. their ultimate the book, comprised the General Strike in goal was control. On the other hand, the Philadelphia in 1910. the shopmen's strike other possibility that Foner suggests, on the Harriman Railroad system 1911-15, namely that these strikes are but small gaps miners' strikes in West Virginia 1912-13. in an otherwise complete capitalist Colorado 1913-14. and the Michigan hegemony over the workers, conjures vi­ copper belt 1913. and finally the garment sions of a society in which class conscious­ workers' strikes 1909-14. What makes ness. whether it existed or not, had little these upheavals most significant was that effect on American developments. Both of they took place within the orbit of the AFL these schools of thought, it need scarcely — not the radical Iww — at a time when its be said, differ from that of the Commons' leaders followed a policy of accommoda­ school. tion. Though Foner tells a good story with a With such vastly different interpreta­ certain dramatic flair, he fails to draw any tions open to us, and with such little spe­ overall conclusions about the period. In cific guidance from the author as to where particular, he avoids being explicit about he stands, it is interesting to ask whether one vital question — namely the true state his narrative provides any clues. Here, ! of workers' consciousness and the effect, believe, two salient points arc made. if any, that it had on developments. The First, in reading Foner's work one is one place in which he raised the question. constantly impressed by the formidable in his brief introduction, can be taken two physical power of American capitalist ways. On the one hand, he tells us that power and state power. Both the law itself these years witnessed a "transformation of and law enforcers scarcely ever failed to workers' consciousness," which seems to act against organised labour, and strikes say quite a lot. but on the other hand his were usually defeated. It is the powerless- REVIEWS 413

ness of labour that is the most salient fea­ more central to the immigrant's life. Stu­ ture of American life. dents of labour history, modernization, But if capitalists waged the class strug­ woman's and family history, assimilation gle unrelentingly, this is not necessarily a and social mobility have all been guilty of guide to labour's actions. In fact, it is the selecting elements of the immigrant expe­ limited nature of labour's demands that rience without exploring their subject's emerges in Foner's book. Organized complete universe — his/her socio- labour at all levels associated itself with economy, social contacts, ethnicity, world "progressivism" in its early stages and so view, and aspirations. Against this back­ showed a desire to participate in American drop, it is refreshing to read a book such as politics. Even if there was a later drift to John W. Briggs's An Italian Passage on independent politics and to social democ­ Italian immigrants in Utica, Rochester, racy, this was still a means of ameliorating and Kansas City, a volume which makes the system rather than of challenging it the immigrant, rather than the union mem­ completely. At least, so it seemed to the ber, the mobile individual, or the mother, extreme left at the time. As for the major the central focus of its study. "revolts" in industry, it is true that the pre­ Briggs adheres to Timothy Smith's valence of sympathy strikes shows a high admonition that the immigrant must be degree of class consciousness. Neverthe­ examined on both sides of the ocean, in the less, what strikers persistently demanded pre-industrial Old World setting and in the was union recognition as a prelude to bar­ North American industrial, urban centre. gaining. Foner presents little evidence that Thus, the first section of the monograph the hard knocks labour received, in the pur­ examines the world the contadini left suit of these limited demands, led to any­ behind. In the early chapters as well as in thing more revolutionary. It is thus ironic the ensuing pages, Briggs presents the that the author who for long was regarded reader with an impressive array of informa­ as the Marxist historian of the American tion and data — among them, destination labour movement, when compared with points on the passport application forms of the new Marxist historians of the a Sicilian town, membership statistics of Montgomery school, should now appear to mutual aid societies in a number of south- be so much closer to the Commons school em Italian communities, and rates of he so long challenged. endogamy among immigrants in Utica from common provinces and regions in W.M. Dick Italy. Yet, despite the enormous research, Scarborough College this volume is marred by questionable University of Toronto premises, occasional contradictions, and at times by data which say little about the John W. Briggs, An Italian Passage: immigrant experience and which do not Immigrants to Three American Cities, clarify Brigg's main themes. 1890-1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press 1978). Central to Brigg's study is the thesis that Italian immigrants to American urban IN RECENT YEARS social historians have centres were not passive, apathetic indi­ turned to the North American immigrant in viduals shaped by "'external forces" but a manner reminiscent of ward heelers, Pro­ rather "active agents, capable of initiative testant missionaries, and reformers in the as well as accommodation, and. . . pos­ Progressive Era. They use the immigrant sessors of a viable culture which shaped to achieve specific goals pertinent to their their perceptions of their American experi­ research, and in their eagerness to abstract ence, in many ways giving them a sense of certain aspects of the immigrant experi­ continuity between the past and the pre­ ence, many social historians neglect issues sent." (272) This perspective, although 414 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR rare, is not novel and indeed was central to sources are statements of intent; he has no Rudolph Vecoli's work of the early 1960s evidence that any actions were ever on the Italians in Chicago. What is off- effected to achieve prescribed goals. To putting about Briggs's approach, though, make his case that Italians were future are his gauges of the "viable culture" of oriented and progressive in the hometown, the contadini. He devotes two chapters to a he refers to the 1871 constitution of the survey of formal education and mutual aid Società Filarmonica ed Operaia per societies in southern Italy and two parallel Mutuo Soccorso of the commune of Vig- chapters on those institutions among Ita­ giano in which it was stated that members' lians in Utica, Rochester, and Kansas City. children aged six to twelve years were to be Briggs' purpose is to demonstrate that kept in school. Yet Viggiano, along with these people were not aimless illiterates, Laurenzana, was the town in Basilicata incapable of cooperation or void of any most notorious for sending child street sense of future orientation. I question, musicians — the "little slaves of the harp" however, the validity of demonstrating a — to New York, Chicago, and other general desire for formal education among American and European cities in the 1860s a people to indicate a viable culture or and 1870s. future orientation. Is Briggs not employing American middle-class values to do this? This discrepancy between formal state­ Certainly there are other values, institu­ ment and actual practice appears in other tions, and social contacts — especially chapters, especially when Briggsdiscusses informal ones — more intrinsic to the cul­ the ethnicity of the immigrants. For exam­ ture of the late nineteenth-century con- ple, his assertion that immigrants from ladino. Laurenzana, who defeated the towns­ people from Lucca in a 1903 boccie tour­ Another problem with Brigg's presen­ nament in Utica, were Italian "in self- tation is that we are not certain about how concept" simply because the "Patriotism important or relevant formal education in their speeches referred to obligations to truly was to the average southern Italian Italy" is too easily made. Examining in ret­ peasant. We have virtually no statistics for rospect what Lawrence W. Le vine calls the specific communes on the rates of children consciousness or the mind of a people enrolled in elementary schools, not to men­ involves more than taking statements at tion attendance records. Instead we are face value. Briggs should have examined told about the number and conditions of more carefully the Laurenztinesi's claims schools, and about the eagerness of local to being Italian. Certainly the fact that each officials to promote education. Likewise, of the two opposing teams in the tourna­ Briggs's discussion of mutual aid societies ment represented an Old World hometown, is an institutional study rather than an places Briggs's assertion on shaky ground. attempt to understand the members. He Indeed, Briggs's whole treatment of admits that he found no written records for the theme of ethnicity or nationality among individual societies, so his major sources are the constitutions of the self-help Italian immigrants invites skepticism. He institutions. Although I sympathize with rejects the idea that the peasant immi­ him on the paucity of more detailed grants' most intensive contacts in the records, i disagree with Briggs's facile North American town or city were with method of taking general intentions printed Old World townsmen, but rather contends in the societies' constitutions at face value. that the former peasants in Utica, Roches­ He attempts to show that the societies not ter, and Kansas City came to view them­ only provided for funeral and sick benefits, selves primarily as Italians. Unfortunately, but also promoted upright, moral conduct Briggs's criteria for determining loyalties, and formal education. Yet, Briggs's sole especially campanilismo (essentially, strong allegiance to the hometown and its REVIEWS 415

people) in the New World are insufficient. hometown "to keep from sliding into an His only measure of the latter phenomenon undifferentiated proletarian mass" but he are rates of intramarriage in the American explores no farther. He does not indicate city among peasants from a common who in the family unit left and how the hometown or province: "Campanilismo decision was made. He writes nothing might be said to be at work when endogam- about towns where emigration was not an ous marriages exceeded the rate expected alternative but a social fact so entrenched if mating were to occur randomly through­ that to stay home was a sign of deviancy. out the colony." (81-84) This might be an The analysis of the immigrants' sense of important gauge, but certainly neither a space in the New World is lacking. Briggs central nor an exclusive one. I think that devotes his efforts to estimating the ratio of the problem with Briggs's perceptions of Italian immigrants to the total population nationality and ethnicity go much deeper. in the Italian wards of the three cities, but When he states that if "a spirit of camp­ he makes no attempt to understand the cog­ anilismo had been prominent in Rochester, nitive maps or psychic neighbourhoods of the colony would have been hopelessly the contadini. Social history from the bot­ divided and impotent," (87) Briggs betrays tom up should be more concerned with the an inner belief that an immigrant cannot immigrant's world view, informal social sustain loyalties to both hometown and Old contacts, and cognitive world than with the Country. Perhaps it would be more useful political power of an ethnic group accruing to view the immigrant as a possessor of from its relative strength in numbers in the multiple, or expanding loyalties; such a population. view has been expounded by Fredrick Frey, Feliks Gross, and others. In fact, An Italian Passage is a smoothly- Briggs himself accepts this idea in his written book and Briggs deserves praise chapter "From Italian to Italian- for his detailed research. It is unfortunate, American": "Patriotism was now associ­ however, for the historiography of Italian ated with America; Italy and things Italian immigration that the author was apparently remained important, but in the nature of a more anxious to find proofs for a number cherished and romanticized past that had of a priori theories rather than in studying emotional significance and served as a the inner consciousness of the immigrants. determinant of group status to which they As a postscript, I draw attention to were now committed." (136) Briggs sees Yale University Press's slipshod spelling the dual identities of Italian and American of a number of names and place-names. in terms of accommodation yet he rejects Although I can accept an incorrect spelling the notion that a paesano (a townsman) of the small town of Viggiano or the can also be an Italian. He does not resolve ubiquitous "g" at the end of Irvin Child's the problem of dual identities convincingly first name, I find no excuse for misspelling and this is most obvious in his treatment of such names as Columbus, Garibaldi, and the mutual aid societies. Briggs does not Briggs's colleague, Mark Stolarik. account for the many societies in Utica which drew immigrants from a single Ita­ John E. Zucci lian town; the presence of such societies University of Toronto hardly lends credence to his view that the immigrants forsook their hometown and Paul Avrich, The Modern School Move­ regional loyalties for allegiances to Italy. ment: Anarchism and Education in the Ultimately, Briggs fails to enter the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton minds and to perceive the world views of University Press 1980). the contadini of these three American cities. He posits that emigrants left the IN THE 1960S, reformers and radicals sought to transform the American public school sys­ tem, and revisionist historians set out to 416 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

rewrite its history. Largely overlooked by losophy, In a" natural," unstructured envi­ annalists and activists alike was a curious ronment, where children would learn by and remarkable chapter in the history of observing and doing; where teachers were private education — the anarchist inspired companions instead of authority figures; "modern school movement." In a fascinat­ where the individuality and dignity of the ing chronicle, Paul Avrich traces the devel­ child were sacrosanct; and where disci­ opment and demise of this libertarian expe­ pline and punishment were as alien as riment which pre-dated the turbulent exams and grades, the modern school 1960s, and from which "revolutionary" advocates attempted to put into practice educators of that period, had they glanced what their mentors had preached. It is jar­ over their own shoulders, might well have ring to realize that not a single educational learned a great deal, innovation of the 1960s, from field trips to Few developments in the history of the free schools, was original. American anarchist movement escaped the Yet in their promotion of unqualified imprint of Emma Goldman and Alexander individual liberty, the anarchists encoun­ Berkman, and the modern school tered enormous difficulties. Contradic­ phenomenon was no exception. Inspired tions abounded in their movemeni and edu­ by the martyrdom of Francisco Ferrer, a cational philosophy. Deifying indi­ Spanish educator and revolutionary vidualism, some extreme libertarians, like anarchist, who was executed in his home­ Alexis and Elizabeth Ferm. sounded more land in 1909, his American followers soon like nineteenth-century liberals, as they established the Ferrer Center in New York. argued that the government which governs This cultural and educational institution least governs best. They opposed welfare, devoted itself to immortalizing Ferrer's eschewed social action, and were hostile to name and spreading his educational philos­ all institutions (but theirown school). Ale­ ophy. xander Berkman would not have agreed Backed by a small, motley collection with all of their ideas, but he was his own of socialists, liberals, and progressive paradox. While he claimed that the modern philanthropists (in the days when free schools should be forums for anti- thinking leftists could submerge ideologi­ capitalist propaganda, in the same breath cal differences for the common purpose of he spoke against teaching children any fighting capitalist plutocracy), American "isms," and favoured the pursuit of knowl­ anarchists opened a dozen "modern edge for its own sake. Furthermore, the schools" across the nation between 1910 libertarian teachers wanted parents and 1915. Though seldom able to recreate excluded from the schools, yet as rebels the spirit and optimism of these early from the public system, most found it years, the movement survived for the next impossible to avoid imposing upon the four decades. Facing insurmountable educators and children frequently tearing obstacles, the modern school association the colonies and schools apart. In retro­ finally disbanded in 1956. spect, Leonard Abbott (a movement pioneer) concluded that despite the good Fervently, if naively, devoted to the that flowed from the schools, the anarchist belief that to free the nation they must first educators never did develop a workable free its children, the libertarians invoked philosophy, in part the result of the anti- the catchwords and processes associated intellectualism of those teachers who had almost exclusively with the educational little use for book learning. experiments of the 1960s. But long before then, thinkers like Rousseau, Godwin, Most destructive to the anarchist cause, Bakunin, Ferrer, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy apart from state harassment and deporta­ had articulated, in the minds of the anarch­ tion of many of its leaders, was the vicious ists, an infinitely viable educational phi­ conflict within colonies and schools REVIEWS 417

between anarchists and communists. movement, that at times his account reads While cooperation characterized early like an anarchist year book, where no relations, the rise of Stalin turned them graduates escape mention, however into irreconcilable enemies. Some anarch­ ephemeral their contributions. Some crea­ ists even turned names of communists over tive and rigorous editing (preferably not by to McCarthy's head hunters. Only too late an anarchist) would have made this a more did many discover that educational change readable book. in a vacuum produced only isolationism But in the end Avrich succeeds in com­ and ill-fated utopianism. But in fairness, if bining a tribute to some forgotten radicals the anarchists insisted upon freedom with­ with a sophisticated historical study of out structure, the communists they fought their activities. He is sympathetic without generally had the reverse problem. being sycophantic, and his conclusions, Yet the story and legacy are not all while judiciously critical, avoid cynicism bleak. Avrich is at his best in describing and despair. His book should be the first the vibrant social and cultural life that consumed by the next generation of radical revolved around the Ferrer Center in the educators who seek to reinvent and ideal­ years before World War I. There, non­ ize the wheel of educational reform. If they conforming artists, writers, and actors at least read their own history, perhaps they spawned a dynamically creative commu­ will not be condemned to re-living it. nity with some extraordinary results. For example, out of that environment emerged Paul Axelrod the realistic art of Robert Henri and his Queen's University "ash can painters" who astounded observ­ ers with their graphic protrayal of ghetto life and the work of Alfred Stieglitz who Harvey Schwartz, The March Inland: introduced America to Matisse and the Origins of the ILWU Warehouse Division, French modernists. Journalists hovered 1934-/938 (Los Angeles: Institute of around the centre reporting on the Industrial Relations 1978). activities of these free-loving, free- thinking, eccentric (and largely Jewish) THE MARCH ISLAND relates the history of radicals. Who could resist Hippolyte the formation in the 1930s of the ware­ Havel, the mad Czech poet who waited on house division of the International Long­ tables at Polly's, and denounced his cus­ shoremen's union in San Francisco. In a tomers as "bourgeois pigs?" Or the family decade that was characterized by substan­ of Ben Liber, who had a brother named tial unionization drives, a split within the Liberty, a son named Amour, and who American Federation of Labor which cul­ convinced his friends. Jack and Molly minated in the formation of the rival CIO, Albert, to call their child "Freethought." and considerable labour violence, the Exalting free expression, the anarchist establishment of the warehouse division of movement touched, if only briefly, the the longshoremen's union may appear to lives of many important figures in the cul­ be a justly neglected footnote in the labour tural life of America. history of the era. Mr. Schwartz effec­ tively establishes his contention, however, While Avrich overwhelms with his that the movement was a significant one meticulous research, the structure of the and that it has tended to be overshadowed book leaves something to be desired. by historical concentration on both the col­ Whenever a new school opens, he feels ourful and volatile Harry Bridges, leader of compelled to repeat in painful, unneces­ the west coast longshoremen, and the 1934 sary detail the educational philosophy Pacific coast strikes. upon which it is based. He also provides so Schwartz sets his study within a larger many brief biographies of the people in the consideration of the "causes and limits" of 418 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

unionization in the 1930s. He poses several rather than the type of democratic indus­ questions in this regard: why workers trial unionism with which the long­ organized; how employers responded; shoremen were associated. Yet, rank-and- what effect if any New Deal legislation had file workers appeared capable of tran­ on union activity and organization. The scending the internecine rivalries of the answers he provides to some of these labour aristocracy and demonstrated sub­ issues tend to be fragmentary at times. At a stantial solidarity, as for example during the time when labour historians have been September 1937 port blockade, when fruitfully exploring the dimensions of many Teamster pickets and ILWU men working-class culture and its impact on fraternized and discussed the confronta­ labour organization, there is little consid­ tion. This incident ended the efforts of the eration here of such factors as ethnicity, the Teamsters to break the power of the ILWU social and economic background of work­ through direct confrontation during the ers, or of their residential and occupational decade, and by 1938 employers recog­ mobility. There is some suggestion that a nized the ability of the union to control its degree of ethnic fragmentation among membership. The ILWU succeeded because Irish, Italian, and Swedish workers began its tactics were appropriate for the circum­ to diminish in 1935 and play a reduced role stances and for the structure of the ware­ in discouraging unionization efforts. Yet, housing industry, and because workers one learns very little about these groups, were driven to militancy by the appalling even their numbers, and although inter­ working conditions and wages in the views were conducted, there appears to depression years. Whether the New Deal have been no effort to determine the extent contributed to their success or not, one to which the interviews reflected a reason­ wonders what the consequences of mili­ able cross-section of workers' views. tancy would have been had there been a Schwartz argues persuasively that New political climate and administration Deal legislation, notably Section 7(1) of antagonistic to organized labour. the National Industrial Recovery Act and The study is a valuable contribution to the Wagner Act, was a relatively minor fac­ our knowledge of the Bay area labour tor in promoting unionization. Conversely, situation in the 1930s and casts light on the evidence suggests that workers' experi­ some of the larger issues of the decade. ence under 7( 1 ) contributed to their belief One would hope that those who take the that unionizing efforts would be successful inquiry further will transcend the rather only through militant action, rather than traditional industrial relations methodol­ reliance on New Deal encouragement of ogy of this study to incorporate the insights the voluntary cooperation of employers. and techniques of E. P. Thompson, Herbert Indeed, until 1934, such employers' asso­ Gutman, Ira Berlin, and others working in ciations as the Industrial Association, the the forefront of labour history. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and, after 1936, the Wholesalers, Ware­ Stephen J. Randall housemen's and Distributers' Committee McGill University provided the main opposition to the March Inland. Why employers' associations were unsuccessful in their efforts to contain the longshoremen is significant. Employers Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans: had the advantage of available agricultural Political Surveillance from Hoover to the workers to serve as scab labour in 1934-35 Huston Plan (Philadelphia: Temple Uni­ as well as substantial competition between versity Press 1978); Jane Sanders, Cold the longshoremen and the teamsters over War on the Campus: Academic Freedom at jurisdiction beyond the docks. Employers the University of Washington, 1946-64 favoured the teamsters in this struggle (University of Washington Press 1979); REVIEWS 419

and Justin Goldstein, Political Repression balances and do the job that in an earlier in Modern America from 1870 to the Pres­ day they too had rejected. It is a rather ent (Cambridge, Mass: Schenlunan 1978). mechanistic solution that issues from a questionable historical analysis. Yet Spy­ SINCE THE Viet Nam War era, there has ing on Americans is, nevertheless, a valu­ been renewed interest in the varied forms able book. Theoharis has used the Free­ of government repression of domestic dom of Information Act well and his care­ opposition. It is undoubtedly an important ful footnotes and bibliography constitute a theme in contemporary American history useful guide through a thicket of materials but historians have thus far been unable or that have often been purposefully obscured disinterested in assessing its impact. by the agencies involved. He has also given Athan Theoharis is a well known stu­ us a very able treatment of the interaction dent of the McCarthy period. In Spying on between the FBI and the Presidency. Americans be extends his range back to Jane Sanders' Cold War on the Campus F.D.R. and up to the present. His focus is is the least ambitious of these works but not on the FBI's activities as an internal secu­ the least valuable. She gives us a rity police and particularly on its relation to straightforward chronicle of academic the Presidency. Unfortunately, the author freedom at the University of Washington, takes a dramatic tale and fails to do it jus­ concentrating on the post-war decade. tice. This is not only a matter of style but Legislative investigation, administration also, perhaps fundamentally, of approach. compliance, the purge of communist pro­ Tbeoharis* interest is not so much in detail­ fessors, speakers bans, and faculty weak­ ing FBI transgressions on basic liberties but ness, all form part of her narrative. It is an in such matters as the success of the intelli- interesting case study of Cold War pressure gency agency in exploiting the Cold War, on a public institution that was replicated the increasing claims of executive elsewhere. Curiously, there is no indica­ privilege, and the failure of Congress to tion that Sanders sought to use FBI files. If check these developments. He believes that she had, it might have supplied a nice com­ the critical Congressional failure came parison to Professor Sigmund Diamond's during the Eisenhower administration, recent revelations of cooperation with Mr. when conservatives deserted their tradi­ Hoover's boys by Harvard and Yale. tional, though fragile, libertarianism in Finally, Robert Goldstein's Political favour of national security goals. Thus Repression in Modern America is the most Theoharis prescribes a reassertion of Con­ ambitious of the works but the least suc­ gressional authority through legislation cessful. His book is an almost encyclo­ and oversight as a check against the intelli­ pedic account of government activities gence agencies' abuses. against labour and radical movements. It is The diagnosis and hence the antidote based entirely on secondary sources, are debatable. Theoharis recognizes that although newspapers, periodicals, and American conservatism had a shaky some congressional hearings are used for allegiance to libertarianism. Other schol­ the more recent years. One would not ars, going further, have questioned expect that a volume which encompasses whether the United States has ever had a so much could rely on primary materials truly conservative tradition. Certainly the but the necessary corollary is our expecta­ failure of so-called Congressional conser­ tion of a broad new synthesis. Instead of vatives to sustain their critique of execu­ analysis Foldstein presents us with asser­ tive power after the Republican return to tions that represssion prevented the labour power demonstrated that partisanship movement from achieving power until (he rather than principle controlled their 1930s, and destroyed radical labour and behaviour. Today, Theoharis looks to Con­ political movements in the United States. gressional liberals to reinstate checks and Certainly repression had its impact but the 420 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

author gives us no effective means of judg­ media "dance," as Gitlin terms it, is the ing how important it was. The subject focus of the book. demands a comparative analysis that For Gitlin, "... the mass media have Goldstein does not supply and it is only become core systems for the distribution of through comparison that we can begin to ideology;" they are capable of "orchestrat­ weigh the impact of repression vis à vis ing everyday consciousness — by virtue of other forces in American society. One can­ their pervasiveness." (2) As such, they are not shrug off Louis Hartz's analysis of per­ a powerful force which ensures the con­ vasive American liberalism, or David Pot­ tinued existence of the established order. ter's people graced by plenty, merely by Content analysis of the coverage of the SDS the enumeration of cases of repression. by the New York Times and CBS News Goldstein is so pessimistic in his view of (1965-70) done by the author, reveals that increasing repression that he judges "it stories about the radical student group will not be possible to publish a book such were "framed" in such a way as to portray as this in another fifty years." May that day it either as well-meaning but Utopian (in be hastened. the early years), or as powerful but insidi­ Careful new studies of repression such ous (toward the end of the decade). Rarely as those by Theoharis and Sanders are use­ were the issues raised by the SDS at the ful and welcome. However, we sorely lack centre of media coverage. In part, this was comparative treatments which may help us due to the technical requirements of jour­ to understand not only the processes of re­ nalism and telecasting, to the need to find a pression but the impact of it on American "peg" on which to hang the story. But it society. was also the result of a political process which involved writers, reporters, corre­ Stephen J. Scheinberg spondents, editors, cameramen, photo­ Concordia University graphers, and in a few instances, the man­ agement of the media enterprise. An ideological front protecting the domina­ tion of the elite in society would always Todd Gitlin, "The Whole World Is Watch­ have to be maintained; or, in a situation ing": Mass Media in the Making and involving intra-elite conflict, such as Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley; Uni­ occured over the question of the prosecu­ versity of California 1980). tion of the Viet Nam War, the legitimacy of one elite fraction would be supported OVER THE COURSE of the last two decades, ideologically. we have witnessed the appearance of many Gitlin has done his homework. He social scientific studies concerned with carefully documents his argument and suc­ "ideology" and "meaning," with the pro­ cessfully avoids the temptation of saying duction and manipulation of "conscious­ more than his evidence will bear. Yet, even ness," with the determination of subjective if we give him full marks for producing a life generally. Todd Gitlin's recent book lucid and well-written book, we are forced on the role of the mass media in the "mak­ to ask several questions which throw his ing and unmaking" of the New Left in the entire project into relief. 1960s is one such study. According to the Our first question concerns the treat­ author, the rise and fall of the leading New ment of "meaning," "ideology," '"con­ Left organization in the United States, the sciousness," as matters apart from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), social relations out of which they arise, in was shaped, directed, and otherwise influ­ which they are embedded, and of which enced by its portrayal in and by the mass they are an expression. The process of media. In turn, the SDS had a limited "making meanings" is seen by Gitlin to be impact upon the latter. The movement- a parallel process to "making value": REVIEWS 421

"Truly, the process of making meanings in Wright Mills, mentor of the New Left- the world of centralized commercial cul­ (Gitlin's introductory paragraphs are con­ ture has become comparable to the process structed out of Millsian language: a "man­ of making value in the world through ufactured public world" stands opposite labor. Just as people as workers have no "private space" and "private crevices." voice in what they make, how they make it, Gitlin does not ask for a return to the true or how the product is distributed and used, publics of a decentralized nineteenth- so do people as producers of meanings century America, which C. Wright Mills have no voice in what the media make of was wont to idealize; he asks the radical what they say or do. ..." (3) Instead of movement instead to free its mind of the saying that men produce the objects which images of itself created by the media: "A satisfy their wants, the relations which mass market culture, even with Bob Dylan organize and determine the historically records and The Battle of Algiers, is sim­ specific character of this production, and ply not a sustaining basis for oppositional the ideas, the consciousness of the fore­ political culture. A strategically minded going, Gitlin makes these into separate political movement cannot afford to substi­ processes, the production of meaning hav­ tute the commodity process of news. ing assumed, in his eyes, an independent fashion, and image for a grasp of its own force. Meaning thus comes into conflict situation, a suitable organizational form, with meaning, ideas with ideas. Unlike and a working knowledge of social condi­ Karl Marx, who viewed the ideas of lib­ tions, structures and interests." (238) erty. equality, and fraternity as expressions Third, we would like to ask how Gitlin of the specific character of bourgeois rela­ understands the rise and fall of the New Left tions, the author of this study sees an "evo­ in general, since he admits that media cov­ lution" of these ideas in the following way; erage had only a partial effect upon the "Bourgeois ideology in all its incarnations movement's trajectory. He astutely recog­ has been from the first a contradiction in nizes that the New Left was a movement of terms, affirming the once revolutionary the relatively privileged whose narrow ideals of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of social base stood in sharp contrast to its happiness," or "liberty, equality and frater­ vast political and social ambition. In addi­ nity." as if these ideas were compatible, or tion. he underlines (he radical or revolu­ even mutually dependent, at all times in all tionary will of its members. But he does places. More recently, the dominant ideol­ not tell us why this particular group at that ogy has strained to enfold a second- particular time developed the will to be radi­ generation set of contradictory values: lib­ cal." He mentions the movement's erty versus equality, democracy versus professional-managerial base but neither hierarchy, public rights versus property cites the Radical America article by the rights, rational claims to truth versus the Ehrenreichs, nor offers an explanation of arrogalions of power." (256) his own on the connection between the This brings us to our second question: movement and its "class interest." (120) although it is clear that the author of the Yet, to be fair, this was not the problem book has a theory of the media in modem which the author chose to investigate in society, it is not at all clear that he has a this work. theory of the society within which the Our final query concerns the message media operate. There are a number of inde­ which the author of the study wishes to finite references to Marx made in passing, impart to his readers about the future. a lengthy discussion of Antonio Gramsci's From our point of view this message is an theory of hegemony, and a few allusions to alarming one insofar as it signifies that lit­ psychoanalysis. But the unmistakable tle has been learned from the past. In the theoretical beacon which guides the author author's words: "The radical project for to the end is that projected by the late C. the eighties is to regather the elements of 422 LABOUR/LE TRAVAILLEUR

cultural revolt, to form of them a coherent zens agree to identify themselves and to political opposition, and to overcome the behave as consumers, devoting themselves centrifugal tendencies of the seventies: ten­ to labour in a deteriorating environment in dencies which represented the playing out order to acquire private possessions and of the incomplete and self-contradictory services as emblems of satisfaction?" (9) results of the sixties." (292) The results of The very posing of the question is an indi­ the 1960s were not incomplete and they cation that the framer is cut off from the were self-contradictory only in the sense of common mass of humanity. The real being a manifestation of a movement of lesson of the .1960s, which not all have privilege struggling against privilege. learned, is that history does not dance to Even though Gitlin seems to have recog­ the tune played by a relatively privileged nized the elitist elements within the New few. Left, he is not entirely clear on their signif­ icance. He can still ask the question: "The Cyril Levitt goods are delivered, true; but why do citi­ McMaster University

BOOK NOTES/REFÉRENCES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES

(Notice here does not preclude subsequent review.)

Alan F.J. Artibise and Gilbert A. Stelter, comps., Canada's Urban Past: A Bibliography to 1980 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 1981). This 438-page bibliography contains a useful, if opinionated "Introduction," "Directions for Users," 7,054 entries organized by theme and by region, a 50-page "Guide to Canadian Urban Studies," and both author, subject, and place indices. Albert A. Blum, ed., International Handbook of Industrial Relations: Contem­ porary Developments and Research (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press 1981). Twenty-seven essays by various specialists cover the map from Australia to Yugoslavia. Although published in 1981 the material covers up to 1979. The Canadian essay by Mark Thompson of the University of British Columbia includes data up to 1977 and provides an unremarkable overview drawing on traditional works such as Jamieson and Woods. Paul Boase,ed.,77w Rhetoric of Protest and Reform, 1878-1898 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press 1980). Thirteen essays by different authors cover indus­ trial, agricultural, feminist, religious, and intellectual critics. Of particular interest are J.H. Beaty on Gompers and Powderly, and D.K. Sprugin on Benja­ min Butler, Wendell Phillips, Peter Cooper, and John Altgeld.