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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 33, 1994

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Éditeur(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

ISSN 0700-3862 (imprimé) 1911-4842 (numérique)

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Citer cet article (1994). Reviews / Comptes Rendus. Labour/Le Travailleur, 33, 303–377.

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Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Douglas McCalla, Planting the Pmince: The Economy History of Upper CoMdrr, 1784-1870 by Peter Baskcrville I 303 M.C. Warrior and Mak Leier, llw First Forty Years: A History of the Tunnel and Rock WohrsUnion Local 168 by Jaemy Mouat I 305 Uutin Robin SMsof Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in COMda. 1920-1940 by Joaathan F. Wagner I 306 C.H. Gervais, People in Struggle: llw Lifc and Art of Bill Stapleton by Lynda Jessup I 308 Michael Oliver, The Passionate Debnte: The Social and Political I&as of Quebec Nationalism, 1920-45 by Michael D. Behiels I 310 Kris Inwood, cd.. Farm Factory, and Fortune: New Studies in the Economic History of the Maritime Provinces by Ke~ethPryke / 3 13 Stephen J. Hornsby, Nineteenth Century Gzpe Breton: A Historical Geography by David Frank / 3 15 E.R Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation by G.A. Rawlyk I 3 18 L. Anders Sandberg, ed.. Trouble in the Woocis: Forest Policy and Social Conflct in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by Christopher S. Beach / 320 Richard Apostle, Gene Barrett, et aL. Emptying Their Nets: SmaN Capital and Rural Industrialization in the Nova Scotia Fishing Industry by Alan R. MacNeil / 321 B. Curtis. D.W. Livingstone, and H. Smaller, Stacking the Deck The Streaming of Working-ClassKidr in Ontario Schools by Ruth Gamberg / 323 John Cavanagh, John Gershman, Karen Baker, and Gretchen Helmkc, eds., Trad- ing Freedom How Free Tradc Afects our Lives, Work and Environment by Judith Adler Hellman / 326 Louis Foumier, Louis Laberge. Le syndicalism, c 'est ma vie by Bernard Dionne / 327 Roch Denis et Serge Denis, Les syndicatsface aupouvoir. Syndicalisme etpolitique au Qdbec & 1960 d 1992 by Jean-Fran~oisCardin / 329 Denis Goulet et Andd Paradis, Trois siecles d'histoire mkdicale au Qubbec by Guy Grenier / 332 Pierre Lanthier et Guildo Rousseau (sous la direction de), La Culture inventbe. Les stratigies culturelles aus 192 et 202 si2cles by Yvan Lamonde / 335 Lucia Ferretti, Entre voisins. La sociitdparoissiale en milieu urbain: Saint-Pierre- ApStre & Montrbal, 1848-1930 by Guy Lapenitre / 337 Marianne Kempeneers, Le trm'f au flminin. Analyse dlmographique de la discontimiJ professionnclle &s femnus au CaMda by And& Fortin / 339 Re& B.-Dandurand et Francine Descanies, dir., MLres et travailleuscs. De 1 'exception b la rLgle by And& Uvesque / 34 1 Jocelyne Lamourcux, MicWle Wlinas. Katy Tari. Femmes en mouvement. Trajec- toires & lSAssociationfbmininc d'kducation et d'action sociale, AF~S 1966-1991 by Odctte Vincent Domey I342 Bill Cecil-Fmnsman, Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina by John T. O'Brien / 345 Stephen Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers by Nina Reid-Maroney / 346 Marilyn Rhinehart, A Way of Work and a Way of Life: Coal Mining in Thurber, Texas 1888-1926 by Glenda D. Noseworthy Davis 1348 Peter C. Seixas, "Shifting Sands Beneath the State": Unemployment, the Labor Market, and the Local Community, 1893-1922 by Graham Adams, Jr. / 350 Prometheus Research Library. ed., James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 by James R. Barrett / 352 Archie Green, Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations by Clarke "Bucky" Halker I 354 Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: me Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York by Patricia Malcolmson I Reginald Gibbons and Terrence Des Pres, eds., Thomas McGrath: Life and the Poem by Arthur D. Casciato / 357 L.D. Schwarz, London in the age of industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, labourforce and living conditions, 1700-1850 by.David Levine I 359 Margot Finn, After Chartism: Class and nation in English radical politics, 1848- 1874 by James Epstein / 361 Robert Duncan and Arthur McIvor, ed.. Militant Workers: Labour and Class Conflict on the Clyde, 1190-1950 by Don Madjillivray / 363 David Marsh, The New Politics of British Trade Unionism: Union Power and the Thatcher Legacy by Rennie Warburton / 364 David Collinson, Managing the Shopfloor: Subjectivity, Masculinity and Workplace Culture by Ava Baron / 366 Gerald Porter. The English Occupational Song by Peter NarvAez I 368 Mark Traugott, ed., and trans., The French Worker: Autobriographies from the Early Industrial Era byDonald Reid I 37 1 Darryl Holter. The Battle for Coal: Miners and the Politics of Nationalization in France, 1940-19.50 by Stephen Burwood / 373 Gregg Olsen, The Strugglefor Economic Democracy in Sweden by Paul Phillips 1 374 REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: reinforced trends already in place. Indus­ The Economie History of Upper Canada, trialization, often explained in terms of 1784-1870 (Toronto: University of To­ the linkages generated by the post-1850 ronto Press 1993). wheat boom, railway construction, and reciprocity, owed as much, McCalla THIS BOOK is a myth breaker. Drawing avers, to the pre-1850s activities in house­ on an expanding body of research (much hold, craft, and manufacturing, almost all of it his own), Douglas McCalla has gone of which was geared to satisfying local, far towards clearing the stump-ridden not international, demands. State econ­ field of Upper Canadian economic history. omic policy cannot be understood as the The central myth under revision con­ expression of a distinctive local culture of cerns the role played by external forces in "defensive expansion." Rather the Upper Upper Canada's economic development. Canadian state acted in a way almost in­ That economy was not, McCalla asserts, distinguishable from the policies pursued staple driven, export led, and subservient by Ohio and Michigan in the 1830s and to external demand and control. While by those states and Indiana in the 1850s. most farmers grew wheat, they did so This was not an imitative or reflexive within the overall context of mixed farm­ policy as the "defensive expansion" argu­ ing. He estimates that wheat contributed ment implies. Policies resulted from the between 12 and 21 per cent of the col­ demands generated by internal growth as ony's total "income." While important, much as, if not more than, from external this contribution did not mean that shifts pressures. in international demand for wheat would McCalla comes to these (and other) lead to dramatic economic downswings in conclusions via a careful deconstruction the simple lock-step fashion so often im­ of such abstract words as staple, wood, plied in the staple thesis. When wheat harvest, farmer, and industry. He is con­ exports declined, Upper Canada's econ­ stantly attentive to, as he puts it, "the omy continued to grow because farmers specific and complex world of actual rural could and did sell other products to local production and exchange." In this world, markets, to Lower Canada, to the United for example, "wood" is broken down into States and, in the case of wood products, species like oak, red and white pine; spe­ to Great Britain. Export of wood products cific products like staves, squared timber, commenced before the stimulus provided deals, boards, pot and pearl ashes; distinc­ by British tariffs and continued to grow tive locales — the Ottawa Valley, the after the revocation of those tariffs. The Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence trades. Reciprocity Treaty, the Crimean War, and The significance of these manifold pro­ the Civil War did not initiate new direc­ ducts from various locales is computed tions in growth or trade. At best, they not simply in terms of export value, but also and most revealingly by their place Table of Contents for Reviews is on pp. 5 in the local economy as seen through the &6. ledgers of regional stores, the output of a 303 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

proliferating number of small sawmills, of the attitudes, motives, and social stand­ the employment rates of Lake Ontario ing of the colony's people, McCalla es­ schooners, and the price of urban fire­ chews notions of significant transitions wood. Wheat economy and industrializa­ and sharp divides. There was, he argues, tion are similarly dissected. no important division between a pre-mar- This micro-analysis is often, as ket and market economy in this era. There McCalla admits, a matter of necessity was, rather, an intensification of market given the absence of aggregate statistics involvement, of the integration of local, for much of the colony's existence. But, colonial, and international economies. and this is one of the central strengths of For most Upper Canadians, McCalla the book, McCalla employs this micro- strongly implies, the colony was a decent level evidence to generate estimates of place to live. Otherwise, he wonders, why provincial level outputs. He then uses the would they have stayed? The availability newly-constructed data to contextualize of credit was a positive, not a restricting the colony's economic growth as, for or entangling process. Debtors and credi­ example, when he suggests that the inter­ tors were often one and the same. Credit nal market for firewood probably ex­ relations linked people of the same class ceeded $2 million per year, more than the as well as those of other classes. Despite value received for provincial oak exports. speculation in land by governments and Or when he points out that the $350 mil­ individuals, McCalla argues that land was lion capital invested in farms in 1861 ex­ always available at a price the market ceeded the capital invested in railways by could bear if only because speculators almost five times. wanted to be sellers. Statistics like these point to the exten­ The sensitivity with which McCalla sive nature of a process of decentralized deconstructs the economy is less apparent growth and lend support to one of McCal- in the areas of class formation and social la's central contentions concerning Upper relations. Operating within an environ­ Canada's development. McCalla finds ment which held out the hope of at least few sharp chronological divides in the modest competencies, Upper Canadians, colony's pattern of growth. The economy McCalla argues, enjoyed much agency in 1850 was a more mature version of that and were not unduly hampered by hierar­ in 1804. Similarly, in 1870 the economy chical structures or differential social re­ represented a pattern of development evi­ lations. In some sense, the economic sys­ dent in 1850. Only in the mid 1850s, when tem was an effective social leveller. Rich immigration no longer exceeded emigra­ and poor existed but not in large enough tion, does McCalla come close to refer­ numbers to disturb the system. It is some­ ring to a turning point, in this case from what of a shock when one reads on page extensive to intensive growth. Even then 174 of "the insecurities of everyday econ­ he points out that such a shift was vir­ omic life." That perspective is not central tually imperceptible. Rather than speak­ to the basic arguments presented in this ing of transitions and the dislocations that book. McCalla focuses instead on the ac­ such phrasing often implies, McCalla tivities of "the successful 'ordinary' writes of incremental, layered growth; of fanner." While corrupt railway contrac­ gradual and extensive development. tors and promoters existed, McCalla as­ Commercial revolutions are not evident; serts that they affected general develop­ economic downswings are carefully ment in no significant way. The role nuanced, if not blunted, situated as they played by women in economic develop­ are within a general context of gradual, if ment is certainly mentioned, but no con­ not inexorable growth. certed attempt is made to generate a stat­ As with his depiction of the general istical measurement of that activity al­ economy so, too, in his characterization though American and some Canadian REVIEWS 305 literature suggest ways to do so. Even tional history complete with long lists of natives, a group McCalla sees as being union members, fulsome statements by perhaps the most marginalized of any in various union officers, and so on. But Upper Canada, benefitted to some degree Warrior and Leier work hard to overcome from being a "part of the complex net­ the common limitations of such work. work of such local economies that con­ They describe something of the socio­ stituted the larger provincial economy." political context of post-war British Col­ McCalla sees society as a broad matrix, umbia, for example, and do not ignore the "constrained by the simultaneous and inter-union battles which characterized continuing expansion of many similar the construction industry. And the book production units all selling into a non- itself is an attractive one. Liberal use of farm sector that was expanding only at the quotations — beginning with a familiar same rate as agriculture." The peaks and Brecht poem on the first page — com­ valleys of class formation and social rela­ bined with a large format, generously il­ tions are not part of that landscape. lustrated, make the volume easy to read or This is a powerful book and is must to pick up for a quick browse. reading for anyone interested in pre-con- The book's purpose is to record the federation history. McCalla has uprooted contribution of construction workers many of the old shibboleths that cluttered (narrowly defined as the membership of traditional economic interpretations and the Tunnel and Rock Workers Union) to planted some provocative seeds of his the development of British Columbia's own. That his view of society is logically industrial infrastructure. Chapters de­ consistent with his depiction of the col­ scribe the Kemano project in northwest­ ony's economy does not preclude the con­ ern BC, the drilling and subsequent de­ struction of alternative interpretations, struction of Ripple Rock, as well as a perspectives more attentive to the issues series of highway, dam, and tunnel under­ of class. Far from foreclosing debate, this takings. But the book is not simply a book will, for the forseeable future, be at chronicle of great works. Oral testimony the centre of all meaningful discussion of enlivens the narrative, and problems with Upper Canada's economic and social issues such as health and safety as well as evolution. union disputes (with both management and other unions) are covered in some detail. Peter Baskerville University of Victoria The book was written to celebrate a specific union constituency and occasion­ ally suffers as a result. Not everyone will agree with the authors' sweeping asser­ M.C. Warrior and Mark Leier, The First tion that "the history of British Columbia Forty Years: A history of the Tunnel and is the history of these large construction Rock Workers Union Local 168 (np: Tun­ jobs." (2) And the book is silent on the nel & Rock Workers Union Local 168 gendered nature of that workforce, the [LIUNA], 1992). notable absence of Native people from its ranks, and the environmental controver­ THIS BOOK is a laudable attempt to write sies generated by many of the projects. a new sort of union history. Commis­ But if complex issues do not always re­ sioned and published by a local of the ceive the attention they deserve, the book Tunnel and Rock Workers Union, it de­ does a good job of tracking the changing scribes four decades of construction work face of the construction industry, from the in British Columbia, from the post-war glory days of the 1950s and the 1960s boom to the present. At one level, then, through to the grim 1980s. This last peri­ the book follows a model familiar to many od is described particularly well, when readers of Labour/Le Travail: an institu­ 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

changing technology drastically cut the shelves with BA essays, MA theses, and number of workers necessary on a large dissertations on labour topics, while this project, at the same time that the province journal regularly publishes articles on the endured the twin curse of recession and province. Not all this work is as faithful an anti-union government. The angry to the perspective of working people as words of a union official capture or­ The First Forty Years. For that reason ganized labour's frustrations during this alone it is a useful addition to the prov­ dismal period: "We had a relationship that ince's historiography. was tough for many years with contrac­ tors, companies, but they were reasonably Jeremy Mouat honest. You wouldn't get deliberate liars. Athabasca University The Bill Bennet era brought in the profes­ sional liar. ... two-faced lying bastards and I find them hard to deal with." (109) Overall, the book is a fruitful colla­ Martin Robin, Shades of Right: Nativist boration between labour historians and a and Fascist Politics in Canada, 1920- union local. If it fails to match the scope 1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto and sophistication of some other exam­ Press 1992). ples, such as McKay's The Craft Trans­ formed and Zerker's The Rise and Fall of "THE FASCINATION for the abomin­ the Toronto Typographical Union, War­ ation" is how Joseph Conrad described rior's and Leier's book is well worth read­ man's apparent abiding interest in evil. ing for the light that it sheds on the history The phrase might well be applied to Mar­ of the construction industry in post-war tin Robin's recent study, for Professor British Columbia. Particularly welcome Robin has attempted to conjure up the evil is the way it effectively refutes the claims forms and describe in detail the varie­ of Social Credit politicians and their ha- gated Fascist, right-wing political move­ giographers, who continue to take credit ments which both tormented and for building the province's transportation fascinated Canadians in the period 1920- network. The people who built the roads, 1940. The book has been long awaited by bridges, and tunnels finally receive credit many, this reviewer included. It is unfor­ for their work. tunate that the wait has brought nearly as much disappointment as delight. The history of BC's working people has grown considerably in the quarter To begin with, the style is uneven. For century since Paul Phillips wrote No the most part, Robin, who is a professor Power Greater, a centennial history of of political science at Simon Fraser organized labour in BC. A handful of University, writes with precision and con­ unions, mostly in the Lower Mainland, trolled enthusiasm and when he does, he have produced their own histories and depicts his subject concretely and effec­ several memoirs — notably White's A tively. His skill as a stylist shows through. Hard Man to Beat and Stanton's Never On the other hand, there are too many Say Die! — provide a lively commentary times when the phrases and sentences on labour in the post-war era. One of the seem to slip away from him. Frequently, province's leading woman organizers, he exaggerates, plays for effect, tries to be Helena Gutteridge, is the subject of a re­ sensational. One soon grows tired of read­ cent biographical study and the prov­ ing bad alliteration as in "parades of ince's women workers are the focus of a robed rubes" (29), "abandoned Hoosier number of articles in the new collection huksters" (45), and "Buckets of fraternal by Creese and Strong-Boag (British Col­ fun." (49) The same applies to overdone, umbia Reconsidered). Students at the strained metaphors like "jump start a province's universities have filled several movement mired in a swamp of hack­ neyed hate." (265) Why there should have REVIEWS 307

been so much of this is hard to explain. It community in Québec and Canada. He seems almost as if the author deliberately answers slanders with figures and num­ sought to imitate the bad journalism of the bers. In so doing, he convincingly shows numerous newspapers he so often relied up the irrationality of the anti-Jewish upon for his sources. movement. There had to be something The book's organization surpasses its else here, the reader inevitably concludes. style. Three major sections divide the If the Jews were not the devils that Ar­ work's ten chapters. The first portion cand, Bott, and the other demagogues (chapters one through three) deals with made them out to be, then why were they the nativist Klu Klux Klan which ap­ being attacked so? peared in the aftermath of the Great War This question goes to the basic flaw and then disappeared on the eve of the in the study. Put simply, Robin's book Great Depression. Robin describes the does not devote enough space to analyz­ Klan's activities and especially its mani­ ing what the Fascist phenomenon meant festation on the Prairies in great detail. and what it tells us about Canada. Even Chapters four through six, in many ways the conclusion, as noted, does no more the strongest portion of the book, shifts than describe who was interned and how the center of focus to Québec and Adrien successful the government was in sup­ Arcand. Robin's discussion of the anti- pressing the reactionary radicals. At the Semitic theme in Arcand's movement is very least the conclusion should have telling. The book's last major section in­ tried to decipher a larger meaning. The cludes chapters seven through nine and KKK, Arcand's Fascists, and the German deals with other forms of right-wing ac­ Bund were what they were because of tivity — the so-called ethnic Fascisms conditions in Canada. Robin, for (Italian and German) and the English example, never tries to relate the Saskat­ speaking counterparts which all appeared chewan Klan to the province's German in the 1930s. Generally speaking, this is Canadian Bund although the same society the weakest part of the book. In this sec­ produced both. What were Orangemen in tion, for example, the author writes about the Klan and Germans in the Bund sharing the Italians, apparently without believing in common? Surely it was more than a it necessary to have read any Italian sour­ hatred of Catholics or Jews. These were ces. He relies instead upon the RCMP's symptoms of a greater malaise. In the East accounts of what they were doing. The what did Arcand's movement tell us about last chapter, the conclusion, simply adds the plight of the French in Canada and a description of the disappearance of the how did that condition relate to Saskat­ several movements after the beginning of chewan farmers and Germans? The book World War II. does not systematically tackle these fun­ damental issues. Could Canadian Fascism The strength in Robin's account of have had anything to do with what Porter Canada's radical right in the inter-war described in his Vertical Mosaic some period lies in the richness of detail he years ago — a socio-economic order in provides the reader. The movements and which the privileged few at the top man­ their actors are painted with a fine brush. ipulated the rest who then battled one As a result, they assume life and plausi­ another for places in the pecking order? bility. The author's depiction of the anti- Semitic theme common to the several An effort to answer some of the above groups illustrates this point nicely. For questions would, it seems, have required example, in the first chapter dealing with of the author a more critical and open- Arcand, Robin describes the specific ex­ minded attitude toward Canadian tradi­ cesses and distorted claims being made tions and history than he evidently pos­ about the Jews. He then detours to discuss sesses. Robin's uncritical acceptance of the reality of the situation for the Jewish the accounts of the several movements 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

provided by the RCMP dramatically illus­ Bourdieu describes as the cultural capital trates this problem. The Mounties did in­ of the educated elite. deed have their spies and informers and Within the systems of thought that these persons knew exactly what their em­ find expression in art and its repre­ ployers wanted to hear. A more biased set sentation, of course, the artist can be a of records than the RCMP files is hard to political activist. The act of making the art imagine. Yet the author seems completely can take on a political dimension as well, unaware of this problem. (His too heavy the place in which it is made and the reliance upon those sensational journalis­ conditions under which it is produced re­ tic accounts already mentioned, I might flecting the artist's political stance. An add, illustrates the same methodological artist may be a political activist and the weakness. Moreover, while on methods, making of the art a self-consciously pol­ one asks why the author made no effort to itical act, but that does not necessarily interview some of the survivors and par­ mean that the art itself makes an overt ticipants from the era and movements he political statement. treats. Surely, a few of them must still be This is my criticism of C.H. Gervais' alive.) But the work's most serious short­ book: both author and artist have assumed coming derives from the fact that Robin that Bill Stapleton's pictures express a apparently does not view the Fascist phe­ political stance simply by association nomenon as a serious flaw in a larger, with that of its maker. There is little dis­ flawed socio-economic system. Ultimate­ cussion of the dozens of works that illus­ ly, for Robin, then, it is the benighted trate the text. When reference is made to "rubes," the bigoted Germans, the primi­ Bill Stapleton's production, the stress is tive French Catholics who are solely re­ placed on the ideas that inform the mak­ sponsible for Canada's Fascist aberra­ ing of his art, rather than on evidence of tions. This is far too simplistic. For those their manifestation in the finished works. wanting a thorough description and in- It can be argued, of course, that art depth analysis of the Fascist problem in "speaks for itself," but that argument Canada, this book offers only half the should not be used to avoid analysis and story — the description. discussion that articulates the ways in which it does so. Jonathan F. Wagner In this sense, the book is a biography. Minot State University Even as a life-history, however, the treat­ ment of a socially active Canadian artist may be regarded as a welcome addition to the body of such literature promised, but C.H. Gervais, People in Struggle: The as yet largely undelivered, by the 1972 Life and Art of Bill Stapleton (Waterloo, publication of Barry Lord's survey. The ON: Penumbra Press 1992). History of Painting in Canada: Towards a People's Art. Now we have the story of ALL ART IS POLITICAL. Art historians Bill Stapleton, a man who has a devotion have demonstrated time and again that to "people in struggle." "In a quite persist­ even the most seemingly benign works ent way," we are told, implicitly engage the dominant values of the society within which they are pro­ Stapleton has frequented picket-lines to sketch duced. Informed by the paradigms within angry strikers, and for a period of his life he which artist and audience operate and by devoted his evenings to depicting the "have- the institutional system that classifies and nots" of society as they seek relief from the represents it in turn, art is also the tool and tedium or sorrows of their everyday lives in the weapon of those who seek to maintain downtown pubs or bars. And it is this search for underlying dignity of the downtrodden that control of what French sociologist Pierre has drawn him to Latin America to speak with REVIEWS 309 the dispossessed, with refugees from aod vic­ he has always worked at a full-time job tim» of gaerrilla warfare, with mother» who during the day to remain what he de­ have witnessed terror and death in their scribes as "a 'virgin' artist at night" (11) familiet. Ht project hat sent him to the Soviet It was a decision that resulted in what Union during the Cold War to meet artists and Stapleton himself calls his "prostitution" writers and civilians who were desperate for free expression. TUs quest has landed him on — his work as a salesman for a commer­ the shores of Labrador to visit the Innu, to find cial art house, as a real-estate agent, and out about their culture and their traditions, and then, for many years, as the owner of a to record their territorial struggle. (7) commercial design firm. The reader is simply left to wonder how his ideologi­ Based on interviews with the artist, cally-based art could be unaffected by which are quoted extensively in the text, such a glaring compromise in ideology. the book is also an oral history. In fact, Yet, in making it, Stapleton believes he Oervais' respect for Stapleton's narrative has rejected the elitist values implicit in gives the book an autobiographical the lifestyle of mainstream artists and in dimension. Refusing to introduce himself the conventional art institutions and ex­ in the text as a mediating influence, change systems in which they operate. through critical comment or probing Working in the margins of the cultural question, he permits Stapleton's account mainstream, he sees himself as "the to carry authority usually reserved for the people's artist." The problem with mar­ author. He defies academic imperialism gins, of course, is that they define them­ in a blanket validation of Stapleton's sub­ selves in relation to the mainstream, con­ jective experience and self-proclaimed stantly reinforcing its dominance by their autonomy. In doing so, he provides an subordinate place. And Stapleton does alternative, and often engaging, narrative this too. By removing himself from the art to the broad readership Penumbra Press scene, he refuses to engage the very struc­ hopes to attract to the latest in its series of tures that reflect and reinforce the class, inexpensive, soft-covered books on Cana­ gender, and race divisions against which dian art. he fights. Art that now rips at the very But he also pays a price. In privileg­ fabric of the art system from within by ing subjectivism to such an extent, Ger- exposing and indicting the nature of its vais risks leaving his readers with an un­ operations through biting critique and easy feeling that Stapleton may not be the scathing satire is a world apart from his. best judge of his own autonomy, that un­ Stapleton caters instead to one of the sys­ checked subjectivity can deteriorate into tem's lesser constituencies, reinforcing a self-serving exercise, and that the rea­ the mainstream in his missionary zeal to son Bill Stapleton is an "unsung senior maintain the values assigned to art and the Canadian artist" is that his rejection of the artist in the margins as well. cultural mainstream has made the art he There, he has dedicated himself to sees as "a tool for bearing witness and a making what he calls "protest art" — an weapon for effecting change" relatively art meant to inspire the people to fight. ineffective as either. His banner piece, Massacre of the May­ It is difficult, however, for the reader ans, however, is perhaps his only work to to know for sure; Stapleton's account is have done so, though likely not in the way rife with contradictions. Describing him­ he intended. It drew complaints when it self at various times in his life as a com­ was hung in the window of an alternative munist, a socialist, and a social activist, gallery in 1984, and the result was its here is a man who claims he has never removal to the interior of the show and "compromised" the art generated by his Stapleton's validation as a "protest" art­ ideologies. (123) Eschewing what he sees ist. It is this moment that is signalled for as the potential demands of the art market, the reader on the frontispiece of the book 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and in the advertising that accompanied the time, it seemed possible that the prov­ its publication; a photograph of Stapleton incial wing of the CCF movement might standing with a version of the work has stand some chance of making a small been reproduced for both. Stapleton's breakthrough in Québec under the leader­ pictures, Gervais reminds us in the text, ship of Madame Thérèse Casgrain. Mi­ "speak honestly and truthfully about real­ chael Oliver tried to provide some ities many of us would prefer not to stare analysis on the parameters of a left-wing in the face." (9) party putting down roots in the French- In the eyes of women, in particular, Canadian society of Québec. Convinced the painting is an offensive one; it illus­ of the assumption that both Catholicism trates a woman being raped by one man and nationalism would remain an integral while her arms are pinned by another. The part of Quebec's social and political cul­ impact of the image as a metaphor for the ture, Oliver concluded with considerable victimization of women in general is al­ prescience that any successful left-wing tered little when the content is specified political movement would have to seek an by the title or by Stapleton's explana­ alliance with the embryonic left-wing ele­ tions. It conveys a message the artist did ments among French-Canadian nationa­ not intend to formulate to an audience he lists, especially those in the increasingly did not expect to address. While it can be militant Catholic labour movement. argued that it nonetheless confronts Determined to put his theory to the women with the realities of their domina­ test, Oliver, as first president of the tion, the reaction it evokes — particularly newly-created NDP, 1961-63, devoted the desire to suppress its display — may considerable time and energy to estab­ well express the feeling that the pervasive lishing a base in Québec. He was one of use of such images sustains the reality. the architects of the two nations policy in Dismissed as misdirected anger, the im­ the party. In 1963, as a result of this sym­ mediate act of protest in a case such as pathetic perception of Quebec's franco­ this, of course, is censured by fear of phone community, he was appointed Di­ censorship. But, isn't it ironic? The very rector of Research for André Laurendeau moment Stapleton's art inspired protest is and Davidson Dunton's Royal Com­ the moment he uses to glorify his own mission. Later Michael Oliver was Vice- victimization in his efforts to speak for Principal of McGill University at various the oppressed. times and President of Carleton Univer­ sity, where he now resides as adjunct pro­ Lynda Jessup fessor. Queen's University That this dissertation should appear at this time is most propitious. A careful reading of his analysis of the intellectual climate of Québec during the inter-war Michael Oliver, The Passionate Debate: years brings one to realize just how far the The Social and Political Ideas of Quebec Québec intelligentsia has evolved. It re­ Nationalism 1920-45 (Montréal: Vé­ ally does seem light years away from the hicule Press 1991). religious and rural environment which so conditioned the mentalité of traditional WHO IS MICHAEL OLIVER? And why is nationalism and the uses to which it was he doing this to us? Why has he waited put. Yet, one can also hear the echo of the thirty-five years to publish a perceptive traditional nationalist predecessors in and pioneering piece of scholarship on much of the conservative neo-nationalist French-Canadian nationalism? Michael rhetoric of the 1980s and early 1990s. In Oliver is a well known Canadian political the aftermath of the 1993 federal election scientist/activist/administrator who re­ in which the separatist Bloc Québécois ceived his doctorate in the mid-1950s. At REVIEWS 311

formed the official opposition, Michael deau, Martin P. O'ConnelL or Joseph Le­ Oliver's long-lost study of Québec na­ vitt. He dissects carefully the contradic­ tionalism during the difficult and tumul­ tory radical and conservative strains in tuous inter-war years sheds some light on Bourassa's thought — the castor-rouge the problems of accommodating sub-na­ — and contrary to Rumilly and O'Con- tionalities in a federal system. nell, portrays him primarily as a moderate Michael Oliver judiciously decided reformer who strove valiantly to put his that it was not appropriate to try and re­ ideas into action. Yet, many would still vise the dissertation in any way, shape, or argue that it is hard to consider Bourassa form. Any attempt on his part to incorpor­ much of a reformer when he "had nothing ate the vast amount of literature on Qué­ but contempt for the commercial and in­ bec nationalism which has appeared over dustrial middle class and their politics," the past three decades would have re­ (43) not because he despised capitalism quired a total rewriting of the dissertation. per se but rather its abuse by an ignorant This process would have obliterated the and immoral bourgeoisie. Bourassa also historiographies! value of the original rejected systematically the Enlighten­ work. Any substantive revisions would, ment belief in the perfectibility of man. At of necessity, reflect the evolution in Mi­ heart Bourassa really was a pre-industrial chael Oliver's perception and under­ being who would have preferred to live in standing of French-Canadian nationalism the time of Louis-Joseph Papineau when since 1956. Fortunately for students of the petite-bourgeoisie was in its ascend­ Canadian historiography he convinced his ancy and certain elements of the Catholic publisher to make only minor revisions. Church, such as Canon Lionel Groulx, The book reads pretty much as I first were not as dominant or as stridently na­ remember the dissertation when I sa­ tionalistic. Oliver found Bourassa's ad­ voured its insights during the late 1960s herence to the principles of British par­ as a graduate student at the University of liamentary democracy, especially his life­ Alberta researching an MA thesis on the long support for marginal third parties, political and social ideas of André particularly attractive. Laurendeau. As with many Canadian his­ In contrast, Oliver's portrayal of abbé tory students of my generation, I remain Lionel Groulx and his little clique of indebted to Michael Oliver's work for a "racists" and "separatists" at l'Action couple of reasons. At that time, his study française and l'Action Nationale in the helped me immeasurably by placing 1920s and 1930s is particularly harsh and André Laurendeau's ideas in the dual con­ unrelenting. His categorically negative text of Henri Bourassa and Lionel Groulx, interpretation went out of fashion for over the two giants of nationalism of their age. three decades as neo-nationalists of all Perhaps more importantly, Oliver's study stripes took over control of the nationalist inspired me to undertake for my doctorate movement in Québec and preferred to under Ramsay Cook at York University a mythologize all nationalist predecessors close analysis of the ideological origins of including Canon Groulx. Not too surpris­ the Quiet Revolution, that is, the ideas of ingly, in the difficult economic and social the neo-nationalists at Le Devoir and climate of the 1990s when Québec society L'Action Nationale and the liberal and like much of North America is moving to social democrats at Cité libre and Radio the right, Oliver's interpretation finds Canada. greater resonance with that of Esther De- This study has a succinct two chapter lisle's The Traitor and the Jew (1993) analysis of the mentalité and ideas of than that of Susan Mann Trofimenkoff s Henri Bourassa which has yet to be sur­ Action française: French Canadian Na­ passed by anyone writing about him, in­ tionalism in the Twenties (1975). Oliver cluding Robert Rumilly, André Lauren­ demonstrates how Groulx and his coterie 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

of friends despised all politicians, politi­ Oliver noted to a greater cooperation be­ cal parties, and especially British par­ tween the CCF in English-speaking Cana­ liamentary democracy with its emphasis da and the incipient Catholic left in on civil rights and individual freedoms. French Canada was the ugly cancer of The one contradiction which emerges in anti-semitism which grew out of the racial Oliver's analysis is his portrayal of exclusiveness of Groulx's nationalist ide­ Groulx and his colleagues as separatists ology and permeated much of French-Ca­ while arguing at the same time that their nadian society in the 1930s and early refusal of the primacy of politics 1940s. Yet, Oliver believed, like Tru­ prevented them from seeing "the state as deau, that French Canadian nationalists the complete expression of the nation." had abandoned the most overt forms of (89) He cannot have it both ways. Groulx anti-semitism by the 1930s. Their accept­ and his nationalist colleagues did not re­ ance of dramatically increased immigra­ ject the primacy of all politics, only that tion of Jews was proof of their acceptance of liberal democratic politics. They of an emerging social and cultural plu­ wanted a theocratic state that served the ralism in the French-Canadian society, collective interests of French Canadians particularly in middle-class Montréal. and their Catholic Church with its medie­ Yet ironically, Oliver was so struck val doctrine of economic and social cor­ by the dogged persistence of right-wing poratism. nationalist ideology throughout the 1930s Oliver was the first to draw our atten­ and 1940s that he saw no possibility for tion to the incipient forms of left-wing the emergence of a left-wing ideology in Catholic thought emerging in Québec French Canada except under the aegis of during the 1930s. It was this ideology both the Catholic Church and the nation­ which set the stage for the post-war evol­ alist movement. He felt so strongly about ution of mentalities. He analyzed La his conclusion that he criticized Trudeau Relève's, André Laurendeau's, and Fran­ for his wholesale denunciation of all çois Hertel's struggles to redefine tradi­ forms of French-Canadian nationalism, tional nationalist dogma in the light of the old and new, in his La Grève de l'amiante ideology of Catholic personalis!» in Em­ (1956). While nationalism would prove to manuel Mounier's Esprit, Robert Aran's be a powerful staying force in Québec Ordre Nouveau, and Etienne Gilson's society, the Catholic church would vir­ Sept. Slowly, and at times incoherently, tually collapse as a political institution by new wine was being poured into the old the early 1960s. Even the collapse of anti- and decrepid vessel of French-Canadian semitism in its most virulent forms during clerical nationalism. What remains clear, the 1950s did not ensure, as he hoped, that however, is that the ideological discourse left-wing nationalists while "most avail­ of the right prevailed in the 1930s and able as units in a constitutional political found expression in the reaffirmation of process" would of necessity be more open the agrarian vocation of the French-Cana­ to "the possibilities of reworking Cana­ dian nation, in a desire to buttress small- dian federalism." (195) This reworking of and medium-scale capitalism to the Canadian federalism, according to Oliver, benefit of a declining francophone petty was only possible if the left in English- bourgeoisie at the expense of the Jewish speaking Canada accepted the inter-re­ shopkeepers and small industrialists with lated concepts of two nations and a decen­ an aggressive Achat chez nous campaign. tralized form of asymmetrical federalism. Finally, French-Canadian nationalists of In this way, a perceptive young Mi­ all stripes adopted several varieties of chael Oliver foresaw the outlines of the corporatism as their alternative to un­ constitutional struggle which would en­ bridled capitalism and godless socialism. gage enormous time and the energy of The other serious impediment which some of Canada's best minds over the REVIEWS 313

next generation. Oliver believed that if R. MacNeil argues persuasively that the the question of the constitutional status of English settlers who took over Acadian Québec as the homeland of the French- farms following the deportation achieved Canadian nationality could be addressed a level of productivity much more quickly and solved quickly, the country would be than did the English settlers who followed forced to tackle the other important cleav­ later. This suggestion that Acadian farms ages of social class and ethnicity, topics were quite productive is in line with re­ which were the inherent preserve of the cent work which suggests that the Aca­ left and its political arm, the CCF. 77»* dian settlements were far more developed Passionate Debate remains a seminal and prosperous than traditional accounts study in the evolution of our under­ have allowed. standing of French-Canadian nationalist The argument that frontier farms re­ ideology and the response of Canada's quired several years to become produc­ left to that phenomenon. Véhicule Press tive is developed by Beatrice Craig in her should be congratulated for putting it into piece on the development of agriculture print in the upper St John River Valley. She argues that by 1850 most residents had Michael D. Behiels shifted to diversified agriculture, espe­ University of Ottawa cially husbandry, in order to cater to local markets created by lumbering operations and by those opening up new farms. In a very ambitious study of two different Kris Inwood, éd.. Farm, Factory, and farming regions in New Brunswick, T.W. Fortune: New Studies in the Economic Acheson points out that only those with History of the Maritime Provinces (Frede- well-developed, successful operations ricton: Acadiensis Press 1993). had the resources to supply what was a very volatile market. FOR SOME YEARS the economic develop­ Acheson's argument that farmers fell ment, or lack of it, of the Maritime prov­ into several strata ranging from producers inces has been dealt with in terms of of large quantities of farm commodities to regionalism. One version of this ap­ cottars of the community leads to the con­ proach, dependency theory, has lost sup­ clusion that there was no simple defini­ port during the last decade. Nonetheless, tion of a farmer. Instead of seeing a clear it is still common to relate the disparity dichotomy between the rural life-style between Maritime economic develop­ and the urban society soon to follow, he ment after 1867 and that of central Cana­ argues that fanners were integrated into a da to a lack of local control. It is by no capitalistic exchange system and that the means surprising that Confederation, the most successful appeared to embrace a most obvious example of subordination to highly individualistic work ethic. the upper provinces, should be seen as the cause of this disparity. This collection of The importance of a strong agricultu­ essays was selected in part to cast doubt ral segment to the total economy is on this approach by arguing that econ­ stressed in the study of commodity prices omic disparity pre-dated Confederation. by Kris Inwood and James Irwin. This While it is difficult to bring entirely new importance is due not only to the number arguments to such an often debated topic, of people involved in agriculture but to the thoroughness of the analysis, espe­ the fact that areas dependent on fishing, cially of agriculture, is refreshing. mining, and lumbering were marked by low levels of commodity prices. Thus, the Nineteenth-century agriculture, and poor performance of agriculture in Nova rural society in general, have recently re­ Scotia, combined with the low com­ ceived increased attention. This subject is modity returns that prevailed in mining well served in this collection. Thus Alan 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

and fishing areas, raise the possibility that group" began to direct capital out of the the economic disparity of Nova Scotia Maritimes in the 1890s in reaction to de­ predated the colonial union of 1867 and clining profitability of Maritime enter­ was not created by it. New Brunswick, prises. A different aspect of the same however, whose agricultural sector out­ question is explored by Neil C. Quigley, performed that of Québec, had a stronger Ian M. Drummond, and Lewis T. Evans in economy than Nova Scotia prior to colo­ their examination of regional transfer of nial union, although it declined markedly funds through the banking system from in the post-confederation period. 1895 to 1935. They argue that there is no In a second paper, Professor Inwood evidence to support the claim that banks analyses the much-discussed topic of in­ actively discriminated against the Ma­ dustrialization in the Maritimes from ritimes, and that although significant 1870 to 1910 in terms of the staple theory funds from the Maritimes were invested and structuralism. Reviewing the evi­ outside the region there was no net nega­ dence available from census material, the tive impact. Yet further amplification of author indicates that while the manufac­ this theme is provided by Ken Cruikshank turing sector in New Brunswick and Nova who takes issue with an argument origin­ Scotia had a number of similarities, New ating with Ernie Forbes that policies Brunswick matched or surpassed Ontario adopted by centrally controlled bodies in some categories. After 1870 the effi­ concerning freight rates on the Intercolo­ ciency of factories in New Brunswick de­ nial Railway were a significant factor in clined markedly, while Nova Scotia, hindering Nova Scotian industry follow­ which succeeded in expanding its manu­ ing World War I. facturing from 1870 to 1890, did not man­ While a number of the articles dis­ age to improve its relative position. By count the lack of local control as the cause 1910, however, the similarities between of the economic problems faced by the the two Maritime provinces had increased Maritimes, Marilyn Gerriets in her exam­ and the differences between them and the ination of the General Mining Associ­ upper provinces had become more pro­ ation provides a reminder that the centre nounced. Rather than ascribe this situ­ of control should not be entirely ignored. ation to a lack of control created by Con­ She argues that the company, being an federation, Inwood suggests that the absentee owner, did not adjust its policies economic disparity in manufacturing to local conditions and that the province existed prior to Confederation and can be did not receive the economic stimulus explained by the staple theory. Thus, in which might have been expected had the contrast to Professor Acheson's often- coal fields been under local ownership. cited paper on the subject. Professor In­ Analyses of economic disparities in wood suggests that the movement of capi­ terms of technology, location, and dif­ tal out of the Maritimes was actually or­ ferential rates of return are important but chestrated by Maritime capitalists who so too are studies of the human impact of were seeking better returns than were such factors. This point is brought into available in the Maritimes. Support for focus by Del Muise in his fine study of this approach is provided by Gordon P. industry in the post-Confederation Ma­ Marchildon in his study of John F. Stairs ritimes in which he examines the nature and Max Aitken which examines whether of employment for women in Yarmouth, the Maritimes suffered from a shortage of Amherst, and Sydney for the period 1871 capital and financial entrepreneurship to 1921. What emerges very clearly from and whether some of the capital which his account is how varied were the condi­ was there was drained out of the region. tions in the three towns and how this While not directly addressing the first diversity has to be understood before the point, the author argues that the "Stairs REVIEWS 315

impact first of industrialization and then 1891 (which is coincidentally the scope of de-industrialization is comprehensible. of volume 2 of the Historical Atlas of It appears obvious that the articles in Canada) — is a study informed by many this collection were selected principally of the concerns of the late 20th-century to re-open the debate on the causes of the about the problems of economic and so­ economic disparity experienced by the cial development. It is easy to see why Maritimes and to bring into question ar­ Hornsby was attracted to the topic for this guments which have recently enjoyed is in many respects an epic story of how wide-spread acceptance. While the diffi­ one compact, though often diverse, com­ culties faced by the Maritimes may not munity lived some of the big changes of have been created by Confederation, they the 19th century. may have been aggravated by it. As Ernie At the beginning of the century Cape Forbes illustrates, the federal govern­ Breton Island, with a sparse population of ment's preference for linking relief 2,500 people, was little more than a fron­ measures to matching provincial and mu­ tier of the North Atlantic cod fishery, its nicipal grants severely limited the partici­ population focused around centres such pation by the Maritimes in programmes as Arichat and Chéticamp; the few farm which were badly needed. settlements were small and struggling, the There is little question that the ar­ growth of coal mining was extremely ticles in this collection raise significant limited and the colonial state, isolated in questions concerning the economic his­ the tiny town of Sydney, was almost in­ tory of the Maritimes. At the same time visible. By the beginning of the 1890s, this collection should be seen as contri­ however, the population had increased buting to ongoing work; six of the eleven enormously — to 87,000 people — large­ articles have appeared in Acadiensis. ly as a result of immigration from the They are thus not as new as the sub-title western highlands and islands of Scot­ would suggest. Nonetheless, bringing land. Farming had been undertaken on all them together in one volume increases of the more arable soil, with some com­ their impact and makes them more ac­ mercial success in livestock and butter cessible, raising their impact on Maritime production; meanwhile, the cod fishery, studies. supplemented by new activities such as the canning of lobster, had also continued to grow. In addition, the new staple of the Kenneth Pryke coal industry, fuelled by rising demand University of Windsor for power and funded by British, Ameri­ can, and local capital, was establishing the foundations for a major centre of in­ Stephen J. Hornsby, Nineteenth Century dustry in the Maritimes. Cape Breton: A Historical Geography Despite these visible signs of pro­ (Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's gress, Hornsby argues, the prospects for University Press 1992). future prosperity were not strong. In the fisheries, as elsewhere in the North Atlan­ THERE IS ONLY ONE general history of tic, the resources were controlled almost Cape Breton Island. That one was written entirely by a network of merchant capital­ by the manager of the General Mining ists. The industry brought few local bene­ Association, Richard Brown, in 1869, and fits and created few economic linkages it was a typical 19th-century account of and its successes were supported by a the eventual arrival of progress and devel­ population living in a perpetual condition opment on the British North American of dependence and destitution. In agricul­ frontier. By contrast, Stephen Hornsby's ture there was no significant generation of historical geography of Cape Breton Is­ local capital as there was in more success- land — limited to the period from 1800 to 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

fui agricultural regions such as Ontario; ermen at Chéticamp, Homsby uses the instead, there was a sharp division be­ records of the Robin Company to describe tween the minority of successful fanners several remarkable episodes of combina­ and the rural majority who struggled for tion and collective bargaining on the subsistence and were most likely to be wharf over the price of fish. In the coal drawn away from productive work on industry Homsby shows that episodes of their farms to seek remuneration in vari­ conflict over work-discipline and wages ous kinds of wage-labour. Although the can be seen at Sydney Mines as early as coal industry seemed to have a promising 1830. From this kind of evidence it is future, local capitalists had failed to cap­ clear that there was a local history of ture control of the industry during the popular resistance and labour conflict in decades of opportunity after the 1850s Cape Breton long before the arrival of and its development was now tied to out­ formal institutions such as the Provincial side markets and outside investors. In the Workmen's Association in the 1880s, end, Homsby concludes, local agriculture which in any event limited its activity to was based on a deficient resource base — the collieries at this stage. For those who "a generally niggardly land" (208) — and have a distorted view of 19th-century the two key staple trades, in fish and coal, Cape Breton as a thoroughly indus­ "had created enclaves of specialized work trialized replica of the British coal around the coast that were more con­ country, there is the useful reminder that nected to external economies than to the throughout the period under discussion rest of the Island." (203) An indication of the work force was dominated not by an the island's malaise at the end of the 19th industrial working class but by other century was the fact that ever since the groups: the principal occupations in 1881 hard times associated with the potato were as follows: farmers 14,536, fisher­ blight of the 1840s, there had been an men 3,190, mariners 1,357, servants exodus from the island. In the 1880s, the 1,243 (many of them apparently young first decade of the National Policy, the women in off-island employment in Hali­ island's population increased only 2.8 per fax and Boston), and miners 1,043. Al­ cent. though the coal miners were obviously a Apart from the genera] argument substantial presence in the 19th century, about the failure of the staple economy, the process of working-class formation labour historians will have a special inter­ was only beginning at this stage — the est in several aspects of this study. For number of coal miners would multiply each of the three major economic sectors several times during the next few decades which Homsby discuses, there is useful and the coming of the railroad and the attention to methods of production, divi­ steel industry, with their associated em­ sions of labour, recruitment and remuner­ ployment (and new immigration), were ation of workers, standards of accommo­ also still in the future. dation and diet, problems of labour disci­ This is a concise and well-written pline, and episodes of collective action. study, supplemented with more than 75 Homsby finds that among immigrants useful tables, maps, and illustrations. It is from the estates of Scotland who were fair to say that in a study of this scope few now settled on new lands in Cape Breton, individuals or local situations can be de­ there was a resilient determination to suc­ scribed at length, but the range of sources ceed on the land — so much so that among and local details employed is truly im­ them the collection of quit rents owed to pressive, including along the way ac­ the Crown in the 1820s was virtually im­ counts of crop production and fish mar­ possible and at mid-century perhaps half kets as well as the diaries and letters of the occupied land was held by squatters the farmers, fishermen, and miners who without clear title. Among Acadian fish­ are the human subjects of the story. Ques- REVIEWS 317 tions can be raised about some of the analysis. This is understandably not a pol­ bolder generalizations. The statement that itical history, so there is little discussion farmers "gave up an independent living of individual political figures or of the on the land for industrial wage-labour" changing sutus of Cape Breton as a sep­ (152) seems to contradict much of the arate colony prior to 1820, as part of Nova other evidence about the dependent con­ Scotia prior to 1867 and then as part of the dition of the rural majority and their early Dominion of Canada; issues such as the familiarity with various kinds of wage-la­ struggle for self-government or the debate bour, both in agriculture and in the sta­ over Confederation and the process of ples. Also, labour historians will have political integration receive little atten­ some difficulty in recognizing "the so­ tion. All this is perhaps acceptable in a cialist rhetoric of the Provincial Work­ study of this kind, but it does weaken the men's Association, with its millennial vi- explanatory framework, which, in the ab­ sion of the cooperative commonwealth" sence of alternative analysis, falls back (204), a description that seems premature rather easily on a form of geographic and for the coal miners in the period covered resource determinism. As Hornsby's ac­ by the study. Readers should also be count itself shows in various instances, aware that there is a disagreement among the colonial, imperial, and national gov­ historians about the identity of one of the ernments all acted repeatedly to structure country merchants discussed in this the prevailing opportunities for the con­ study, and Hornsby's discussion of John trol and exploitation of resources, land Belcher Moore (72,138-9) should be read settlement and ownership, access to capi­ in conjunction with Rusty Bittermann's tal and markets, and the distribution of comment (Labour/Le Travail, 31, p. 20, economic power on the island. Such n. 29). In addition, there are some themes structural weaknesses as the failure of which could have received greater atten­ agriculture as a motor of economic devel­ tion in this study. Hornsby is generally opment and the limited impact of the sensitive to the presence of various ele­ staple trades were not simply the out­ ments apart from the dominant Scottish comes of the island's resource endow­ population who contributed to the making ment but also the product of policies of of the island identity; but although the access, incentive, and exclusion. As presence of the Micmac in the interior of Hornsby again acknowledges, the poverty the island is noted at the beginning of the and destitution that ran through the back- 19th century, they subsequently disap­ lands, outports, and colliery villages pear from the discussion and unfortunate­ limited the surpluses available for devel­ ly nothing is said of their dispossession opment and contributed to the restriction and accommodation to the new order dur­ of local economic potential. Since the ing the remainder of the century. Similar­ central argument is that the staple indus­ ly, while Homsby has given considerable tries failed to provide solid foundations attention to the role of the farm household for economic growth, it would seem use­ in the rural economy, there is little spe­ ful to pursue a closer examination of the cific discussion of the role of women in role of the state in maintaining the domi­ sustaining the agricultural economy, nant economic structure. This is all the either in dairying and weaving on the more relevant as Hornsby maintains, with more successful farms or in the simple some justice, that "the roots of the loss of struggle for subsistence in the backlands, Cape Breton and Maritime control over a responsibility which fell most heavily their industry lay in the late eighteenth- on women when men were drawn away and nineteenth-century development of into wage-labour. the region's staple and agricultural econ­ omies." (207) While he has utilized the Most of all, readers must be struck by staples approach to good effect to isolate the relative absence of the state in this 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL key questions concerning regional devel­ Canadian historical mainstream. There opment in the 19th century, it is probably are eighteen chapters in the book, each too soon to conclude that the staple trades written by an authority in the field, and were too dominant and the resource base each, more or less, reflecting the available too limited to allow any other historical literature — at least that written in the outcome. After all, in the 1890s Cape pre-1988 period. As is always the case in Breton Island possessed more substantial such a multi-authored collection, there is local resources for the establishment of a broad spectrum of literary and scholarly coal and steel industries than any other quality in the various chapters. A few of district in the entire country. Within the the essays are superbly written and context of the developing Canadian econ­ studded with marvellous insights; they omy at the tum of the century. Cape Bre­ could have been published as articles in ton Island was about to become one of the almost any first-class Canadian historical most dynamic industrial communities journal. Most of the rest of the chapters within the Dominion. Moreover, the local are confidently and well-written syn­ identity which had been under construc­ theses; a few, alas, are rather limp and tion in the course of the 19th century tired efforts — as if the authors had lost would, in the 20th century, give rise to a interest in their decades somewhere in the sustained struggle to escape the depend­ latter stages of writing. ency of the past. The decade-by-decade format of The Although Hornsby's explanatory Atlantic Provinces, it should be noted, framework may provoke questions, this is results in a somewhat disjointed book — nevertheless a study in the best traditions a book with too much repetition and a of historical geography. He has success­ book with too many rough and awkward fully shown the interaction of people and transitions. The University of Toronto place on a grand scale, incorporating in­ Press, it is clear, could have devoted more sights into the physical and social envi­ of its resources to sensitively and care­ ronment, the organization of technology fully editing the volume (repetitiveness is and culture, and the prevailing economic accompanied by too many small factual and class relations in the community. errors and too much, far too much, thick There is a rich selection of descriptive detail); and, moreover, the Press should detail here and an impressive range of have ensured that the wonderful maps evidence, all of it testimony to the energy were larger and clearer in their presenta­ and industry which have gone into the tion. preparation of this study. The result is an The editors, Ernie Forbes and Del effective account of the structure of local Muise, have encouraged the authors to history in 19th-century Cape Breton as devote some attention not only to politi­ well a useful case study in some of the cal, economic, and cultural history but great transformations of the 19th century. also to women, the working class, Blacks, the First Nations, and the dispossessed. David Frank These hitherto largely neglected groups University of New Brunswick have become in The Atlantic Provinces an integral and significant part of the re­ gional experience. In fact, it may be ar­ gued that, in terms of the broad base of E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds., The analysis, this book now becomes the Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (To­ model for other general and regional Ca­ ronto: University of Toronto Press 1993). nadian histories. There are two basic underlying THIS IS, despite its flaws, a landmark themes in these somewhat jaggedly-inte- study which powerfully thrusts the Atlan­ grated chapters — the slow growth and tic region and its historiography into the REVIEWS 319

then decline of the region within Con­ reason, the region was so badly repre­ federation and a profound disquiet about sented by its political leaders in Ottawa. the Atlantic region's role and future with­ Part Four has four chapters, J.K. Hit­ in Canada. This is not, in any way, an ler's largely political overview of New­ optimistic volume but rather it is, for foundland history from 1807 to 1949, many of the authors, a mournful lament Margaret Conrad's lively The 1950s: for a future and a past that never was. The The Decade of Development," Delia first two chapters of The Atlantic Provin­ Sunley's "The 1960s," and John Reid's ces, The 1860s" by Del Muise and The The 1970s." A brief epilogue regarding 1870s** by Phil Buckner cover this well- the 1980s by Forbes concludes this huge plowed period — providing a formidable 626-page volume. More stress could have geographical, political, and economic been placed in these latter chapters on foundation for the remainder of the vol­ public opinion surveys conducted during ume. In her treatment of the 1880s, Judith the past two decades in the region and Fingard makes excellent use of some of what they tell us about Atlantic Canada her work on the underclass of Halifax to and about Maritime» and Newfoundlan­ pump life into the region's underclass. ders. Larry McCann's The 1890s: Fragmenta­ Reflecting rather well the state of pre- tion and the New Social Order," is en­ 1988 Maritime historiography, The Atlan­ ergized by a strongly-argued thesis re­ tic Provinces is particularly strong in the garding the complex way whereby the areas of political and economic history "transition from a seaward to a landward and, of course, working-class history. economy" encouraged the growth of Ma­ Some of the authors are not very convinc­ ritime dependence. The 1900s: Industry, ing or very confident when they discuss Urbanization, and Reform," by Colin Ho­ religion — that is if they do. Some of them well is particularly strong on social and are virtually silent about the Christian cultural history. churches and Christian leaders whether Perhaps the best chapter in the book they are writing about the 19th or the 20th — that by Ian McKay — deals with the centuries. It is noteworthy, however, that 1910s and what he called "The Stillborn in 1987, Reginald Bibby, in his Frag­ Triumph of Progressive Reform." The de­ mented Gods, argued, with some passion, cade begins and ends with remarkable that the Atlantic Provinces had become working-class discontent being mani­ Canada's "Bible Belt." And recent survey fested in the region. This labour radical­ data supports this contention ("God is ism is connected by the region's enthusi­ Alive," Maclean's, 12 April 1993). Ap­ astic espousal of World War I. McKay parently close to 37 per cent of all adults raises some key questions in this chapter in the Atlantic Provinces pray daily — the about how "conservative" the region ac­ national average is 29 per cent. Thirty- tually was and why so many of the Ma­ seven per cent of Atlantic adults attend ritime workers were so radical. David religious services at least "once a week" Frank's The 1920s" is also a superb — compared to 23 percent in Canada (and piece of historical writing; his empathy only 15 per cent in British Columbia). for the working class is both richly tex­ The role that religion has played and con­ tured and critically based. tinues to play in the development of At­ Ernie Forbes and Carman Miller both lantic Canada should never be underesti­ write authoritatively about the 1930s and mated — nor should it be overestimated. 1940s respectively. These chapters are a But it should be perceptively described little more political in their overall ap­ and analyzed even though it may question proach than the previous two and both some of the new Atlantic "historical or­ authors seem to wonder why, with good thodoxy." 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

It is too easy to criticize authors for as pulp and paper companies forced local the sins of omission rather than the sins of sawmill operators to beg for "sub-licen­ commission. The Atlantic Provinces is an ses" when demand for pulpwood was low important book; there is no question during the 1930s. The Nova Scotian pulp about this. And everyone interested in and paper industry did not develop until post-Confederation Canadian history is the 1950s, L. Anders Sandberg suggests, indebted to the authors for their scholarly because it took the provincial government contributions. I certainly am. that long to consolidate enough crown land to assure the companies the benefits G.A. Rawlyk of the reserve system. Queen's University The next two contradictions focus on the extensive conflict which evolved dur­ ing the 1960s and 1970s between small woodlot owners, the companies, and the L. Anders Sandberg, éd., Trouble in the provincial governments. Bill Parenteau Woods: Forest Policy and Social Conflict provides a well-argued explanation for in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick the process in New Brunswick. The de­ (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press 1992). cline of small-scale agriculture left mar­ ginal farmers more dependent on pulp- FORESTS IN NEW BRUNSWICK and Nova wood markets, and thus highly sensitive Scotia have been dominated by the pulp to recurring recessions in the industry: and paper industry for the past SO years. low prices, rural life ideology, and com­ In both provinces during this same period, munity organizers administering federal more pulpwood has been produced from grants supplied the rhetoric and activism small private woodlots than from crown for the woodlot interests. At the same lands. The eight contributors to this book time, pulp and paper companies and their ask why the small woodlot operators have client, the provincial government, sought been unable to acquire more equitable new means to rationalize the pulpwood shares of the wealth they have generated labour market. Regional pulpwood mar­ for the pulp and paper industry. Included keting boards were created to balance the in the answers to this thematic question conflicting interests. Most significantly, are the actions of "client" provincial gov­ the social characteristics of the woodlot ernments, persistent divisions between operators shifted during the 15-year pro­ primary producers, changing rural so­ cess, as farmer-operators became absen­ ciety, and the slowly evolving processes tees selling stumpage to full-time, mech­ of mechanized pulpwood production. anized pulpwood contractors. More than The first four articles cover the period any other writer in the collection, Paren­ 1875 to 1950, and examine the forest pol­ teau manages to capture the irony of a icy structures which shaped the succeed­ labour movement that succeeds, but is ing era of active social conflict. New transformed in the process into a form Brunswick's crown lands (half the prov­ which only serves to further entrench the ince) were consolidated into large blocks existing power structure. Peter Clancy between the 1880s and 1930s, first by provides a similar tale for Nova Scotia sawmillers and then by pulp and paper during the same time period. The primary companies. Raymond Léger and Serge variation seems to be that the Nova Sco­ Côté establish the ultimate purpose of the tian woodlot activists tried to organize the consolidations — to create forest reserves entire province, and experienced fatal for leverage over the small woodlot mar­ fragmentation as a result. The profes­ kets which remained the primary means sional pulpwood contractors took over the for extracting forest labour. Nancy Col­ bargaining sector from the woodlot move­ pitis documents the extent to which the ment, leaving the original activists and consolidations also meant privatization, REVIEWS 321

the remaining fanner-operators in disar­ recent forest labour conflict or of Ma­ ray. ritime underdevelopment history. The final two articles discuss Nova Scotian forest and land regulatory laws Christopher S. Beach that were never enforced, but are useful McGill University for understanding the province's contem­ porary political culture. Glynn Bissix and Sandberg argue that the Forest Improve­ ment Act established a forum for the pol- Richard Apostle, Gene Barrett, et al., iticization of forest policy. The act lost its Emptying Their Nets: Small Capital and effectiveness when the federal govern­ Rural Industrialization in the Nova Scotia ment funded an alternative provincial Fishing Industry (Toronto: University of agency dedicated to servicing the needs Toronto Press 1992). of the pulp and paper companies. In­ cluded are interesting descriptions of the CANADA'S ATLANTIC FISHERY, one of uses of royal commissions, the mixed the world's richest, is in a state of crisis. consequences of private property ideo­ Fish stocks are dangerously low and un­ logies, "ecocentric" activism, and similar employment among fishers and plant obstacles to the development of "equit­ workers is depressingly high. This book able and responsible" forest policies. Kell is a timely and ambitious analysis of the Antoft's short piece on rural land specu­ structure and diversity of Nova Scotia's lation and xenophobia suggests an im­ fishing industry, particularly its coastal portant topic but could use further devel­ fishery and small capital sector, during opment. the 1970s and 1980s. While the editor provides useful and It is a collaborative and inter-discipli­ thoughtful introductory and concluding nary project involving sociologists, an­ remarks, the collection is not compre­ thropologists, and economists working hensive and provides only minimal the­ under the auspices of the Gorsebrook Re­ oretical exposition. Sandberg makes no search Institute for Atlantic Canada effort to compare and contrast the two Studies. The authors interviewed hun­ provinces, although a number of interes­ dreds of managers, fishers, plant workers, ting distinctions are suggested by the ar­ and brokers. Indeed, one of the book's ticles. Similarly, the many references to major strengths is the richness of the in­ Swedish practices and possibilities sug­ formation assembled about the industry. gest an important element in the Nova Regrettably, the study's focus on a rather Scotia story, but these are not developed. narrow period of development raises The pulp and paper companies and prov­ some uncertainty regarding long term incial governments are presented as un­ trends. changing monoliths rather than as import­ The volume adopts a thematic format ant subjects appropriate for close examin­ and consists chiefly of sector surveys and ation. Significant changes in Maritime community case studies. Some of the society during the last quarter-century are main topics addressed include fish pro­ referred to — new rural livelihoods, con­ cessing, port market relations, labour and tinuing poverty, successful contractors, community structures, and ideology. The increasing tourism, and environmental­ volume contains numerous tables and a ists — but the implications are not ex­ brief appendix describes sampling proce­ plored in detail. Overall, however, the dures. At least four of the fourteen chap­ collection makes significant inroads into ters were previously published, and re­ a complex subject, and suggests a number vised for the text. of promising leads for further research. In It begins with a theoretical and his­ addition, it will be useful to students of torical overview of the fishing industry. One of the most surprising and significant 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

developments following the end of World would shed further light on the question War II was the growth and vitality of the of dependency. coastal fishery and the small/intermediate Davis and Kasdan's case study of scale fish processors. Contrary to some Digby Neck and the Islands (Chapter 8) is theories of economic development, this one of the volume's most interesting es­ sector was not monopolized or subsumed says. The authors discuss how the intro­ by large capital, nor was its work force duction of dragger technology and gov­ "proletarianized." The idiosyncrasies of ernment policies influenced the develop­ the resource, together with modernization ment of the area's fishing industry. In an and flexibility, ensured its success. The attempt to "modernize" the coastal fish­ writers rely heavily on differentiation the­ ery the federal and provincial govern­ ory, with its emphasis on "supply side" ments began providing financial assist­ factors, to explore the structure of small ance after World War II for the acquisi­ capital and its relationship with other sec­ tion of dragger technology. The tors of the industry. assistance brought mixed benefits. On the The book provides an effective dis­ one hand, it increased fish production and cussion of differentiation within the pro­ processing. On the other, it inflated the cessing sector. In Chapter 4, Apostle, cost of boats and equipment, led to an Barrett, Davis, and Kasdan establish a overexploitation of the fishing stocks, typology of plants based on their scale of and caused friction between line and operations and social organization: small, dragger fishers. In the long term, these competitive, and large. They find that the changes contributed significantly to the small and competitive plants, for the most decline in Digby Neck's coastal fishery. part, were family-owned and specialized The last third of the book explores in a few products such as fresh fish, labour market relations and community whereas the large plants devoted more structures. In Chapter 10, Apostle and attention to frozen and canned fish. La­ Barrett look at the interaction between bour management was more flexible in capital and labour. Further evidence is the former, and their workers performed provided regarding labour management multiple jobs more frequently. Women in different types of plants. Small plants constituted nearly half of the work force, had the highest proportion of seasonal but were disproportionately represented workers and paid the lowest wages. Thus, in the larger plants where work processes their workers were more dependent on UI were more mechanized and task-spe­ benefits. Most plant managers of non­ cialized. Thus, women performed "light union establishments did what they could labour" and received lower wages. to ensure that their employees would Port market relations receive consid­ qualify for UI. In addition. Apostle and erable attention in the study. In Chapter Barrett find that most plants were situated 7, Apostle and Barrett examine the extent in rural areas which contained surplus la­ of economic dependency between fishing bour. This kept wages low and created a captains and buyers. They argue that the pool of labour which was responsive to presumed "subsumption of direct produ­ the production cycles of the industry. cers by capital — the proletarianization Apostle and Barrett examine the "so­ process — has to be reconsidered." (162) cial economy" of fishing communities in They conclude that the position of fishers Chapter 12. They assess the level of com­ improved with "the emergence of alterna­ munity attachment among plant mana­ tive outlets for fish, alternative service gers, fishing captains, and plant workers. and input suppliers, state based income Most managers were dependent on the support, and loan institutions...." (166) communities in which their plants oper­ More information about the income and ated; they felt obligated to offer work to accumulated debt of fishing captains local residents first. Fishing captains REVIEWS 323 maintained the highest level of work sat­ have suffered immeasurably as a result of isfaction and community attachment, streaming. Narrowly defined, it refers to whereas plant employment generated few the practice of placing secondary school "economic and cultural rewards." This students into different programs which seems fairly obvious. Perhaps a more in­ provide them with different kinds of prep­ teresting question is whether the so­ aration for further education or work. cioeconomic distance between the groups However, streaming is far more complex. changed over time? Here, the inclusion of It involves the systematic segregation of empirical evidence regarding income and children (along social class lines for the wealth would be useful. most part) in ways that determine the The final chapter considers populism quantity and quality of their education. It and alienation within the fishing industry. starts as soon as children enter school, and Apostle and Barrett find that the small the effects remain long after they have capital sector disliked "big government graduated from high school or dropped and big companies" and felt politically out — usually for the rest of their lives. alienated. Furthermore, the marginality of Curtis, Livingstone, and Smaller plant employment left workers alienated thoroughly describe and analyze the as well. These conclusions are based on a subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which series of personal interviews. Fair streaming works in Ontario schools and enough. However, Apostle and Barrett its effects on students. They do this by then assert that "they [private enterprise first outlining the history of streaming in sentiments] may represent the roots of a the province and then detailing the speci­ right wing populism that is the dominant fics of streaming at all levels of public ideology of much of rural Nova Scotia." schooling (including elementary, which (301) Regrettably, little evidence is of­ is usually seen as not involved in the fered in support of this sweeping state­ practice of streaming). Finally, they offer ment. recommendations for "unstacking the Despite its shortcomings, this is an deck." The recommendations take the impressive collaborative effort. The vol­ form of guidelines for democratic school­ ume not only provides many fresh and ing and a strategy for realizing them. significant insights into the sociology, Although the book is about streaming economy, and history of Nova Scotia's in Ontario schools, the practice of stream­ fishing industry, but it also draws atten­ ing is unfortunately not confined to just tion to the importance of small capital in one province. The historical facts may economic development. vary from one place to another and a few of the details about how streaming is cur­ Alan R. MacNcil rently played out in the schools may differ Toronto somewhat, but the practice can be recog­ nized across the country. And so can its devastating effects. In tracing the origins of educational B. Curtis, D.W. Livingstone, and H. inequality in Ontario, the authors show Smaller, Stacking the Deck: The Stream­ that the history of education is in fact the ing of Working-Class Kids in Ontario history of streaming. Schools (Toronto: Our Schools/Our Selves Education Foundation 1992). Since the creation of mass public schooling, students from working-class families have STREAMING, perhaps more than any chronically received less schooling and a dif­ other school practice, is responsible for ferent quality of schooling than have students the persisting inequalities that charac­ from upper-class and professional families. (8) terize our education system. Children from working class and poor backgrounds 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Indeed, the ultimate in streaming was evi­ teacher expectations, which can be highly dent in the establishment of publicly sup­ motivating or completely devastating for ported education in Ontario nearly two students. These are often built into the centuries ago when the poor were ex­ teaching materials. In one study reported cluded altogether by fees beyond their in Slacking the Deck, elementary school­ reach. teachers were asked what knowledge was Since then, an imaginative range of important for the children to learn. Tea­ techniques has been developed to ensure chers in an "executive elite school" em­ the continued segregation of children by phasized reasoning, problem-solving and social class: different programs (techni­ learning to think; the grade 5 science pro­ cal, commercial, vocational, academic) gram and materials were "designed to be within the same high school; guidance 'intellectually stimulating and scientifi­ programs to assist students in making cally authentic.'" But teachers in a "work­ their program (stream) "choice"; separate ing-class school" talked about the import­ schools for different programs; "ability ance of the children learning facts, basic grouping" into different classrooms and skills, the three R's; the grade 5 social within the same classroom in the elemen­ studies textbook guide in this school fo­ tary and junior high schools; private cused on "the importance of 'eliminating schools; and, in more recent years, French extraneous subject matter and excessive immersion programs, classes and pro­ details' so that students will 'feel secure grams for "the gifted," "the learning dis­ in doing routine tasks' and not have 'great abled," children who are judged to be demands' placed on them." (71-3) "slow" or to have "behavioural prob­ Then there are differences in class­ lems," to need "remedial work" or "spe­ room atmosphere, facilities and activities. cial education," and on and on. This says These show up early. The authors quote nothing of the fact that most urban and from a study of a middle-class grade 1 suburban elementary schools are them­ classroom that was a selves segregated by social class because children go to the elementary school in hodge-podge of colour ... book-racks, their already segregated neighbourhoods. chalkboard designs, listening terminal and ear­ phones, autumn centre and seed centres, a Furthermore, a number of other stand­ whole range of alcoves and tiny nooks ... sur­ ard school practices feed directly into roundings for a small fleet of tables and these more formalized streaming prac­ chairs" [where] students were engaged in a tices. They support and justify streaming number of different individual and group ac­ and in so doing become an integral part of tivities ... the streaming process. High on the list is IQ testing, that absurd practice which has compared to its inner-city counterpart been thoroughly discredited for decades where children but which nonetheless survives, probably were kept "in tidy rows" and the class rules because, as Curtis et al. point out, [were] written on the blackboard ("1. We must be quiet in class ...") ... and the emphasis ... the history of intelligence testing can be seen was much more weighted to "proper" be­ largely as an effort to devise more efficient haviour, obedience and order. (71) means to sort people for their social destinies on the basis of supposedly fixed intrinsic Obviously, these practices which di­ capacities. (14) rectly stream or support streaming guar­ Standardized testing serves the same pur­ antee sub-standard education for most pose. This is buttressed by the invidious working-class and poor kids. But Stack­ competition which pervades our schools. ing the Deck gives us a glimpse beyond Perhaps most elusive of all are the that by showing us how children also have usually subtle and often unconscious to endure the labelling and stigmatizing that go with streaming and the resulting REVIEWS 325

humiliation, low self-esteem, and hatred lected into the teacher education program of school, teachers and learning. from a huge batch of applicants (highly The authors back up their claims by streamed!). Almost all of them have an citing numerous studies and statistics to undergraduate university degree and may show who gets put in what streams, who have advanced degrees. While each year ends up with what levels of achievement, many students have some sophistication who is considered "gifted** and who is in about gender and race when they enter the need of "special education," who gets course, most know virtually nothing how much schooling and who drops out, about social class, to the point of not even who gets what kind of jobs (or none at all) recognizing that the existence of classes based on the amount and type of their in our society is real and that it has serious schooling. Overwhelmingly, we see the implications for schooling — including working class and the poor as those who their presence in a teacher education pro­ suffer from the streaming practices in our gram. schools. Streaming in school is, in fact, The book is couched in what the auth­ streaming for life. The studies and the ors call "a 'class-power approach/ ... figures show without a doubt that stream­ which combines ... structures-of-domin- ing serves to reproduce the social classes. ance and elite-politics theories." (20) This is not new information. Al­ Curtis, Livingstone, and Smaller quite ac­ though "systemic class differences have curately see the problems of the school as been ignored or denied in many studies of inextricably tied to economic and politi­ educational inequality" (7) and thus the cal power in the society at large. Conse­ connection has not always been made quently, they recognize that the schools with streaming, social class discrimina­ cannot solve the problems in isolation tion has been unavoidably clear from the underlying social realities that throughout: give rise to the problems. [E]very study of schools that has paid attention [W]e do not expect a reformed school system to class differences has found that working- alone to be able to create a better world. The class kids have always fared much worse in school system cannot overcome differences in school than middle- and upper-class kids. wealth, property ownership and political Working-class kids always have, on average, power, nor can it erase sexism or racism. It did lower reading scores, higher grade failures, not create these conditions in the first place. higher drop-out rates and much poorer But we do expect the school system, in concert employment opportunities. (7) with reforming social policies in other areas, to challenge people to develop their abilities, Curtis, Livingstone and Smaller have and encourage them to seek democracy. The undertaken the frustrating task of saying school system can start to do this by stopping all over again and documenting all over its efforts to convince a large majority of work­ again what was said and documented long ing people that they deserve boredom and stul­ tification at school in preparation for boredom ago but has never changed — at least not and low pay at work. (102) on any substantial scale. Unfortunately, it is as necessary as ever that they do this. The authors mention in passing that While at long last there is at least the the changes they propose can only be real­ beginnings of recognition of the insidious ized with appropriate support within the racism and sexism that exist in our school system. However, this point needs schools, the same cannot be said about more emphasis. We have seen educa­ classism. My own students well illustrate tional reforms come and go. Many of this point. I teach a Race, Class, and Gen­ them fail simply because of inadequate der in Education course to people who are supports and lack of connection to a going to be teachers. They are an un­ broader educational vision. This problem usually keen and thoughtful group of stu­ stems, when not from outright sabotage, dents, the approximately 10 per cent se­ 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL from an insufficient grasp on the part of with this collection. Trading Freedom those who are to implement the changes consists of very brief excerpts from news­ of why they are being made and therefore paper and magazine articles, speeches and how to make them. You can unscrew the testimony to congressional and par­ desks from the floor (as was done in many liamentary committees, and newsletter schools in the 1960s and 70s) but if you briefs to environmental and labour organ­ don't know why you did it, and if every­ izations. The book has precisely the thing else remains as it was, all that hap­ strengths and weaknesses of a good clip­ pens is that by the end of the day, the ping file. Taken together, these pieces, teacher is backed up against the wall and which average two pages in length, pro­ is surrounded by a sea of desks (as hap­ vide a vivid picture of the unhappy con­ pened in many elementary school class­ sequences that are the most likely rooms). Then comes the cry that the "re­ outcome of a free-trade agreement among form" didn't work and that the desks Canada, Mexico, and the United States. should be screwed to the floor again. We The assembly of highly qualified authors cannot simply eliminate the streams in the does give us many, varied, and generally high schools without also doing away persuasive reasons to feel concern about with ability grouping in the elementary the process that has brought the three grades, without making the classrooms North American governments to strike an cooperative rather than competitive, agreement. However, the collection does without getting rid of IQ and standardized not provide enough analysis to enable us testing, without helping teachers to learn to understand how the world got to be the new ways of teaching that are appropriate way it is and, specifically, why the Bush, to these new settings, and without follow­ Mulroney, and Salinas regimes have been ing the many other thoughtful guidelines successful in pushing an initiative that is provided in the last chapter. so damaging in so many different ways to Curtis, Livingstone, and Smaller perhaps a majority of Americans, Cana­ quite sensibly recognize that all this rep­ dians, and Mexicans. resents a major change, and therefore a John Cavanagh's "Forword" is very program of action is needed. Their strate­ useful in defining the terms in which the gy calls for "a democratic class alliance" discussion is conducted. John Gershman of parents, community organizations, the follows with an introduction that sets the labour movement, and teachers and their debate about free trade in the context of organizations. (120-2) To really unstack the changes in patterns of world trade and the deck, progressives within the school the process of internationalization of pro­ will have to link themselves to broader duction. Excerpts from the work of Bruce political forces. Campbell and other Canadian observers outline the problems inherent in the US- Ruth Gamberg Canada accord. Adolfo Aguilar Zinzer, Dalhousie University David Brooks, and the Ecumenical Coali­ tion for Economic Justice very effectively sketch the arguments against free trade with Mexico. In particular they emphas­ John Cavanagh, John Gershman, Karen ize the negative impact on the Mexican Baker, and Gretchen Helmke, eds., Trad­ poor, especially in the rural areas. The ing Freedom: How Free Trade Affects our myths surrounding the maquiladoras and Lives, Work and Environment (Toronto: the "low wage boomtowns" of Mexico are Between the Lines 1992). exploded by Sandy Tolan and Jerry Kramer. The environmental dangers and ANYONE WHO has ever carefully assem­ human rights implications of the free bled a file of clippings on an important trade agreement are the focus of another topic will feel familiar and comfortable REVIEWS 327

two sections of the collection. Finally, evaluate the most immediate problems as­ contributions by Arnoldo Garda, Jorge sociated with the drive toward the Castafieda and Rafael Alarcon dispense NAFTA. Trading Freedom would make a with the argument that a free trade agree­ wonderful briefing book for anyone who ment will put an end to illegal migration had to address a largely sympathetic audi­ from Mexico to the United States. ence on the topic, "One Hundred Good The book closes with a section on Reasons to Oppose Free Trade." How­ "Continental Alternatives." It is perhaps ever, for a more profound and satisfying here that the superficiality of the collec­ analysis of why we now stand on the brink tion is most frustrating to the reader. Be­ of a North American free trade agreement cause the authors have not provided an and what is to be done about its negative analysis of the alignment of class forces consequences, we will have to search for underlying the push for free trade, it is more sustained analyses than this collec­ difficult for them to identify meaningful tion can provide. alternatives to this project. What does the "One-World Strategy for Labor" pro­ Judith Adler Hellman posed by Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costel- York University lo mean in an historical moment in which the US labour movement has suffered one defeat after another and the relatively tiny number of Mexican workers who are or­ Louis Fournier, Louis Laberge. Le syndi­ ganized by independent unions live every calisme, c'est ma vie (Montréal, Québec- day of their working and private lives Amérique 1992). under threat of savage repression? In what terms can we understand Cavanagh, LOUIS FOURNIER NOUS livre ici la bio­ Bello, and Broad's proposals for debt re­ graphie du militant syndical le plus connu lief for Mexico and other Latin American au Québec, hormis peut-être Michel Char- countries if the book does not provide an trand. Louis Laberge, en effet, est resté 27 analysis of how the "debt trap" developed ans à la tête de la plus importante centrale and is sustained? The "Development, syndicale du Québec, la Fédération des Democracy and Dignity" referred to by travailleurs (puis des travailleurs et des Gaventa, Smith, and Willingham seems travailleuses) du Québec, la FTQ. A ce little more than a hopeful slogan in the titre, il méritait qu'on lui consacre une absence of a more profound exploration biographie. Le lecteur y découvrira le of what, exactly, is the link between the bilan d'un chef ouvrier important de l'his­ democratization process, economic de­ toire syndicale du Québec, une person­ velopment, and «distributive justice. The nalité attachante et une mine de cases of Argentina and Brazil indicate renseignements et d'anecdotes qui font de that the relationship between the move cette biographie une espèce de portrait from authoritarian rule to democratic in­ intimiste et affectueux de celui que l'aut­ stitutions and economic development is eur appelle le «Vieux lion.» anything but simple. How, then, is the Louis Fournier a bien connu Laberge: reader to interpret calls for a "new partici­ il a été vice-président aux communica­ pation" that "transcends class, racial, gen­ tions pour le compte du Fonds de soli­ der and community lines," (112) in the darité de la FTQ pendant plus de sept ans. context of the political authoritarianism Il en a rédigé l'histoire, d'ailleurs (Soli­ that persists in Mexico even as Salinas darité Inc. Un nouveau syndicalism créa­ attempts to "streamline" the economy? teur d'emplois, 1991) et cette proximité de l'auteur et de son sujet pose certaine­ Overall, the editors of this collection ment le problème de la complaisance: cer­ have assembled some very stimulating, tes, son amitié avec Laberge a permis à well written, short pieces that critically Fournier d'interroger 62 personnes, dont 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL les proches de Laberge — sa première 1991, et il reste actif dans le syndicalisme femme, sa deuxième, ses trois fils, ses comme président du conseil d'administra­ collaborateurs immédiats, notamment tion du Fonds de solidarité de la FTQ. Fernand Daoust et Jacques Brûlé, ses sec­ Au travers les 23 chapitres de ce livre, rétaires, ses amis personnels — en plus de c'est toute l'histoire du syndicalisme réaliser des entrevues avec Robert Bou- moderne qui défile sous nos yeux, de la rassa, Jacques Parizeau, Jean Campeau, syndicalisation massive du temps de Marcel Pépin, Chislain Dufour, et plu­ guerre à la création, controversée du sieurs autres. Mais il trace le portrait de Fonds de solidarité, en passant par les celui qui a été son patron et l'on ne se batailles contre Maurice Duplessis et Jean surprendra pas devant le regard tendre, Drapeau, la révolution tranquille et amical, affectueux et admiratif que Four- l'émergence du syndicalisme dans le sec­ nier a posé sur la carrière et la person­ teur public, les batailles du Front commun nalité de Laberge. Mais peut-il en être de 1972, 1975 et 1982, les durs conflits à autrement dans le genre biographique? Seven-Up, La Presse et United Aircraft, Qui entreprendrait la biographie d'une la crise d'octobre 1970, la commission personnalité qu'il excècre? Cela dit, Cliche sur la criminalité dans la construc­ Fournier mentionne les jugements tion, les rapports avec le Parti québécois, critiques qu'ont posés ses adversaires sur le référendum de 1980 et les réaligne­ Laberge: les Mulroney, Bourassa, Marcel ments imposés par les crises économiques Pépin (ex-président de la CSN), Michel de 1982 et 1988. Chartrand (ex-président du Conseil cen­ L'ouvrage de Fournier est bien écrit. tral de Montréal) et Chislain Dufour. Les phrases sont courtes, le style est vif et L'ensemble donne toutefois un portrait l'auteur n'est pas avare de ces anecdotes largement favorable du «Vieux lion.» qui rendent le personnage de Laberge si Laberge naît le 18 février 1924, à vivant. Laberge est caractérisé ainsi par Montréal, huitième enfant d'une famille Fournier: force de la nature, bourru mais ouvrière qui en comptera dix. Son père, avec du coeur, travaillant, possédant un Ephrem Laberge, est charpentier-menui­ franc-parler, privilégiant les liens sier et syndicaliste de la Confédération d'amitié envers et contre tout, franc, di­ des travailleurs catholiques du Canada ... rect, parfois matamore, joueur invétéré un Dès l'âge de 19 ans, Laberge est congédié peu trop porté sur la bouteille, Laberge est pour activité syndicale, mais c'est le l'opposé du bureaucrate froid ou de début d'une carrière de cinquante ans de l'idéaliste dogmatique: il personnalise ses militantisme syndical. Le profil de rapports avec les ouvriers de la base Laberge en fait le protoype du syndical­ comme avec les grands de ce monde. Il iste nord-américain qui a gravi tous les fait jouer ses contacts pour régler les con­ échelons de la base au sommet: délégué flits, car il est constamment à la recherche d'atelier puis secrétaire de la loge 712, d'un compromis pour faire avancer les Laberge devient «agent d'affaire,» c'est- choses. Laberge est aussi en constante à-dire permanent du syndicat des Machin­ évolution: ouvertement antiséparatiste au istes. début des années soixante, Laberge est un Il milite ensuite au Conseil des Mé­ militant souverainiste au début des an­ tiers et du Travail de Montréal (CMTM), nées quatre-vingt dix. Tour à tour conser­ dont il devient membre de l'exécutif en vateur, socialiste, puis social-démocrate, 1950 et président, en 1955. Puis, il de­ pro-Américain puis farouche défenseur vient le président fondateur du nouveau de l'autonomie syndicale québécoise, Conseil du travail de Montréal, en 1958, partisan du NPD puis ami de Mulroney, avant de succéder à Roger Provost à la Laberge ne s'enferme pas dans des tours tête de la nouvelle FTQ, en 1964. Il de­ d'ivoire idéologiques. meure à la présidence de la FTQ jusqu'en REVIEWS 329

Pragmatisme et réalisme: tels sont les se réjouir de la parution de celle de deux qualificatifs employés par Fournier Laberge. De tels travaux permettent de pour décrire le leadership de Laberge, ce situer les chefs ouvriers dans leur époque «parrain» du syndicalisme québécois. En et dans la dynamique des organisations effet, on ne trouvera pas de longue disser­ qu'ils ont dirigées, cet égard, le livre de tation sur l'idéologie de Louis Laberge Fournier livre la marchandise, sans pour dans ce volume, mais plutôt une longue autant épuiser le sujet. Mais il est bien liste de ses réalisations. Il a été au coeur difficile d'écrire la biographie d'un vi­ de l'affirmation de la FTQ comme centrale vant, surtout quand ce dernier occupe en­ syndicale à part entière, indépendante du core des fonctions importantes. Qui sait si Congrès du Travail du Canada et aussi des les témoignages seront les mêmes dans grands syndicats américains. Il est à vingt ans? l'origine de la FTQ-Construction, du pro­ gramme Corvée-Habitation et du Fonds Bernard Dionne de solidarité de la FTQ. Son dernier projet, Cégep Lionel-Groulx l'édifice de la FTQ et du Fonds de soli­ darité, boulevard Crémazie à Montréal, témoigne du succès de celui que Fournier n'hésite pas à qualifier de «figure domi­ Roch Denis et Serge Denis, Les syndicats nante du syndicalisme québécois pour la face au pouvoir. Syndicalisme et politique deuxième moitié du XXe siècle.» (382) au Québec de 1960 à 1992 (Ottawa: Les Bien entendu, l'ouvrage de Fournier Éditions du Vermillon 1992). ne peut aborder toutes les grandes batail­ les syndicales ni examiner en détail le rôle DANS CET OUVRAGE, les auteurs rendent de Laberge dans chacune d'elles. Ainsi, compte de l'évolution des rapports entre Fournier décrit longuement la crise initiée le mouvement syndical et le pouvoir po­ par les agissements de Dédé Desjardins et litique au Québec, depuis 1960. Renouant ses confrères du puissant Conseil des mé­ avec une tradition historiographique tiers de la construction, responsables du longtemps reléguée au second plan, voilà saccage de la Baie James (1974) et de un livre centré sur ce qu'on appelait Inac­ l'établissement d'un système de bandit­ tion politique ouvrière» — mais qui, en isme organisé dans les syndicats de la fait, ne concerne ici que les organisations construction affiliés à la FTQ. Laberge, syndicales. dont Desjardins est l'un des amis, est Le développement se divise en trois blâmé par la commission Cliche pour son parties. Dans une première partie, la plus «aveuglement» et sa «méconnaissance longue, on relate le développement tu­ des hommes.» Fournier nous apprend que multueux du syndicalisme québécois du­ Laberge a été également blâmé par l'ex­ rant les vingt ans qui vont de l'arrivée au écutif de la FTQ (238), mais nous ne sau­ pouvoir des libéraux de Jean Lesage rons pas comment il a fait pour demeurer jusqu'au premier mandat du Parti québé­ à la tête de la FTQ dans de telles condi­ cois. Les auteurs, notamment en com­ tions. Pour durer ainsi 27 ans à la tête de parant cette époque avec les années 1950, la FTQ, Laberge a dû être un batailleur, un démontrent bien comment la croissance «survivant,» conclut simplement Four­ des effectifs — particulièrement ceux du nier. secteur public — et l'émergence du syn­ dicalisme comme force sociale de premier L'ouvrage de Fournier comble ainsi plan ont généré durant cette période un une lacune évidente en histoire du syndi­ nouveau type de rapport avec l'État et les calisme québécois. Les biographies sont gouvernements, qui ne peuvent plus ig­ rares — à quand celles de Michel Char- norer sa présence et sa voix. Les grandes trand, de Fernand Daoust, de Claude étapes et les principaux phénomènes et Jodoin, de Madeleine Parent? — et il faut développements de cette époque de gloire 330 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

du syndicalisme québécois sont présentés Enfin, dans leur troisième partie — la et resitués dans leur contexte. Au delà de plus faible, selon nous, parce que la dém­ l'analyse des facteurs internes et externes onstration y est trop embryonnaire et ap­ ayant conditionné ce développement, le puie peu les conclusions — les auteurs fil conducteur privilégié ici est l'attitude analysent les effets de la stagnation écon­ des syndicats à l'égard de la politique omique des années 1980 sur les struc­ partisane, et plus précisément de la forma­ tures, les attitudes, et les pratiques des tion d'un parti des travailleurs, cet égard, syndicats au Québec. Partant de l'hypo­ bien que cela ne soit pas dit explicitement, thèse selon laquelle «les crises écon­ les auteurs semblent reprocher l'incapa­ omiques ont tendance à favoriser l'inter­ cité des syndicats à s'engager dans la voie vention politique du mouvement du troisième parti et leur choix de miser ouvrier.» les auteurs s'attachent princi­ plutôt sur les formations en place, les libé­ palement à décrire le «processus des dif­ raux d'abord et le PQ par la suite (exem­ férenciations, des clivages et des contra­ ples: 36-7,55,57,74,189). Ce biais agace dictions internes» que ce phénomène au­ quelque peu, justement parce qu'il n'est rait provoqué au sein du mouvement. On pas explicitement déclaré et assumé par développe d'abord l'idée que l'impact les auteurs qui ont semble-t-il voulu mar­ profond de la récession et des grèves de quer leur analyse du sceau de la neutralité 1982-1983 dans le secteur public aura et éviter les prises de position idéologiques deux effets opposés: d'un côté, l'alliance trop marquées. Nous y reviendrons. informelle avec le gouvernement péquiste Dans un deuxième temps, les auteurs se brise et conduit à une méfiance et une se penchent sur la période allant du réf­ certaine autonomie à l'égard des gouver­ érendum de 1980 jusqu'à l'accord du Lac nements; mais d'un autre côté, afin de Meech, en passant par la rapatriement de défendre les intérêts de leurs membres 1982. Cette partie est en fait consacrée à durant une conjoncture particulièrement une analyse comparative des positions re­ difficile, les appareils syndicaux mettent spectives des mouvements syndicaux de l'avant une attitude de concertation et québécois et anglo-canadien à l'égard de de dialogue, recherchant ainsi l'implica­ la question constitutionnelle. On y décrit tion et la participation au processus de avec force détails comment le CTC et le décision politique. Abordant la question NPD sont passés d'une attitude de relative des divisions et des contradictions inter­ ouverture d'esprit à l'égard du droit à nes résultant de cette évolution contradic­ l'autodétermination du Québec, pour toire, les auteurs font état des tensions devenir, à l'époque du référendum, des entre une base présentée comme plus alliés fidèles de la stratégie constitution­ «radicale» et critique à l'égard de l'État nelle du gouvernement Trudeau. l'in­ et du pouvoir politique — attitude mili­ verse, bien qu'aucune centrale n'appuya tante découlant principalement de la officiellement l'indépendance, le mouve­ grève de la fonction publique de 1982- ment syndical québécois adopta des posi­ 1983 —, par opposition à des leaders syn­ tions s'opposant diamétralement à celles dicaux qui auraient plutôt cherché à court­ des organisations anglo-canadiennes iser les gouvernements en adhérant à leur puisque, grosso modo, il s'alignera sur les discours de concertation et de partenariat positions du Parti québécois. Bref, pour tripartite. Par ailleurs, on voit dans le fait les auteurs, la question nationale — ou que les centrales soient devenues ouver­ plus précisément le nationalisme respectif tement souverainistes au tournant des an­ des uns et des autres — est devenue plus nées 1990, non seulement une étape im­ que jamais, durant les années 1980, le portante de leur attitude face à la question grand facteur de division entre les deux nationale, mais le signe de leur affran­ solitudes syndicales cohabitant au sein du chissement et de l'autonomie retrouvée Canada. face au pouvoir politique. L'ouvrage se REVIEWS 331

clôt sur une esquisse à peine ébauchée de ils ne se reconnaissaient pas a aussi joué prospective quant i l'attitude du syndical­ un rôle en creusant un fossé entre eux et isme à l'égard de son implication po­ leurs dirigeants. De même, avec l'obten­ litique. Dans l'ensemble, l'analyse du tion de très bonnes conventions collec­ syndicalisme actuel tel qu'il se développe tives durant les années 1970, suite à de depuis le retour des libéraux est chiche et très durs conflits dans le secteur public, l'évaluation de la crise actuelle du syndi­ plusieurs ont été amenés tout naturelle­ calisme, malgré les promesses de l'intro­ ment à estimer que le retard initial avait duction et de la quatrième de couverture, été comblé et qu'il fallait remettre en déçoit par sa minceur, son manque d'orig­ question les pratiques antérieures, d'aut­ inalité et son manque d'achèvement. ant plus que la frustration croissante de la Dans cette optique, ajoutons en passant population, privée régulièrement de ses qu'il aurait été plus fertile selon nous de hôpitaux et de ses écoles, concourait rapatrier dans cette dernière partie l'ana­ également à une réflexion en ce sens. lyse de la nouvelle idéologie de partena­ Toujours dans cette optique, l'emploi par riat prévalant depuis 1984-1985, qui se les auteurs de l'expression «radicalisation trouve curieusement à la fin de la pre­ politique» (i.e., dans le titre du chapitre mière partie. (86-9) IX, 149), pour désigner l'attitude de la L'ouvrage de Serge et Roch Denis a base syndicale suite aux grèves de 1982- comme grand avantage d'offrir une syn­ 1983, prête à confusion. Selon nous, il thèse relativement à jour du mouvement faudrait plutôt parler d'une sainte colère syndical québécois — et, dans une cer­ des employés du gouvernement, alors en taine mesure, canadien — à une époque processus de négociation et qui, habitués où l'on écrit beaucoup moins qu'aupara­ aux succès des rondes précédentes, ont vant sur le syndicalisme. Comme l'affir­ mal digéré le refus ferme et cavalier de ment à juste titre les auteurs, leur ouvrage leurs demandes par un gouvernement comble donc une lacune justifiant dès lors qu'ils croyaient jusque là «de leur bord.» sa parution. Nos réserves touchent leur Cet épisode a certes détourné plus ou approche analytique qui, si elle est co­ moins temporairement beaucoup de syn­ hérente, est parfois discutable et com­ diqués du Parti québécois et aiguisé l'es­ porte quelques ambiguïtés. prit critique de certains militants à l'égard de la stratégie de concertation prônée par En effet, le grand absent de leur inter­ les hautes instances, mais il ne faut pas prétation reste la masse des syndiqués an­ exagérer selon nous la dichotomie entre onymes dont l'impact pourtant fon­ une base qui serait devenue soudainement damental sur l'évolution du mouvement plus idéologiquement lucide et critique semble inexistant. Dans l'ensemble, la envers l'État et des hautes instances différenciation reste trop souvent floue devenues quant à elles plus «collabora- entre ces trois niveaux distincts que sont tionistes.» la haute direction des centrales, le groupe des militants actifs et la base des mem­ D'autre part, cette absence, dans bres, ce qui conduit parfois à des glisse­ l'analyse, du poids des membres de la ments analytiques agaçants. Par exemple, base hypothèque également la com­ on ne situe pas le rôle non négligeable du préhension qu'ont les auteurs des rap­ membership dans le virage des années ports du syndicalisme québécois envers le 1980 vers une certaine modération dans le PQ et le néo-nationalisme. Comme nous discours et les pratiques syndicales. L'ar­ le signalions plus haut, les auteurs déplor­ rivée au pouvoir du PQ puis la crise écon­ ent implicitement de voir les syndicats omique ont certes déterminé cette évol­ adopter le PQ comme leur parti, plutôt que ution, mais il reste qu'un certain raz-le- de se doter d'un parti bien à eux. Ils sem­ bol des membres à l'égard d'une blent présenter le PQ et l'adhésion au néo­ rhétorique anti-capitaliste dans laquelle nationalisme comme un cheval de Troie, 332 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

un leurre ayant détourné le mouvement présenter le mouvement syndical du Qué­ syndical de sa voie «normale» vers un bec et celui du reste du Canada comme parti autonome. Or, plutôt qu'une aberra­ étant les deux composantes d'une même tion erratique et moralement condam­ entité, d'une même classe ouvrière qui nable, cette évolution des appareils syndi­ serait pan-canadienne. Les deux syndical- caux ne vient-elle pas — au moins en ismes sont distincts pour la simple et partie — de la pression de la grande ma­ bonne raison que les deux sociétés des­ jorité de leurs membres, notamment ceux quelles ils sont issus le sont tout autant. du secteur public? Comme ces derniers ne Dès lors, les positions opposées des deux se percevaient pas d'abord et avant tout mouvements quant à la question constitu­ comme des syndiqués, mais bien plutôt tionnelle ne surprend plus et s'explique comme citoyens individuels d'une société sans problème. québécoise en voie d'affirmation, c'est en En terminant, mentionnons que l'ob­ tant que tels qu'ils ont massivement jectif fort louable des auteurs de fournir adopté le néo-nationalisme et que plu­ un instrument de synthèse accessible aux sieurs d'entre eux — tout comme, d'ail­ étudiants (13) n'est que partiellement at­ leurs, beaucoup de militants et de hauts teint, selon nous. Si la table des matières dirigeants syndicaux — ont appuyé le et l'abondance de titres permet de «navi­ parti qui en poussait la logique jusqu'au guer» assez facilement dans le texte, on bout. se doit cependant de déplorer l'absence de Ces commentaires nous amènent à bibliographie et d'un index de base. Par revenir sur une autre ambiguïté que nous ailleurs, le niveau de langage et d'abstrac­ relevions dès le départ. En effet, on ne tion reste élevé, et nombre d'allusions et comprend pas pourquoi les auteurs, qui de références à des événements, des per­ s'inscrivent de longue date dans le cour­ sonnages ou des réalités propres aux rela­ ant de pensée marxiste, n'explicitent pas tions de travail de cette époque ne pour­ clairement l'origine théorique et idéo­ ront être saisies des non-initiés, à défaut logique de leurs attentes et postulats de d'avoir été bien situées dans le texte. base, tels que la nécessité de l'implication politique et d'un parti autonome des tra­ Jean-François Cardin vailleurs, ou la perception du national­ Université de Montréal isme comme facteur de division de la classe ouvrière. Ces conceptions et a priori guident implicitement leur ap­ proche globale, mais ne sont pas discutés Denis Goulet et André Paradis, Trois ouvertement dans les remarques prélimi­ siècles d'Histoire médicale au Québec naires au début du livre où elles auraient (Montréal: Collections Études québé­ pu facilement figurer, ce qui aurait coises, vlb éditeur 1992). clarifié les choses dès le départ. Faute de l'avoir fait, le lecteur non-initié — le DEPUIS UNE DÉCENNIE, de nombreuses livre, affirme-t-on, est destiné aux étu­ études ont été consacrées à l'histoire de la diants — se demandera pourquoi les aut­ médecine au Québec. Il est pourtant cu­ eurs ne semblent pas aimer l'alliance des rieux de constater qu'aucune chronologie syndicats avec le PQ, ni pourquoi ils sem­ des institutions et des pratiques médicales blent déplorer la division des syndicalis- n'avait été mise à jour depuis 1928. Dans mes québécois et anglo-canadien sur la cet imposant volume, les auteurs tentent question constitutionnelle. Sur ce dernier de combler cette importante lacune en point, d'ailleurs, on pourra contester la rassemblant les différentes informations tendance des auteurs, dans leur deuxième présentées dans les sources et l'historio­ partie notamment, à pousser la logique de graphie sur la généalogie de la pratique l'unité de la classe ouvrière au point de médicale entre 1639 et 1939. REVIEWS 333

Pour raisons de commodités, les aut­ dominantes à l'époque. Or, au début du eurs ont regroupé leurs informations dans 19e siècle, les médecins sont divisés au cinq sections différentes. Le première sujet de la cause de choléra ou du typhus partie porte sur l'histoire des institutions et par le fait même sur la manière hospitalières depuis la fondation en 1639 d'éliminer ces maladies. Alors que les de l'Hôtel-Dieu du Précieux-Sang de partisans des théories contagionistes Québec. Cet hôpital a d'ailleurs été la prétendaient que la maladie se propageait première institution hospitalière en par contact, les partisans des théories in- Amérique. Sous cette rubrique, les aut­ fectionnistes croyaient au contraire eurs notent l'origine non seulement des qu'elle se propageait par l'air. Si la pre­ hôpitaux mais aussi de tout établissement mière thèse amenait la nécessité d'isoler (asile, dispensaire, sanatorium, etc.) où a le malade et de pratiquer la quarantaine, été pratiqué, soit temporairement, soit sur la seconde soulignait plutôt l'obligation une base permanente, un quelconque de désinfecter les lieux infectés, de traitement médical. ramasser les ordures, d'assécher les ma­ Durant l'époque coloniale, l'hôpital rais, etc. Ce ne sera qu'avec l'introduc­ remplissait ici les mêmes fonctions qu'en tion de la bactériologie durant les décen­ Europe. Alors que l'Hôtel-Dieu est voué nies 1880-1890 que les moyens de à la guérison autant de l'âme que du prévention proposés par contagionnistes corps, l'Hôpital Général était plutôt un et infectionnistes trouvèrent un terrain lieu d'enfermement des pauvres. d'entente. L'augmentation de l'indigence au 19e La troisième partie porte sur la struc­ siècle entraîne la création des premiers turation de la profession médicale. Sous dispensaires, qui peu à peu se spécialise­ ce titre, les auteurs indiquent l'ensemble ront. Ce sera à la fin du 19e siècle que les des lois touchant le fonctionnement des hôpitaux deviendront d'authentiques ma­ corporations professionnelles ainsi que chines a guérir. les dates de fondation des diverses so­ Le lecteur ne manquera pas de remar­ ciétés médicales, des associations ou des quer que les dates de fondation des diver­ périodiques médicaux qui ont joué un rôle ses institutions hospitalières varient sou­ dans le développement de la pratique vent selon les auteurs. Ce fait vient de médicale. Goulet et Paradis indiquent que l'absence d'un consensus de la part des la séparation de la médecine en trois corps historiens sur ce que signifie la fondation. professionnels différents (médecins, chi­ Alors que certains auteurs ont retenu la rurgiens, apothicaires) présents dans l'en­ journée d'ouverture de l'institution, semble de l'Europe n'exista jamais au d'autres ont retenu au contraire le mo­ Québec en raison de la rareté des prati­ ment où l'institution a obtenu son incor­ ciens et du peu de contrôle de la pratique poration comme date de fondation. médicale avant la conquête britannique. La seconde partie porte sur les Ce n'est qu'en 1788 que fut adoptée la épidémies, l'hygiène et la santé publique. première législation de la profession Si la Nouvelle-France a connu, dès le 17e médicale. La lutte des praticiens locaux siècle, des mesures visant à contrôler la pour dominer leur profession conduira à maladie, comme la quarantaine, c'est au la création du Collège des médecins et milieu du 19e siècle avec les fameuses chirurgiens en 1847. Invoquée au nom de épidémies de choléra et de typhus que ces la lutte contre le charlatanisme, la con­ mesures jusqu'alors exceptionnelles s'in­ solidation de la profession médicale con­ stalleront définitivement. Comme le sou­ duisit toutefois à la subordination des aut­ lignent avec justesse les auteurs, la forme res praticiens de la santé comme les que prend le combat contre les maladies sages-femmes, les pharmaciens et les épidémiques ne peut se comprendre sans homéopathes. Si les sages-femmes sont une connaissance des théories médicales peu à peu soumises au contrôle du collège 334 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

et si les facultés de médecine n'admet­ Seuls les spécialistes peuvent appor­ tront des femmes qu'à la fin du 19e siècle, ter certaines critiques sur le fond. Si, lors la profession des infirmières sera de plus de divergences trop fortes entre certains en plus reconnue au fur et à mesure que historiens sur les dates ou les causes l'on avancera dans le temps. Dominée d'émergence d'une institution hospita­ d'abord par le clergé, cette discipline se lière, Goulet et Paradis expriment leurs laïcisera de plus en plus à partir du 20e opinions sur la thèse la plus probable, on siècle. peut regretter qu'ils n'aient pas vérifié les L'histoire de l'enseignement médical sources quand un seul auteur s'est penché fait l'objet de la 4e section. Pendant long­ sur l'histoire d'une institution ou d'une temps, l'apprentissage auprès d'un maître pratique. Permettons-nous ici de préciser formait l'essentiel de la formation chirur­ quelques points portant sur l'aspect qui gicale et médicale au Québec. Le début du nous est le plus connu, celui de la psychia­ 19e siècle a marqué le début des premiers trie; L'école La Jemmerais fondée en enseignements dans les dispensaires. 1928 «destinée aux patients souffrant de Mais la non-reconnaissance officielle de maladies nerveuses ou mentales» (Gos- cet enseignement et la difficulté d'avoir selin, 1983) est pour être plus précis une de la «matière première» (c'est-à-dire des école vouée à l'éducation sensorielle et corps pour étude de l'anatomie patho­ psycho-motrice des jeunes déficients logique) nuiront longtemps au développe­ mentaux. Par ailleurs, la lecture d'un ment de l'enseignement médical. C'est ouvrage non utilisé par les auteurs (H. pourquoi les premières écoles de méde­ Hurd, 1917) nous confirme que l'asile cine et de chirurgie durent s'affilier avec Saint-Benoit-Joseph de Longue-Pointe les hôpitaux qui devinrent le cadre pri­ (fondé en 1884 selon certains auteurs) et vilégié de la formation pratique au cours le Saint-Benedict Asylum (fondé en 188S de la second moitié du 19e siècle. selon Haegerty) sont en fait un seul et La dernière section porte enfin sur même établissement fondé en 1885. Ces l'évolution du savoir médical. Pendant quelques coquilles, comme toute autre toute la période étudiée, la médecine que des recherches ultérieures pourraient québécoise ne fait qu'importer le savoir démontrer, n'enlèvent rien toutefois à la venant de la métropole et des grands cen­ qualité d'une oeuvre qui ne doit être vue tres médicaux. Cette dépendance de la comme étant décisive. médecine québécoise face à l'étranger se Et c'est justement en prenant cet démontre très manifestement par le peu de ouvrage sur cet angle que le spécialiste y découvertes et d'innovations locales. trouvera son compte. Ce livre nous per­ Goulet et Paradis ont produit ici un met en effet de découvrir rapidement les ouvrage qui intéressera autant le grand divers territoires encore peu explorés par public que le spécialiste. Pour le profane, les historiens de la médecine au Québec. il permet en effet de saisir rapidement les Ainsi, de nombreuses institutions théra­ grandes étapes de l'évolution du savoir et peutiques, spécialisations médicales ou de la pratique médicale en termes simples professions para-médicales n'ont pas en­ et accessibles. Sans être totalement ex­ core fait l'objet d'études historiques. Peu haustif, le répertoire des sources et des d'études comparatives ont été faites ouvrages de référence présenté par les jusqu'à maintenant également. L'histoire auteurs est particulièrement impression­ du savoir médical est, de toutes les sec­ nant et offre une bonne idée des instru­ tions présentées par Goulet et Paradis, de ments disponibles pour tout chercheur in­ loin celle qui jusqu'à maintenant a été la téressé à en savoir plus sur un aspect moins étudiée. Enfin, plusieurs autres as- précis de l'histoire de la médecine au pets comme la médecine en milieu rural, Québec. le charlatanisme, les médecines popu­ laires, le comportement du patient face à REVIEWS 335 l'hôpital ou au traitement sont encore des recours au concept plutôt grossier de territoires totalement vierges. «dressage idéologique» (45-6), montre Le livre de Goulet et de Paradis est à toutefois avec habileté et originalité la notre avis appelé à devenir un instrument collusion entre l'édition, l'école et le pou­ de base non seulement pour les historiens voir politique dans l'histoire de la maison de la médecine mais aussi pour toute per­ Beauchemin. Le jargon de Louis Fran- sonne intéressée à n'importe aspect de coeur n'aide guère à comprendre sa no­ l'histoire québécoise. Car après tout l'his­ tion sémiotique de «série culturelle» à toire d'un individu ou d'un peuple ne se laquelle les historiens portent pourtant un résume-t-elle pas en fait à la lutte pour sa intérêt tout particulier; les lecteurs se fe­ survie? ront leur propre idée à propos de cette tentation généralisatrice et de certaines Guy Grenier notions comme «l'interprète collectif.» Université de Montréal Jean-Marc Paradis présente des résultats très préliminaires de ses recherches sur le sport en Mauricie; la variante régionale de cette histoire, mieux connue pour Mon­ Pierre Lanthier et Guildo Rousseau (sous tréal, promet d'être intéressante en par­ la direction de), La Culture inventée. Les ticulier en raison de l'hypothèse de l'ac­ stratégies culturelles aux 19e et 20e culturation du village et du collège où, siècles (Québec: Institut québécois de re­ parmi les sports, au tournant du siècle, cherche sur la culture 1992). domine le baseball étatsunien. Jacques Beauchemin, Gilles Bourque, et Jules Du- SI L'ON SE FIE à la remarquable cohérence chastel se livrent à une analyse du «dis­ des actes, ce colloque tenu au Centre cours» constitutionnel de M. Duplessis, à d'études québécoises de l'Université du la recherche des modes de rapport entre la Québec à Trois-Rivières fut à la fois une tradition et la modernité. L'intitulé de réussite et l'occasion, pour le Centre, leur contribution, emprunté à «la stratégie d'identifier ses secteurs d'excellence. discursive duplessiste,» «Les traditions L'ouvrage offre des analyses «des de la province de Québec sont immuables stratégies culturelles au sein des rapports mais elles ne sont pas immobiles,» sociaux» et des moyens pris par les suggère la difficulté de la tâche. classes dominantes «pour défendre leurs Parmi les stratégies sociales, deux intérêts.» Ces études illustrent à souhait études sur la littérature: Judith Cown fait comment «on forge la mémoire his­ voir comment Mazo de la Roche a inventé torique,» comment on récupère des sym­ un univers romanesque de refus des Etats- boles pour créer des ralliements idéo­ Unis et d'adhésion à l'Angleterre qui logiques et promouvoir des idées et des aboutit à un Ontario rural, seigneurial, groupes sociaux. Elles s'insèrent dans stéréotypé, et anachronique, et Lucie une trame de recherche internationale de Joubert explore la mise en scène sociale déconstruction qui, en Histoire, renvoie des femmes dans la dramaturgie québé­ aux travaux de Hobsbawn en Angleterre, coise récente. Puis trois textes sur l'asso­ d'Agulhon et d'Ozouf en France et de ciation, L'école et la Caisse populaire. nombreux historiens américains. René Verrett étudie les conditions Les résultats de ces enquêtes sont mis d'émergence du phénomène associatif à en forme selon quatre types de stratégies: Trois-Rivières, mais la stratégie cul­ identitaires, sociales, économiques et turelle de ces associations reste à être pour l'avenir. Les statégies identitaires détaillée, même s'il appert que des élites sont celles mises en place pour constituer parfois libérales et démocrates y trou­ Garneau et Frechette comme historien et vaient leurs intérêts. poète nationaux et que Manon Brunet rend explicites. François Landry, avec un 336 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Serge Gagnon se tourne actuellement dienne au Québec (1929-1957)» constitue vers l'histoire de l'éducation des masses l'un des plats de résistance de l'ouvrage. en se concentrant sur l'école élémentaire. La recherche est impressionnante: cor­ C'est avec l'alphabétisation, LA stratégie pus, échantillon, légitimation de la pério- culturelle publique ou de masse incon­ disation, analyse de la croissance des ven­ tournable et préalable à toute histoire cul­ tes au détail, des agences de publicité, du turelle. Fin analyste, Gagnon va à contre- pouvoir d'achat et de ses contextes, étude courant: il fait voir ce que l'Etat a néan­ des types d'annonce selon les secteurs de moins retenu de son combat avec l'Eglise; consommation permettent des conclu­ il évoque le maternage d'une institution sions fascinantes sur la privatisation de la peuplée d'institutrices, susceptible d'as­ vie sociale et de la consommation cul­ surer «une transition en douceur de l'uni­ turelle et, enfin, une définition un peu vers domestique vers la sphère publique.» explicite de la culture de masse. Cette Et, question de mettre le suspense qu'il analyse sur la genèse et l'évolution de la faut à une recension, le lecteur aura plaisir consommation de masse au Québec est à lire les conclusions stimulantes de S. poursuivie par Mario Désautels qui scrute Gagnon à propos de la responsabilité so­ la structure budgétaire des familles mon­ ciale du «retard» scolaire. (148-9) tréalaises entre 1938 et 1959 et qui met en Les organisateurs du colloque ont vu valeur une consommation qui passe de loin en faisant place à des études sur un l'univers des besoins à celui des aspira­ phénonène «populaire»: les Caisses popu­ tions. Ces dépenses qui s'accélèrent vers laires créées par Alphonse Desjardins. Ro­ 1947 confirment l'analyse de Côté et nald Rudin montre bien comment Desjar­ Daigle qui datent de l'après-guerre le dé­ dins a inventé une tradition à la fois pour collage de la consommation. Enfin, maintenir le pouvoir de la petite bourgeoisie Simon Langlois, qui dirige à l'IQRC une et pour donner à la masse la conviction équipe qui suit les tendances de la société qu'elle était associée à l'initiative. québécoise, explore les nouveaux rap­ Cette analyse introduit à la section sur ports sociaux engendrés par la consom­ les stratégies économiques, la plus neuve mation depuis 1960 et propose de voir et la plus cohérente de l'ouvrage. On y dans la consommation récente un des aborde le vingtième siècle, l'émergence lieux de formation de l'individualisme de la société de consommation et des contemporain. stratégies publicitaires selon une sé­ Dans «L'évolution du marché des quence d'études présentées dans une dy­ best-sellers au Québec dans les années namique chronologique. Michel Belle- 1980.» Denis Saint-Jacques, critique sur fleur, Roger Levasseur et Yvan Rousseau les sources disponibles et sur leur valeur, décrivent la libéralisation du crédit dans en vient à constater à propos de la lecture le Mouvement des caisses Desjardins qui, de loisir que c'est la France qui sert de centrées sur le petit producteur, s'ouvrent «relais de l'américanité sur le marché après 1945 au consommateur. Les auteurs francophone au Québec.» Le best-seller ont visé un objectif décisif: la marche à la étatsunien est traduit en France et diffusé consommation du Québécois moyen. au Québec via des distributeurs français Claude Tousignant et Vincent Dubost ou québécois. L'absence même d'un jour­ s'intéressent au discours publicitaire sur nal couvrant l'ensemble du territoire les produits pharmaceutiques entre 1900 québécois, l'absence de liste fiable de et 1950 centrant leur analyse sur les actes best-sellers dans la presse, une critique de langage et renonciation plus que sur élitaire faite pour la critique et le milieu les énoncés. plutôt que pour les lecteurs et la difficulté L'article de Luc Côté et de Jean-Guy à vivre l'appartenance à l'Amérique font Daigle sur «la publicité de masse et la écrire courageusement à l'auteur: «Pour masse publicitaire dans la presse quoti­ une raison difficilement explicable, il est REVIEWS 337 important de savoir avec assez de préci­ Lucia Ferretti, Entre voisins. La société sion ce que nous regardons à la télévision, paroissiale en milieu urbain: Saint- ce que nous écoutons à la radio, ce que Pierre-Apôtre de Montréal, 1848-1930 nous lisons dans la presse, médias de (Montréal: Boréal 1992). masse où se joue notre culture, mais pas dans la lecture de loisir, marché où au­ EN 1982, LUCIA FERRETTI avait présenté cune obligation de propriété nationale, ni avec Daniel LeBlanc un mémoire de maî­ de quotas de produits nationaux ne joue. trise sur une paroisse ouvrière de Mon­ A vrai dire, il n'est pas évident qu'on tréal, Sainte-Brigide, entre 1880 et 1914, veuille même savoir ce qui s'y passe.» (273) dont j'avais retenu —je ne sais pourquoi, Dans les «stratégies pour le Québec un détail parfois nous marque — que les de demain,» Marcel Fournier, Lucie ouvriers s'y mariaient le plus souvent le Robert et Heinz Weinmann proposent lundi entre 6 h et 7 h du matin. (La mod­ leur réflexion de même que Gérard Bou­ estie de l'A. lui fait omettre de sa bibliog­ chard qui confronte ses lecteurs à deux raphie l'article qu'elle en a tiré pour impératifs: l'américanité du Québec qui a RHAF, 39 (1985), 233-51.) Elle s'intéres­ fait du Québec une nation à deux cultures, sait alors en priorité à la condition l'élitiste et la populaire, et ce face à face ouvrière en milieu populaire. pour les intellectuels d'une société où la Six ans plus tard parait sa thèse de culture savante traditionnelle est en dé­ doctorat (UQAM, 1990), qui traite de clin et exige de nouveaux modes de com­ même quartier du centre-est montréalais munication entre l'université et Monsieur et des mêmes ouvriers, mais se présente Tout-le-monde. sous des vêtements différents: ceux de En ce qui concerne le travail d'édi­ l'histoire religieuse (la société parois­ tion, les auteurs cités ne sont pas toujours siale) et de l'histoire urbaine (en milieu dans les notes: c'est le cas de l'étude urbain). Pourtant, la trajectoire entre ces pionnière de Jean Gagnon à laquelle on différentes préoccupations est en ligne fait allusion. (57) Des «Ibidem» apparais­ droite et c'est ce qui fait de cet ouvrage sent sans référence préalable (58) ou des un grand livre, qui vient révolutionner références sont incomplètes. (59, n. 23 et l'historiographie québécoise et défaire 31) Des «compilations personnelles» sont plusieurs poncifs ancrés depuis trop long­ mentionnées sans que l'on sache quelles temps dans la mémoire collective. furent les sources et les méthodes. (96, n. Ferretti étudie la paroisse Saint- 12,13,18,19) Dans un autre cas ( 158), le Pierre-Apôtre, érigée en 1900, mais qui lecteur voudra peut-être connaître pré­ était depuis 1848 la chapelle des Oblats cisément les sources utilisées pour com­ dans le faubourg Québec. Elle veut mon­ menter telle polémique. Un graphique des trer que la paroisse a été le lieu de médi­ pourcentages eut facilité la lecture et ation entre ses habitants, venus de la cam­ l'analyse des données. (285) pagne, et la ville: elle liait autant les L'ouvrage constitue une percée intér­ fidèles à la ville qu'à l'Église. Cette dém­ essante dans l'analyse de la culture de la onstration est menée de main de maître majorité; il donne sa place à une culture d'abord à cause du recours à un ensemble populaire gommée, occultée, biaisée par de sources très diversifié, qui va des ca­ des élites. Il ouvre sur des horizons de hiers des prônes et du Codex historicus données et de questions susceptibles d'ar­ des missionnaires oblats aux rôles des rimer enfin la connaissance historique de valeurs locatives et fichiers d'état civil, la culture à l'expérience actuelle de la vie mais surtout grâce à une maîtrise de l'his­ quotidienne. Les lecteurs de Labour/Le toriographie et à une réflexion d'en­ travail apprécieront. semble qui lui permettent de dominer son Yvan Lamonde sujet et de livrer une interprétation qui Université McGill renouvelle complètement l'image des re- 338 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL lations entre milieux populaires, paroisse secret, «Les missionnaires peuvent touj­ et ville. ours attendre, l'église parfois, mais les L'arrière-plan est d'abord campé par pauvres jamais.» (133) Et Ferretti de un portrait sociologique des habitants, montrer comment la participation dans un quartier qui passe progressive­ massive aux activités paroissiales de ment de l'état de faubourg qui s'indus­ toute sorte, loisirs, bazars, banquets, par­ trialise i celui de centre-ville qu'on quitte ties de cartes, organisées le plus souvent parce qu'il se paupérise. Un signe qui ne par les Dames de Sainte-Anne au profit trompe pas: le pourcentage des locataires des pauvres, tisse entre les paroissiens des augmente pour atteindre 92 pour cent en liens qui constituent le ciment de la com­ 1931, tandis que les gros proprétaires munauté. Et d'analyser en détail la par­ habitent de plus en plus à l'extérieur du ticipation aux associations pieuses et quartier. Vient ensuite un portrait des Ob- l'ouverture des conseils de confréries aux lats, qui compteront jusqu'à 12 ou 13 vi­ nouveaux arrivés et, dans une moindre caires à la fois dans cette petite paroisse, mesure, aux employés et aux travailleurs. religieux disponsibles, plutôt larges d'es­ Mais ce tissu social, fragile à bien des prit, assez proches des gens simples. points de vue, commence à se défaire. A Deux grands moment se partagent cause des transformations sociales du l'ouvrage. D'abord la période 1848- quartier, tout périclite dans la paroisse 1870, où la paroisse permet aux mi­ entre 1914 et 1930. L'A. esquisse rapide­ grants qui y arrivent d'intégrer la ment la courbe de cette érosion. En ville. Ils le font grâce à la piété ultra- somme, les Oblats et les paroissiens n'y montaine, c'est-à-dire populaire, ex­ peuvent pratiquement rien: c'est le ubérante, que promeuvent les Oblats, changement sociologique du quartier qui appuyés par Mgr Bourget: proces­ transforme le rôle de la paroisse. sions, décorations, prédications, re­ Parce qu'elle lie si bien l'étude con­ traites. Vitalité religieuse d'autant crète de la condition ouvrière à celle des plus forte qu'elle est en rivalité avec sources paroissiales, notamment par l'austère piété des Sulpiciens de Notre- l'étude de l'implication de 2 500 laïcs aux Dame. Cette vitalité s'appuie aussi sur diverses oeuvres, cette étude renouvelle toute une organisation sociale: con­ profondément notre connaissance des re­ fréries ou congrégations d'hommes et lations entre les milieux populaires, de femmes, de jeunes gens et de jeunes l'Église (ou la paroisse) et la ville. Le filles, conférences de Saint-Vincent de point de vue est neuf, équilibré, intelli­ Paul, cercle de loisirs. Une étude détail­ gent. lée des familles les plus engagées Ajoutons que la langue et le style sont montre que les plus actives aspirent à la d'une rare élégance: on reprend goût ici à notabilité et se recrutent dans la bour­ la lecture de travaux savants. Les notes geoisie du faubourg, commerçants et ar­ sont si riches de notations et citations de tisans surtout. toute sorte qu'on regrette qu'elles aient Le deuxième grand moment, l'âge été rejetées à la Tin de l'ouvrage, ce qui d'or de la paroisse urbaine, se situe oblige à un va-et-vient incessant. Un autre entre 1870 et 1914. La société parois­ petit regret: l'absence d'une liste des si- siale prend alors sa pleine signification gles. Il n'est pas donné à tout le monde de et joue à fond son rôle d'intégration. savoir ce que signifie M.P. O.M.I. (Maison Certes, Saint-Pierre est, surtout après provinciale) ou RVL (Rôle des valeurs 1900, une paroisse ouvrière, pauvre, où la locatives). ville est présentée avec ses dangers. On Au total, voilà donc un ouvrage bien demande beaucoup d'argent aux fidèles. enlevé, stimulant, neuf, je dirais surtout, Leur réponse est inégale: selon l'une de profondément honnête, un livre qui donne ces formules bien frappées dont l'A. a le REVIEWS 339 du sens à la réalité. On s'y référera long­ graphie, mais appliquée à un matériel in­ temps. habituel: elle effectue une anayse longi­ tudinale de la participation au marché du Guy Laperriere travail salarié et de l'âge lors des interrup­ Université de Sherbrooke tions successives, à l'aide de tables d'ex­ tinction. En effet, ce sont plus de 60 pour cent des femmes qui ont vécu au moins une interruption de travail d'au moins Marianne Kempeneers, Le travail au douze mois, alors que cette proportion féminin. Analyse démographique de la n'est que de 16 pour cent chez les hom­ discontinuité professionnelle des femmes mes. Une série de données, tirées de au Canada (Montréal: Presses de L'Enquête sur la fécondité au Canada de l'Université de Montréal 1992). 1984, sert de support à la démonstration. Ce compte-rendu prend une tournure LE SOUS-TITRE DU LIVRE de Marianne didactique? En cela il reflète bien l'esprit Kempeneers, évoquant les activités pro­ qui a présidé à la rédaction de l'ouvrage, fessionnelles, crée une légère ambiguïté véritable modèle du genre, qui en quelque en regard du titre. Le travail au féminin deux cents pages pose une question cru­ dont il y est question est celui que les ciale, fait le tour — et la critique — de la femmes exercent tant sur le marché de littérature sur le sujet, formule sa problé­ l'emploi que chez elles; la discontinuité matique, analyse les données et répond à professionnelle servant ici à cerner l'ar­ sa question, de façon systématique et rig­ ticulation entre ces deux composantes du oureuse, sans jamais laisser flancher l'in­ travail des femmes. térêt de la lectrice ou du lecteur. la base de la démarche de l'auteure: Le premier chapitre brosse un tableau un constat, un postulat, une question. Le rapide de la situation des femmes sur le constat: persistance des inégalités sala­ marché du travail et de leur fécondité dans riales entre les hommes et les femmes et les années 1950-1990. Rien de nouveau des ghettos d'emploi féminins malgré une ici, mais le fond de scène sur lequel se scolarisation croissante des femmes. situent les analyses qui suivent: ghettos Kampeneers affirme même qu' on observe d'emploi; persistance des inégalités de actuellement un renforcement de cette revenus entre les sexes; croissance des situation inégalitaire. Le postulat: le tra­ emplois atypiques, i.e., autres que régu­ vail des femmes occupe une position liers-à-temps-plein, surtout pour femmes; charnière entre la famille et l'emploi. diminution de la fécondité; éclatement «Les femmes [...] se trouveraient à as­ des formes de vie familiale, mais peu de surer la jonction, posée comme une partage des tâches domestiques qui re­ nécessité pour la cohérence relative du viennent encore aux femmes. système, entre les besoins constamment modifiées de la production et de la repro­ Le second chapitre ramasse bien duction.» (20) La question: comment (dans les deux sens du terme!) les études s'articulent vie professionnelle et vie antérieures sur les liens entre fécondité et familiale? Y a-t-il un lien direct — et si activités professionnelles des femmes. Ce oui dans quel sens? — entre la présence chapitre établit en premier lieu que les et l'ftge des enfants et la participation de concepts et les méthodes qui conviennent leurs mères au marché du travail? La ré­ pour étudier l'activité professionnelle ponse à cette question est loin d'être aussi masculine ne conviennent pas pour les évidente que le sens commun pourrait le femmes: les hommes, grosso modo, une laisser croire; c'est ce que ce livre s'em­ fois entrés sur le marché du travail s'y ploie à démontrer. maintiennent alors que près des deux tiers des femmes qui y entrent (et elles sont Pour répondre à sa question, l'auteure plus de 90 pour cent à le faire) en sortent utilise une méthode usuelle en démo­ 340 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

un jour ou l'autre. Ainsi est-on amené a leurs aînées; «qu'une proportion plus réexaminer la hausse de la participation forte de femmes célibataires que de fem­ des femmes a la main d'oeuvre globale. mes mariées travaillaient à temps partiel Signifïe-t-elle que de plus nombreuses en 1983» (115); que le nombre d'emplois mères s'insèrent sur le marché du travail, à temps partiel va en s'accroissant; que ou qu'elles s'en retirent moins? Bref près de la moitié des femmes sans enfant quels sont les changements réels en la ont également connu des interruptions matière? La «complexité des biographies d'emploi; d'ailleurs les enfants ne sont professionnelles» des femmes a été négli­ invoqués que dans la moitié des premières gée ou évacuée par les études antérieures interruptions de travail. Tout ceci, bien qui ont toujours pris pour acquis que entendu, est modulé par le secteur d'acti­ c'était la présence des enfants qui moti­ vité. Ainsi les travailleuses du secteur vait le retrait des femmes du marché du public, dont les conventions collectives travail. Celles-ci «reposent sur un postu­ garantissent le retour en emploi après un lat commun, à savoir que l'activité sala­ long congé de maternité sont plus nom­ riée et l'activité maternelle seraient in­ breuses à relier leur interruption de travail compatibles par essence» (59), concep­ à la venue des enfants. tion totalement injustifiée selon l'auteure. Le cinquième chapitre porte très pré­ Le troisième chapitre présente la lec­ cisément sur les interruptions d'emploi. ture féministe «classique» du travail des Inversion de la question habituellement femmes puis celle que retient l'auteur, posée qui est pourquoi les femmes travail- ainsi que les données sur lesquelles se lent-elles? Revenu d'appoint ou base l'analyse. Pour Kempeneers, «une nécessité? Interroger les aller-retour entre logique commune, celle de la division le marché du travail et la maison a ceci sexuelle du travail, [est] à l'oeuvre simul­ d'intéressant qu'on ne prend pas l'un ou tanément dans la sphère du travail et dans l'autre pôle comme point de départ de la sphère de la vie familiale.» (64) Ceci cette dynamique. On note qu'en général oblige le décloisonnement entre la socio­ les femmes plus jeunes sont plus long­ logie de la famille et la sociologie du temps actives sur le marché du travail que travail, ce que permet l'analyse des inter­ les plus âgées, ce qui n'exclut pas des ruptions de travail. Ici encore Kampe- interruptions d'emploi; une tendance neers propose une lecture à la fois éclair­ nouvelle est le maintien plus continu en ante, synthétique et décapante des travaux emploi des femmes ayant au moins un antérieurs: «Au-delà des divergences fon­ enfant; aussi les plus jeunes réintègrent damentales qui opposent les deux pre­ davantage le marché du travail après une miers courants (néo-classiques et acquisi­ première interruption. tion du statut) aux deux derniers (segmen­ Marianne Kempeneers en arrive à la tation et théories marxistes) quant à leur conclusion que non seulement les inter­ vision de l'organisation sociale, les ruptions d'emploi ne sont pas toutes dues quatre partagent une caractéristique com­ aux enfants, mais qu'elles sont davantage mune: aucun d'eux ne remet en question liées au fait d'être femme qu'à la mater­ la division sexuelle du travail, qui laisse nité; en ce sens, dans une large mesure, aux femmes la responsabilité première, ces interruptions sont intimement liées à sinon exclusive, des tâches accomplies la structure du marché du travail actuel. dans le cadre de la famille.» (78) En résumé, on peut dire des femmes que Le quatrième chapitre présente les «leur position dans la famille apparait le caratéristiques de la population étudiée. Il meilleur alibi de leur position instable apparaît que contrairement à l'idée reçue, dans l'emploi, et leur position instable les jeunes femmes n'échappent pas aux dans l'emploi renforce leur position dans ghettos d'emploi et n'ont pas nécessaire­ la famille.» (173) Et l'auteure se demande ment des emplois plus intéressants que si la «distinction entre les deux sphères REVIEWS 341

demeure opératoire pour analyser les Maurisson démontre qu'il n'y a pas coïn­ grandes transfomutiont contemporaines, cidence exacte entre l'évolution de la et, surtout, si cette distinction permet famille et celle de l'emploi. Elle offre une vraiment d'éclairer ce que l'avenir «typoligie de l'articulation entre struc­ réserve aux femmes.» (174) la lumière tures familiales et structures de l'emploi» des analyses pénéteantes des chapitres qui présente un net décalage entre pays deux et trois on aurait aimé voir l'auteure méditerranéens et pays nordiques au point développer ces réflexions. Elle touche ici de vue de la fécondité, de la participation en effet à quelque chose de fondamental, des femmes au travail rémunéré, du role impliquant la division sociale du travail, de la famille et de la présence de services pour parler comme Durkheim, entre les aux familles. La maternité et le travail sexes. rémunéré possèdent chacun leur cycle, Je souhaite que cet ouvrage, dans la d'où décalage entre les comportements mesure où il soulève d'importantes ques­ démographiques et la participation à la tions sur le partage social du travail, ne population active. Une telle analyse ne soit pas lu que par des femmes et des devrait toutefois pas négliger l'impact de féministes. Car s'il les intéressera cer­ l'économie et des classes sociales sur tainement, il propose une analyse déca­ l'évolution des structures familiales. pante et mettant à mal, comme je l'annon­ Se fondant sur l'Enquête sur la popu­ çais plus haut, le sens commun et même lation active du Canada de 1976 à 1988, le sens commun sociologique. Marianne Kempeneers et Marie-Hélène Saint-Pierre établissent que l'irrégularité Andrée Fortin du travail des femmes est moins imput­ Université Laval able au nombre d'enfants qu'à l'emploi des mères. Dans une contribution plus qualitative sur l'évolution des rapports travail-maternité, Denise Lemieux et Renée B.-Dandurand et Francine Descar- Lucie Mercier analysent trente-huit récits ries, dir., Mères et travailleuses. De l'ex­ de vie de Québécoises portant sur les an­ ception à la règle (Québec: IQRC 1992). nées 1930-1983. S'appuyant sur la typo­ logie de Barrère-Maurisson, famille pa­ EN CES TEMPS DE COUPURES dans les triarcale, famille conjugale et famille as­ services sociaux, de menaces de ferme­ sociative, elles montrent l'absence de ture des garderies et de précarité d'em­ progression linéaire d'un modèle à l'autre ploi, le thème du colloque «Maternité et et comment, dans une même vie, on passe Travail,» dans le cadre du congrès du de l'une à l'autre et parfois dans les deux l'ACFAS 1991, tombait à point. Il est utile sens. On aurait cependant aimé plus de de faire le bilan à la fois des acquis des précisions sur le concept de partage des dernières décennies et de la persistance tâches qui caractérise le type contempo­ des lacunes sociales concernant l'adapta­ rain de famille associative, à deux sa­ tion au travail rémunéré des mères. Les laires. Ce partage est-il equitable? Com­ six communications présentées au col­ ment est-il négocié? Comment réflète-t-il loque mettaient donc l'accent sur l'articu­ les différentes classes sociales? lation des rapports travail/maternité dans le contexte de l'évolution de l'accès au Les rapports au travail et aux enfants travail rémunéré «quel que soit le statut varient sensiblement selon les profes­ matrimonial ou parental des femmes.» sions et le milieu social. Renée Dandu- (10) rand et Françoise-Romaine Ouellette présentent les résultats d'une recherche Plusieurs des auteures s'appliquent à portant sur trois quartiers montréalais de réfuter certains mythes ou idées reçues. niveaux socio-économiques différents. Ainsi, dans son étude des principaux pays Une étude subtile de soixante entrevues industrialisés, Marie-Agnès Barrère- 342 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

laisse transparaîte des variations mar­ Chacune de ces études empiriques quées entre les attitudes et les comporte­ ajoute à notre connaissance des différen­ ments ayant trait au travail féminin et aux tes stratégies adoptées pour concilier stratégies de garde d'enfants et d'aide do­ maternité et travail; elles soulèvent toute­ mestique. Les ménages de la classes fois une foule de questions quant à la ouvrière peu qualifiée de Saint-Henri ex­ problématique et aux informations re­ priment le plus de méfiance envers les cueillies. On aimerait souvent connaître garderies et comptent beaucoup plus sur la composition ethnique des groupes les voisines et les parents que les familles étudiés: quelques détails laissent entendre bourgeoises professionnelles d'Outre- qu'il ne s'agit pas toujours de catégories mont. D'autre part, sûrement sensibles a homogènes, qu'une informatrice vient de la critique, les pères bourgeois expriment l'étranger, mais sans plus. Si la variable le discours le plus égalitaire même si dans ethnique est occultée, celle de classe est la pratique leur participation est infé­ parfois négligée et certaines auteures sont rieure à celle des travailleurs de Saint- portées à généraliser à partir de compor­ Henri. La non-participation des grand- tements spécifiques à une classe plutôt parents distingue nettement Montréal des qu'une autre. Enfin, qu'en est-il des fem­ pratiques européennes: dans aucun quar­ mes rurales, ou même de celles qui habi­ tier se fie-t-on aux grand'mères de façon tent des petits centres urbains? Le continue pour assurer la garde des enfants problèmes liés au travail rémunéré hors dont la mère travaille hors du foyer. du foyer sont bien documentés, on aborde Si le travail rémunéré des femmes est aussi ceux des mères au foyer, mais on en grande partie sorti du foyer depuis laisse de côté le travail rémunéré à do­ plusieurs décennies, il reste encore des micile qui requiert lui aussi des stratégies ménagères qui se consacrent exclusive­ de garde d'enfants ou d'intégration des ment aux travaux ménagers et à l'éduca­ enfants au milieu de travail. tion des enfants. C. Corbeil, P. Descar- Comme l'indique le sous-titre «de ries, C. Gill, et C. Séguin se penchent sur l'exception à la règle,» le travail des fem­ un groupe de femmes fidèles au modèle mes à l'extérieur du foyer est maintenant père pouvoyeur-mère au foyer. Les aut- chose acquise, la diversité des arrange­ eures font bien de dissiper certains ments et des compromis échappe souvent mythes sur le profil social de ce groupe. aux régies et chaque stratégie demeure On retrouve les mères au foyer non pas soumise à l'articulation de multiples fac­ tant dans la bourgeoisie que dans les fam­ teurs. illes défavorisées où la situation écon­ omique plutôt que le choix individuel mo­ Andrée Lévesque tive leur présence à la maison. Université McGill Mères au foyer ou mères au bureau, toutes aimeraient pouvoir compter sur l'aide de leur conjoint. Michelle Duval étudie la mobilisation de trois groupes de Jocelyne Lamoureux, Michèle Gélinas, femmes désireuses de réorganiser leur tra­ Kety Tari, Femmes en mouvement. Tra­ vail en vue de permettre une plus grande jectoires de l'Association féminine d'édu­ reconnaissance de leur rôle de mères. Il cation et d'action sociale, AFÉAS, s'agit des efforts de membres de l'Asso­ 1966-1991 (Québec: Éditions du Boréal ciation du Jeune Barreau de Montréal, du 1993). comité de la condition des femmes de la Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec CET OUVRAGE ÉCRIT EN collaboration (CEQ) et de travailleuses dans des maisons ne se veut au départ ni un livre d'histoire, d'hébergement pour femmes violentées. ni une monographie de l'une des princi­ pales organisations féminines du Québec. Il se propose plutôt d'esquisser un portrait REVIEWS 343

critique de l'AFÉAS dans ses dimensions position les place automatiquement sous historiques et actuelles. Pour ce faire, les la coupe de l'Église, dont le poids est auteures tentent de saisir la dynamique peut-être plus lourd encore que celui de particulière du mouvement en mettant l'État. Quel est d'ailleurs ce contrôle de l'accent sur les projets et cheminements l'État sur les Cercles? On ne le précise de l'organisation aux moments-clés où les jamais tout en le posant comme a priori membres se mobilisent autour d'enjeux (comme dans le discours ecclésiastique). sociaux précis. En second lieu, elles cher­ Sans aller jusqu'à transformer les femmes chent a cerner comment l'AFÉAS devient de l'UCF et de I'UCFR en victimes un groupe de pression significatif dans la passives des luttes de pouvoir Église-État, vie publique québécoise, représentant les il ne faut pas ignorer que les «résistantes- aspirations principalement de «travail­ autonomistes» se trouvent peut-être da­ leuses au foyer» (expression que le vantage du côté des Cercles que des mouvement contribuera à propager) habi­ Unions catholiques ... Les CED, comme tant hors des grands centres, bref de fem­ les UCFR, sont le pur produit de l'action mes pour qui la visibilité publique ne va sociale catholique. Si la fusion des deux pas de soi. Si les auteures n'hésitent pas mouvements (suggérée par l'Église) a dévoiler à l'occasion les réticences des évolue vers la formation d'un corps inter­ membres de la base face aux stratégies médiaire féminin proche de l'Église sans des dirigeantes du mouvement, il n'en y être totalement inféodé, on le doit da­ reste pas moins que l'image du mouve­ vantage, à mon avis, au contexte socio- ment qui nous est transmise reste celle des politique du Québec qu'à la volonté des instances dirigeantes (présidentes, ex­ membres. Comme les auteures, on peut présidentes). Peut-être est-ce dû aux sour­ toutefois reconnaître que, indépendam­ ces utilisées (les archives du mouvement ment des structures, les femmes adhèrent et les entrevues avec les ex-dirigeantes)? à l'une et à l'autre des organisations pour On en vient finalement i écrire ... l'his­ leurs propres raisons (socialiser, appren­ toire d'un mouvement. dre et agir sur elles-mêmes, leurs familles, La date retenue de foundation de leurs communautés). l'AFÉAS (22 septembre 1966) est celle de C'est graduellement que l'AFÉAS la fusion officielle des membres de construit sa propre personnalité en s'écar­ l'Union catholique des femmes rurales tant «prudemment et modérément» des (UCFR) et des Cercles d'économie domes­ positions de l'Église (92) ... et devient tique (CED). Le chapitre 1 relate l'histoire féministe. C'est l'objet du chapitre 2. des origines mouvementées du mouve­ Cette évolution s'affirme dans les posi­ ment, soit les événements ayant entouré tions qu'adopte le mouvement lors de la scission «douloureuse» des Cercles de mémoires présentés à diverses commis­ fermières (création de l'État) et de sions gouvernementales et dans les sujets L'UCFR (produit de l'offensive de d'étude privilégiés par les membres. l'Église québécoise pour les concur­ Alors qu'en 1970 par exemple, l'AFÉAS rencer). La position adoptée par les aut­ s'oppose à toute modification de la loi sur eures sur la manifestation d'autonomie l'avortement considérant le droit à la vie démontrée par les femmes lors du passage comme fondamental (sans consulter la des Cercles de fermières à l'Union catho­ base), le mouvement adopte une position lique des femmes rurales laisse toutefois de compromis en 1973 disant non à perplexe. (25-35) L'argumentation ici est l'avortement sur demande mais oui à la loin d'être convaincante. formation de comités thérapeutiques dans Il est difficile en effet de considérer le les hôpitaux. Les tiraillements de la base refus des subsides de l'État par I'UCFR trahissent les interrogations des femmes comme une preuve irréfutable d'auton­ dont la culture catholique imprègne en­ omie des femmes quand on sait que cette core fortement le vécu et explique leur 344 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

position modérée sur l'échelle du fémin­ éducation. On retrouve des témoignages isme militant. très révélateurs sur les réticences des La contribution la plus originale du membres à s'impliquer dans l'action so­ mouvement à l'histoire des femmes est ciale versus les activités sociales. (217- sans contredit celle de la cause des fem­ 8) «Sortir les femmes de la sphère do­ mes collaboratrices du mari. «Rendre mestique» exige à la fois une démystifi­ visible le travail invisible des femmes» cation du pouvoir politique et passe par la reconnaissance sociale des l'investissement des lieux de pouvoir. partenaires ou mercenaires (95) qui con­ (230) Cette réflexion amorcée en 1985 tribuent à l'entreprise du conjoint autant par le mouvement conduira l'AFÉAS à qu'à la valorisation du travail domestique développer une aile lobbyiste active et au foyer. Sur ces deux dossiers, le travail à favoriser les candidatures féminines de conscientisation et d'action de en politique (1990). l'AFÉAS sera crucial. Concrètement, la En conclusion, les auteures repren­ loi de 1989 sur le pratimoine familial (loi nent les avenues privilégiées par l'As­ 146) et les transformations successives de sociation face à son action dans le mi­ l'exemption des personnes à charge en lieu soit celles des «gestes prag­ crédit d'impôt sont considérées comme matiques» par opposition aux des victoires conduisant à l'autonomis- contributions théoriques (voir les an­ ation des femmes. Elles sont le résultat nexes 1 et 2 traitant des sujets d'étude d'enquêtes menées par l'AFÉAS qui et des sessions d'information aux pages avaient révélé l'étendue de la pauvreté 191-4). Face aux enjeux d'un mouve­ des femmes et leur dépendance à l'égard ment des femmes pluriel, la part de de la bonne volonté du conjoint en cas de l'AFÉAS aura été de «donner une voix à séparation ou de divorce. Malgré toutes des femmes qui n'en avaient pas.» (243) ces démarches «autonomistes,» les mem­ Mais en même temps, les auteures ne bres hésitent encore en 1981 à s'afficher soulignent pas assez comment le en tant que féministes et préfèrent con­ mouvement reste un phénomène de juguer une forme de féminisme à la fois génération car le renouvellement du social et égalitaire, où les valeurs fami­ membership connaît peu de succès au­ liales et conjugales restent prioritaires. près des jeunes générations qui affron­ Le plan adopté pour l'ensemble du tent d'autres réalités. volume est thématique plutôt que chrono­ Dans l'ensemble, malgré les meil­ logique. S'il permet aux auteures de bien leures intentions des auteures, le volume cerner la transformation d'un mouvement se présente comme une histoire institu­ d'action sociale en mouvement de reven­ tionnelle, du moins par le style adopté et dication, il contribue aussi à multiplier les les sources privilégiées, ce qui en rend la redondances. Cet aspect ressort particu­ lecture lourde par endroits. En dépit de lièrement dans les chapitres 3 et 4 qui plusieurs tentatives de remise en contexte pourraient, à la limite, être réduits à un (18, 40, 59), les auteures ne réussissent seul chapitre. pas toujours à faire ressortir les tendan­ «Rejoindre madame tout-le-monde» ces lourdes du mouvement dont les et lui donner la parole, voilà le premier modes d'action s'inspire largement du objectif éducatif de l'AFÉAS. Le member­ militantisme d'action catholique, dans ship de l'Association étant constitué ma­ une société qui l'est de moins en moins. joritairement de femmes au foyer, défa­ Au fil de la lecture, on a souvent vorisées par le système, la prise de parole l'image d'un exécutif qui «tire» sa base sur la scène publique passe d'abord par vers l'action. Néanmoins, malgré ces l'éducation à la parole ou la conquête de quelques réserves, l'ouvrage permet de la confiance en soi... et conduit à une lutte connaître un aspect important du à finir contre les stéréotypes sexistes en REVIEWS 345 mouvement des femmes au Québec des selves members of the elite. Probably a trente dernières années. quarter of them were poor and property- less, and others owned land and a small Odette Vincent Domey number of slaves, but the majority farmed Institut québécois de recherche their own plots, were relatively comfort­ sur la culture able, and produced most of what they consumed. Most lived in the countryside or in tiny villages, and they tended to be clannish and suspicious of outsiders and Bill Cecil-Fronsman, Common Whites: of innovation. Their culture was broadly Class and Culture in Antebellum North egalitarian, though patriarchal and racist. Carolina (Lexington, Kentucky: Univer­ The songs and stories of their British an­ sity of Kentucky Press 1992). cestors praised Robin Hood types, scorned wealthy misers for neglecting the SOUTHERN ELITES have always captured poor, and taught that strong emotions like the fancy of historians, and more recently love should overcome differences based enslaved and free African-Americans on wealth and status. In North Carolina have also attracted their attention. The these imported values flourished before majority of those outside planting, mer­ and especially after the revolution. "The cantile, professional, and governmental belief that poor men were as good as rich circles whom Bill Cecil-Fronsman calls ones was drilled into common whites at "common whites" are by comparison the an early age through various means," the understudied and misunderstood men and author observes. (32) Those means in­ women of the Old South. Cecil-Fronsman cluded songs and stories about the seeks to shed light on this diverse group, triumph of true love, the political culture "to discern what their norms and expecta­ of republicanism and the practices of tions were, whether the social reality af­ democratic electioneering, and the re­ forded them the chance to fulfil these cruitment of sinners by the converted in expectations, and the causes and direction the fast growing evangelical Christian of cultural change." (5) He also wishes to churches. Common whites cherished determine "both the extent of common- equal rights, independence, and self-re­ white class consciousness and the factors liance: they insisted that boundaries sep­ that prevented it from developing to the arating classes be permeable but that the point that it would support a movement chasm separating the races by unbrid­ that questioned planter hegemony." (7) geable. He offers compelling answers to these important questions, and though he does North Carolina was by no means an not always fully persuade he invariably egalitarian society, however. An elite provokes thought. He uses census and dominated by planters controlled local economic data sensibly and to good ef­ and state governments and ruled very fect. He employs folklore and popular much in their own interests. Conflicts be­ culture imaginatively to probe the values tween commoners and governing elites and aspirations of his subjects. His re­ over matters like taxation and legislative search is exhaustive and his writing en­ apportionment erupted frequently, and gaging. The result is a fascinating study those seeking greater fairness scored im­ that deserves a wide readership. portant victories. Yet none of the reforms either proposed or acted upon even re­ Eschewing familiar terms like "plain motely threatened the economic and pol­ folk" and "yeomen," Cecil-Fronsman em­ itical power of the elite. Thus, though ploys the far more expansive category of conflict between commoners and elites "common white" and places it in the 80 was by no means rare in North Carolina it per cent of North Carolinians who were only occurred on terrain acceptable to the neither considered nor considered them­ 346 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

latter. Popular grievances were articu­ their separate economic spheres, planters lated by political parties that were ideo­ and the majority of commoners had rela­ logically opposed to a class analysis, and tively few opportunities to injure each thus class issues tended to mutate into other and develop enduring enmities. partisan squabbling. The common whites' The rapid spread of the railroad net­ "political struggles lacked a clear sense of work in the 1850s and the concomitant class consciousness," the author claims. introduction ofcapitalist market relations (61) The religious sensibility of white into common white counties shook the evangelical Christians differed from that status quo to its roots. It instigated a kind of Blacks in that it tended to be individ­ of cultural war in many white counties, ualistic and otherworldly, rather than pitting the forces of tradition (self-suffi­ based in the group and focused on deliver­ ciency, ethic of mutuality, folk beliefs) ance in this world. Common whites were against the encroachments of modernity quick to fight against unfair privilege or (commercial agriculture, individualism, abuse of power, "but so long as planters, rationality). It shattered the buffer be­ merchants, and other members of the elite tween the two economies that had damp­ accommodated themselves to the com­ ened criticisms of the elite. Although mon whites' sense of personal equality, common whites opted for secession and there was little in their culture that would fought for the Confederacy, wartime suggest that something was wrong." (65) hardships and impositions fuelled popu­ They objected to elite malefactors, not to lar disenchantment with the governing the elite itself. elite. The war accelerated the breakdown Much else about the culture and out­ of cultural values and economic struc­ look of common whites tended to lend tures that had protected the old rulers. direct or inadvertent support to the status Cecil-Fronsman suspects Reconstruction quo and especially to slavery. Cecil- might have succeeded had the economy Fronsman argues that in the long term been healthy in the late 1860s and the slavery worked against the economic in­ elevation of freedmen not been accompa­ terests of common whites, but that eman­ nied by a decline in the economic position cipation without forced colonization was of common whites. Without significant definitely against their immediate econ­ support from common whites, the recon­ omic and social interests. Common struction experiment was doomed. Here, whites counted on planters to protect and throughout his book, Cecil-Frons­ them from black economic competition man's judgment is sound. and to uphold their racial privileges. In thousands of tiny, isolated, largely self- John T. O'Brien sufficient villages bound by close ties of Dalhousie University familial obligation and communal reci­ procity, the culture viewed outsiders with suspicion, enforced conformity to ac­ cepted norms, and legitimated extra-legal Stephen Stein, The Shaker Experience in violence against abolitionists and other America: A History of the United Society dissenters from the status quo. Further­ of Believers (New Haven: Yale Univer­ more, two distinct economies and so­ sity Press 1992). cieties co-existed in antebellum North Carolina: the one commanded by planters STEPHEN STEIN'S ACCOUNT provides an produced goods for distant markets; the impressive synthesis which challenges other, which aimed at self-sufficiency and many of the assumptions central to exist­ produced relatively little surplus for dis­ ing Shaker scholarship. Through a vigor­ tant markets, busied most common ous reassessment of traditional Shaker whites. As long as they remained within history and the sources used to construct it. Stein is able to distance his account of REVIEWS 347 the United Society of Believers from with little about her theology that might those romanticized appropriations of prepare us for the development of Shaker "Shaker values" which are common in belief and practice. modern studies of the sect's material cul­ Nonetheless, Stein's account of the ture. While other historians have concen­ formative period captures the ironic trated on specific Shaker settlements or possibilities in Shaker history. Corporate periods, Stein takes a comprehensive ap­ organization, celibacy, and the conviction proach to the two centuries of Shaker his­ that the United Society of Believers rep­ tory. His work follows the Shakers from resented the first-fruits of Christ's king­ their Manchester origins through their dom set the Shakers apart. Yet as Stein removal to America, their formal estab­ points out, their sectarian opposition to lishment as the United Society of Belie­ the "host culture" was balanced by the vers, their expansion, decline and rebirth remarkable convergence of many Shaker in the 20th century. Five chronological values and the preoccupations of other divisions give the book its structure. But Americans in the young republic. At because Stein emphasizes diversity and that moment when, as Emerson said, dissent within the Shaker tradition, the Americans were "all a little made with story he tells does not fit a simple linear numberless projects of reform," the model of declension. Instead, the Shaker Shakers were far from isolated by their experience is woven through die pattern optimism, their interest in expansion of American life, sometimes drawing near across the continent, and their desire to to the world outside, sometimes pursuing remake the world. a course guided by the Believers' own The middle period (1827-1875) logic and imperatives. brought an extraordinary revival of spiri­ In his discussion of the early period tuality known as the "Era of Manifesta­ (1747-1787), Stein tries to distinguish re­ tions." Stein's expertise in the reading of liable sources from the stories used by apocalyptic texts opens a fascinating later generations of Shakers to create a world of ritual and "gifts," mountain-top spiritual past. A critical analysis of ma­ feasts, and spirit-drawings. Even more in­ terials from the "Age of the Founders" triguing is the description of conflict as­ undermines the notion that Ann Lee was sociated with the revival and the rise of a the primary source of spiritual authority, progressive Shakerism in its wake. These and leads Stein to conclude that Lee was developments strengthen Stein's case "not the only charismatic force in the against the myth of Shaker simplicity. young society." He assigns less overall Although the middle period brought pros­ importance to the age of the founders, and perity, it exacerbated old tensions be­ more importance to the "formative peri­ tween the outward pressures of geo­ od" from 1787-1826. Given the fact that graphic and financial growth on one hand, the Shakers' communal organization and and the centripetal force of communal first authoritative theological statements spirituality on the other. Such tensions emerged from the formative period, would ultimately subject Shaker life to Stein's attention to developments in the the vicissitudes of the modern American generation after Lee's death seems justi­ economy and generate new questions fied. But a sense of ambiguity about Lee's about the Society's relationship to the place in Shaker history pervades the outside world. book. It is difficult to pin down the con­ This becomes even more apparent as nection between "Mother Ann" — con­ Stein follows the "transformation of the sidered to be a manifestation of the sec­ United Society of Believers" into the 20th ond coming of Christ — and the Ann Lee century. Marked by infrequent worship who emerges from Stein's portrayal as services, modern dress, and reliance on one 18th-century enthusiast among many, outside labour, the attenuated United So- 348 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ciety of Believers appeared to be all but Marilyn Rhinehart, A Way of Work and a lost. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Way of Life: Coal Mining in Thurber, the final section of the book — optimisti­ Texas, 1888-1926 (College Station: cally titled The Rebirth of Shakerism" Texas A & M University Press 1992). — reveals as much about America in the late 20th century as it reveals about the TRADITIONALLY, LABOUR historians fate of the Shakers' theological experi­ have focused their attention on trade ment. When placed in the context of the unionism and the politics and economics renaissance of commercial interest in of labour relations, examining how these Shaker artifacts, the account of the two elements work together to define an elu­ surviving Shaker villages (and the mys­ sive working-class consciousness. Recent terious Shaker Trust Fund) makes a curi­ scholars, however, have regarded union ous denouement to the United Society's activity as but one facet of working-class history. lives, and have suggested that the role of Throughout the book. Stein insists that labour relations represents only one arena the boundaries of Shaker historiography in which class consciousness might be must be pushed beyond sentimental and explored. Pursuing the local study in uncritical evaluations of the Shaker experi­ which efforts are concentrated on one in­ ence. Others who write of the Shakers will dustry, this new generation of labour his­ now be compelled to address Stein's inter­ torians offers an intricate exploration of pretive assumptions as well as his conclu­ myriad aspects of working-class lives. sions. Regrettably, beyond a citation in the Marilyn Rhinehart attempts to synthesize endnotes Stein does not engage recent fem­ these two approaches in her study of the inist scholarship on Shaker theology and the coal-mining town of Thurber, Texas, in­ practice of celibacy. A consideration of this tegrating sensitively the history of union promising body of work would sharpen the . development into the day-to-day experi­ historiographical edge of the book, and ences of the miners of Thurber. would support Stein's discussion of female Rhinehart has three goals: first, to leadership and the "feminization" of the trace the development of trade unionism Society. in Thurber as one element of miners' ex­ While the Shakers in Stein's work perience; second, to explore life in Thur­ retain their peculiarities and their separ- ber in a multi-faceted way, examining ateness, their story is an instructive one racial and ethnic diversity, the impact of for historians of American religion and company paternalism, as well as labour culture. The need to balance "gift" and protest and resistance beyond the frame­ "order," the challenge of declining mem­ work of the union; and finally, to place bership, of being in the world but not of Thurber in the larger context of the indus­ it — these are questions which resonate trial Southwest and turn-of-the century beyond the bounds of the communal America. Like many of the "new" labour Shaker village, even though the United historians, Rhinehart acknowledges the Society of Believers' version of such de­ organization of the United Mine Workers bates has had an intense and hyperbolic of America in Thurber as "the most dra­ character. Stein recalls a history complete matic and recounted episode in the com­ with doctrinal strife and the frequent in­ munity's history." However, she is quick trusion of worldliness. In the process of to point out that there is more to working- restoring the full sweep of that history, he class history in Thurber than union devel­ has managed to find a place for the Sha­ opment. The daily experience of coal mi­ kers within the larger fabric of American ners involved surviving the hardships and Protestantism. dangers of their occupation; adapting to the domination of the Texas & Pacific Nina Reid-Maroney Coal Company; and resolving racial and University of Toronto REVIEWS 349 ethnic differences in order for family and Rather than trying to define an elusive individual needs to be met It was in the class consciousness among Thurber's underground community of the mines, coal miners, then, Rhinehart concentrates Rhinehart argues, that these goals were her efforts on discovering a sense of com­ met as miners developed a strong sense of munity based on an occupational con­ cohesion based on their common experi­ sciousness. She argues that in spite of ences. ethnic diversity, language barriers, and In many ways, Rhinehart argues, potential racial discord, miners in Thur­ Thurber was "not very different from hun­ ber developed a sense of belonging based dreds of coal mining towns across Ameri­ on their shared fears, mutual dependence, ca" at the turn of the century; what made and common goals and grievances in the the town unique, she claims, was the mines. Key to Rhinehart's thesis, though, group consciousness developed by the is the notion that this "subterranean com­ miners. She argues that in spite of ethnic munity" was reconstructed by the miners and racial diversity, Thurber miners cre­ in their daily lives above ground in the ated "their own community" in the mine. company-owned town. "Ultimately," she continues, "this sense Although Rhinehart makes a strong of occupational community proved to be case for the notion of occupational ident­ the primary link between [the miners] that ity, the notion that the subterranean com­ enabled a diverse population successfully munity was transplanted above ground is to challenge the company's control over not as convincing as it perhaps could have their at-work and after-work lives." She been. True, miners did endure many com­ cites many situations in which miners had mon circumstances in their daily lives: ample opportunity to develop their ident­ they drank together in the company sa­ ity below ground. For example, the mi­ loon, shopped at the company store using ners resembled each other: they were company scrip, lived within the com­ "pale" with "stooped backs," "second pany's guarded wire fence surrounding knees," and skin streaked with coal dust; the town, and occupied company houses. they "smelled alike," exuding common These facts of life, Rhinehart argues, odours of oil, blasting powder, smoke, demonstrate that "the network of relations sulphur and sweat; they dressed and car­ that developed in the environment of a ried their equipment in the same manner, company town further solidified the bond and those who did not were quickly sin­ of common interest among [miners]." gled out as novices. Nevertheless, Rhinehart can not es­ More than a common appearance, cape the fact that miners and their families though, the miners shared common atti­ lived in ethnic enclaves, spoke their own tudes: an air of independence borne out of languages, and boarded with members of a system of limited direct supervision and their own ethnic or racial group. Further­ a keen sense of fair work and fair pay. more, she glosses over the potential vo­ Common grievances were voiced on the latile situation created when black miners train ride home, which Rhinehart sug­ were imported as strike breakers. That gests "actually served as a kind of 'melt­ blacks were later admitted into the union, ing pot' where 'men from all nations sat' Rhinehart argues, implies that the poten­ and 'strong friendships grew.'" Cohesion tial for racial discord never erupted into was nurtured in the mine during periods violence; thus, racial harmony prevailed. of slack time waiting for the elevator or However, it could be argued that the de­ empty coal cars. With increased mechani­ cision to grant union membership to zation and specialization, miners de­ potential strikebreakers was a pragmatic veloped a mutual dependence for produc­ one on the part of union executives. Even tivity and for safety. underground Rhinehart can not escape this ethnic solidarity: when choosing a 350 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

"buddy," or apprentice, miners selected hold firm in other coal towns and within their relatives or fellow countrymen. other occupations. Although these issues are not fatal to Rhinchart's thesis, they leave the reader Glenda D. Noseworthy Davis with some doubts. These doubts could Simon Fraser University have been erased if she had delved deeper into many of the areas she only touches upon, such as church membership, frater­ nal organizations, and mutual aid so­ Peter C. Seixas, "Shifting Sands Beneath cieties. For example, Rhinehart does not the State": Unemployment, the Labor examine whether fraternal organizations Market, and the Local Community, 1893- had a multi-ethnic membership. If mem­ 1922 (New York and London: Garland bership in these organizations surpassed Publishing 1993). the boundaries of race and ethnicity, then this would support her thesis. But if these AMERICANS IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA boundaries persisted in the same way as inaugurated the country's first compre­ residential patterns did, then one could hensive attack on the problem of modern conclude that ethnicity and race, not oc­ industrialism. Old beliefs in laissez faire cupation or even class, shaped the com­ and social Darwinism had seemingly dis­ munity identity above ground. integrated during the great depression of Still, this is a valuable contribution 1893-96 and critics started to formulate towards understanding the connections new ideas for the reform of society. Paul between occupation and class, ethnicity Seixas examines the changing percep­ and race; the relationships between em­ tions and actions of the Progressives to­ ployees and employer in the context of ward unemployment, particularly as company paternalism; and the role of in­ exemplified by the city of Yonkers in dustrial capitalism in company-owned, New York. single-industry towns. More significant­ In the late 19th century local elites ly, though, this book contributes to the had long assumed responsibility for the task of making sense of how identities are unemployed. Five family-owned busi­ formed among the working class. Rhine- nesses in Yonkers, for example, played a hart suggests how class, ethnicity, and major role in confronting the employment race only serve as elements of an individ­ crisis of the mid-1890s. As labour milit­ ual's identity. This underscores the fact ancy, strikes, and violence mounted in the that all facets of workers' lives need to be early years of the 20th century, each of explored in order to fully understand the these firms settled their problems in their history of the working class. Race, eth­ own self-contained way. Family enter­ nicity, occupation, and class all work in prises, however, slowly evolved into tandem to form an individual's sense of stockholder-owned public corporations; personal identity and his or her place their managers tended to lose interest in within a larger group, indeed, within community affairs. For a time women's many larger groups — the family, the organizations, such as in Yonkers, filled ethnic or racial group, class. Rhinehart the vacuum created by the abdication of has made substantial progress towards male elites and devoted themselves to the comprehending how these elements work promotion of education, housing, health, together to form a sense of community recreation, and employment but as time among Thurber's coal miners. All in all, progressed they increasingly sought the this is an important book, but it is also aid of salaried professionally-trained so­ only a beginning. It remains to be seen cial workers. whether Rhinehart's conclusions will External influences played an ever greater role in shaping attitudes toward the unemployed. Edward T. Devine, REVIEWS 351

General Secretary of the New York Service (USES) as the centrepiece for a Charities Organization and founder of the planned approach to handling unemploy­ magazine. Charities (later Survey), re­ ment. USES had claimed considerable jected the old notion that weakness of success in finding jobs for returning ser­ moral character caused unemployment. vicemen and reformers wished to develop Environment and industrial organization, USES branches throughout the country. he insisted, really lay at the heart of the An economy-minded Republican Con­ question. Paul Kellogg, Managing Editor gress, however, abolished the agency. of Survey, with the aid of the Russell Sage Disheartened reformers who now Foundation, conducted the famed Pitts­ sought refuge in the states and munici­ burgh Survey, which modified an ex­ palities found succor in the leadership of tended Devine's analysis and helped to Governor Alfred E. Smith, who estab­ mould Progressive social thinking. Econ­ lished the New York State Industrial omist William Leiserson urged estab­ Commission and expanded the functions lishment of a nationwide system of unem­ of the State Employment Bureau. Smith's ployment exchanges to facilitate syste­ achievements, however, served chiefly as matic management of the labour market a delaying action in an era of retrench­ City and state reformers now sought ment. Yonkers also witnessed a further to put these new concepts into action. decline in local control as a result of war­ Mayor John Purroy Mitchel of New York time mobilization. A trend toward cen­ City convened the first National Con­ tralization of Yonkers' charities, Seixas ference on Unemployment and sponsored notes, led eventually to the forging of new a Municipal Employment Exchange. Its links with city, state, and federal agen­ successor, the Public Employment cies. Conscription, new booming war in­ Bureau, served both as an employment dustries, periodic shortages of fuel and agency and as a clearinghouse for infor­ the heightened fluidity of labour, all led mation. New York State passed some 25 to a breakdown of previously-unified new labour laws and created the Factory local organization and leadership. Labour Inspection Commission, which profound­ militants found themselves thwarted ly affected labour administration in the when opponents tarred them with the state. It also inspired formation of the brush of Bolshevism during the postwar Industrial Commission, which wrote Red Scare. codes, enforced workmen's compensa­ Secretary of Commerce, Herbert tion laws, provided mediation and arbitra­ Hoover, appeared to give unemployment tion services, and compiled labour statis­ a high priority when he initiated the Presi­ tics. dent's Conference on Unemployment in During World War I, new federal 1921. Yet the Conference placed obliga­ agencies directed all phases of the econ­ tion for the unemployed squarely on the omy including transportation, produc­ shoulders of local authorities. It stressed tion, fuel, food, and energy. The War community action, worker discipline, and Labor Board, co-chaired by ex-President a return to self-reliant American individ­ William Howard Taft and Frank P. ualism. Hoover's Conference, in effect, Walsh, former Chairman of the US Com­ turned the clock back to the late 19th mission on Industrial Relations, dealt century. By 1920, however, most indus­ with working conditions, wage standards, tries operated as parts of national corpor­ and collective bargaining. At the end of ate structures and no longer participated the war most business leaders wanted to in community activities. Reformers had to dismantle all wartime structures while re­ wait until Hoover's world of laissez faire formers strove to enhance government and American individualism collapsed in regulation of the economy. Progressives 1929 before they could make further ad­ regarded the United States Employment vances. 352 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Seixas' study is well researched and focused community and workplace expands our knowledge of one aspect of studies, aimed to rewrite the movement's the Progressive Era. His use of Yonkers history from the bottom up. The vision of as a microcosm does not succeed entirely. American communism which emerged Several chapters examine national trends was both more sympathetic and fun­ without a mention of the New York com­ damentally different in its vantage point. munity; when a section on Yonkers does Many of the new studies described a grass surface, it sometimes appears tacked on roots movement shaped less by Moscow as an afterthought. Seixas concentrates masters than by the agency and ideas of almost wholly on impersonal forces. This indigenous radicals. Neo-conservative lack of inclusion of the human personality and neo-liberal historians contested this gives the book a dull heavy quality in more optimistic reading, and a new histo- need of leavening. Nevertheless his work riographical battle was joined. The cen­ makes a contribution to our under­ tral question involves the relative import­ standing of one of the important social ance of indigenous factors and Comintern issues in the Progressive Era. intervention in explaining the rise and fall of communist politics in the United Graham Adams, Jr. States. Mount Allison University The Prometheus Research Library's collection of James Cannon's speeches and writings from the 1920s can tell us a good deal about this failure. It focuses on Prometheus Research Library, éd., James a period that has been largely ignored in P. Cannon and the Early Years of Ameri­ the more recent studies, and its internal can Communism: Selected Writings and party documents provide a rare look in­ Speeches, 1920-1928 (New York: Spar- side the organization. In addition to sim­ tacist Publishing Company 1992). ply describing the collection, I would like to suggest how it relates to the current ONE OF THE POLITICAL IRONIES of the historiographical and political debates conservative 1980s in the United States about the history of American communism. was a resurgence of interest among histo­ Besides being an important radical rians in the history of the Communist activist throughout his life and the Party. This renaissance was generated by founder of American Trotskyism, Jim related political and methodological de­ Cannon was also a fascinating character. velopments that turned younger scholars Born near Kansas City in 1890, his own toward the rich legacy of American radi­ ideas and experiences linked the Com­ calism and toward the Communist Party munist movement to an earlier generation in particular as the most important 20th- of American radicals. Passing through his century example of this radical tradition. father's Irish republicanism and socialism When the New Left generation of the six­ at a very young age, he joined the Indus­ ties and early seventies reached their in­ trial Workers of the World (1WW) in 1911 tellectual maturity and began a search for and remained a key figure in Midwestern radical roots, they found the Communists. syndicalism throughout the World War I An earlier generation of historians era. He rejoined the Socialist Party in writing at the height of the Cold War, as 1919 to build its pro-Bolshevik wing and well as some more recent conservative entered the communist movement at its scholars, located the pulse and brain of inception in the summer of that year. Can­ the party in Moscow; it was an alien non was the Workers' (Communist) movement espousing an alien ideology. Party's (WP) First chairman and a member But the new historians of American com­ of its Central Committee from its found­ munism, embracing the methods of the ing until his expulsion for Trotskyism in new social history with its emphases on REVIEWS 353 the fall of 1928. In 192S he founded the conflicts. These are conveyed in a series International Labor Defense (ILD), an im­ of documents running throughout the en­ portant united front providing legal pro­ tire period. One gets the distinct impress­ tection for labour and progressive groups ion that much more time was spent writ­ and individuals in the midst of the Red ing internal memos and realigning fac­ Scare. He went on in 1929, in collabora­ tions than in any real organizing and that tion with the Canadian communist indeed such conflicts represented serious Maurice Spector, to establish the Com­ obstacles to communists who were pri­ munist League of America, North Ameri­ marily interested in practical work. Scho­ ca's first Trotskyist organization, and he lars who wish to understand the weakness remained the leading figure in its succes­ of labour radicalism in the 1920s should sor, the Social Workers' Party, until his consider the problem of factionalism, for death in 1974. these documents suggest the dominant in­ The book consists of sixty of Can­ fluence of such conflicts. non's speeches, articles, and internal As a research organization and memos and reports, many of them pre­ archive with strong ties to the Spartacist viously unpublished and culled from his League, a small Trotskyist group, the Pro­ papers, now at the State Historical So­ metheus Research Library had a political ciety of Wisconsin; a host biographical purpose in editing this large and rather note; an introduction which analyzes the complex book — to trace their own pol­ evolution of the WP's program in the itical lineage. The central argument that 1920s in relation to its turbulent internal emerges from the introduction and editor­ politics; a series of previously unpub­ ial comments is the notion that American lished reports from Cannon's closest col­ Trotskyism was the product of factional laborators; an internal WP report that pro­ struggles within the WP, that Cannon's vides an approximation of Trotskyist sup­ experience in these conflicts predisposed port within the party at the time of him and other WP activists to Trotsky's Cannon's expulsion; an extensive glos­ critique, and that the failure of communist sary of individuals, organizations, and politics in the United States can be ex­ terms mentioned in the documents; a bib­ plained in large part by the degenerate liography of Cannon's writings from nature of the Soviet party and Comintern 1912 through 1928; and 28 photographs leadership as early as 1925. from a dozen different sources. The edi­ Yet the failure of American commun­ tors, who have done a fine job, provide a ism was a great deal more complicated brief, helpful introduction for each docu­ than this suggests. Trotsky's own ma­ ment in the collection. noeuvring in the Comintern was part of The documents themselves are im­ the more general problem of international portant for a number of reasons. First, in factionalism that sapped so much of the tracing the trajectory of Cannon's own WP's strength and creativity and so thought through these years, they do in­ warped its perspective of class politics in deed suggest the roots of American Trot­ the United States. Had the American com­ skyism in the factional politics of the munists listened to Cannon and Trotsky 1920s. One can begin to see why the split in 1928, they would still have faced emerged, what people like Cannon saw at massive repression at the hands of the stake in the Comintern conflicts. The pre­ government and conservative union viously unpublished internal documents leaders. are especially useful for understanding And this brings us back to the histo­ the way in which the WP functioned, or, rians' debates about American commun­ more often, failed to do so. What emerges ism. Documents directly addressed to Co­ most clearly is the terribly destructive ef­ mintern commissions and congresses or fects of the party's incessant factional closely reflecting Comintern politics 354 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL dominate this collection, whereas we find Archie Green, Wobblies, Pile Bulls, and very little here about the lives of Ameri­ Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations can workers. Why? (Champaign: University of Illinois Press There are at least two ways to under­ 1993). stand this focus, each relating to a differ­ ent way of explaining communist history. MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS ago Archie Many of the newer and more radical inter­ Green coined the term "laborlore" to refer preters of American communism might to the wealth of traditions — songs, argue that in concentrating on Cannon, stories, slang, phrases, occupational ter­ the editors have settled for a rather minology, jokes — generated by workers myopic view of the movement. In docu­ and their organizations. Green admitted menting a discourse among radical elites, that laborlore might not fît conventional they have simply missed the submerged academic definitions of folklore and folk­ and more important experience of Ameri­ song. However, he argued that consider­ can communists. To put it bluntly, who able similarities existed between the cares what Cannon thought unless it can traditional folklore and laborlore pro­ be linked closely to the reality of class cesses and that scholars would do well to conflict in 1920s America? More conser­ investigate the lore and song of the work­ vative interpreters might find good grist ing class. Green was not the first to plead for their mills. The WP was obsessed with on behalf of labour's song and lore. As a Comintern politics. American party pol­ journalist and ally of labour, George Kor- icy was often dictated from Moscow. In son had pioneered the collection and pub­ this sense, the movement was an alien lication of coalminers' songs and stories influence, and this explains its failure. My from the 1920s onward. In addition, John own sympathies lie with the newer, more Greenway had made a case for labour sympathetic interpretation of the party's protest songs within the academic folk­ history, but after reading these docu­ lore circle in the early 1950s. Neverthe­ ments, it is difficult to avoid the over­ less, Green's work finally won the crowd whelming importance of the international over to laborlore's side. Doing so re­ movement. The process of democratic quired considerable persuasion and it is a centralism meant that the work of rank- compliment to Green that he did so with and-file communists was fundamentally little methodological or ideological shaped by the preoccupation of James venom. He simply spent three decades Cannon and other WP leaders with the collecting and disseminating laborlore science of Marxism-Leninism as inter­ among his colleagues, while simulta­ preted by the Comintern leadership. The neously waging a tireless non-partisan key in building a communist movement campaign to get other scholars to follow lay in integrating this theory of revolution his lead. with workers' experiences in streets and In this book Green once again takes workshops throughout the United States. up the cause in a collection of essays on a The key in understanding the movement's variety of laborlore topics. In his intro­ history, it seems, lies in analysing the duction Green outlines the historiography failure to achieve this integration, a of laborlore while encouraging more wor­ failure that James Cannon shared with a kers and scholars to do fieldwork. Green whole generation of American communists. has never laboured over theoretical or methodological details, however, and this James R. Barrett work is no exception. Green states his University of Illinois at case, moves on to do the business at hand, Urbana-Champaign and leaves the larger analytic questions to other interested parties. Most of this work finds Green taking readers through a REVIEWS 355

series of laboriore case studies. In the first has ever written. While utilizing the orig- chapter Oreen charts the history of visual inal-source-and-all-iu-variants form that representations of the folk hero John folklorists frequently rely upon. Green Henry. In a similar vein Green traces Joe avoids slipping into the antiquarianism Hill's elevation to heroic status among that can plague scholarship guided by this the left in chapter two. In two other chap­ methodological formula. Just as histo­ ters Green dissects the sources and evol­ rians sometimes string together one mass ution of the terms "wobbly" and "fink." after the next of dry descriptive evidence Elsewhere he fleshes out the epic of data, those trained in folklore can meaning of a labour song about Marcus string together variant texts and reams of Daly, the Butte, Montana mining mag­ dull, ancillary descriptive information. (I nate. Two chapters review the history of won't make friends among genealogists songs: one from the 1892 Homestead or demographers by saying this, but such strike and another from a textile strike in writing reminds me of my relatives sitting North Carolina in 1900. Another chapter me down to read an annotated family tree. briefly surveys a variety of work rituals Information contained in the tree has no — Labour Day parades, Charivari, retire­ inherent value, in spite of what my rela­ ment ceremonies, and sabotage. A final tives might think and regardless of how chapter considers the origin and history of many variant texts my forebears bore!) the term "pile butt" for pile driver. Nearly all of us suffer this malady at some Green packs a wealth of information point in our writing and the weakest sec­ into each of these chapters. Anyone inter­ tions of this book demonstrate that Green ested in workers and their history will hasn't entirely escaped it either. The find something of value here. From this chapter on "Home Front Harassment," for reviewer's vantage certain chapters example, falls into this category even nevertheless stand out for quality and ap­ though it includes informative material. peal. In his chapter on the term "wobbly," In "pile butt," however. Green carefully for example. Green does an admirable job delineates a larger perspective as he of straightforward detective work as he brings in worker anecdotes, political com­ attempts to chart the term's origin and mentary, labour history, economics, and evolution. If we never actually discover cultural analysis. Moreover, because he the term's original source we learn a lot puts more of himself into this essay by of labour history along the way. Else­ adding personal recollections of his years where, in the chapter on Joe Hill, Green on the waterfront, this essay breaths a demonstrates how the independent- kind of intensity and verve as well. For minded, Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill these reasons it becomes all that more emerged as a martyred hero, among the convincing to readers. (We should hope Stalinist-dominated Communist Party. that Green neatly segues from this essay Much of the story follows the popular into a work on his own life and labour. song "Joe Hill" and its movement through That would be a treat for us all.) leftist ranks. Along the way, however, we Anyone interested in laboriore or learn as much about the US Party's his­ worker culture would do well to make tory as we do about a song. their way through this important book. By far the most engaging chapter in You will sometimes find yourself bewil­ this book, however, is the one on "pile dered as Green takes you through a case- butt." Green's enthusiasm and interest in study maze where beginning and end are his subject will appear obvious to readers. not always clear. Be patient when that He turns a chapter on a single term into an happens. There is much to learn from this excursion through the labyrinth history of book and everyone will find useful infor­ an entire occupation and its lore. This mation in its pages. Overall it must be strikes me as one of the best essays Green judged a first-rate piece of scholarship. 356 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

After 30 years on the campaign trail, came a leading organization in New Archie Green proves that he still has a lot York's Chinatown. to say to the converted and unconverted. From its new power base the Alliance championed Chinese patriotism. The Al­ Clark "Bucky" Halker liance's efforts included a major cam­ Princeton, Maine paign to raise money from laundrymen and their customers to aid China in its war against Japan. Four ambulances were pur­ chased in 1938 with the funds raised; the Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Our­ vehicles were used visibly in the streets selves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Al­ of New York to display Chinese-Ameri­ liance of New York (Philadelphia: Temple can patriotic spirit. Once in China, how­ University Press 1992). ever, the vehicles frequently stood idle — a result of lack of fuel and inappropriate IN THE UNITED STATES the Chinese have terrain. While their practical utility in often been perceived as an ethnic group guerrilla warfare may have been exceed­ robustly resistant to the American melting ingly limited, the ambulances were a po­ pot. As newcomers, they have been port­ tent tool in an American-based propagan­ rayed as "sojourners," immigrants who da campaign meant to raise the status of did not take root in American society, the Chinese in America. If they could be failing to adopt its dominant values or shown to be as patriotic a native Ameri­ assimilate its culture. Renqiu Yu disputes cans, members believed, respect for them this view. In this study of the Chinese would increase. Demonstrations of pa­ Hand Laundry Alliance of New York, the triotism were prominent in most Alliance author argues that the Alliance's acti­ activities. The leadership encouraged its vities demonstrate the extent to which economically hard-pressed members to some Chinese had in fact adopted Ameri­ buy US war bonds. As Li Chengzhu, one can democratic values and vigorously of the Alliance's leading members, urged sought to advance them. in 1944: "Let every hand laundry in every Founded in 1933 to protect New corner become a buyer of war bonds, so York's laundrymen against municipal as to increase the amity between us and regulations which would have driven our customers and, to set an example for them out of business, the Chinese Hand those 'cheap' customers, inspiring them Laundry Alliance quickly assumed other to follow us to buy the war bonds." roles in the Chinese community. It be­ These promotional and fund-raising came, from one perspective, a democratic activities became an important part of the counterweight to the conservative, hierar­ life of many Chinese laundrymen and a chical, merchant-controlled Chinese Con­ method of breaking down their isolation solidated Benevolent Association, which from the country in which they worked. dominated the life of the Chinese com­ These men had little choice to be other munity in New York. The battle between than "sojourners." Most spoke and read these two bodies was bitter and often un­ little English, worked long hours, had scrupulous. For example, leaders of the only superficial contact with non- Benevolent Association exploited wide­ Chinese, and, crucially, were legally re­ spread suspicion of the Chinese to under­ stricted (by the Chinese Exclusion Act mine the Alliance, hinting of "bad ele­ and related regulations) from forming ments" among its members and leaking to family units or becoming American authorities the names of people thought to citizens. By the early 1940s, however, the be illegal immigrants. Despite the best Alliance's efforts seemed to be making efforts of Chinatown's elite to harass and headway. In 1943 the Chinese exclusion discredit them, the Chinese Hand acts were repealed, finally giving the Laundry Worker's Alliance quickly be­ REVIEWS 357

Chinese the same right to apply for in favour of long quotes from newspapers citizenship as all other immigrants — and and documents. We leam too little about a quota of 105 new immigrants a year. the laundrymen's work, thoughts, and The reason for the repeal, however, had feelings about their lives. Editorials, little to do with the views of Chinese often reproduced at great length, cannot Americans; rather, the fundamental argu­ achieve the immediacy of good oral his­ ment was that the measure would help to tory. In addition, this monograph prema­ end the war and enhance US postwar rela­ turely takes on the tenor of a "dusty tome" tions with China. Meanwhile, the war it­ through its suffocating use of acronyms. self helped Chinese laundries, since work To Save China, To Save Ourselves adds was diverted to them from large factory considerably to our knowledge, but, at the laundries devoted to war work, and be­ same time, it misses an opportunity to cause of increased custom from women make the past come alive. newly in the wartime workforce. These benefits were short-lived. After Patricia Malcolmson the war home washing machines and Ontario Ministry of Health renewed commercial laundries seriously harmed the livelihoods of Alliance mem­ bers. Politically, the support of leftists and the hostility of conservative Chinese Reginald Gibbons and Terrence Des Près, combined to ensure FBI harassment and eds., Thomas McGrath: Life and the prosecution during the McCarthy years. Poem (Urbana and Chicago: University of The Alliance's members, along with their Illinois Press 1992). journals and businesses, were pursued re­ lentlessly. Chinese community leadership Even in this brief outline, there is enough to reverted to the conservatives. The Al­ indicate that Sidney Greenspan was not the liance lost much of its membership and stuff of which heroes are made, at least in the FBI surveillance continued into the 1970s. conception of heroes which is most popular in The Alliance's efforts were largely America today. ignored by the broader society. It did Howard Fast, "An Epitaph for Sidney" much to provide assistance and economic aid to its members but it could never break THE UNLIKELY HERO of Fast's short down the twin barriers of American anti- story is one of those freedom-loving Chinese sentiment and the Chinese com­ youngsters who, in the summer of 1937, munity's political conservatism. The ignored their country's wishes and fol­ Chinese, between 1882 and 1943, were lowed their hearts and their Party to the explicitly excluded from American so­ hills and valleys of Spain. Fast names his ciety, yet the Chinese Hand Laundry Al­ hero "Sidney Greenspan," a metonymy liance chose to identify with the demo­ for all the working-class radicals who put cratic values of a society which kept its aside what little personal comfort they members politically, socially, and econ­ enjoyed at home to volunteer for liberty omically on the periphery. abroad. But "An Epitaph for Sidney" is To tell the Alliance's story, the author not solely about the civil war in Spain or has drawn extensively on Chinese lan­ the brave men who fought and died there. guage sources and oral history. As a con­ It is, as the final clause of my epigraph sequence, this study adds nuance and suggests, the story of an age when the complexity to our understanding of the selfless heroism of a Sidney Greenspan Chinese experience in America. Unfortu­ had grown not only unfashionable but nately, the potential to use creatively the nearly extinct, when the belly-crawl of interviews conducted with two dozen el­ the besieged anti-fascist had been re­ derly Chinese laundrymen is largely lost placed by the long, low one of the con- 358 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL gressional informer. Looking back al Sid­ ably and engagingly by Reginald Gibbons ney's sacrifice from the early days of the and the late Terrence Des Près, this vol­ postwar persecution of Communism, ume serves as both tribute and general Fast's narrator must write his epitaph introduction to the work of a writer whose against the grain of a national press that achievement as poet, teacher, and citizen "devotes countless millions of words" to is, I believe, unsurpassed in modern explain "why people like Sidney Green­ American letters. span are corrupt, evil, selfish, and That McGrath hasn't received the enemies of mankind." To counter the anti- critical acclaim he deserves might in part Communist mystifications of the late be explained by his backlisting in the 1940s, the narrator musters this simple 1950s and by his association throughout clarity: "To the memory of Sidney Green­ his career with what he called "the unaf­ span, anti-fascist, who fell in the people's filiated far left." Things are changing, struggle — from his comrades." Soon, however. In 1988 Des Près gave a chapter however, the House Committee on Un- of his highly-regarded Praises & Dis­ American Activities and the Smith Act praises to McGrath's accomplishment as trials would distort even this comradely a political poet, placing him alongside idiom not only into heresy but also into Brecht, Breytenbach, and Rich — fast evidence of conspiracy, and writers on the company indeed. The following year The left would be forced to adopt an Aesopian Nation awarded its Lenore Marshall indirection and obscurity incommensur­ Poetry Prize — whose previous winners ate with the spirit and tact of their revol­ include Allen Tate, Hayden Carruth, and utionary politics and poetics. Denis Levertov — to McGrath's Selected One of the radical writers who fought Poems: 1938-1988. In 1991 a reviewer most valiantly to retain a language that for the New York Times Book Review might not deny a lifetime of direct action called Letter to an Imaginary Friend, was the poet Thomas McGrath. Sum­ McGrath's two-volume epic of labour, re­ moned to testify before HUAC in 1954, sistance, memory, and hope, "this cen­ McGrath neither equivocated nor tem­ tury's most persuasive poem about porized, citing legal, professional, moral, struggles for broad-based social change" and even aesthetic precedents for refusing and McGrath himself "the essential mod­ to cooperate: ern American poet of witness and com­ munity." The timely reappearance of Tho­ I believe that one of the things required of us mas McGrath: Life and the Poem should is to try to give life an esthetic ground, to give only enhance the poet's already burgeon­ it some of the pattern and beauty of art. I have ing reputation. tried as best I can to do this with my own life, and while I do not claim any very great suc­ What distinguishes Gibbons and Des cess, it would be anti-climactic, destructive of Près' volume from previous attempts to the pattern of my life, if I were to cooperate honour and understand McGrath's work with the committee. — there are special issues of the North Dakota Quarterly and Poetry East Sadly but not surprisingly, such forth- devoted to McGrath as well as Federick rightness cost McGrath his teaching job C. Stern's 1988 collection. The Revol­ at Los Angeles State, but it is this un­ utionary Poet in the United States — is broken trajectory of political commitment the editors' wise decision to underplay and social responsibility that is memo­ critical assessment and emphasize instead rialized by this collection of poems, inter­ McGrath's own language. After an appro­ views, memoirs, and criticism first pub­ priately modest introduction by Gibbons, lished in 1987 as a special issue of the the collection begins in earnest with a journal TriQuarterfy and now happily re­ healthy sampling from all four books of issued in a somewhat expanded version Letter to an Imaginary Friend, followed two years after the poet's death. Edited REVIEWS 359 by the longest interview with McGrath L.D. Sch warz, London in the age of indus­ ever published, a conversation filled with trialisation: Entrepreneurs, labour force the same irreverence, generosity, hard- and living conditions, 1700-1850 (Cam­ won wisdom, and beguiling Irish wit that bridge: Cambridge University Press mark all of his poetry. Here is McGrath 1992). near the start of his 329-page Letter, ex­ plaining what he's up to: "INEVITABLY, THIS BOOK draws heavily on Dorothy George's London Life in the — I'm here to bring you Eighteenth Century. First published in Into the light of speech, the insurrectionary 1926, and frequently reprinted, it will re­ powwow of the dynamite men and the doomsday main a classic of its kind. The labour that spielers, to sing you went into its production was prodigious: Home from the night. time and again one begins to write about something only to find that Dorothy And later on, in lines written in the horrible George has already dealt with the subject shadow of the Congressional witch-hunt, and done so with more authority." (6) In more of McGrath's characteristic blessing fact, I had a strong sense of déjà vu: time and cursing as he recalls "the generous and again, I began to read about some­ wish" of populism during the late 1930s: thing only to find that Schwarz did not deal with the subject with authority be­ Music under the dogged-down cause this book is a collection of essays, Dead lights of the beached caboose. that are themselves pastiches of argument Wild talk, and easy enough now to laugh. That's not the point and never was the point. and assertion. Time and again, I had the What was real was the generosity, expectant strong sense that what worked in a good hope, article or learned comment was indigest­ The open and true desire to create the good. ible or else under-conceptualized in the framework of what should be a more con­ Now, in another autumn, in our new dispensa­ sidered study. Overall, then, this book has tion some good parts but I found that the cen­ Of an ancient, man-chilling dark, the frost drops over trifugal forces of its parts detracted from My garden's starry wreakage. the centripetal attraction of its main argu­ ment. And, indeed, the main argument is This emphasis on the spoken word, if not not merely a re-hash of Dorothy George finally made flesh at least potentially so, but also relies very heavily on an abridged is manifest throughout the volume, and edited version of Henry Mayhew's McGrath's laughter and complaints studies of London labour in the mid-19th everywhere resounding, from the extraor­ century. I had hoped for more. dinary memoir by the late British labour The novelty of Schwarz's emphasis historian E.P. Thompson of his fifty-year on population dynamics gave me this friendship with the poet, to a seventy- hope but, unfortunately, he has treated year-old McGrath's final free-form theo­ this issue separately rather than giving it rizing on poetics: "We need a language the centrality he urges for it (and it calls that ranges from slang all the way out. Or, for). In this regard, I would contrast this to paraphrase what MacDiarmid said of book unfavourably with Jack Goldstone's the kind of poetry he wanted: language Revolution and Rebellion in the Early that is high, low. Jack and the whole god­ Modern World (1991). This comparison damned game." More often than not, underscores Schwarz's diffuse arguments that's exactly what Tom McGrath spoke about the supply of labour deriving from tous. the changing structures of vital forces. Arthur D. Casciato Throughout this book the importance of a Miami University relative over-supply of labour is repeated- 360 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ly emphasized, but when the author ana- sisted forever, but Schwarz's account lyzes the causes of this fluctuating demo­ gives us little sense of why these struggles graphy he provides a very old-fashioned were fought nor why and how resistance discussion of the Bills of Mortality along­ was organized. Moreover, his repeated side a series of unsubstantiated assertions assertion that the traditional economy dis­ regarding family size without any con­ integrated in the 1860s is not completely sideration whatsoever of illegitimacy, convincing since beneath the veneer of nuptiality, or fertility. structural stability the previous ISO years What is lacking — and the author witnessed some very radical changes in himself acknowledges it — is precise ana­ the reproduction of both capital and la­ lysis of births, marriages, and deaths. This bour. London's workers are seen as is a shame because this book shows that bearers and suppliers of labour power but Schwarz has done interesting research their more complex social relationships into the relationship between incomes, with each other — and with their em­ occupations, social structure, social class, ployers — are hardly considered. More social geography, and the standard of liv­ intimate forms of social reproduction are ing. His discussion of the formation of the likewise neglected so that we are told wage and entitlements and their relation­ almost nothing about family, kinship, and ship to non-monetary perquisites is neighbourhood; likewise, we learn noth­ thoughtful. His analysis of the changing ing about social mobility between classes fortunes of tailors, shoemakers, furniture- nor within classes, while geographical makers, and silkweavers is also percep­ mobility from the countryside into Lon­ tive. His consideration of the roles of don is completely overlooked. In much guilds, apprenticeships, and magistrates the same way, Schwarz treats England's is fair and even-handed. His inquiry into imperial wars superficially so that the sweated labour and the problem of skill is state's role in regulating labour is only also sensitive. But somehow the parts do considered within a neo-classical analysis not add up to a significant whole. What of supply and demand. Thus, the press we get instead is an argument that has the gang is never mentioned, while the role of potential to develop into a significant de­ the state's demand for manufactured parture from the established historio­ goods from the dockyards and armament graphy, but the potential of this research manufactures is hardly considered: the is unrealized, its impact is dissipated, and only real impact of war on the economy the reader is left in the lurch. seems to be the removal of hundreds of Finally, Schwarz's orientation is de­ thousands of workers into the armed cidedly economistic. Debunking the forces and the consequent demand for mythology that treats London as "the At­ coats and blankets. Thus the economic hens of the artisan," Schwarz shows that role of the state and its wars is seen as nine often male workers — who made up neutral — more or less like the demand two-thirds of all males in the capital — for shoes or stockings. This is curious sold their labour in a marketplace that was since the thrust of recent historiography always flooded. Workers, we are told on — see John Brewer's The Sinews of a number of occasions, could expect to do Power: War, Money and the English little in face of large-scale structural rela­ Slate, 1688-1783 (1989) — has been to tionships so that they were fighting a emphasize the importance of state forma­ hopeless battle — "a ceaseless quest for tion initiatives and imperial policies. stability." (209) Of course, we now know These years were, after all, the time when that the struggle against de-skilling, sub­ Britannia's wooden ships ruled the division, and speed-up would be lost waves; for the pullulating throngs of while competition from provincials, seamen and coastal merchant mariners — women, and children would not be re­ the deep-sea proletariat — who gravitated REVIEWS 361 to the East End of London, the Ratcliffe virtue of seeing a fair measure of conti­ Highway was the centre of the world. Of nuity between late Chartism, the mid- Vic- this we learn next-to-nothing. Similarly, torian labour movement, and the London's demand for coal was of crucial emergent socialism of the 1880s, without importance in promoting the Tyne- and losing the distinct flavour of each of these Teeside mines, but of these linkages we historical moments. also learn nothing. Nor do we learn any­ The originality of After Chartism thing about the immensely complex divi­ turns on how the author negotiates the sion of labour in the port of London. Fur­ complex politics of class, nation, and in­ thermore, the entrepreneurial classes are ternationalism in the decades after Chart­ similarly given scant attention so that the ism. While recognizing the blurring of immense complexities of the City and the perceived class distinctions, Finn persua­ Inns of Court are given such short shrift sively maintains that the politics of the that we would never imagine that Dickens 1850s and 1860s were more sharply located the Circumlocution Office in the divided along class lines than is usually heart of this great city. supposed. Moreover, she insists that al­ London in the age of industrialisation legiances to class and nation were not is, then, a dissatisfying book. It promises simply opposed; nationalism was itself to revise one of the classics of English contested rather than shared cultural ter­ historiography, but Schwarz's only signi­ rain. Her superb opening chapter, "Nation ficant departure from Dorothy George's and class in the English radical tradition," London Life is in his treatment of popula­ emphasizes the centrality of the 17th cen­ tion dynamics. Yet this discussion is ac­ tury to English notions of patriotism and knowledged to be both old-fashioned and an imagined national identity. Finn's under-researched. view should be set alongside Linda Col- ley's more exclusive concern with the origins of "Britishness" as the result of David Levine 18th-century warfare with France. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Labour historians have generally ne­ glected that late Chartist movement, and Finn's contribution here is significant. Her discussion of the political culture of Margot Finn, After Chartism: Class and late Chartism is sound as is her consider­ nation in English radical politics, 1848- ation of Chartist debates on social policy. 1874 (Cambridge: Cambridge University She stresses a continuing radical concern Press 1993). with democratic social change, relates this concern to internationalism, most BRITAIN'S MID-VICTORIAN labour and particularly to support for French labour- radical movements have always been dif­ republicanism, and identifies this orienta­ ficult to place. What happened to the ex­ tion as a crucial fault-line separating the pansive vision and solidarity of politics of working-class radicalism from Chartism? It is this period that Royden that of middle-class liberalism. Thus, in Harrison entitled "before the socialists" 1848, Chartists were most enthusiastic and this retreattha t the labour aristocracy about France — with its adoption of thesis purported to explain. More recent­ universal manhood suffrage and Louis ly, Eugenio Biagini and Alaslair Reid, in Blanc's economic schemes — whereas their edited volume. Currents of Radical­ middle-class reformers were more typi­ ism (1992), have argued for the substan­ cally drawn to the national and liberal tial continuity of radicalism in the period revolutions of Germany, Italy, and Hun­ 1850-1914, an interpretation that views gary. Finn proceeds to show how work­ "socialism" as a mere recasting of liberal ing-class and middle-class radicals fa- radicalism. Margot Finn's work has the 362 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

shioned distinctive and competing ver­ lized in English responses to the continen­ sions of national and international allegi­ tal revolutions of 1848." (187) ance, charting the shifting configurations Indeed, one of the most arresting parts of support for such figures as Mazzini, of Finn's study is her sustained treatment Garibaldi, Blanc, Kossuth, and the British of the reformulation of mid-Victorian lib­ Russophobe David Urquhart. eralism. She claims that like 1848, the Within post-1848 radical culture, decade following 1858 marked a water­ support for various continental causes, re­ shed in English radical politics, charac­ inforced by the presence of several thou­ terized by a gradual expansion of the sand exiled revolutionaries, became inex­ middle-class radical vision and the reinte­ tricably linked to debates on political gration of the political and social spheres economy and on the relationship between earlier separated within bourgeois liberal political and social reform. In contrast to thought. Sympathy for Polish and Italian the politics of patriotism, however, radi­ nationalist struggles drew working-class cal leaders' concepts of international and middle-class leaders into increased brotherhood were based on far less secure cooperation, setting the stage for the tan­ ideological foundations. But, as Finn ar­ gled reform movement of the mid-1860s gues, internationalist and nationalist sen­ and the rise of popular liberalism follow­ timents, rather than constituting a ing the Second Reform Act. "If class has straight-forward opposition, were histori­ failed, let us try the nation," thundered cally contingent. Radicals were thus able Bright. But as Finn comments, the archi­ to refashion the rhetoric of nationalism to tect of popular liberalism appealed to the promote internationalist causes. nation to legitimate his new recognition As for debates within the mid-Victo­ of the claims of labour and acceptance of rian labour movement on social and econ­ the fundamental relationship between so­ omic programs, Finn concedes that radi­ cial and political reform. Moreover, Finn calism's leaders proved unable to gener­ traces the ideological origins of liberal ate a shared critique of industrial social democracy (and thus the "new lib­ capitalism. Yet while falling short of eralism" of the early 20th century) from Marx's programmatic aims, Finn stresses the evolving pattern of liberal and radical the dynamism rather than the reformism thought during the 1860s. Similarly, she of English radical culture after 1848. In­ views the Labour Party as rightly tracing deed, during the 1850s, this dynamism its lineage to democratic social and politi­ presented a challenge to the sophisticated cal traditions "that owed as much to the moulders of middle-class reform opinion nation-state as they do to class." (319) and often served to distance labour-radi­ Finn leaves some questions unasked. cals from progressive middle-class spo­ One wonders, for example, how the pro­ kespersons like George Dawson, Birm­ nounced anti-statism often prevalent in ingham's radical Congregationalist min­ 19th-century popular radicalism Tits an ister. Finn concludes that the decade after interpretation that places so much em­ 1848 "saw the proponents of nationalist phasis on the continuing importance of sentiment mediate a gradual elision of democratic social reform and state inter­ Chartist and liberal thought without de­ vention. Overall, however, Finn has re­ stroying perceptions of labour's distinc­ thought the history of these decades in tive political vision." If working-class most wide-ranging, nuanced, and con­ radicals moved toward the center, this troversial fashion. For this, we are in her was at least in part because middle-class debt. liberals moved to the left, "first question­ ing and then discarding the received dog­ mas of political economy that had crystal­ James Epstein Vanderbilt University REVIEWS 363

Robert Duncan and Arthur Mclvor, eds., sure of the seventy-year old Economic Militant Workers: Labour and Class Con­ League, "the most vigorous contempor­ flict on the Clyde, 1900-1950 (Edinburgh: ary anti-socialist political blacklisting John Donald 1992). agency in Britain" (129) is a case in point "Victimisation of those on the left of the THE EXTENT OF INFLUENCE of the Red political spectrum has a very long history Clyde has been long and wide, histori­ indeed" (130) and according to this article cally and geographically. In Canada, for Clydeside employers were at least as example, Clydesiders became a generic autocratic, nasty, and miserable as any of term for radical Scottish immigrants who their contemporaries in other parts of the became actively involved in workers' land. Comprehensive blacklisting, evic­ straggles here in the early 20th century. tions, informers, propaganda, sharing of The focus of this study — Harry police information, and a biased judiciary McShane, one of the last of the Red were a few of the methods utilized. Sys­ Clydesiders — can be instructively com­ temic blacklisting was endemic, effec­ pared with Ecclefechan-born Jim tive, and singled out political activists on McLachlan, the most prominent "Cly- an impressive scale. In 1911 the Singer desider" in the coal fields of Nova Scotia. Sewing Machine Company sacked be­ Both were honest, forceful, determined, tween 400 and 1,000, including all of the imaginative fighters and educators who almost 200-strong Strike Committee. A never gave up. Their radicalism brought letter to the Glasgow Evening Times or them constant blacklisting. Both left their running against a coalowner in a parish respective community parties when the council election was reason enough to be latter lurched to the right, McLachlan in dismissed. "Sackings forced many to mi­ 1936 and McShane in 1953. Their exam­ grate from the area to seek work, whilst ples continue to inspire and to teach those those who remained often experienced on the left, frequently far from the Old dire problems obtaining alternative em­ Country. ployment." ( 140) During the Hunger Mar­ Terry Brotherstone's historiographi- ches in the 1930s the imaginative "Tory- cal piece "Does Red Clydeside Really controlled Fife County council 'had the Matter Any More?" targets the revision­ married men who marched to London ar­ ists in the 1980s who made a determined rested as wife deserters.'" (147) effort to relegate this period to the back Rob Duncan's "Independent Work­ shelves. The attempt, as this book attests, ing-class Education and the Formation of was unsuccessful. Brotherstone succinct­ the Labour College Movement in Glas­ ly argues that this fascinating and histori­ gow and the West of Scotland, 1915- cally useful period of militancy and radi­ 1922" uses the notion of 'independence' calism between 1914 and 1922 still "has as a "fundamental class and political po­ a central part to play in political discus­ sition" (110) as he traces the rise and fall sion at the end of the twentieth century." of formalized education, attributing the (53) He perceptively dissects the 'liberal demise to finance, "opposition and ambi­ revisionists,' adds the broadening assess­ valence," and the ascendancy of labour ments of contemporaries and, with the reformism. Ambivalence is also evident "openly capitalist offensive" (74) of the in James Young's treatment of "James 1980s, concludes that "Red Clydeside Connolly, James Larkin and John Ma­ certainly matters ... more so than ever." clean: The Easter Rising and Clydeside (75) The relevance of this is underlined in Socialism." Young dissipates much of a later chapter by Arthur Mclvor and their historical fog surrounding these re­ Hugh Paterson, "Combating the Left: lationships and makes the important point Victimisation and Anti-Labour Activities that "Connolly appreciated the import­ on Clydeside, 1900-1939." Recent expo­ ance of utilising cultural factors in the 364 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

struggle for socialism." (158) While so­ the horrendous housing conditions in the cialists on the Clyde were slow to support Gorbals in a clear and thoughtful fashion. the struggle for Irish independence they This work is a timely refresher course eventually came around—even John Ma­ for reminding us that many of the same clean. That struggle continues as well. problems, practices and attitudes that Useful articles on "Labour Unrest in West confronted people seventy years ago are Scotland, 1910-1914" by the Glasgow still around hammering away at the poor, Labour History Workshop and a study of the unemployed, the underemployed, the the "National Unemployed Workers' old, the young, the absurd, those who Movement" in the same area by George disagree. The last decade has left people Rawlinson complete the essay section of reeling and the government/business as­ the collection. sault on working people in Scotland, Eng­ This book also includes a series of land, Ireland, or in Canada for that matter reminiscences about and pamphlets by has not yet let up. Sometimes it pays to Harry McShane, who died at the age of 96 relearn and remember and another look at in April 1988. The former contains three the "Red Clydeside" is quite felicitous. brief but useful personal recollections by The editors offer this collection as "a very Hugh Savage, Ray Challinor, and Eric modest companion volume" (1) to Heffer which underline the strength of McShane's autobiography, No Mean McShane's character. While a member of Fighter. It easily achieves that objective. the CPGB for over thirty years he demon­ It is less an uneven work than an asymme­ strated his commitment, determination, trical one; reminiscences, reprints, re­ openness, and honesty. "Harry was al­ search in progress, and detailed scholar­ ways suspicious of unanimous decisions ship reworking the fertile and still rele­ and was not afraid of disagreements and vant area of the Red Clydeside combine discussion, provided they led to action." in a very useful and well-written collec­ (14) When the Party veered too much to tion. the right, in his opinion, he left it. "He was completely and utterly incorruptible." Don MacGillivray (15) After he left the CPGB he would University College of Cape Breton remain politically active for another 35 years of "selfless devotion." (19) When McShane was asked a few days before he died how he was for money he said "I'm David Marsh, The New Politics of British fine. I've got over £40." (15) As Heffer Trade Unionism: Union Power and the concludes: "It was a privilege to have Thatcher Legacy (Ithaca: ILR Press worked with him." (24) Some of 1992). McShane's personal strengths can be dis­ cerned in two pamphlets written by him ASSAULTS ON LABOUR UNIONS have in the 1940s. Disregarding those "with a been a prominent feature of the recent fixed mentality" (29) he was primarily politics of advanced capitalist societies in concerned with people and how they the context of worldwide restructuring. lived. One effort, "Gorbals in not Para­ But the author of this analysis of British dise" begins: "It is a hundred years since trade unions since the 1960s claims that Gorbals was annexed to Glasgow, but it the impact of Thatcherism on unions' looks as if 1946 will pass without a cel­ status has been exaggerated. Membership ebration of the event. That is as it should has declined by 25 per cent since 1979 be, the progress made does not call for the and bargaining strength has dwindled. lighting of a single bonfire." (39) He then However, unions have been weakened, proceeded to offer practical solutions to Marsh concludes, mainly by the deindus- trialization of heavy manufacturing in­ dustry and the relocation of production REVIEWS 365

abroad by British transnational corpora­ toral successes, starting with the commit­ tions. Other contributing developments ment in 1979 to end "cosy consultation" include: the expanding service sector, in­ and curb union power. (243) Thereafter creased part-time and female employ­ the Tory government was able to assert its ment, a drop in plant-size, and the authority over a movement that was al­ movement of manufacturing industry ready weakened by economic changes away from large conurbations. and rising unemployment. The book is largely a review of exist­ Nevertheless, Thatcher's labour ing literature, including the author's own legislation severely curtailed closed investigations. After brief chapters on the shops and picketing, outlawed union-la­ historical background and on union bour-only contracts, forced unions with power before 1979, Marsh examines the political funds to hold ballots on them contents of conservative legislation and every ten years, allowed selective dis­ the extent of its use. There is discussion missal of unofficial strikers, made black­ of the unions' political role, surprisingly listing of employers by unions illegal, and confined to influence over policy. made industrial action against non- Union's relations with the Labour Party unionized companies unlawful. Given are seen to have culminated in that party this list one might wonder just how valid reasserting its political autonomy. The is Marsh's argument about the shifting changing economic context is examined economy having done more than That- and Thatcher's economic policy is shown cherist policies to emasculate the unions. to have built upon and accentuated exist­ Part of the answer is that in the private ing restructuring and deindustrializing sector the actual use of government legis­ trends. Shop-floor industrial relations in lation by employers has been uneven: it both private and public sectors receive has most often been invoked in the print­ scrutiny. Most chapters conclude with ing and shipping industries, where comments on the future which Marsh sees macho-management is very evident and to depend heavily on whether Labour derecognition of unions most widespread. could get elected. Since it did not, one can In the public sector, although financial expect further adversarial treatment for constraints have been imposed on man­ unions under Major's regime. agement and a more confrontational at­ Marsh reports that before the excep­ mosphere has replaced the consultative tional period from 1966 to 1979, when practices of earlier years, there have been they were involved in helping to develop "relatively few alterations in the institu­ policies under the Social Contract, unions tions of industrial relations ... no real had a limited impact on government pol­ move towards derecognition and no sig­ icy. They have had virtually no such role nificant decline in collective bargaining." since that unusual period. However, the (236) practices of shop-floor industrial rela­ The study is nicely organized and tions remain the same and unions have Marsh makes his points firmly and clear­ adjusted to the new realities. There has ly. However, one would have liked some been no major move to derecognize analysis of the complex system of class unions or to restrict collective bargaining, domination which formed the background and few employers have used industrial to Tory policies, including, for example, legislation. But the content and scope of the continuing trenchant attacks on or­ collective bargaining have changed and ganized labour in the British press. At the number and duration of strikes have certain points Marsh refers to capital and dropped. labour's relationship but thee is no real Marsh argues that the significance of sense of class-based power that underlies Thatcherism lay in its exploitation of pub­ the introduction of Thatcher's legislation. lic opinion against the unions in its elec­ The new regulations were intimidating, 366 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

hegemonic tactics aimed at drastically al­ ance to managerial control. Collinson tering the balance of class power. They makes clear his indebtedness to previous were means whereby the Tories' suc­ research on shopfloor culture, particular­ ceeded, as Gamble points out, in dominat­ ly the work of Paul Willis and Michael ing the political agenda. Britain's "Bona­ Burawoy, but he (rightfully) criticizes parte in petticoats" succeeded in smash­ them either for romanticizing workers' ing much ofthe machinery for collectivist culture and exaggerating the degree of and democratic politics with her brand of workers' resistance or for overemphasiz­ authoritarian populism. Marsh is appar­ ing consent and conformity. Building on ently not concerned about these issues: recent critical theories of organizations his interest in the politics of unions is and management Collinson places issues restricted to their influence on policy. of power and control at the forefront of As Tory Lane put it in his discussion his analysis. He rejects previous ap­ ofthe Tories and the unions in S. Hall and proaches to workplace culture for using a M. Jacques, éd., The Politics ofThatcher- theory of power that depends on a series ism, "If management were to design an of dualisms: material/symbolic reality; ideal world then trade unions would not behaviour/consciousness; compliance/ fit in it. People are a nuisance and insist subordination. on having minds of their own. It would be Collinson's major contribution is to so much more convenient if they wens like highlight the significance of workers' visual display units and showed the right subjective experiences of the control and signals when a key was punched." commodification of their labour for un­ derstanding the social relations of work. Rennie Warburton Subjectivity, by which he means individ­ University of Victoria uals' efforts to achieve personal security and to produce a stable and positive ident­ ity, is an important ingredient in repro­ ducing power asymmetries in organiza­ David Collinson, Managing the Shop- tions. Without a theory of subjectivity, floor: Subjectivity, Masculinity and Collinson maintains, we cannot explain Workplace Culture (Berlin & New York: either the conditions or consequences of Walter de Gruyter 1992). workplace cultural practices of consent and resistance. He replaces previous ex­ DAVID COLLINSON explores male ma­ planations of workers' practices as false nual workers' subjective experiences of consciousness or as structurally deter­ work and their practices of resistance, mined with a sophisticated account of compliance and consent. His analysis is workers actively engaged in a dynamic based primarily on an in-depth ethno­ process of constructing their world and graphic study (conducted between 1979- themselves under conditions of domina­ 1983) of a production facility in the North tion. Chapters ofthe book are devoted to of England which he calls "Slavs," a com­ analysis of the various discursive prac­ pany that had once been family-owned, tices male workers used to deal with their but which was purchased by an American commodification. transnational corporation in the 1970s. The agenda Collinson sets out for The book provides valuable correc­ himself is extraordinarily important and tives to the literature on organizations and ambitious: to identify and to understand workers' culture and to theories of man­ the strategies and practices workers used agement and the labour process. Since to construct a dignified self in the context Harry Braverman's pathbreaking Labor of their commodification. The self that and Monopoly Capital (1974) there has Collinson writes about is not unitary and been much debate and research on the rational as assumed in liberal humanism extent of workers' consent and/or resist­ REVIEWS 367

(and found in most social sciences and his argument about shopfloor culture con­ humanities). Rather Collinson adopts a vincing. Some may wonder how a seem­ poststructuralist version of the self as ingly poststructuralist analysis can de­ fragmented, heterogeneous, and non-ra­ pend so heavily upon an assumption of a tional. Individuals construct identities for singular totalizing "essence" of hu­ themselves by investing in a multitude of manity. available and typically contradictory dis­ There are other curious inconsisten­ cursive practices. But, Collinson con­ cies in Collinson's approach. He claims cludes, none of the strategies male wor­ to adopt a theoretical framework that es­ kers employed (indifference, domination, chews the separation of material realities, subordination) confronted the underlying behaviour and consciousness, preferring problem of their object ideation. to see each of these as inseparable. Yet he This book provides many examples of employs the concept of (class) "interests" the ways resistance and compliance co­ treating them as if they were "real" and existed on the shop floor, sometimes in pre-existing any discursive practice. the very same practices. In the chapter, Similarly, he treats workers' "experi­ "Managing a Joke," for example, Collin­ ence" of work in ways which assume its son explores how workplace humour "materiality" separate from its discursive operated to maintain the status quo and to construction. The "real" experiences on challenge it. Jokes which ridiculed man­ the shopfloor, Collinson argues, led men agement as effeminate helped to develop manual workers to view labour as a con­ workers' cohesion; but the male sparring straint on their freedom. Collinson makes that was part of the joking culture also cut significant efforts to break away from di- into worker unity by individualizing and chotomous thinking, but he unwittingly heightening competition among workers. falls into its trap. Workers did "resist" but their opposi­ While I commend Collinson for tak­ tional practices drew on and thereby re­ ing gender seriously in his analysis of produced the corporate culture that had class and shopfloor relations, gender re­ objectified them. Workers' efforts to se­ mains undertheorized. Despite Collin­ cure material and symbolic security had son's efforts to deconstruct masculine the contradictory effect of reinforcing subjectivity he is caught in a framework those insecurities. According to Collin­ which treats the subordination of work as son, Slav management succeeded in con­ "real" and masculinity as "ideological." trolling workers not simply because they He ultimately falls back on analysing gen­ had more power and resources, but also der as epiphenomenal, as a form of false because workers' oppositional practices consciousness. Class and gender remain served to reproduce their own subordina­ distinct, even if overlapping and inter­ tion. secting. Although Collinson claims that Collison's analysis of workplace cul­ gender is central to his analysis his pri­ ture at Slavs hinges on his assumption mary concern is with subjectivity and its that the workers he studied adopted par­ relation to class. (Interestingly, discus­ ticular discursive practices in an effort to sion of masculinity does not begin until achieve material and symbolic security, page 34.) an enterprise which is impossible and ul­ Working-class masculinity is treated timately self-defeating. Workers' discur­ as static rather than as part of a process in sive practices derived from the existential which it is itself transformed. Masculinity need to search for a stable identity and a is alternately conceived as a "compensa­ predictable set of meanings. Collinson at­ tion" for workplace deprivations or as one tempts to show that such efforts produced of workers' "coping mechanisms" in only more insecurity. If you accept these dealing with their commodification. big assumptions you will find the rest of 368 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Because Collinson has been so sensi­ tural commonalities by "collapsing] the tive to issues of masculinity it is frustrat­ walls interpolated between love songs ing that he does not take his analysis fur­ and working songs, between orality and ther. He points to the ways men at Slavs print, and between popular and 'high' cul­ talk about manliness and provides many ture." (151) Although he is primarily con­ examples of their use of sexual/bodily cerned with English material, Irish, metaphors, but he often treats workers' Scottish, and North American analogues language as self-evident. He doesn't ex­ are also included. Given his use of North plore how discourses of masculinity oper­ American materials, however, it is per­ ate to give meaning to other systems of plexing why major Figures in the study of hierarchy and power relations in the North American occupational and labour workplace. While there is much rich ana­ song such as George Korson, Archie lysis in Managing the Shopfloor, there Green, John Greenway, Norm Cohen, and also are numerous missed opportunities to Edward D. Ives are completely ignored. explore the ways workers, managers, and Likewise, while Edith Fowke's Penguin shop stewards invoke the language of Book of Canadian Folk Songs is cited, her gender to naturalize and/or to represent works on labour song and lumbering conditions of vulnerability or domination. songs are absent. In sum. Managing the Shopfloor is a As Porter observes in his introduc­ welcome addition to the literature on tion, some workers in Britain, especially work. I applaud Collinson's efforts to agricultural workers, miners, and wea­ examine the question of workers' subjec­ vers, have generated more available tivity. I also am pleased that he attempted songs than others, the variables being: "a to incorporate gender as well as class into cohesive and perceptive audience," "fa­ his analysis of the social relations of the vorable conditions for songmakers" and workplace. Even if the book falls short in the activities of the "broadside and popu­ certain respects it certainly is asking im­ lar presses." (10-3) While he maintains portant and neglected questions. that sea shanties and soldiers' songs prob­ ably form the largest corpus of occupa­ Ava Baron tional songs, they do not warrant con­ Princeton University sideration, he argues, because they have already been extensively studied, notably by Roy Palmer and Stan Hugill. From a theoretical perspective, Porter's decision Gerald Porter, The English Occupational not to include such songs in his survey is Song (Umeâ, Sweden: U of Umeâ 1992). unfortunate, particularly because Pal­ mer's and Hugill's works do not approach USING FOLK AND POPULAR SONG data songs with Porter's frame. Employing an of "between four and five thousand recor­ encompassing semiotic interpretation of dings and printed texts, from the seven­ occupational expression that overrides teenth century to the present," this work, class and gender divisions, Porter views despite its title, does not seek to delineate the occupational signi fiers of his study as a "genre" of song. Rather, it is analysis of being "embedded in a matrix of cultural the diversity and complexity of occupa­ associations," songs being but one sector tional representation in English song and of a "continuum of social reference in­ as such it provides an important model for cluding proverbs, jokes, caricatures and the examination of all song texts that in­ written literature." (13) Given such a hol­ clude such references. (24) Moreover, in istic perspective, it is further lamentable tracing occupational iconography Porter that Porter omits any mention of the large is to be commended for not becoming amount of work that has gone into occu­ mired in categorical questions regarding pational folklife studies by scholars such cultural hierarchy and for perceiving cul­ REVIEWS 369 as Robert McCarl, Jack Santino, and texts. Particularly with regard to British Robert Byington, for occupational fol- folksong collectors, a narrow view of klife is also an area of research concerned traditional song focusing on amatory gen­ with expressive communication and der relations has had the effect of "leading multigeneric ideas about work. fieldworkers and editors alike to exclude Although Porter is mainly interested the bulk of occupational songs as not true in "insider" songs because of their rich, folk songs." (43) What published lyrics "occupation-specific" detail and the ways have appeared have often been compo­ that they reflect the "lived conditions'* of site, bowdlerized, "clean" texts. Not will­ work, he does not neglect "outsider" ing to abandon these resources because of songs, showing that through time their their inadequacies, Porter exemplifies views of occupations substantially alter. how one can recover the "suppressed" His major criteria for designating insider details of such sanitized texts "through an occupational songs are, first, that they examination of the rhyme words." (49) have actually been performed within an Arguing that work is "central in con­ occupational group, and second, that such structing the paradigms of society," Por­ songs have been created "within the ter's second chapter deals with the multi- group, or by people whose relationship faceted (music, gesture, setting, lan­ with it was largely one of equality." Por­ guage) expressive representation of work ter qualifies this insider-outsider dualism and workers and "the durability of such as not being a "fixed order," however, for representations in song transmission." in some cultural contexts insider-outsider (63) Using songs representing railway distinctions can be difficult to discern and workers as a major example, he argues for it is not uncommon for outsider songs to "a broad line of development in occupa­ eventually gain insider status. (IS) tion-specific culture that is common to Through examples drawn from the many trades and industries," namely one mason-bricklayer trade. Porter notes a in which work processes are initially seen tempting pattern of song evolution from from the outside as "simple phenomena," worksongs, primarily concerned with as­ through to the gradual foregrounding of sisting the work effort through rhythm, to the work process, until finally, "the rep­ occupational songs, focusing on the mi­ resentation of work develops a variety lieu of work, and finally to the labour and complexity of its own, expressed songs of organized workers, the social through wide variations in language, set­ function of which is solidarity. He wisely ting and figurative resources." (65) In displaces this hypothesis, however, as­ their latter development, Porter maintains serting that one cannot assume such a that it is "the inwardness of repre­ "'natural' progression." In its place he sentations of work, that gives the occupa­ posits a more comprehensive position, tional songs their cohesion" and that the namely, that there is "a less schematic social boundaries drawn in the narratives change" from "work as social ritual to a of such songs "routinely transgress the reification of the work process in terms of norms of the ruling discourse, particularly its tools and routines, with a current through the literal displacement of auth­ growth of group and class identity." (24) ority, the captain by the woman in dis­ guise, the gamekeeper by the poacher, the Porter's initial chapter, "The Fairing magistrates by the highwayman, and the Hand: Mediation of the Occupational recruiting sergeant by the deserter." (80) Song," puts his data in perspective by noting how commercial (the broadside A third chapter, "Occupation as Meta­ trade), ideological (activities of early phor," examines the ways in which occu­ folksong collectors), and aesthetic (culti­ pational attributes have been used in vated literature) constraints have affected songs as "role markers" and metaphors. occupational representation and song By the 18th century, for example, the dim- 370 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

inutive stature, demeanour, ethics, role, In a final chapter before his conclu­ and comic actions of the tailor were well sion, "Forces from the Outside," Porter defined in song as well as in a continuum ponders the songs of cotton weaving, rail­ of proverbial sayings, jokes, and carica­ ways, and coalmining as examples of tures. A significant portion of this chapter "symbolic schemes" which emerged in also scrutinizes ballads in which the Britain's industrial revolution (ca. 1770- "work process itself becomes a sexual 18S0). In addition, he interprets certain, metaphor" (millers grinding, milkmaids more recent songs as "rituals of rebellion" stroking). The interface of oral and because they exhibit patterns of collective printed traditions is apparent in this ero- action and protest based on the formation ticization, the broadside being the major of trade unionism. The signifiers he "mediating agency." (91, 99). examines as "symbols" are the factory Social identity through occupation, bell (the regimentation of time), the ma­ i.e., the integration of life and work, is the chine (displacement of the human body), focus of Chapter four, "Group Cohesion and the worker as hero (strength, produc­ and Disintegration." A section on the tivity). Rebellion is treated under individ­ emergence of the concept of "women's ual and organizational headings. Critical work" is especially poignant, for as Porter of the popular rise of the "autonomous notes, the viewpoint of women in song protest singer" in the 1960s, Porter con­ needs conscious foregrounding in order tends that singers such as Dick Gaughan "to combat the continuing invisibility of and Ewan MacColl who worked "within women's culture in the dominant dis­ the parameters of organized movements," course." (108) Besides songs in which have performed and recorded "songs of women usurp traditionally male occupa­ individual protest" that "live in a sym­ tions (see Diane Dugaw, Warrior Women biotic relationship with labour anthems." and Popular Balladry 1650-1850), Porter Here he cites the uses put to Gaughan's specifically cites songs in which women True and Bold: Songs of the Scottish Mi­ are active, "central figures by virtue of ners, a cassette which was released during their work." He lists eighteen occupations the national miners' strike (1983-84) and in this regard including "besom maker, MacColl's union anthem "We are the En­ bus conductor, chainmaker, cook, dress­ gineers." maker, fishgutter, ... oyster seller, pros­ A study of "texts," Occupational titute and stripper." (109) Evidence as Song necessarily incurs the liabilities of early as the 16th century indicates that omission that only context can provide. women first developed a group identity in For instance, what is the barometer for the song as wage labourers in the textile in­ popularity of the thousands of texts that dustries. With regard to women's domes­ Porter has consulted? Parody may be one tic labour Porter discusses "Woman's indicator, but how typical are Porter's Work is Never Done," first published as examples and to what extent are they in­ a broadside in 1629. As he observes, the sider social documents? Although I am immediate success of the song among aware of Sam Richards as a fine "folk women is indicated by the parodies that it revival" singer and composer, Porter of­ prompted in the latter part of that century, fers no arguments for his extensive exam­ and by the fact that the song has continued ination of Richards' "The Lofthouse Col­ to be performed by women in variant liery Disaster" other than that the song forms for over three centuries. In the last "enlarges and extends the tradition of part of the chapter Porter discusses the turning the specific conditions of disaster role of mining disaster ballads in foster­ to the cause of group solidarity" and that ing solidarity and social consciousness in it "can be seen as part of the folklore of the fact of common calamity. the event, an element in the complex net­ work of cultural expression." (120, 122) REVIEWS 371

That the song is interesting, draws on balanced by Truquin's and Dumay's previous disaster song models, and has to ironic and rebellious natures. do with an actual tragedy which occurred Traugott's introduction highlights the in 1973 are all well taken considerations, historical context in which the autobio­ but what source group has the song ac­ graphies were written and emphasizes tually served? Have miners sung it? Are their value to the historical sociologist as the people of Lofthouse, Yorkshire aware evidence of changes in work organiza­ of it? Is it a song that has been sung tion, apprenticeship, sociability, the use largely at folk festivals? Such questions of patois and French, and collective pro­ must be broached if the analysis of texts test in the 19th century. The texts are is to be more than a formalistic exercise. especially rich in discussions of the work­ Minor quibbles include an insufficient ings of the labour market: Bédé' s account discussion of audio recordings, which of how chair turners protected their posi­ today have replaced the broadside, and tion by assuring the distribution of wor­ the index's omission of concepts. A final kers to competing centers of the business stylistic criticism is that the author has in Paris and by sending younger workers made no attempt to transform what is ob­ out of the city with the understanding that viously a thesis into a book and because chair turners with families would protect of this, the writing is sometimes cumber­ the corporation's interests while keeping some and repetitious. In general, how­ their jobs in Paris; Perdiguier's explana­ ever, Porter's monograph is a very valu­ tion of how a compagnonnage "captured" able contribution to studies of vernacular a town: Nadaud's shifting positions in a song and occupational folklife. variety of pay systems; and Dumay's run- ins with Le Creusot management eager to recoup apprenticeship costs and which Peter Narvaez therefore banished for life any trainee Memorial University of Newfoundland (like Dumay) who left the company be­ fore his draft lottery. The texts are open to equally reveal­ Mark Traugott, editor and translator. The ing readings of cultural beliefs and prac­ French Worker: Autobiographies from tices: the meanings given skill and hon­ the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley: our, responses to odours and proximity, University of California Press 1993). and the physicality and violence of the informal and formal (compagnonnage) MARK TRAUGOTT has performed a real worlds of male labour. Particularly inter­ service for teachers and students of mod­ esting are the ways in which workers ern French history and of social history by evaluated employers, on economic as translating large portions of the autobio­ well as moral and humane grounds. Bédé graphies of seven French workers whose most clearly inverts the employers' argu­ experiences span the period from the end ment that they act in line with the ration­ of the Old Regime to the dawn of the 20th ality of the market, while workers are century: the chair turner Jacques Etienne governed by their passions. He wrote of Bédé, the embroidery worker and mid­ one master, "This proves that a person's wife Suzanne Voilquin, the joiner Agricol interests are not always well served when Periguier, the mason Martin Nadaud, the pride takes hold and is allowed to triumph silkweaver (among other occupations) over reason." (67) The autodidact's anger Norbert Truquin, the machinist Jean-Bap- at a society that stymied access to the tiste Dumay, and the silkthrower, seam­ world of knowledge marks the memoirs stress, and domestic servant Jeanne of Voilquin, Truquin and Dumay. Most Bouvier. Even temperament is well repre­ college students approaching these texts sented in the collection, with Perdiguier's for the first time will likely be struck by and Nadaud's optimistic faith in progress 372 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the harsh material conditions in which Second, by the mid-1970s many on many of the authors grew up, the authors' the left in France had come to distrust the apparently extraordinary memory of intellectual's traditional forms of politi­ wages and costs of items from their cal engagement as potentially muting or youths, and especially the autobiogra- even contradicting the voices of the op­ phers' often devastating assessments of pressed and the marginalized in society. their parents' behaviour. "I was not loved Maspero's "Actes et mémoires du by my mother," Bédé tells us at the begin­ peuple" series, in which six of Traugott's ning of his tale, the first of several such seven autobiographies appeared, was one laments in the collection. (48) (Only the response to this concern. While Trau- optimists Perdiguier and Nadaud had gott's principles of selection and editing good relations with both parents.) are those of the historical sociologist, Traugott selected what parts of the contemporary French readers have been autobiographies to include in his collec­ interested in the political implications of tion so as to bring out the youth and the these texts as well. work experiences of the authors. He This becomes evident if one com­ largely omitted the adult political beliefs pares Traugott's brief introduction to his and careers of the Saint-Simonian Viol- selection of Truquin's memoirs with Mi­ quin, the republican Nadaud, the agrarian chelle Perrot's essay on the memoirs — Utopian Truquin, the socialist Dumay, and to which Traugott refers as a source for the syndicalist Bouvier. This was a sound his comments. (Perrot's essay is in Steven decision. In his introduction to Nadaud's Kaplan and Cynthia Koepp, eds.. Work in memoirs (published by Hachette in 1976), France: Representations, Meaning, Or­ Maurice Agulhon contrasts the freshness ganization, and Practice [ 1986].) For of the early sections on Nadaud's youth Traugott, the memoir reveals "the occu­ and work life with the more guarded — pational instability and marginality of and less interesting — chapters Nadaud those without skills, without knowledge, devoted to his career as a leading repub­ without tools, without the support of a lican. Such a shift in the memoirs of work­ family or a circle of friends." (25) Perrot, ing-class politicians, notes Agulhon, "is reflecting her broadly Foucauldian poli­ almost a low of the genre." tics, moves from a sociological gloss on While Traugott's principles of inclu­ Truquin's experiences to Truquin's inter­ sion largely eliminate the political careers pretation of them: "a lifetime ... com­ of his memoirists, there is another aspect mitted to the belief that the rootedness of of the politics of these texts which deser­ the working class is a cause of its misfor­ ves mention. All seven of these autobio­ tunes.... There was job insecurity, it is graphies were published (usually repub­ true, but also a certain freedom." (Work lished) in France between 1976 and 1984. in France, 300, 308). The autobio­ Interest in these works in France at this graphies Traugott presents are open to a time reflected two developments. First, variety of readings and this is one of the the transformation of France during the strengths of his collection. Fifth Republic prompted publication of a While The French Worker should at­ number of autobiographies of individuals tract a variety of audiences, it will be from a rural France of berets and baguet­ particularly valuable as a text in French tes (Pierre-Jakez Hélias, The Horse of history and social history courses. The Pride) and, to a lesser extent, from an stories are riveting — and often wrench­ industrial France of mining and manufac­ ing. Given the large literature in English turing (Louis Lengrand and Marie Crai- on 19th-century French working-class ex­ peau, Louis Lengrand, mineur du nord), perience, it would have been helpful for both sectors which appeared to be disap­ Traugott to provide a list of "further read­ pearing in the 1970s. ings" for students interested in exploring REVIEWS 373

the context of the memoirs, but this is a tervention and ownership. The coal mi­ minor quibble. Traugott has produced a ners of the northern fields resisted the wonderful collection: the memoirs are Germans and sabotaged energy supplies. well selected, introduced, edited, and They struck openly from August 1940 and translated to illustrate the breadth of periodically right through the occupation working-class experience in 19th-century period. Opposition to the Germans was France and the diversity of ways of de­ orchestrated largely by militants of the scribing and interpreting this experience. Communist Party which gathered to it large numbers of workers anxious to help. Donald Reid Holter describes patriotic resistance as ac­ University of North Carolina at ting against invaders and employers ac­ Chapel Hill tively supporting the Nazi war effort. The Communist Party emerged from the war as the most important single political force locally and nationally. As a result, Darryl Holter, The Battle for Coal: Mi­ the miners' union enjoyed considerable ners and the Politics of Nationalization in prestige and had to be involved intimately France, 1940-1950 (De Kalb, IL: North­ in energy policy and postwar reconstruc­ ern Illinois University Press 1992). tion. Their militants had to be involved in the nationalization of the mines for it to THE BATTLE FOR COAL was of central work. importance in the shaping of postwar The second phase of the book con­ France. This book is a study of union cerns the actual nationalization of the power in operation, the evolution of in­ mines and the so-called "Battle of Pro­ dustrial policy by government, and of the duction." In this period. Communists insecurities of labour-manage ment co­ fully supported the idea that France operation. Holter is at his best in describ­ should be reconstructed as fast as possible ing the mentalities of union leaders and under the leadership of the wartime libe­ managers and the interplay of national ration coalition. It was hardly a revol­ and international politics with industrial utionary position. Holter shows ably the relations. In a rich and multifaceted treat­ lengths to which Communists went to ment, what perhaps is most interesting is convince workers to make sacrifices in Holter's examination of the role played the national interest. According to Holter, by the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Communists singlehanded put an end its militants in the CGT Federation of Mi­ to the spate of wildcat strikes which broke ners. In his focus on the coal miners, out in 1945. The trade off between or­ Holter bears out George Ross's thesis that ganized labour and the government Communists acted as labour leaders as brought results. In exchange for labour well as revolutionaries and that the bal­ peace and record production levels, mi­ ance between the two continually shifted. ners achieved their goal of nationalization Holter organizes his book into three of the industry and representation in man­ phases. The first deals with the process agement; improved wages and benefits; through which coal became a nationalized and the encodement of traditional legisla­ industry. Coal had been the subject of tive demands. state interest before World War II through subsidies and the social reforms of the Through all this, the Socialists, who 1930s Popular Front government. After had dominated the Miners' Federation the liberation, the centrality of coal in any until the war, faced a difficult choice. reconstruction and the breakdown of the Most were opposed to the Communists authority of coal owners and managers but did not wish to appear unpatriotic. because of collaboration with occupation Socialists within the mineworkers forces, demanded direct government in­ adopted guerrilla tactics. They kept up a 374 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

level of criticism which dwelt on sacri­ orbit from 1946. American aid and in­ fices made by the miners in the face of fluence were powerful incentives to pur­ escalating inflation and criticized the sue the Communists with great vigour. "stakhanovism" of the Communists, Hotter acknowledges the important role saying that the battle of production was in coal politics of a rapidly changing in­ little more than hated scientific manage­ ternational situation from the beginning ment by another name. Failure in local of 1947. and union elections during 1945 and 1946 What Holter does very well is to led Socialists to adopt more extreme tac­ examine the independent hostility and tics. Within the union they fonned a dis­ determination of Socialists like Robert tinct faction. Like the Communists of the Lacoste and Jules Moch to crush Com­ CGT, Socialist miners followed closely munist influence. The failure of the great party policies. As Socialists nationally strikes of 1947 and especially 1948 turned against the PCF, they used their marked, for Holter, "the defeat of the influence in government to purge Com­ French working class." (180) In the wake munists from the coal industry leadership. of the Monnet Plan, amply supplemented The third phase of the book deals with with Marshal Plan money and in accord the influence of the Cold war on the poli­ with its goals, the mines were fully mech­ tics of coal. Many observers and scholars anized, management regained its con­ have argued that the United States press­ fidence and authority, production was in­ ured France, among other countries, to tegrated in the European Coal and Steel end experiments in social reform and Community with that of Germany, and crush Communist influence. Holier takes "the heroes of the battle of production the more francophile view that the divi­ became the victims of modernization." sions between Communists and non- (189) Communists were real and deep without In vigorously working to restore what American influence and that while "the they considered to be a popular yet bour­ cold war did not create these problems, it geois state, the Communists helped seal did provide a new frame of reference for their own doom. In the nation they were old conflicts that boiled over in a series of isolated. In the mines they were thrown strikes in November 1947." (115) This into disarray and left without influence in perhaps is less convincing. Socialist the running of an industry they did so strength in the postwar period had been much to shape. considerably diminished. American cash This is a welcome book. It contains was crucial to the survival of the Socialist much to stimulate thought and it provides Party (SFIO) and its national newspaper. a valuable addition to a literature which American money and equipment was also has helped recast the struggles of postwar made available by the American Feder­ Europe in recent years. ation of Labor to militants considered suf­ ficiently anti-Communist in the northern mines from 1946, as well as elsewhere Stephen Burwood and in other industries. Irving Brown of Staffordshire University the AFL, cultivated the militants of the Force Ouvrière faction and urged them to split from the Miners Federation and the Gregg Olsen, The Struggle for Economic CGT. In addition, the impact of VS deci­ Democracy in Sweden (Aldershot: Ave- sions to withhold desperately needed bury 1992). loans from European governments which continued to include Communist minis­ THE COLLAPSE OF STATE socialism in ters served to orient the French govern­ eastern Europe and the rapid adoption of ment more and more into the American what looks suspiciously like capitalist re­ forms in much of the remaining commun- REVIEWS 375 ist countries has created a sense of crisis through the unions and the popular move­ and depression among the left, not only in ments in political and economic decision Europe and North America, but also making. among the democratic left in the former In the mid 1970s, after over four de­ communist countries. This is despite the cades of almost uninterrupted Social mounting evidence of the lack of success Democratic rule and the expansion of the of neo-liberal "reforms" in eastern Eu­ welfare state, pressure was mounting for rope (cf. Poland) and what may equally be a new advance toward economic and in­ labelled the failure of western capitalism dustrial democracy, towards a "third in general to "deliver the goods." way" not dissimilar from the model What evidence of the latter failure do Yugoslavia was approaching from the we have? When parties across the spec­ state socialist direction. As Olsen notes, trum, from the Reform and Tory neo-con- "the political and cultural climate in servatives to the social democratic NDP, Sweden had become quite radical..." and, advocate and introduce programs that at­ according to political power theorists, tack the social wage and the very legitim­ "labour was finally ready to transcend its acy of the public sector, all in the name of compromise with capital." (16) The "living beyond our means" (sic), that is democratization of the economy would be strong evidence in itself that western capi­ achieved through workplace legislation talist economies are unable to guarantee and wage-earner funds to create a new even minimum levels of income and out­ form of capital ownership different from put. either private capital or state capital, Perhaps this was most frankly re­ much more akin to the Yugoslav concept vealed in some recent TV footage of a of self-managed social capital. brief tea party conversation between Twenty years later, however, Sweden Queen Elizabeth and Ronald Reagan in is governed by a right wing government, which the Queen lamented the "bankrup- its unemployment rate has risen about 10 cy" of western governments. This was per cent, cutbacks in the social wage are attributed by Reagan to the inability of taking place, and plans are underway to capitalist economies to afford the current increase the retirement age. Rather than level of expenditures on social programs. moving toward economic and political Given our continuing high levels of un­ democracy, social democracy in Sweden employment, recession and economic appears to be in full retreat. stagnation, Reagan's admission is a pretty The reasons, Olsen argues, lie in the damning admission of failure. In short, dramatic shift in class power from labour western capitalism, like state socialism, to capital in the intervening two decades. has failed to deliver what it promised, a Ironically, or perhaps inevitably, it was high and rising material standard of living Social Democratic Party (SAP) policy and for the majority of its citizens, in particu­ the new and more radical policies that lar the working class. made possible this shift and provided the Many of the left have traditionally issue that precipitated it. looked at social democracy as the alterna­ The issue was the proposal for wage- tive "middle" or "third" way. In terms of earner funds. Under the original plan put the democratic transition from capitalism forward in 1975 by Rudolph Meidner, the to social democracy (and potentially to leading economist for the dominant la­ democratic socialism), it was Sweden that bour federation, LO, and the co-architect was seen as the vanguard model. Unques­ of Sweden's post-war economic policy, tionably, it had the most advanced wel­ 20 per cent of all pre-tax profits, in the fare state marked by high levels of gender form\of shares, would be put into a la­ and income equality, full employment, bour-controlled central fund allowing and strong and democratic participation workers greater collective ownership and 376 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL participation in economic decision mak­ had already undermined many home mar­ ing. According to Olsen, within Five or six ket industries. By financial deregulation, decades the plan would guarantee that which strengthened international capi­ "most of the Swedish economy would be tal's blackmail power and the opening up 'socialized."* (35) of the Swedish economy to the European Opposition to the Meidner plan came Community, the Social Democrats had not only from capital and the right (as engineered their own defeat. If indeed would be expected), but also within the they had ever really supported the trans­ SAP and from the two white-collar labour formation of economic society through federations, the TCO which split badly on the real transfer of property rights within the wage-earner fund issue, and SACO, a market system, their integration into the the professional and managerial feder­ European-global system precluded this ation which, given its ambiguous class outcome. Perhaps the ultimate irony is position, remained adamantly opposed to that, just at this time, within the EC there the social democratic position. As a re­ is emerging doubt about the wisdom or sult, the wage-eamer fund proposal went unregulated capital mobility even for the through a series of amendments watering health of capitalism. down the plan until, by the time it was Meidner, in a recent article in Studies adopted in 1984, the legislation guaran­ in Political Economy (Summer 1992), is teed that the fund would not be allowed to optimistic that the situation in Sweden "socialize the economy." can be rescued. After reading Olsen's While labour became divided over the book, which anyone interested in the issue of the wage-earner funds, capital democratic transformation to socialism coalesced. This reversed the previous di­ should read, I am much less optimistic. If vision in the Swedish capitalist class be­ the social structure of accumulation (SSA) tween domestic (home market) capital school, or the regulation school, is correct which had generally supported the full- (and I accept that they are), we are in the employment welfare state capitalism pro­ middle of a major social transformation to moted by the SAP up to the 1970s, and a new stage, or regime, of capitalist accu­ export-oriented capital which remained mulation. If Olsen is right, and unfortu­ relatively independent of the domestic nately I believe he is, social democracy economy and had always opposed the "missed the boat." The chance at a third solidaristic-wage centralized bargaining way, a humane and democratic political that had characterized the Swedish indus­ and economic way, has been lost, at least trial relations-based incomes policy. for this and several more generations. Domestic capital had also been rela­ tively weakened by escalation of capital Paul Phillips concentration and by 'globalization' that University of Manitoba