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Labour/Le Travailleur

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Volume 34, 1994

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/llt34rv01

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Publisher(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History

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

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Cite this review (1994). Review of [Reviews / Comptes Rendus]. Labour/Le Travailleur, 34, 297–383.

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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Julie White, Sisters and Solidariry by Charlotte Yates I 297 Eric Sager with Gerald Panting, Moritimc Capital: The Shipping ldkstry in Atlantic CaMdq 18201914 by Kris Inwood / 300 John F. Cooway, Debs to Pay. English Canada Md Quebecfnun the Conquest to the Refcnndrun by John A. Dickinson / 302 Nicholas fillmore, MmMtimeRadical: Thc Life and Times of Rosca FiUmore by MichaelEarlc1303 DiaMe Newell, Tagled Webs of History: lndianr and the Law in CModa 'sPacific cwst Fisheries by Tina Loo / 305 Cynthia R. Comaccbio, 'NationsAre Built ofBabies': Saving Ontario Mothers and Children 1W1940by Dominique Marshall / 308 Katherine Amup. Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in ZJventieth- Century CMada by James G. Snell/310 Edward Bell, Social Clnsses and Social Credit in Alberta by Alvin Fdl/ 3 1 1 Charlotte Yates. From Plant to Politics: 2?u Autowohrs Union in Postwar CaMda by Donald Swam/ 313 Franca Iacovetta, Such Hardworking People: Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto by Rudolph J. Vecoli / 3 15 June Corn, Meg Luxton, D.W. Livingstone. Wally Seccombc. Recasting Steel Lobour: The S&&o Smry by David Bensman / 3 17 Matt Bray and Ashley Thornson, eds., At the End of the Shift: Mines and Single- lndustry Towns in Northem Ontario by Kerry Abel / 3 18 Shaun Cornish, The Westmy Tmgedy: A Miner's Story by Matt Bray / 320 David Ralph Matthcws, Controlling Common Property: Regulating Canada 'sEast Coast Fishery by Sean Cadigan 1 321 Jean Du Berger et Jacques Mathieu, dir.. Les owrilres de Dominion Corset (f Qdbec, 1886-1988 par Denyse Baillargeon / 324 gvelyne Tardy. Francine Descarries. Lorraine Archambault, Lyne Kurtzman et Lucie PicM, Les Bdtisseuses de la Citt?par Odette Vincent / 325 And& Dandurand Les carnets de David Thomas: roman par Georges Md/ 328 Carole Turbin, Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1844-86 by Molly Ladd-Taylor / 33 1 Genevieve G. McBri&. On Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights from Settlement to Sufiage by Margaret M.R. Kellow / 333 Richard Schneirov, Pridc andsolidarity: A History of the Plumbers and Pipefitters of Columbus, Ohio, 1889-1989 by Warren Van Tine / 334 James C. Cobb, lltc Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for industrial Developmenr, 1936-1990by W.M. Dick / 336 Gary M. Fink, 77u Fvlton Bag and Conon Mills Strike of 1914-1915: Espionage, Labor Coslpict, and the New South Industrial Relarions by Alan Drapcr / 338 Alan Drapef, Conjlict of Interests: Organ~udLobor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968 by James R. Ralph, Jr. 1 339 Michael K. Holrey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workersby CiHahamovitch / 341 Gary Chm, TrmeandMoney:lkMaking kingGmuuncr Cuhby Cynthia Wright1343 Hardy Green. On Strike at Howl: The Struggle for a Democratic Labor Move- ment by Paul Kellogg / 345 Jo Vellacott, From Liberal to Labour with WomenSuffrage: The Story of Catherine Marshall by Kathleen E. McCrone / 350 John Saville. The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government 1945-46 by Richard Hyman / 351 Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Bammcades:Chs Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871 by Lenard R. Berlanstein I 353 Gilbert Badia, Clara Zetkin: Feministe Sans Frontiers by Rosemarie Schade / 355 Eduard M. Dune. Notes of a Red Guard by Ronald Grigor Suny I 355 Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880-1939 by Christina Burr I 356 Walton Look Lai. Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918by David Eltis I 358 Eero Loone, Soviet Mumism and Analytical Philosophies of History by David Bakhurst 1359 Nelson W. Keith and NovellaZ. Keith, The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica by James Millette / 361 Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian, Strike Across the Empire: The Seamen's Strike of1925 in Britain, South Africa andAustralasia by Mike O'Brien I 363 Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler, eds., LiquorandLabor in Southern Africa by Martin J. Murray I 365 Rene Loewenson, Modern Plantation Agriculture: Corporate Wealth and Public Squalor by Bob Shenton 1367 Peter Drucker, The Ecological Vision by Colin A.M. Duncan 1368 Frank Gaffakin and Mike Momssey, The New Unemployed: Joblessness and Poverty in the Market Economy by James Rinehart I 370 Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex by Geoffrey S. Smith 1372 William J. Puette, ThroughJaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor by Mary Vipond / 374 Richard E. Wokutch, Worker Protection Japanese Style: Occupational Safety and Health in the Auto Industry by Robert Storey I 376 Steven E. Rhoads, Incomparable Worth: Pay Equity Meets the Market by Carl J. Cuneo / 380 Antonella Picchio, Social Reproduction: thepolitical economy of the labour market by Valerie Burton / 382 REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Julie White, Sisters and Solidarity by Charlotte Yates / 297 Eric Sager with Gerald Panting, Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914 by Kris Inwood / 300 John F. Conway, Debs to Pay. English Canada and Quebec from the Conquest to the Referendum by John A. Dickinson / 302 Nicholas Fillmore, Maritime Radical: The Life and Times ofRoscoe Fillmore by Michael Earie/303 Dianne Newell, Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries by Tim Loo/305 CynthiaR. Comacchio, 'Nations Are Built of Babies'.-Saving Ontario Mothers and Children 1900-1940 by Dominique Marshall / 308 Katherine Arnup, Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth- Century Canada by James G. Snell / 310 Edward Bell, Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta by Alvin Finkel /311 Charlotte Yates, From Plant to Politics: The Autoworkers Union in Postwar Canada by Donald Swartz /313 Franca Iacovetta, Such Hardworking People: Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto by Rudolph J. Vecoli /315 June Corman, Meg Luxton, D.W. Livingstone, Wally Seccombe, Recasting Steel Labour: The Stelco Story by David Bensman /317 Matt Bray and Ashley Thomson, eds., At the End of the Shift: Mines and Single- Industry Towns in Northern Ontario by Kerry Abel /318 Shaun Cornish, The Westray Tragedy: A Miner's Story by Matt Bray / 320 David Ralph Matthews, Controlling Common Property: Regulating Canada's East Coast Fishery by Sean Cadigan / 321 Jean Du Berger et Jacques Mathieu, dir., Les ouvrières de Dominion Corset à Québec, 1886-1988 par Denyse Baillargeon / 324 Evelyne Tardy, Francine Descarries, Lorraine Archambault, Lyne Kurtzman et Lucie Piché, Les Bâtisseuses de la Cité par Odette Vincent / 325 Andrée Dandurand, Les carnets de David Thomas: roman par Georges Massé / 328 Carole Turbin, Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1864-86 by Molly Ladd-Taylor /331 Genevieve G. McBride, On Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights from Settlement to Suffrage by Margaret M.R. Kellow / 333 Richard Schneirov, Pride and Solidarity: A History of the Plumbers and Pipefitters of Columbus, Ohio, 1889-1989 by Warren Van Tine / 334 James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990by W.M. Dick / 336

5 Gary M. Fink, The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Strike of 1914-1915: Espionage, Labor Conflict, and the New South Industrial Relations by Alan Draper / 338 Alan Draper, Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968 by James R. Ralph, Jr. / 339 Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers by Cindy Hahamovitch / 341 Gary Cros^rme and Money: The Making ofG>nsumer(Mtureby(^\im Hardy Green, On Strike at Hormel: The Struggle for a Democratic Labor Move­ ment by Paul Kellogg / 345 Jo Vellacott, From Liberal to Labour with Women Suffrage: The Story of Catherine Marshall by Kathleen E. McCrone / 350 John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government 1945-46 by Richard Hyman /351 Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871 by Lenard R. Berlanstein / 353 Gilbert Badia, Clara Zetkin: Féministe Sans Frontiers by Rosemarie Schade / 355 Eduard M. Dune, Notes of a Red Guard by Ronald Grigor Suny / 355 Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880-1939 by Christina Burr / 356 Walton Look Lai, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918 by David Eltis / 358 Eero Loone, Soviet Marxism and Analytical Philosophies of History by David Bakhurst/359 Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith, The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica by James Millette / 361 Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian, Strike Across the Empire: The Seamen's Strike of 1925 in Britain, South Africa and Australasia by Mike O'Brien / 363 Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler, eds., Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa by Martin J. Murray / 365 Rene Loewenson, Modem Plantation Agriculture: Corporate Wealth and Public Squalor by Bob Shenton / 367 Peter Drucker, The Ecological Vision by Colin A.M. Duncan / 368 Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey, The New Unemployed: Joblessness and Poverty in the Market Economy by James Rinehart / 370 Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex by Geoffrey S. Smith / 372 William J. Puette, Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor by Mary Vipond / 374 Richard E. Wokutch, Worker Protection Japanese Style: Occupational Safety and Health in the Auto Industry by Robert Storey / 376 Steven E. Rhoads, Incomparable Worth: Pay Equity Meets the Market by Carl J. Cuneo/380 Antonella Picchio, Social Reproduction: the political economy of the labour market by Valerie Burton / 382

6 REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Julie White, Sisters of Solidarity (Toron­ tion, the nearly two-thirds of women wor­ to: Thompson Educational Publishing kers who are non-unionized need to join 1993) a union. For their part, unions need women workers to join their ranks if the FOR WOMEN in the labour market and labour movement is to remain relevant within labour unions so much has and capture the potential benefits of a changed and yet so much remains the fourth wave of unionization in the private same. Although women have increased service sector. For this to happen, current their participation in the labour market to women's struggles within unions must be constitute 46 per cent of the labour force, successful in transforming the labour they remain struck in job ghettos charac­ movement to make it accessible to service terized by low pay and precarious tenure. sector workers, whose work and life ex­ When at work, women suffer harassment perience differs markedly from the mem­ and discrimination which prevents them bership and leadership of malestream moving up the job hierarchy and rein­ unions. forces the practice of paying women less Sisters and Solidarity is a long over­ than men for doing comparable work. Al­ due return by White to issues and themes though women work in the paid labour discussed in her previous volume. Women market in increasing numbers, they con­ and Unions. The latter volume, published tinue to shoulder a disproportionate in 1980, summarized the place of women amount of the daycare and housecleaning in the labour market and labour unions. It responsibilities (not to mention the emo­ quickly became standard reading for stu­ tional nurturing needed for a functional dents of the labour movement, filling as it family). Amidst this gloomy scenario, did an enormous gap in available lit­ Julie White argues that unions offer a ray erature on Canadian unions. In 1993 Sis­ of hope as they represent increasing num­ ters and Solidarity enters the fray at a bers of women and enhance their control time when the economy and women's over their workplace, reduce the gendered place within it are changing swiftly and pay gap and collectively bargain provi­ when studies of women and the labour sions for maternity leave, protection movement are mounting. Nonetheless, against harassment, and so on. Most of the this book has a place in this changing benefits accrued by women from their landscape, providing as it does a compre­ unions have been wrenched from these hensive picture of women in the labour labour organizations which are also be­ market and labour unions. deviled by sexism and organizational bar­ White's volume addresses two broad­ riers to women's equal participation. ly defined sets of questions. First, how According to White, women need does women's role in the labour market unions and unions need women. For shape and in particular erect barriers to women to reap the benefits of unioniza- their participation in the labour move­ Table of Contents for Reviews is on pp. 5 ment? Second, what is the experience of &6. women inside unions? To answer the first 297 298 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

question, White provides an historical take advantage of legislation which, and contemporary analysis of women's while designed to benefit all women, is changing participation in the labour mar­ either too complex or costly to be used by ket. White examines the emergence and most working women. reproduction over time of a gendered la­ Having early demonstrated the bene­ bour market in which women become fits of unionization to women. White then concentrated in job ghettos — in personal turns to the thorny questions of the prob­ service jobs in 1901, in clerical and ad­ lems and obstacles faced by women with­ ministrative jobs in 1981 and in the re- in unions. For all of us who are committed emergent homeworking sector of the to unions and to those of us naive enough 1990s. White argues that there are three to believe that unions really are com­ key barriers to unionization amongst mitted to equality and justice of all, it is women. These are 1) the particular char­ with despair that many of us observe and acter of women's workplaces which are experience within unions the problems of often small, paternalistic environments in sexism, harassment, and dismissal of which women are isolated in small groups women's issues. White addresses two and face especially authoritarian manage­ crucial themes in her discussion of ment; 2) women take on a disproportion­ women in unions. The first concerns the ate share of domestic responsibilities representation of women at various levels which prevents them from having the time of union leadership and the problems con­ or energy to participate in unions; and 3) fronted by these women. The second con­ legal barriers. The absence of many of cerns women's strategies for mobilizing these barriers in the public sector opened within unions. On the question of repre­ these environments up to unionization in sentation White goes beyond the limited the 1960s. But women's workplaces of information available from CALURA on the 1990s such as banks and retail shops women in executive union positions by are rife with these problems. presenting information gathered by her White spends the bulk of her book from interviews with unionists from the examining the experience of women in­ CLC, the CSN, the ten provincial feder­ side unions. She begins her analysis with ations of labour, and thirteen unions. an overview of women's growing partici­ What she gives the reader is a clear pic­ pation within unions, dispelling in the ture of women's underrepresentation in process the myth that women are uninter­ most unions and federations at all levels ested and unwilling to join unions. White of union activity from delegates to con­ then moves on to an analysis of the bene­ ventions to staff in national offices. fits for women of unionization. Based on Added to this is an overview of unions a combination of secondary sources and and federations' affirmative action analysis of Statistics Canada and Labour policies designed to correct this problem. Canada collective bargaining data, White The information provided in a chapter on shows how unionized women have im­ "Women into Union Leadership" is in­ proved their pay, their control over the valuable and unavailable elsewhere. workplace, and have taken advantage of What is missing from this chapter, how­ new legislative opportunities provided by ever, is a more conceptual discussion of pay and employment equity laws. Here problems of representation which would one finds a wealth of new and valuable capture the dilemmas of women in organ­ information on unions' progress on issues izations. Representation, as Janine Brodie of pay and employment equity, leave pro­ once wrote, is "more than a matter of visions, sexual harassment and so on. numbers." Women have learned that they Simply put, White's argument is that only cannot be assured a voice in government, through collective organization can private organizational, or societal affairs women improve their working lives and just because women occupy positions of REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 299 leadership. Margaret Thatcher certainly equal pay and pursuit of the family wage. taught us this, as did the many years of White cogently, although briefly, argues federal Conservative Party government in that it was employers who largely deter­ Canada! Without such a conceptual dis­ mined wage structures and that unions cussion, many of the difficult questions of were too weak to resist employer women in union leadership are avoided at strategies using women as cheap labour. the very time when they are surfacing White goes on to argue that unionists, with ever more urgency. most often supported by their wives who Some of these questions of repre­ were labouring at home to sustain a fam­ sentation surface in White's examination ily on inadequate male wages, supported of women's activities and issues inside the "family wage" as the only means unions. Here White examines how possible for raising men's wages to a level women have used women's committees sufficient to feed and clothe a family. and conferences to organize within unions That this had the unintended consequence and advance issues which in most instan­ of reinforcing pay inequality is not dis­ ces had been sidelined. Again, the infor­ puted by White, but it was unintended mation on numbers and structures of rather than the intentional machinations women's committees and conferences of sexist male unionists. Overall, White's provided by White from her interviews book explains the problems experienced with unionists is new and interesting. by women in the labour market and labour Here White also addresses the different unions as a consequence of the interplay ways in which unions have responded to between structural economic change, a problems unique to women activists, from gendered labour market, and gender-spe­ the issues of daycare to sexual harass­ cific intra- and inter-class relations. Com­ ment. pounding these problems are the sexist The issues raised in this book are culture and practices found both within large ones which White answers within a the labour movement and society at large. political economy framework. Her ana­ White ends her book with a discus­ lysis attaches more explanatory signific­ sion of the experience in unions of mi­ ance to the organization of the capitalist nority groups, persons with disabilities, economy and labour market, than to sex­ gays, and lesbians. This conclusion picks ism or patriarchy. This is not to say that up on a theme raised in her introductory White dismisses sexism as an important chapter on racism and the early develop­ factor in hindering women's full and ment of unions. In this final chapter White equal participation in the labour move­ seeks to draw out the similarities and dif­ ment. On the contrary, this theme is taken ferences of experience between these up at various points in the book. White's groups and women. In so doing. White is political economy approach, combined building on her political economy frame­ with her conviction that trade unions im­ work and her implicit commitment to prove the place of women, however, leads class solidaristic strategies. Yet, there is her to take issue with arguments that place something disquieting about this discus­ too much blame on unions for the plight sion. While White raises questions and of women and ignore the role played by points too long ignored in union lit­ employers and governments in "keeping erature, it is not clear why and how women in their place." For example, in women's issues can shed light on (or have her discussion of the early development any relevance to) issues concerning racial of unions, White examines the problem of minorities, people with disabilities, gays, the use of women as cheap labour. She and lesbians. These linkages need to be takes issue with authors who blame male- made more explicit so that this final sub­ dominated unions for the ghettoization of stantive chapter reads less as an append- women due to unions' lack of support for 300 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL age to and more as part of the main dis­ The authors begin and end with an ambi­ cussion. tious discussion of theory, comparative Despite this book's theoretical limits, history, and the larger controversies of White has made another major contribu­ social and economic change. The middle tion to the study of women and unions. chapters contain a descriptive overview, Sister and Solidarity is a comprehensive a detailed examination of particular as­ study of women in unions. White's clear pects of shipping, and clearly argued po­ writing style makes this work accessible sitions on a series of difficult interpreta­ to both university students and trade tive points. The packaging is itself note­ union activists. Meanwhile, her research worthy; the graphs, maps, and diagrams efforts have produced much new informa­ give a stunning reminder that attractive tion invaluable to those interested in stu­ presentation and solid intellectual con­ dying women in the labour market as well tent, even if based on quantitative sour­ as to those committed to improving ces, are not incompatible. women's place in the economy. The authors characterize shipping in British North America (BNA) as a 'trans­ Charlotte Yates planted enclave' dependent on British in­ University of Melbourne puts and British markets in the early 19th century. During the following decades the industry expanded and changed into a lo­ cally-owned and managed business of ex­ Eric Sager with Gerald Panting, Maritime tensive proportions. The transition to in­ Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlan­ dustrial capitalism, elaborated at greater tic Canada. 1820-1914 (Kingston and length in Sager's companion volume, Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Seafaring Labour, began in the final de­ Press 1990). cades of the century. The owners of sailing ships are the THIS BOOK marks a turning point in two subject of a fascinating profile built from important literatures. Study of North At­ the registry books of eight regional ports, lantic shipping saw a remarkable series of the R.G. Dun credit ledgers, private acts articles during the 1970s and 1980s from of incorporation, directories, newspapers, scholars associated with the Atlantic Ca­ and miscellaneous archival collections. nada Shipping Project at Memorial The authors argue that ownership patterns University. Sager's and Pan ting's text reflect the risks inherent in shipping and builds on, extends, and summarizes this other activities on the North Atlantic rim. distinguished research. The study also Smaller owners, including many masters, contributes to the analysis of regional held shares in vessels as part of a diversi­ (under)development. Apart from the lit­ fied family economy of outport villages. erature of agrarian settlement patterns, The large owners, merchants first and shi­ Maritime Capital is the first industrial powners second, held maritime assets as study to argue for a link between the char­ part of a risk-spreading diversified port­ acteristics of a Canadian-based business folio of investments. Ownership patterns and the nature of regional development. in individual ports varied enormously but (Rosemary Ommer's examination of the everywhere the share held by small Gaspé fishery appeared soon after this owners tended to diminish while there volume.) We can only hope that more was an increase in the share held by mer­ authors will follow these authors in bring­ chants and specialized shipowners. ing traditional business and economic his­ tory to bear on the complex problems of The tendency of shipowners to own regional and social history. part of their cargo also diminished al­ though, of course, the cargoes changed as The structure of the book reflects the well. The carriage of forest products stag- two literatures to which it contributes. REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 301

nated during the second half of the cen­ the wooden shipping industry was quan­ tury while business into and out of US titatively significant (pace McClelland), ports increased considerably. The arrival but nevertheless contributed less to re­ of telegraph services in Atlantic Canadian gional development than might have been cities and towns provided owners in the hoped. Less than what alternative? The second half of the century with oppor­ authors do not say, but we are told that the tunities unavailable earlier. Regrettably, decentralized organization of the industry the authors do not address Ommer's argu­ inhibited market concentration and that ment about the centralizing effects of in­ the dispersal of income among rural formation/transaction costs in a London- small-holders in isolated outports streng­ based international shipping market. thened a 'pre-capitalist' coastal economy. In the core chapters five and six the A second and more familiar villain is ex­ authors use quantitative sources, espe­ cess importation of metal, a significant cially the machine-readable vessel regis­ cost in building wood ships. It is further tries and crew agreements at Memorial alleged that wood shipbuilders failed to University, to document tonnage growth substitute capital for labour just as re­ until the 1870s and decline thereafter. gional interests failed to undertake the Vessels larger than 250 tons account for construction of steel-hulled ships. The the entire increase; coastal shipping did authors also cite economic indicators im­ not expand although, conversely, it de­ plying that the coastal colonies were at a clined much more slowly after 1880. The higher level of capitalist development in increase in tonnage was the result of some 1812 than the interior colony of Upper new construction but, more importantly, Canada, roughly the same level in 1850 increased durability and longer time to and that the coastal regions subsequently (re)sale. As in earlier accounts, the in­ fell behind during the 'golden age' of sail. crease of tonnage during the 'golden age' In connecting maritime activity with of sail reflects, at least in part, the dim­ the lagging landward economy the auth­ inished willingness of British shippers to ors are exploring new terrain; not surpris­ acquire colonial wooden vessels. The ingly, a number of questions arise. Are the authors provide important documentation indicators of pre-1870 economic activity of productivity growth in sailing times, sufficiently reliable to support the auth­ (un)loading times and vessel staffing. ors' comparison of colonial develop­ ments? What do the authors mean by capi­ Another revelation is the success of talism if it is not simply the growth of Canadian ships in winning American car­ manufacturing or occupational specializ­ goes during reciprocity and in the car­ ation? How do we reconcile the pre-capi­ riage of foreign trade. The authors do not talist economy with significant evidence explain this success; more information of wage labour and market-oriented activ­ about the American industry would be ity? Have the authors properly repre­ useful, since the authors argue that Cana­ sented the role of uncertainty in neoclassi­ da erred by not following the American cal economic theory? Is the authors' exclusion of foreign vessels from coastal splendid documentation of a declining trade. The authors appear to argue that the rate of return consistent with themes ad­ Canadian performance was somehow dis­ vanced by Knick Harley and, if so, why is appointing, even though the BNA share of his work ignored? Do the authors do jus­ world sail tonnage remained constant tice to their own evidence in arguing that from 1850 to 1910. (90, 127) the technologically-driven decline in Toward the end of the century Cana­ freight rates was not responsible for the dian ships moved into increasingly dis­ falling rate of return and that the latter tant trade, which partially disengaged the was not responsible for declining invest­ industry from its regional origins. This is ment? Are not demand linkages inevit- the first argument in a larger theme that 302 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

ably weak if income accruing to owners any pioneering study its impact will be is ignored and if late century success seen in further work which, hopefully, rested on improvements in vessel du­ will follow. rability, longer-distance voyages and input-saving productivity growth? Could Kris Inwood not more be learned from the example of University of Guelph Canadian interests (Allen, Cunard, Thom­ son, the railway lines, and no doubt others), which did acquire steel-hulled steamships? John F. Conway, Debts to Pay. English The material on shipbuilding raises Canada and Quebec from the Conquest to another set of questions. Is the implicit the Referendum (Toronto: James Lorimer counterfactual about imported inputs con­ 1992). vincing in the absence of an examination of the relevant metal and metal goods WHAT IS ENGLISH Canada's responsi­ markets? What exactly is the relevance of bility in the crisis facing the Canadian data describing the entire manufacturing federation? This is the basic question so­ sector or of evidence which ignores ciologist John Conway tries to answer in Upper Canada's transit trade through this essay on the political and constitu­ Montréal? Is there any evidence for the tional impasse that now confronts the na­ impact of allegedly negative effective tion. Despite the wide-ranging aim of the protection to shipbuilders? How strong is title, the contents deal essentially with the evidence that capital-labour substitu­ developments in the past 30 years and tion was particularly limited in shipbuild­ focus in some detail on the events be­ ing? Why do the authors use entirely dif­ tween Meech and the defeat of the 1992 ferent rate of return measures for shipping referendum. The perspective is that of a and shipbuilding? Are promotional Western socialist sympathetic with the claims by contemporary vested interests social-democratic aspirations of Québec sufficient evidence that steel shipbuilding nationalists and hoping that accommoda­ was a likely field for regional investment. tion can still be found to keep the country Are there not other explanations, rooted together. According to the author this de­ in steel quality and captive markets, for pends on English Canada recognizing two the decision by regional steelmakers to centuries of national oppression and red­ produce rails rather than ship plates? ressing Quebec's legitimate grievances. Such questions inevitably arise dur­ After presenting the thesis, Conway ing the course of a full, rich, and ambi­ deals with two centuries of history in 40 tious treatment of important issues. This pages. The interpretation is a simplistic wonderfully provocative book may be the version of Michel Brunet and Maurice closest we will ever see to a definitive Séguin, much akin to that found in the study of the 19th-century shipping indus­ Québec government's presentation of the try of Atlantic Canada. The authors give 1980 referendum question on sover­ us a tightly argued and heavily do­ eignty-association. Québec society after cumented study of shipping, an uneven the Conquest is depicted as "homogene­ but still useful treatment of shipbuilding, ous and rural, rooted in a subsistence and fascinating speculation about the link economy" — a trait that persisted until between regional development and the World War II. The suppression of the practice of a particular industry. The 1837-38 Rebellions is seen as a second pioneering attempt to enlist technologi­ Conquest which broke a progressive cal, business and economic history in the middle-class leadership and reinforced service of social and regional analysis is national oppression. Confederation was a more heroic than successful, but as with scheme hatched by the British Colonial Office to reinforce colonial elites and to REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 303

insure that the Quebec nation would al­ English Canada wrote the official his­ ways be a minority. RieL the school crises tory" while Québécois "clung to truths in Manitoba and Ontario, and conscrip­ they had learned at their parents' knees" tion are all evoked to prove bad faith on (221) give pause to reflect on the state of the part of English Canada. interdisciplinary studies in this country! The 1960s are examined as a water­ Such criticism is unfair, however, since shed in Québec nationalism with separat­ this is not a work of history, but a polemi­ ism emerging as a major option in the cal essay designed to shake English Cana­ 1966 election. The focus is on politics and dians out of their apathy and to encourage the main political personalities rather them to reappraise the issues. From a than on social change which was probably Québec perspective, Conway bas suc­ more important than Trudeau, Lévesque, ceeded in translating the perception of the or Johnson. The Quiet Revolution is seen average person, although the emphasis on coming to a close as tanks rolled into Charlottetown and the 1992 referendum Montréal in October 1970 to suppress seem misplaced. The death of Meech was Québec nationalism by armed force once the end of the constitutional road in Qué­ again. bec, the final humiliation that convinced The second part of the book deals most moderates that English Canada with the most important constitutional could never be trusted to find a reasonable events of the past 20 years: the election of remedy. a Parti Québécois government; the Qué­ Given the presence of the Bloc bec referendum and patriation of the con­ Québécois as the official opposition and, stitution; Meech Lake; the Charlottetown perhaps more alarming for those who still agreement; the 1992 referendum. Each hope that Canada might be saved, of a issue is presented in a very personal way strong Reform Party in the House of Com­ with comments on what might have been mons, it is probably significant that done to resolve the issues. Lévesque is Radio-Canada FM broadcast Mozart's seen as a reluctant separatist who could Requiem on the evening of October 25th. have struck a good deal with the rest of Canada had he been given the chance. John A. Dickinson Mulroney is criticized as a weak leader Université de Montréal willing to sacrifice the federal govern­ ment to the provinces. He is seen as re­ sponsible for the failure of Meech and more importantly for the fiasco of the Nicholas Fillmore, Maritime Radical. 1992 referendum which divided the The Life and Times of Roscoe Fillmore country as never before. Trudeau is also (Toronto: Between the Lines 1992). held responsible for imposing a series of myths — rejection of the two nations the­ ROSCOE FILLMORE was a lifelong so­ ory, multiculturalism, the equality of cialist and for many years a member of the provinces — that prevent English Canada Communist Party. He was also a small from dealing with Québec grievances. businessman, a market gardener, and nur­ Despite these failures, Conway still has seryman, and became the successful hope for an eventual reconciliation but author of a number of books on flower only if English Canada admits the injus­ gardening. Except for a few brief periods tices done to the Québécois nation. in his youth, and the year he spent in the Soviet Union, he lived in rural areas, first Historians will find much to criticize in Albert County, New Brunswick, and in this book and even nationalist Québec later in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. historians are unlikely to agree with the These areas are bastions of Baptist piety stereotyped presentation of Québec so­ and of political and social conservatism, ciety. Statements such as: "As victor, yet Fillmore became a well-known radi- 304 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

cal, whose birthday is still celebrated by combined membership in the Communist an annual gathering of Maritime socialists. Party of Canada with his struggle to main­ These unusual, even contradictory, tain his family through his nursery busi­ features of Roscoe Fillmore's life are well ness in rural Nova Scotia. During part of recounted in this biography written by his this period he was a member of the party ' s grandson, Nicholas Fillmore. The book central committee, but his activity mainly may have been inspired by family pride, consisted of writing articles for radical but it is not limited by this. Nicholas Fill­ periodicals, mainly on international af­ more obviously intends the reader to think fairs. In the federal election of 194S he ran well of his subject, but seems as willing as a farmer-labour candidate in his local as most biographers to reveal some un-. riding, getting only a few votes. He be­ flattering points, such as Roscoe's rather came disillusioned with the Communist domineering behaviour towards his wife. Party in the early 1950s, but he remained The work displays meticulous research, convinced of the ideas of socialism all his both on the details of Roscoe's own life, life, although achieving modest success and on the background events. The begin­ as a gardening expert and businessman in ning chapters concern Roscoe's boyhood his later years. All of these aspects of life of backwoods poverty and recount Fillmore's life are well described in this such experiences as his trips out West in biography. the big harvest excursions. The book then In attempting to explain the seeming describes Fillmore's activities as a young contradictions in Roscoe Fillmore's life man in the socialist movement prior to story the book is slightly less successful. World War I and in the labour upheaval Fillmore spent only a brief time as an which followed the war. Fillmore, in his industrial worker, does not appear to have twenties, was one of the principal organi­ ever been a member of a trade union, and zers for the Socialist Party of Canada was not brought up in circumstances (SPC) in the Maritimes, speaking fre­ which would bring him into contact with quently himself, and arranging meetings leftist intellectuals, so his irrevocable for such visiting speakers as "Big Bill" conversion to socialism as a teen-age boy Haywood and Wilfred Gribble. Although seems extraordinary. However, it is per­ he appears to have shared the SPC's view haps always impossible adequately to ex­ that trade unions were a waste of time, he plain why any individual should adopt a was active in such events as the long and radical outlook so different from the bitter coal miners' strike in Springhill, NS people among whom he or she lives. In in 1909-11, and later in the 1919 General Fillmore's case, after a brief period of Strike in nearby Amherst. In the post-war intense socialist activity as a young man, period he became a strong supporter of his life was divided into two widely sep­ the Bolshevik revolution, and was part of arated parts — his work as a gardener and the SPC faction which favoured joining a businessman, and his Marxist activities. party affiliated with the Moscow-led His move to Siberia can be seen as an Communist International. In his devotion attempt to bring his love for horticulture to the Soviet Union as the new homeland into the service of the struggle for social­ of socialism he travelled there in 1923 to ism. On the intellectual level, an effort to become part of an experimental colony of bring together his interests in plant propa­ Western industrial workers in Siberia. gation and in Marxism is revealed in his There Fillmore used his gardening exper­ attitude to science and evolution. (155) tise, setting up and managing a large ve­ His biographer seems here, however, to getable farm for a number of months, be­ miss the point that Roscoe was a Lysen- fore family responsibilities forced him to koist, believing in the inheritance of ac­ return to Canada. In the period from the quired characteristics, the prevailing the­ 1920s until the early 1950s, Fillmore ory in the Soviet Union. This was de- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 305

nounced by all Western geneticists as un­ historical contexts and contingencies. founded, and Stalin's pronouncements on Tangled Webs of History had its begin­ this were regarded as an outrageous nings in NewelTs scholarly interest in the example of state interference in science. history of technology, resource develop­ Yet Fillmore is quoted as writing that ment, and labour. These interests in­ "only communists could be truly objec­ volved her in a number of land claims and tive scientists." It would be interesting to fisheries trials in British Columbia, an know if he ever changed his views on experience which influenced her sub­ these issues. sequent research, leading her to,examine Fillmore appears to have been in a Native peoples' participation in the fish­ special category as a Communist Party eries and the central role the law played member — rarely active other than in in shaping the terms and conditions of writing general articles for periodicals, their involvement In addition to influenc­ but a man whose early socialist activities ing the object of her research, Newell's gave him prestige of value to the party. He experience in court also led her to rethink was at times in the central committee, but her academic project and its relationship clearly never in the real inner circle which to contemporary politics. "Without ran the party. Roscoe's relationship with doubt," she writes, "the courtroom is an the party could perhaps be explained inadequate, even hostile, environment for more fully than it is in this book. His exploring the tangled webs of history." positions on internal party issues and pol­ That exploration could, she believed, be icy changes at various times are not made more fruitfully undertaken within the ex­ very clear, nor are the reasons for his pansive spaces of a book, and given the leaving the party in the 1950s. A tanta­ contemporary importance of the subject lizing hint is given that he did not accept matter, a book that was aimed at "infor­ the condemnation of American party ming public opinion" as well as lawyers leader Earl Browder in the late 1940s, and academics, [xi] which would put Fillmore to the right of Recognizing both the audience and the party in this period, but this is never the intent of Newell's book is crucially fully developed or explained. important in understanding its argument Such critical points, however, are not as well as its strengths and weaknesses. meant to detract from an overall assess­ She charts the history of fisheries regula­ ment of this as a fine account of the life tion (which almost entirely dealt with the of a very interesting individual. This bio­ salmon fishery) on the Pacific coast from graphy is a valuable addition to the lit­ British Columbia's entry into Confeder­ erature on political radicalism in Canada, ation in 1871 to the present. Though im­ and on Maritime regional history, and portant itself, this study serves as a frame­ will provide fascinating reading for work in which to understand another one: anyone interested in these subjects. the history of aboriginal participation in the fisheries after contact. Newell demon­ strates the ongoing and central import­ Michael Earle ance of the salmon fishery to many coas­ Dalhousic University tal Natives' economy, and, indeed, to their culture. Despite the fact they contin­ ually asserted their right to fish. Native Dianne Newell, Tangled Webs of History: participation in the fisheries was pro­ Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific gressively eroded by the federal and prov­ Coast Fisheries (Toronto: University of incial states through a welter of regula­ Toronto Press 1993). tions. Though the state justified its inter­ vention in terms of conservation and the DIANNE NEWELL begins her book by lo­ need to balance the interests of a variety cating both it and herself in a number of 306 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

of user groups, Newell argues that conser­ There were, of course, exceptions to vation was not the primary aim of regula­ the overall pattern of decline and fall. tory policy. Instead, regulation helped Fisheries law may have affected various foster economic development Thus, the groups differently, but it also had an rhetoric of conservation masked a set of uneven impact on the members of a single initiatives that favoured British Colum­ one. Aboriginal peoples were not all af­ bia's salmon processors over its fishers, fected similarly or to the same extent. and particularly its aboriginal fishers. Some Native fishers grew quite prosper­ The first 20 years after confederation ous despite the regulatory net that was witnessed very little in the way of active cast over them. In addition. Natives who regulation as both federal and provincial worked in the Fraser fishery were margi­ states considered a laissez-faire approach nalized far more quickly and profoundly the surest way to establish the nascent than those who worked in the more industry on a firm footing. Because the remote Skeena system. If the impact of state recognized the role Native men and regulation was mediated by space, it was women played in both commercial fishing also modified by historical circumstance and processing, they too benefitted from and gender: many Native men and women minimal intervention. Indeed, what regu­ benefitted from the racism that drove the lations existed recognized that Indians Japanese out of the fisheries and into in­ had the right to carry on their traditional ternment camps during World War II. fisheries. However, the distinction the However, over time, aboriginal women, state drew between their traditional, or who comprised the majority of the can­ food, fisheries, and the industrial, or com­ nery labour force, found their oppor­ mercial, fisheries would in later years be tunities more severely limited than did used to undermine Native peoples' par­ their male counterparts. When the men ticipation. were pushed to the margins of the fishery, By the end of the 19th century the they took up jobs in the canneries. Unfor­ industrial fisheries were established and tunately, the displaced women had no the state took a more activist stance, ef­ such options. fecting regulation through licensing, re­ In general, however, by regulating the strictions on gear, and by designating dif­ commercial and the food fisheries, the ferent opening and closing times. Though state prevented Indians from competing aimed at the industry as a whole, these in the industry while retaining their la­ regulations had an uneven impact, affect­ bour for the processing sector. Fisheries ing Native peoples more negatively than law managed to alienate work from other groups because of their greater ownership of the means of production, economic dependence on the fisheries and thus served the interests of capital. and because their lack of purchasing This book thus draws together a large power relative to other fishers (something body of economic, legal, and technical that was itself structured by their legal information about the history of a very status as Indians) made acquiring increas­ important resource industry over more ingly expensive gear difficult. If these than a century and makes sense of it with­ regulations worked to "capture*' Indian in the confines of a single monograph. labour for the processing sector, that la­ Equally important, it is also the first study bour was further contained by growing which explores the history of Indian la­ restrictions on the food fishery. Less able bour in British Columbia systematically, to provide for their own families and com­ and with a sensitivity to how race, gender, munities, Indian fishers and shoreworkers technology, and geography — as well as became even more reliant on selling their the law — position aboriginal peoples in labour to make ends meet the province's economy. Simply in terms of laying out these two parallel and inter- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 307 locking stories, then, Newell's book is an cause doing so appears to be at odds with important and useful contribution. the liberal idea of freedom, which is But extricating Newell's main argu­ defined as non-interference. Legitimating ments from the tangled web of facts that their actions thus requires defining them surround them is not always easy, and as being in the public interest. Though even after doing so the reader is left Newell never asks why the state ration­ strangely unsatisfied. The main conclu­ alized its fisheries regulation as "conser­ sions of the book — that state manage­ vation," surely these problems of liberal ment of the fisheries consisted of assist­ democratic governance provide an ing the processing sector rather than con­ answer: few people would take issue with serving fish stocks for all users, and that the fact that conserving fish stocks was in state regulation was uneven, affecting the public interest. In any case, given that some groups more severely than others — conflating private interest with the public are not themselves surprising or particu­ good is a hallmark of modern liberal so­ larly new in the context of the historical cieties, the actions of the Canadian state literature on the state and economic de­ in regulating the fisheries should come as velopment in Canada. Yet there are al­ no surprise. most no references to this literature or the Second, these scholars argue regula­ debates in it. In fact, Newell does not tion should be understood as encompas­ really engage any of the questions that sing a variety of social, economic, and animate the many histories her book political practices carried out by many touches on, and as a result, she has limited actors, including, but not limited to, the both her audience and her contribution state. Indeed, the state neither possesses a unnecessarily, leaving some important monopoly over regulation, nor is it al­ questions unasked and unanswered. ways the most important regulation. The One example should suffice to illus­ fisheries appear to be a case in point: trate my point. Tangled Webs of History though Newell gives the law pride of is about Indians and the law, yet it seems place in structuring the terms and condi­ uninformed by the growing body of legal tions under which aboriginal fishers la­ scholarship, some of which is directly boured on the Pacific coast, its import­ relevant. For instance, Douglas Hay, ance seems to be more asserted than Peter Linebaugh, and E.P. Thompson proven. Because of her reliance on re­ have had much to say about the socially ported cases, the reader never gets a sense constructed nature of crime, arguing that of the actual scale of the state's interven­ the criminalization of customary prac­ tions: how many aboriginal fishers were tices like poaching and gleaning in 18th- prosecuted for violations of the Fisheries century England accompanied the rise of Act? How many boats and catches were commercial capitalism and the parallel confiscated? As Newell herself recog­ emergence of liberalism. The struggle be­ nizes, a number of factors worked to po­ tween Natives and non-Natives over the sition Native peoples in the fisheries, and food fishery would seem to be a clash of it is not always clear that the hand of the "customary" rights and formal law simi­ state was as significant, say, as changes in lar to the kind discussed by these legal economies of scale, racism, or simply the historians. structurally-based inequities in the dis­ Moreover, scholars interested in tribution of wealth, which, though they regulation have, in recent years, come to could be embedded in the law, had their a more complex understanding of it, mak­ origins outside of it. ing two points that Newell might have The lack of engagement with the taken up. First, they argue that liberal legal, as well as other, literature reflects democratic states face particular difficul­ the author's intent and a particular under­ ties in regulating the economic sphere be­ standing of what the scholarly project is. 308 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Newell does not engage with their ques­ and political individualism; reformist tions and literature, I suspect, not because women, only able to pursue the parts of she is unaware of them, but because aca­ their agenda which suited the doctors and demics are not her primary audience. She a whole world of magazines and advertis­ has told a story which begins with govern­ ing, increasing their sales by propagating ment policy and ends with an assessment the values of "modern parenting." Below of its harm. It is the sort of rhetoric (in the the doctors we see public health nurses, formal sense of the word) that can leave working in the narrow confines of preven­ historians feeling unconvinced and unsat­ tion and demonstration and, at the receiv­ isfied — mainly because it overlooks the ing end of the campaign, parents of complex and contradictory process of various socio-economic backgrounds producing policy as well as underplaying with an equally varied enthusiasm for the the difficulties of implementing it — but new credo. it makes sense if we recognize the book's Cynthia Comacchio's exhaustive en­ origin and purpose. Tangled Webs of His­ quiry travels from medical journals, from tory comes out of her courtroom experi­ the bureaucratic records of public child ence and represents the legal research she and family welfare agencies at all levels did for a Native fisheries case. Its rhetoric of government, to the testimonies of par­ may not resonate with historians, but it ents gathered by the media and medical would among the public and in a court­ investigations, via the literature of refor­ room, where the culture of argument cen­ mists and the opinions of labour and farm tres more on consequences of actions representatives. She skilfully follows rather than their causes. By demonstrat­ many agents in a chronological account, ing the harms inflicted on aboriginal peo­ underlines the transformation of beliefs ples at the hands of the federal and prov­ and practices with an exceptional clarity, incial governments, Newell reinforces and links them convincingly to their their claim for compensation. larger historical context. She has attempted to isolate a distinc­ Tina Loo tive period of advice to mothers, an age Simon Fraser University which witnessed the triumph of "child­ hood management" and "habit training." This was a time when government and government-sponsored agencies ques­ Cynthia R. Comacchio, 'Nations Are tioned "traditional" child rearing prac­ Built of Babies': Saving Ontario Mothers tices and began to propagate "modern" and Children 1900-1940 (Montreal and methods at an extraordinary scale, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University through mail, radio, public displays, and Press 1993). conferences, all of this being undertaken when the public commitment to child­ THIS IS THE STORY of how four decades ren's "rights" to a minimum of welfare of child welfare "campaigns" created a did not yet exist. In the name of national new set of social relationships around solidarity and fast economic progress, child rearing in Ontario. At the centre are riding on the general faith in the promises doctors, eager to enhance their influence of science, experts were at once ready to on society, crafting a whole "science of propose radical modifications in family modern motherhood," conveying it life and eager to preserve important as­ through educational drives, using a legit­ pects of it, especially the distribution of imacy gained by real successes in saving sexual and generational roles. Ideas about lives and a monopoly gained by decades regularity in feeding, sleeping, toilet of professional struggle. Beside them training, and other measurable practices stand the politicians, most of them oblig­ may seem familiar to a reader of 1994, but ing, thanks to an unflinching economic REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 309

they were not yet complemented by ideas parents and children, the author, using about attention to the child's own needs, scarce but invaluable documents with a which only entered the mother's literature welcomed restraint, brings to light instan­ in the 1940s. ces of criticism, protest, and resistance, The campaign was never as success­ both individual and collective, to paint a ful as its leaders hoped, but its evolution general picture of commitment to health explains many aspects of the subsequent and eagerness to learn which contrasts history of parenthood and childhood. Co­ strikingly with the doctors' image of the macchio shows that by teaching mothers "ignorant" mother. She complements how to recognize early symptoms of dan­ these fragments with partial theories of gerous diseases and showing parents who the history of culture to postulate that could afford a visit to the doctor a few innovations in child-rearing did not hap­ basic hygienic practices, the educational pen as quickly as the doctors would have drive may have contributed to better liked, largely because practices had to be chances of survival and good health for mediated by tradition and by the percep­ mothers and children over the four early tion which parents had of their usefulness. decades of this century. On the whole, Comacchio's last pages attempt to however, these improvements were most­ bridge her period of study with the fol­ ly due to factors that were not part of the lowing era of "health as a right of citizen­ campaign, including scientific dis­ ship." She attributes the change to an en­ coveries and the general increase in in­ hancement of the power of the labour comes and better availability of health movement and, to a lesser extent, of the services. The campaign had its most di­ women's movement. To this, she adds rect impact in the fact that doctors were that the education solution, which was able to gain a place at the centre of pre- already showing signs of defeat on its and post-natal care for decades to come. own terms, may have had already re­ Their leadership resulted in slowing down ceived an artificial blow during the De­ significantly the availability of services pression, the scarcity of public funds to the poor, because they directed the ef­ making for a blind willingness to find forts of nurses, public servants, and vol­ cheap solutions. unteers toward the aspects of maternity It may also be that one of the reasons and pregnancy which they could in­ doctors could dream so easily of children fluence without jeopardizing their status. as "little machines," is that they were only Here, Comacchio judiciously uses the for­ marginally involved in the raising of their gotten histories of alternative endeavours own children, not only because they were in Ontario to show that as soon as profes­ men, as Comacchio points out, but also sionals took poverty seriously as a cause because their wives had domestic ser­ of illness and abandoned the narrowly vants to help them with the children, and individualistic and biological modes of many could count on their older daught­ explanation prevalent in medicine, the ers. This distance from their children was improvements were undeniable. Com­ no longer possible after the war, the pared to most of their Western colleagues, "modern economy" finally providing Ontario doctors appear to have enjoyed an poorer women with more attractive jobs especially high level of power in the and the state insisting that daughters re­ realm of maternity care — their long mon­ main at school for a longer period. In the opoly on prescription of milk formula end, there could also be a link between the may be the most telling example — and campaigners' promotion of health and the the larger causes of this distinction would general support for the welfare state be worth further investigation. which no mainstream politician could dis­ When it comes to the campaigners' miss after the war. Indirectly, inadvertent­ influence on the social history of poor ly, and slowly, doctors may have con- 310 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL tributed to the increase of the availability Arnup's prosecution of this first task of services they had so jealously hampered. is competent, but raises a number of ques­ tions. The first are methodological. Al­ Dominique Marshall most all of her evidence comes from the Carleton University Toronto area or from publications ema­ nating from the Toronto-Ottawa axis. Why should we believe that the advice circulating in Newfoundland or Saskat­ Katherine Arnup, Education for Mother­ chewan or elsewhere was the same? One hood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth- or two case studies of the local scene Century Canada (Toronto: University of would have done much to establish the Toronto Press 1994). allegedly pervasive character of the southern Ontario advice. Similarly Amup KATHERINE ARNUP sets herself a two­ makes no allowance for non-English- fold task in this book — to examine the speaking women. What was happening in social construction of the institution of Francophone areas or among various eth­ mothering and "to assess women's re­ nic communities? The advice emanated sponse to the child-rearing advice they from urban Canada, and most of the received." (221) The book is limited to a examples of the application of the advice study of the advice on the raising of in­ come from cities as well. What was hap­ fants and pre-school children, on the pening in rural areas? In short, Arnup grounds that these early years were tends to treat the society and the women viewed at the time as the critical ones in as monolithic; the result is simpler and child-rearing (and thus, presumably in less complex than what was really hap­ mothering). pening, I suspect. To carry out the first task Amup em­ At the same time, the author does not ploys a traditional and effective methodo­ pursue some of her themes as effectively logy. There was a rich following of child- as she might and avoids other issues al­ advice literature in Canada in the first six most entirely. The evidence is over­ decades of the 20th century. Not only did whelming that the medical profession ex­ much American literature flood the tended its expertise to the construction of country, but Canadian 'experts' — such mothering. Having established this, I as Helen MacMurchy, Alan Brown, and would like to have seen a discussion of William Blatz — gained new prominence some of the ideas on the medical construc­ through their widely available writings. tion of womanhood that are so interes­ Arnup examines this material exhaustive­ tingly exposed in Wendy Mitchinson's ly, providing readers with detailed, large­ The Nature of Their Bodies ( 1991 ). ly descriptive accounts of a series of themes. Women were first 'educated for Early in the book, Arnup concentrates motherhood,' that is, persuaded that they on the campaigns against infant and needed to be trained in proper mothering maternal mortality as the basic justifica­ behaviour. Having persuaded women in tions for the rise of advice literature. their child-bearing years that they needed While the role of these campaigns is un­ to be educated as mothers, doctors deniable, it is surely arguable that at least presented themselves as the experts who as fundamental were the increasing ideal­ could best provide that education. ization of motherhood and the aggressive­ ly pro-natal culture. Some evidence can These two themes are then followed be teased out of the book regarding these by an account of the advice given over the latter two factors, but there is no discus­ six decades under study. This material is sion of them. Arnup's focus on the child- presented in rather traditional fashion, de­ advice literature limits her perspective scribing the evolving advice given to mo­ somewhat. thers in the raising of young children. REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 311

Similarly, many works on gender is­ appendix. But the problem here lies not sues are now being enriched by a discus­ with the questions posed, but rather with sion of masculinity as well as femininity. the construction and size of the sample. Fathers are seldom discussed by Arnup, What struck me most in the analysis presumably because the literature focused of mothers' behaviour was the failure to so narrowly on mothers. But the treatment distinguish adequately among the various of fathers could have been employed categories of young women: first-time more explicitly as an effective counter­ mothers versus experienced mothers, point to the construction of motherhood. rural versus urban, working-class versus Finally, I would like to have seen a middle-class, native-born versus immi­ more explicit discussion of the subordina­ grants. tion of the mother in this child-rearing Education for Motherhood is a useful literature. The emphasis on breast-feed­ book on an important topic. But it could ing ignored the reality of the diverse de­ have been more useful if the author had mands of women's time. The behaviourist taken more time to expand her research prescriptions for toilet training in reality beyond her doctoral dissertation and to trained the mother rather than the infant probe more extensively some of the issues What can we make of this? involved. The book's second task, that of exam­ ining the response of the mothers them­ James O. Snell selves, is much more problematic, and University of Guelph Arnup fully realizes this. She devotes considerable space to discussing the methodological problems involved. Arnup follows Jay Mechling in his classic Edward Bell, Social Classes and Social article by arguing that the advice tells us Credit in Alberta (Montréal and King­ little about the actual mothering beha­ ston: McGill-Queen's University Press viour, but can tell us much about the con­ 1993). struction of mothering. And yet, like many other family historians dependent EDWARD BELL's objective is to provide on advice literature, Arnup cannot avoid a new theoretical interpretation of the So­ the temptation to argue as well that cial Credit movement "by examining mothering behaviour itself is revealed in three interrelated elements: the Social this material. Many women did seek out Credit ideology, the class basis of its mass the literature; distribution of the books support, and the actions taken by the first and pamphlets was widespread. Social Credit government." (4) He suc­ ceeds only partly. There is little new fac­ To substantiate some of her claims tual information in this volume and the that young women did follow the broad explanation of Social Credit's rise to patterns of this advice literature, Arnup power in Alberta and its performance dur­ constructed an oral history sample of ing its first five years in office diverges twelve women. Half were active child-re­ only slightly from my own in The Social arers before 1940 and half after that date; Credit Phenomenon in Alberta (1989). half were working-class and half were Bell, however, goes further than earlier middle-class (the operational definition authors in suggesting that it is misleading of class is not revealed, except for the to regard the early Social Credit move­ statement that occupation was employed ment as a defender of capitalist values. He as the stand-in for class). All but one of demonstrates the contradictory impulses the interviewees was from urban southern of this movement and its opposition to Ontario, replicating the methodological traditional marketplace operations. Bell problems of the advice literature itself. also provides the best empirical informa­ The interview schedule is included in an tion to date regarding the degree of elec- 312 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

toral support for Social Credit in Alberta vention to defend him or her from the in 1935 and 1940 on the basis of social system's unpleasant social consequences class. for the individual. Though it is a failing What is interesting about Social of the book that Macpherson ignores the Classes and Social Credit in Alberta is its Alberta working class, his work generally sustained debate with C.B. Macpherson's demonstrates his knowledge of the attrac­ Democracy in Alberta. Several authors, tiveness of "petit-bourgeois ideology" for including myself, have accused Macpher­ a large section of the working class. He son of having his facts wrong or reading does not believe there is a one-to-one corre­ history backwards. But Bell goes much spondence between class and ideology further, attempting to demonstrate that ul­ though a reader of Democracy in Alberta timately Macpherson is trapped within or­ can be excused for thinking he does. thodox Marxist assumptions about the re­ Bell throws out the baby with the lationship between social classes and so­ bathwater when he suggests that the vot­ cial values. Macpherson, according to ing behaviour of workers in an election or Bell, assumed that workers were poten­ two can be used to demonstrate an essen­ tially revolutionary and therefore not a tial commonality of class interests and potential base for a movement whose ide­ class viewpoints between workers and ology was as confused as Social Credit. farmers in Alberta. There was mass par­ For Macpherson only the petit-bourgeois ticipation by workers within the Social could fall for this irrational and reaction­ Credit League in the 1930s but by the ary theory. 1940s it had evaporated and the party Bell, by contrast, seeks to demon­ membership at the time Macpherson strate that Social Credit theory did have a wrote was largely composed of petit- core of logical arguments within its ar­ bourgeois. Bell argues lamely that he senal even if, on the whole, the view of ends his study in 1940 because by then how finance capital operates was shallow. "Social Credit was well on its way to Through detailed analysis of voting pat­ institutionalization, resembling a conven­ terns in 1935 and 1940 he suggests that tional political party more than a popular proportionate to their weight in the popu­ movement." (7) But this begs the question lation, workers were as likely to support of what had happened before 1940 to dis­ Social Credit as members of the petit- illusion significant sections of the popular bourgeois. Conversely, members of the movement, including most of its working- latter class were as likely to be in the class elements. The reality is that Social ranks of opponents of Social Credit as Credit in office, though it passed some workers. legislation that appealed to workers, took The empirical evidence is important the side of the petit-bourgeois over the for the historical record. Yet, on both em­ workers where the interests of the two pirical and theoretical grounds, I would classes clashed. Social Credit's mean- argue that Macpherson rather than Bell spirited treatment of the unemployed, and sees the forest for the Social Credit trees. particularly its insistence that the single Bell's efforts to demonstrate that it is un­ urban unemployed work for farmers for a helpful to analyze Social Credit as a petit- pittance or be cut off relief, drew a very bourgeois political formation are finally different reaction from its petit-bourgeois unconvincing. It is clear from the larger members and its working-class members. canon of Macpherson's work on pos­ Similarly the Aberhart government's un­ sessive individualism that Democracy in willingness to reform workmen's com­ Alberta deals with an "ideal type" of the pensation meant taking sides with small petit-bourgeois who at once embraces the employers against the wishes of all wor­ anti-communitarian objectives of capital­ kers' organizations including Social ism while calling for community inter­ Credit workers' clubs. True, none of this REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 313 caused workers within the Social Credit exchange for rising wages tied to produc­ party to become revolutionaries, but it did tivity growth. Her objective is to under­ cause them to leave the organization, stand how trade union struggles have abandoning the organization that Mac- shaped the development of Fordism in pberson describes well. countries like Canada, using the CAW and Nonetheless, Bell's engagement of the auto industry as a case in point To this Macpherson's ideas and facts — and this end Yates draws on the notion of unions review touches on only a few of the areas as strategic actors, arguing that their ca­ where he puts Democracy in Alberta in pacity to struggle is closely connected to doubt as a source of credible information the nature of their 'collective identities' about the early Social Credit party — is a and organizational structures. useful addition to the literature on Social These considerations frame the study Credit. The last word on what working- of the CAW, which is broadly divided into class support for Social Credit tells us three parts. The first examines the union about workers' thinking has nevertheless up to the establishment of Fordist bar­ not been written. gaining relations in the auto industry. The second covers the years 1950-68, the Alvin Finkel height of Fordism, focusing on develop­ Athabasca University ments in collective bargaining and in the union's relations with the state. The final part explores the impact of the increased militancy and nationalism of the early Charlotte Yates, From Plant to Politics: 1970s on the union, the struggles against The Autoworkers Union in Postwar Ca­ wage controls and corporate demands for nada (Philadelphia: Temple University concessions, and the separation of Cana­ Press 1993). dian autoworkers from the UAW. The con­ cluding chapter assesses the union's fu­ OVER THE DECADE of the 1980s the Ca­ ture prospects in light of recent changes nadian autoworkers union (hereafter in the union and the Canadian political CAW) has established itself as the most economy. dynamic and progressive Canadian union Yates' analysis gives particular pro­ and a major reason for the continuing minence to the part played by the Com­ (relative) vitality of the Canadian labour munist Party (CP) in the formation of the movement not just compared to its Ameri­ union. She argues that the union's early can counterpart, but to those of Europe as years of relatively successful struggle well. While the union, and especially its with employers under the leadership of previous leader Bob White, have been the CP-dominated Unity/Left caucus, much in the media during this time, there together with the political weakness of has been no major study of its develop­ the Co-operative Commonwealth Feder­ ment in Canada. Yates examines the CAW ation, gave rise to a quasi-syndicalist col­ from its turbulent origins in the 1930s to lective identity stressing union-centred the end of the 1980s, providing a substan­ strategies and militant workplace action, tial contribution to filling this silence. which became dominant within the union Yates approaches her subject as a pol­ at the end of the war. As regards the itical economist of the 'regulation' union's organization, she emphasises the school, which understands the post World important role of the union's unique (both War II era of growth and stability in terms within the broader UAW as well as the of the emergence of a Fordist regime of whole Canadian labour movement) Dis­ accumulation which linked mass produc­ trict Council established in the late 1930s. tion to mass consumption, securing the Formally independent, including finan­ acquiescence of workers to a Taylorist cially, of the Regional Director and staff, division of labour in the workplace in 314 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the Council was comprised of locally is also quite distinct; its longstanding pen­ elected delegates who initially met six chant for amalgamating bargaining units times a year. Although the Council had has resulted in a preponderance of large, only a limited policy-making function, powerful (and geographically concen­ and lacked any executive role, Yates ar­ trated) locals, often with several full-time gues that it served to mitigate the devel­ officers. It is unlikely that the dynamics opment of bureaucratic tendencies in the of the Council, let alone the CAW gener­ union, enhancing its mobilizing capacity. ally, can be grasped without considering Yates links these characteristics of this aspect of the union. the CAW to the relatively delayed and 'Openness' to member influence, specific form Fordist regulation took in moreover, is only one side of the relation­ the auto industry, and the limited demo­ ship between structure and struggle. The bilization of the union even after its con­ other side, as several theorists, including solidation. Together with the unions' bar­ some of those cited, have argued, has to gaining gains, they enabled the left to do with the capacity of leaders to under­ survive the Cold War and Reuther's con­ take mobilization, capacity loosely en­ solidation of power in the union as a compassing will, personal abilities, as whole, albeit in a weakened state. More­ well as structural linkages to members. over, the existence of the Council pre­ Yet this aspect of the relationship is ab­ cluded the possibility of isolating this left sent from Yates' analytical framework. from subsequent expressions of rank-and- One result is that the study offers a rather file discontent. This is used to explain misleading view of the union's structure, why, notwithstanding the election of Den­ with full-time staff, for example, virtually nis McDermott, "a known rightwinger ... disappearing from view. Another is that, and supporter of the International" as Re­ although Yates frequently refers to the gional director in 1968, the union's re­ union's leadership, she fails to clearly come sponse to the upsurge in rank-and-file mi­ to grips with it analytical significance. litancy that began in the late 1960s was While Yates' emphasis on the import­ much more accommodating than in the ance of a union's 'collective identity' (or US. This response, in effect, set the union more generally, its culture) to under­ on a trajectory leading to the election of standing its preparedness to engage in Bob White, whose roots were in the struggle is surely appropriate, this con­ union's syndicalist wing, as Canadian Di­ cept floats around her analysis without rector, to the struggles against conces­ ever landing. Autoworkers are first given sions, and finally to the historic decision a quasi-syndicalist collective identity, to leave the UAW. which evolved through the 1960s into Yates' study is an informative and what is called 'social unionism.' Besides often insightful account of the evolution the fact that these are only loosely of the CAW. In particular, her account of defined, the reader is offered no evidence the role played by the CP in shaping the of their existence in the CAW, let alone union is an important exercise (politically that these collective identities are in any as well as analytically) in historical retrie­ way unique to the CAW. Indeed, as the val. At the same time the book is not above quoted reference to McDermott without a number of shortcomings. Yates' suggests, the test at times seemingly calls analysis of the structure of the CAW, into question the very notion of a 'collec­ which focuses almost exclusively on the tive' identity. role of the council as a channel for mem­ Finally, while peering into the future ber influence on national leaders, is surely is never easy, Yates' discussion of the incomplete'. Virtually no attention is CAW's (and the labour movement's) pros­ given to the locals from which Council pects in 'post-Fordist Canada' is particu­ delegates came. In this respect the CAW larly disappointing. The profound econ- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 315 omic restructuring within capitalist coun­ Franca lacovetta, Such Hardworking tries — alluded to here by the term 'post- People: Italian Immigrants in Postwar Fordist' — has generated intense debate Toronto (Montréal and Kingston: over the future direction of the labour McGill-Queen's University Press 1992). movement, with the CAW held to be the leading exponent of 'social unionism.' POST-WORLD WAR immigration trans­ But, what, precisely, is meant by this formed Canadian society from its historic term? What sort of political project does Anglo-French dualism to a rich diversity it signify? How does this project address of ethnicities and races. While these "new the various challenges posed by the cur­ Canadians" have been subjected to rent economic changes to the interests and minute scrutiny by sociologists, demo­ aspirations of working people? How ade­ graphers, and economists, for the most quate are existing union structures, prac­ part they have yet to attract their histo­ tices and consciousness to the task of rians. With almost a half century of North undertaking this project? American experience behind them, the Insofar as Yates actually addresses postwar immigrants deserve and need to these questions, the discussion is not only have their stories told. Fortunately a new vague, but frequently contradictory. For generation of scholars, often children of example, assertions that the CAW has immigrants, is beginning to address this "abandoned the postwar politics of re­ task. Influenced by the vision and zest of sponsible unions," and possesses "an al­ Robert F. Harney for an inclusive immi­ ternative vision for an industrialized Ca­ gration history, some, such as John E. nada," are thrown out without any elabor­ Zucchi and Franc Sturino, have studied ation, only to be shortly followed by the earlier history of Italians in Canada. reference to the union's "determination to However, this work by Franca lacovetta protect Fordist collective bargaining is the first monograph-length work to structures" and to its alternative 'vision' focus upon the Italian immigrants in post­ having been "stalled by global competi­ war Toronto. (If I may be permitted a tion and by the federal government." personal note. Bob Harney, to whom These difficulties reflect the limits of for- Franca acknowledges a debt of inspira­ malistic analyses of unions as 'strategic tion would have been proud and elated on actors' and the weaknesses of Regulation reading this book.) theory given its focus on periods of lacovetta has written one of the best relative capitalist stability, the emergence community studies of an immigrant group of which, moreover, is a 'chance occur­ in North America. Her analysis is in­ rence.' Indeed, Yates' approach arguably formed by perspectives from women's, has blinded her to perhaps her major in­ working-class, and urban history, as well sight: the extent to which the working- as immigration and ethnic studies, and by class struggles that produced 'Fordism' extensive and critical reading of their lit­ were inspired and sustained by people eratures. Further, Such Hardworking committed to a socialist project, namely People is based on an impressive array of to transcending the barriers to democracy sources, ranging from public and church posed by a capitalist economy. Is it likely archives to newspapers and social work that the working-class mobilization records. Her deft use of interviews (over necessary actually to challenge 'global- 70 of them) lends a particular authenticity ism' could emerge apart from the revital- and humanity to the test. As a daughter of ization of that project? immigrants, who grew up in Toronto, the author brings empathy to her study of working-class southern Italians. While Donald Swartz investing her narrative with passion and Carleton University 316 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

insight, lacovetta avoids special pleading tation tainted with criminality. A review and sentimentality. of Canadian immigration policy provides The theme of the book is the transi­ abundant evidence of the prejudice and tion of the immigrants from peasants to discrimination against southern Italians. industrial workers. Neither uprooted nor Once in the country, they were subject to transplanted, lacovetta portrays the pro­ "Canadianization," and criticized for cess of adjustment as a dialectical inter­ clinging to their traditional ways. Italians play between Old World culture and New were faulted, for example, for failing to World experience. Although subject to take advantage of social services (agen­ exploitation and discrimination, her cies of Canadianization), preferring to people were not victims. Rather, both rely on their kin. But at the same time, men and women are portrayed as drawing lacovetta notes that the welfare state ob­ upon traditional values and relationships viated the need for the mutual aid so­ to cope with harsh circumstances. The cieties which had characterized earlier family continued to be the central institu­ immigration. Her discussion of the rela­ tion in Canada as it was in southern Italy. tionship between the immigrants and the Kinship networks provided sponsorship Roman Catholic Church (a "vehicle for and succour during migration and follow­ Canadianization"), replete with conflict ing settlement. The ethos of a "family- between Irish and Italians and the con­ oriented work culture" was the source of demnation of folk religion (festas), gives coherence and strength. Home ownership one who has studied the subject in the became the symbol and reality of success United States a sense of déjà vu. to which the efforts of all family members Intent upon demonstrating the immi­ were devoted. grants' capacity for resistance and pro­ One of the distinctive strengths of this test, lacovetta devotes considerable atten­ study is the feminist analysis lacovetta tion to the labour activities of Italian wor­ brings to bear on gender and gender rela­ kers, particularly to their hard fought and tions. Insisting on the differential experi­ violent strikes in the building industry. ences of male and female immigrants, she She attributes their militancy to the values stresses the critical role played by women of familialism, masculinity, and ethnic in migration and adjustment. Within the solidarity, not to radical ideology. (Al­ constraints of the patriarchal southern Ita­ though she downplays the influence of lian family, wives exercised significant Italian radicals, one wonders how the influence in the household and upon en­ change in the political climate of Italy — tering the paid labour force gained new including the South — following World autonomy. While lacovetta argues for War II affected the propensity of these continuity of familialist values in regulat­ new immigrants for class-based action.) ing gender roles, she describes women's Support networks of relatives and paesani working for wages as empowering and a in which women played important roles threat to husbands' masculinity. "Mascu­ sustained the families of strikers. Despite linity" in lacovetta's scenario, it should a nativist backlash which branded the Ita­ be noted, was not necessarily negative; lians as revolutionaries, for lacovetta, the rather it defined male roles as breadwin­ strikes were a major advance towards ners and defenders of the family. "full Canadian citizenship" and emble­ matic of their transition from peasants to lacovetta complements her internal proletarians. ethnography of immigrant life with an external view of the Italians as seen by the Such Hardworking People is such a "host society." She reminds us that south­ fully realized work that to fault it for not ern Italians were at the time Toronto's addressing other issues appears niggard­ "visible minority," their neighbourhoods ly. Let this serve then more as an agenda decried as ethnic ghettos, and their repu­ for future work than an indictment of this REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 317 study. Given significant differences from process. A fourth chapter portrays the one region (and even one paese) to an­ world of women who entered the steel other, I would have liked to have known industry as a result of political efforts to more about the specific backgrounds of challenge its gender discrimination the immigrants rather than generaliza­ policies only to find that global restruc­ tions about southern Italian peasants. Al­ turing left no room for them. though we are told the immigrants The first chapter, "'Re-Tayloring' changed, how these changes manifested Production Relations," argues that while themselves in specific spheres, such as management amalgamated production patterns of consumption and leisure, is jobs and created supercraft positions for not elaborated. Related to this is the sub­ skilled workers, the net effect was not to ject, also neglected, of a second gener­ upgrade the skill level of the workforce ation and the relationships among gener­ but to intensify labour instead. While ations. Although implicit, a more articu­ management adopted the rhetoric of giv­ lated discussion of how an Italian-Canadian ing workers added responsibility, the re­ identity (ethnicity?) evolved would have ality was a continuation of top-down rule. enhanced the study. The endnotes are vol­ Although the strong and well-led uminous (48 pages) and loaded with bib­ union was able to protect workers from liographical citations. A separate and the worse kinds of arbitrary management, critical bibliography would have been of the company's ability to divide the work­ more value to the reader. force through its layoff and recall policies made it difficult for the union to mount Rudolph J. Vecoli effective resistance or create viable alter­ University of Minnesota — Twin Cities natives. Management created a core of workers who enjoyed not only continuous employment but plentiful overtime, while at the same time organizing a surplus pool June Corman, Meg Luxton, D.W. Living­ of workers available for unpredictable re­ stone, Wally Seccombe, Recasting Steel employment during periods of peak de­ Labour: The Stelco Story (Halifax: Fern- mand and during summers, and available wood Publishing 1993). on a subcontract basis as well. (We might contrast these policies to those of Ford in STELCO'S HILTON works in Hamilton, the US, which permanently severed a Ontario suffered the full impact of the large proportion of its labour force in one global restructuring of the steel industry fell swoop in the early 1980s.) Stelco's during the 1980s. In response to the glo­ layoff-and-recall policies meant that the bal excess of steel making capacity, interests of workers in the core, in the which primarily resulted from economic surplus pool, and on permanent discharge stagnation, Canada's steel industry furi­ diverged sharply; the interests of those on ously reduced production costs, cutting separate seniority lists were at odds as capacity while boosting productivity. well. Employment levels at the Hilton Works The authors make a convincing case dropped from 15,076 in 1980 to 9,022 in that management employment practices 1989, while steel shipped per employee kept many workers attached to the com­ increased by 31 per cent. pany well past the time when separation Following a useful introduction to the might have been more in their interest; an concept of global restructuring, three interesting section shows how the em­ chapters of this book explore the impact ployment status of the steelworkers' of the restructuring of Hamilton's steel spouse often decided whether the steel- industry on the work process, as well as worker would remain on the recall list or on those who were employed as steelwor- make a permanent break; regardless of kers at the beginning of the downsizing 318 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

which path was chosen, family living management decisions and economic standards declined substantially. The ob­ changes. Except for the fourth chapter jectivity of the authors' analysis does not about women entering Stelco, the book obscure the cruelty of management's pays little heed to workers' culture, union strategy. political dynamics, the role of left-wing Management's ability to create the parties, quality of leadership, community surplus labour pool was facilitated by activism, the role of local politicians, governmental policies which are not suf­ church leaders, parish committees, and ficiently explored, and here is the chief other such phenomena. As a result of limitation of the study. While the global these omissions, steelworkers appear economy, and management and labour human only in their role as family mem­ strategies are analyzed in depth, the na­ bers; the other aspects of their social tional and provincial political and social being, which surely help to illuminate context is taken as a given; this detracts their choices and strategies, remain sub­ from the reader's ability to compare what merged. At bottom, this is to say that the happened in Hamilton to what has hap­ uneasy combination of economic deter­ pened in other current and former steel minism and feminism which underlie Re­ making centres, like Pittsburgh, the Ca­ casting Steel Labour is not a fully adequ­ lumet region, or the Ruhr Valley. ate framework for interpreting what hap­ Towards the end of the book, the auth­ pened at Stelco and why. ors detail recent efforts on the part of the Nevertheless, to those studying how union to explore worker ownership as corporate management is pursuing global well as worker participation in manage­ competitiveness, this case study is most ment, but the absence of detailed analysis valuable. While Stelco ruthlessly reduced of the socio-political context weakens the costs, created a more flexible workforce, discussion. In Pittsburgh, the restructur­ and reformed its management style, its ing of the steel industry provoked a com­ success at raising productivity entailed munity-based movement to recreate the hardly any of the worker participation, region's industrial economy and in the skill upgrading, and decentralized, post- Calumet region, community and union ac­ bureaucratic decision-making which so tivists have created early-warning net­ many scholars and pundits claim is the works, worker and community ownership only sure path to sustained profitability in support groups, and programs to train the global economy. potential successors to aging owners. These organizing efforts matured within David Bensman a political environment seemingly far less Rutgers University supportive of grassroots activism than that which exists in Canada. And indeed, on the basis of Steven Hertzenberg's com­ parative analysis of the US and Canadian Matt Bray and Ashley Thomson, éd.. At au to workers' response to the restructur­ the End of the Shift: Mines and Single-In­ ing of their industries, one might have dustry Towns in Northern Ontario (To­ expected more effective resistance to ronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press 1992). management policies in Hamilton than in the US. Why this was not the case is GIVEN THE VITAL IMPORTANCE of min­ puzzling, and points out the need for a ing to the Canadian economy, it is curious broader analysis of the restructuring of that so few historians of the current gener­ the steel industry. ation have paid much attention to it. This A second drawback of the book's ana­ collection of essays, drawn from a con­ lysis is that it views the actions of workers ference held in 1990 at Laurentian and their unions primarily as reactive to University, provides an interesting glimpse of what kinds of questions might REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 319

be asked about the development of min­ aging the contributions of a number of ing communities. The contributors in­ community groups. One hopes that others clude a sociologist, a mining engineer, will follow the model. geographers, and historians as well as the CM. Wallace opens the collection mayors and reeves of three northern com­ with some observations on the history and munities. historiography of northern community With such a variety of approaches in development that ought to be read by the collection, one might expect a rather every graduate student in the field. He uneven ride through it—and indeed there observes, quite accurately, that the his­ is in some ways — but the collection does tory of Northern Ontario towns has not hold together surprisingly well. In one been well served and that the time has way or another, all the authors are at­ come to go beyond generalizations and tempting to deal with the problem of the clichés about the "frontier" or ahistorical human need for community in the face of geographical categorizations. Clearly his the Innisian "staples trap." The depend­ remarks apply to the history of the north ency and boom and bust cycles that (both provincial and territorial) more plague resource-based economies are generally. magnified in local economies based on Essays by Matt Bray, Peter Krats, and single resources or even single com­ Eileen Goltz in the second section dem­ panies. These essays explore the emer­ onstrate that historical analysis can in­ gence and development of Northern On­ deed provide some new perspectives on tario communities in terms of the impact resource towns. Focusing on the Sudbury of the single-industry economy on the region, the essays do not establish radi­ human experience. cally new paradigms, but are well-crafted The editors have divided the essays little pieces that challenge the popular into five sections that are organized perceptions. Bray had access to the roughly chronologically: "Setting the newly-available INCO archives and so de­ Stage," "Early Years," "The Era of Gov­ cided to reconstruct the company's atti­ ernment Intervention," "Present Challen­ tudes toward its town, turning the usual ges," and "Into the Future." The first two emphasis on its head. Krats challenges the sections are clearly the strongest in terms idea that Sudbury is a monopoly-directed of their contribution to academic discus­ "Nickel Capital" by examining the role sions; the last two sections provide an played by dozens of small companies and interesting starting-point for discussions individual entrepreneurs in regional econ­ about current responses to economic omic development. The piece is implicitly problems. The Institute for Northern On­ an anti-Whig approach to local history tario Research and Development because his subjects were often the "lo­ (INORD), which organized the con­ sers" in that their development activities ference, deserves congratulations for did not last, yet they did have an impact bringing together community repre­ on the shape of the community. Goltz sentatives and academics in order to en­ re-examines a number of perceptions courage just this sort of discussion. There about company towns through a case is a great deal of lip-service paid in aca­ study of Copper Cliff and comes to an demic circles these days to community- interesting set of revisions. In particular, based research and collaboration, but she notes the ethnic segregation of the rarely are members of the "community" town in a suggestive analysis that could invited to participate in the hallowed aca­ be the beginning of a substantial piece. To demic ritual of The Conference. INORD's what extend did class and religious dif­ first annual conference, dealing with the ferences affect the structure of the com­ issues of development in the Temagami munity? What was the relationship be­ region, was equally successful at encour­ tween the structure of the community and 320 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL the structure of the labour force or its Shaun Comish, The Westray Tragedy: A behaviour in the workplace? Miner's Story (Halifax: Fernwood Pub­ The remaining essays deal with sub­ lishing 1993). jects like the government role in resource- town planning in the 1930s, health and "THE WESTRAY MINE and the Ford coal safety regulation in mining, and contem­ seam lie underground like a large, black porary experiments in local economic spider web. We miners were like insects diversification. The optimistic tone of a caught in the trap, occasionally escaping number of the essays in the latter half of for four days, only to fly back and get the collection seems surprising given the caught again. The spider sat and watched, long-term structural roots of the problems waiting for the right moment. When it described elsewhere. Some fundamental finally struck, the wave of horror and questions come to mind. Is it realistic to grief spread far beyond. This horrific attempt to preserve a community when its spider now lies in wait one again, ready reason for existence has gone? To what to strike at those who dare to venture into extent should governments (that is, other its black domain." (1) So Shaun Comish, Canadians) be expected to subsidize the miner, neophyte union activist and maintenance of these communities? Ob­ draegerman, introduces his brief (58 viously these are questions that are rele­ pages) but compelling account of his ex­ vant to many other parts of Canada and periences underground at the Westray deserve some searching consideration. coal mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia While the collection provides a good during the months leading up to the introduction to the subject of mining com­ massive explosion on 9 May 1992 which munity development, it is clear that many took the lives of 26 of his fellow workers. topics remain to be explored. Because the But as graphic as the spider's web anal­ field has been dominated by planners and ogy is, it is also somewhat misleading, geographers, the emphasis has tended to because as this miner's story unfolds, it be on spatial and economic development. becomes clear that the Westray Tragedy, Social historians, labour historians, in the view of the author, was no pre-or­ women's and gender historians are all dained, inevitable event beyond the badly needed to deal with the many ques­ forces of human control. tions. What was the impact of these com­ Indeed, the theme of The Westray munities on women? To what extent did Tragedy is precisely the opposite, that the the members of these communities shape spider had all-too-human features and their structure and history, and to what frailties, and that the devastating explo­ extent were they company-controlled? sion was at the very least due to human Do company towns and other resource- carelessness, if not to the deliberate based towns differ? How did life in these flaunting of basic safety regulations. communities affect the nature and beha­ More than half of Cornish's narrative con­ viour of the labour force of vice versa? Do sists of a litany of cave-ins and other these communities represent the forma­ near-accident situations which he en­ tion of a new society, or did they simply countered, often the result of shoddy min­ transplant the values and social structure ing practices, taking short-cuts, and fail­ of southern Canada into the north? At the ing to observe safety precautions, usually End of the Shift is recommended reading with management knowledge if not at its as it provides a useful stimulus to discus­ insistence. The most frightening was de­ sion of both the questions that it does liberately disconnecting the methometer address and those it does not. on vehicles, the safety device designed to shut down the vehicle if the methane level became too high, because the machine Kerry Abel would not work in certain sections of the Carleton University REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 321

mine where the methane level was too David Ralph Matthews, Controlling high! Common Property: Regulating Canada's The second part of Cornish's account East Coast Fishery (Toronto: University details his work as a draegerman after the of Toronto Press 1993). explosion, probing the depths of the mine for the bodies of his fellow workers. The MATTHEWS STUDIES the influence of sheer horror of the experience comes federal fisheries policy, supported by the through with every line. Highlighting the Newfoundland Fishermen, Food and Al­ awfulness of the tragedy, too, is the small lied Workers Union (NFFAWU), which tribute by their families to each of the men represents inshore and offshore fishermen killed in the explosion appended to the as well as fish processing workers, on five narrative. Newfoundland inshore fishing com­ While Cornish's account obviously munities from the late 1970s to the pres­ deals with the 1990s, it has a certain time- ent. Drawing on interviews of a lessness about it, shedding light on the proportionately representative sample of experiences and frustrations of gener­ full-time and part-time fishing people ations of miners that preceded his. The with or without species licences from technology may have been different SO or Charleston, King's Cove, Grates Cove, 100 years ago but the pressures on the Fermeuse, and Bonavista (communities workers are very much the same now as chosen for their range in size, types, and then — the desperate need for a job, any scales of inshore fisheries) Matthews re­ job, to support wives and families, the veals the flaws inherent in federal accept­ hesitancy in the face of strong company ance of the "tragedy of the commons" opposition to unionize (a pre-explosion view: that the fishery is an industry domi­ certification vote failed, a post-explosion nated by a common-property resource vote passed), the determination of the open to all. That fish swim free in the sea companies and company managers to supposedly makes them impossible to squeeze as much profit out of the mine control as private property, and this in with as little coast as possible, and the turn forces fishing people who happen altogether too high price that is paid in the upon them to harvest without regard for process. conservation because otherwise another Surprising to this reader, at least, is competitor will take the fish. This book the note on which Cornish ends The West- exposes two fallacies in this supposedly ray Tragedy. One might expect a call for self-evident truth adopted by the Cana­ the permanent abandonment of the West- dian government. The first is an assump­ ray mine; instead, Cornish admonishes fu­ tion that people are Hobbesian ture miners: "Be safe, be tough and don't competitors who can only act reasonably compromise your right to a healthy and under the auspices of a strong, centralized safe workplace. Don't be bullied or authority. The second is seeing property fooled into doing anything you fee) is as a thing, rather than a relationship based unsafe." (58) The spider may be lurking, on people's recognition of having rights but the miner's work goes on. to something, and being able to exclude others from that thing.

Matt Bray The state, Matthews argues, is not the Laurentian University sole source of property rights. Instead "community customs, and norms and traditional practices are the source of cer­ tain property rights enjoyed by the resi­ dents of a community." (75) Fishing people recognized that they needed to regulate access to the fishery to ensure 322 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

that they did not suffer the tragedy of the gluts, create tensions between community commons even before the advent of state members. Such tensions may also be policy. In the small communities of Char­ exacerbated by restricted species licenses leston and King's Cove, people recognize which allow only a few members of com­ customary occupation rights to trap munities the right to catch higher-value berths: places in inshore waters where salmon, lobster, and herring. Com­ fishermen could set cod traps to catch munities cannot develop ways to regulate fish. Fishermen would not set a trap in a access to these licences because state pol­ place where they knew that someone else icy makes them non-transferable. Special in the community was accustomed to licence holders cannot even pass them on without permission unless it fell into to their sons and other male relatives as disuse. In Grates Cove and Fermeuse, they might otherwise do by tradition, so where local marine conditions necessi­ they hold on to them even when they no tated greater investment in larger vessels, longer fully utilize their rights. people developed lottery systems to en­ Loans, and other policies designed to sure that no one group would dominate encourage professional fishermen to ex­ access to the best berths, and to limit pand their capital investment by using newcomers so as to ensure that all had an more destructive gill nets and larger equal chance to a fair return on their in­ boats, are particular problems in com­ vestment. Bonavista, one of Newfound­ munities such as Bonavista. Debt-servic­ land's largest communities in which al­ ing and operational coasts, almost im­ most everybody depends on the inshore possible to meet in any event, encourage fishery, developed a modified inheritance such fishermen to ignore community custom which emphasized family rights regulation of access to fish as they desper­ to berths. Fishing people there emphas­ ately try to catch enough to pay new bills. ized family rather than community rights In addition, unemployment insurance to property because they fished in waters qualification regulations, which require shared by other communities. Local ac­ thirteen weeks of consecutive fish sales, ceptance of family inheritance precluded restrict fishing people's decisions about inter-community rivalry which might when they should begin the fishing sea­ otherwise arise from community property son, how they should market fish, and rights such as those of Grates Cove and general occupational pluralism. While Fermeuse. fishing people have found creative ways Matthews accepts that state regula­ to incorporate UIC payments into their tion can alleviate problems such as com­ seasonal round, and have developed com­ munity rivalry. In practice, however, he munity norms about marketing under the has found that federal policy has at best UI system, the relative successes and created tensions in fishing communities, failures of people have caused com­ and at worse given some fishing people munity tensions. Matthews' style of pres­ an incentive to exploit fish resources entation — frequent direct quotes from more intensely. The problem lies in at­ interviews with too-often only brief com­ tempts to limit access to the fishery by the mentary — obscures his analysis of these creation of a professional fishing elite. points. Nonetheless, a strong sense of With union support, the federal govern­ fishing people straining to re-establish ment introduced a system of part- and community equilibrium in the face of full-time licences, producing divisions in­ fragmentation by state policy does appropriate among people whose liveli­ emerge. hoods depended on balancing fishing Oddly, given his interest in defining against a variety of other work. Union- property as a social relationship, Mat­ sponsored market regulations, which fa­ thews' analytical commitment to "com­ vour full-time fishermen during fish munity" makes him unclear about class REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 323

relations. His argument that state regula­ knowledges that the union has had a posi­ tion of access to technology is as import­ tive effect on fish prices, its commitment ant a determination of fishermen's class to the professionalization of fishing position as their relationship to the means people is shown to be a problem. Unfor­ of production is not easily sustainable in tunately, Matthews does not explain why a work that does not examine class rela­ the union has developed such a commit­ tionships in fishing communities. Mat­ ment. thews is more accurate in describing regu­ A final problem emerges in Mat­ lations which effect the relative status of thews' conclusion. He wisely rejects the fishing people. Except for some loose dis­ use of 'fishers' as jargon that Newfound­ cussion of fish-buyers and plant oper­ landers would never use to describe them­ ators, the state, and even unions (as agents selves. For a variety of reasons, men have largely external to fishing communities), been the ones to catch fish in Newfound­ there is no discussion of class relations here. land, and people refer to those who catch A more historical perspective would fish as 'fishermen.' However, this does have helped this sociological study. Mat­ not mean that fishermen were not subject thews' Lockeian-inspired view of com­ to pressure and advice from their female munity self-regulation concentrates on relatives on questions of the fair use of fishing people's control of supposedly resources. The gender bias inherent in the traditional technology, particularly the term 'fisherman ' also makes its use, while berths needed to use cod traps. Yet cod largely historically accurate, problematic traps were only introduced in the late 19th for present use. Matthews, for example, century. Most of the customs and tradi­ feels that state regulation did little to pre­ tions of Matthews' subjects must, there­ vent the present collapse of the fishery, fore, be of recent origin. This is not to say and that east-coast communities need that his propositions about community "new institutional structures that em­ regulation of property are not important power fishermen in both the design and for understanding earlier periods. the implementation of fisheries policy, at Ommer's work on the Gaspé and a grow­ both a regional and a local level." (246) ' ing Newfoundland historiography (which While Matthews may not believe that men is barely cited in this work) points to truck alone should be empowered, he ends up as another, earlier way in which com­ saying so, although there is increasing munities controlled access to the fishery. evidence of women's more direct invol­ This community regulation was, how­ vement in the fishery. 'Fishing people' is ever, an expression of class relations be­ a less alienating, more gender-neutral de­ tween merchants and fishing people, and scription which might help prevent such often rife with class struggle. a problematic conclusion. We need to know more about the in­ Controlling Common Property is an fluence of class relationships on later invaluable contribution towards demysti­ community regulation of property. Such fying the rationality of applying state further work will have to give more atten­ policies based on the 'tragedy-of-the- tion to unionization in the fishery. Most commons' school to the fishery of Cana­ of the interview excerpts here reveal con­ da's east coast. However, while challeng­ siderable ambivalence among fishing ing, the book's assertion about com­ people about the NFFAWU, but there is no munities' ability to develop their own good analysis of why this might be so. customary regulation of the fishery re­ Without much explanation as to why, quires a more historical consideration if it Matthews portrays the union as a partner is to be sustainable. of the federal state in introducing policies which undermine community control of Sean Cadigan the inshore fishery. While the study ac­ Memorial University of Newfoundland 324 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Jean Du Berger et Jacques Mathieu (dir.), d'archives et la mémoire des travail­ Les ouvrières de Dominion Corset à Qué­ leuses. bec, 1886-1988 (Sainte-Foy: Presses de L'intérêt de cet ouvrage réside surtout l'Université Laval 1993). dans les différentes précisions qu'il ap­ porte au niveau du fonctionnement in­ CETTE ÉTUDE D'ETHNOLOGIE urbaine, terne d'une entreprise de ce type. Les abondamment illustrée, est essentielle­ entrevues sur lesquelles il se fonde per­ ment fondée sur une vingtaine d'en­ mettent en effet d'accéder au coeur même trevues réalisées auprès d'ouvrières et de la vie quotidienne de l'usine et des d'employé-e-s de la Dominion Corset, ouvrières qui y ont oeuvré. Grâce aux une entreprise établie a Québec en 1886 témoignages, les auteurs ont pu obtenir de et dirigée par la famille Amyot pendant nombreux détails sur les différentes plus de cent ans. Divisé en quatre parties, étapes et techniques de fabrication des l'ouvrage veut mettre en évidence les per­ corsets et autres types de lingerie fé­ ceptions et représentations livrées par les minine, sur la machinerie utilisée, les for­ témoignages à propos de l'entreprise, de mes d'apprentissage qui se sont succé­ ses dirigeants et du travail industriel, en dées, la division des tâches, les conditions même temps qu'il entend faire ressortir de travail, les modalités de paiement des les pratiques de solidarité, de résistance et salaires, les relations entre les groupes d'autonomie développées par les d'employés et entre ces groupes et la di­ ouvrières face aux contraintes du travail rection, les différentes formes de socia­ en usine. Sans en faire explicitement men­ bilité dans l'usine et les stratégies utili­ tion, l'étude se situe donc dans le courant sées par les ouvrières pour influer, ne de la nouvelle histoire ouvrière qui s'in­ serait-ce que minimalement, sur leurs téresse à la culture ouvrière et aux conditions de travail et contourner les rè­ stratégies développées par les travailleurs gles hiérarchiques et disciplinaires. et les travailleuses pour conserver une L'étude analyse également l'insertion des marge de manoeuvre sur les lieux de travail. travailleuses à la vie urbaine, plusieurs La première partie du livre présente provenant des campagnes environnantes un bref historique de l'entreprise, une de­ et même de l'Est du Québec. Des faits scription de l'organisation spatiale de intéressants sont ainsi mis à jour; par l'usine, des différentes catégories d'em­ exemple, que les ouvrières étaient parfois ployé-e-s et de leurs fonctions à l'inté­ sollicitées pour faire l'essai des nouveaux rieur de l'entreprise, de même qu'elle modèles de lingerie développés par les s'attarde à l'évolution des produits fab­ dessinateurs de la compagnie (tous des riqués et à l'organisation du travail. La hommes), que la direction diffusait de la deuxième partie, intitulée «l'encadrement musique pour contrôler la cadence de tra­ des travailleuses,» examine les rapports vail et empêcher les travailleuses de hiérarchiques, la discipline industrielle, chanter, que ces dernières savaient faire de même que les conditions de travail et montre de solidarité face aux abus patro­ de vie à la Dominion Corset. La troisième naux, qu'il leur arrivait de frauder la com­ partie s'intéresse aux différentes manifes­ pagnie, qu'à au moins une occasion, elles tations de rivalité, de solidarité et de so­ ont stoppé la production parce que la cha­ ciabilité des ouvrières, et examine les leur était vraiment insupportable ou en­ liens entre l'usine et la vie du quartier où core que des employé-e-s louaient volon­ elle était située. Enfin, la dernière partie tiers des chambres aux jeunes filles qui prend la forme d'un essai comparant les arrivaient de la campagne pour travailler différentes images de l'entreprise que à l'usine. donnent à voir des sources aussi différen­ tes que le patrimoine bâti, les documents L'ensemble des informations qui nous sont ainsi livrées contribuent à dessiner un portrait intimiste du monde REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 325

des ouvrières de la Dominion Corset Le exemple: a quelle grève de la chaussure livre présente toutefois certains l'informatrice fait-elle référence; 108: problèmes. En particulier, l'analyse des vers quelle époque les ouvrières se ren­ phénomènes observés reste trop souvent seignaient-elles mutuellement sur «les superficielle ce qui vient peut-être du fait choses de la vie»?). Un certain «flou» que les auteurs ne confrontent pas les chronologique entoure d'ailleurs d'autres résultats de leur enquête à d'autres études informations: par exemple, à quelle effectuées en histoire sociale et ouvrière. époque la compagnie exigeait-elle de ses Mis à part les archives de la compagnie, ouvrières qu'elles sachent lire et écrire? l'ouvrage s'appuie en effet uniquement A partir de quel moment a-t-elle exigé un sur les entrevues ce qui a pour effet de examen médical? (34) Le cheminement restreindre singulièrement leur perspec­ méthodologique des auteurs est aussi tive. Certains phénomènes font l'objet de laissé dans l'ombre: quel était le contenu commentaires fort intéressants — notam­ exact du guide d'entrevue (s'il avait été ment à propos de l'organisation spatiale précisé au départ)? Combien de temps ont de l'usine et ses répercussions sur les re­ duré les entrevues et combien de fois lations entre les groupes d'employé-e-s chaque personne a-t-elle été vue? Par partageant cet espace (18-9) — mais plu­ quels moyens a-t-on retracé les témoins? sieurs autres sont tout simplement décrits Voilà autant d'informations qui réap­ ou très peu commentés (voir le chapitre paraissent indispensables pour bien sur les conditions de travail en particu­ évaluer la pertinence des données recueil­ lier). Cette faiblesse est peut-être due lies et qui auraient dû figurer, au moins en également au nombre restreint des inter­ annexe. viewées qui ont travaillé comme ouvrière. Enfin, signalons que la structure de En effet, les auteurs ont recours aux té­ l'ouvrage donne lieu a plusieurs redites, moignages de 12 femmes seulement, notamment à propos des liens entre pa­ «dont trois ont travaillé comme employée trons et travailleuses (21 et suiv. et 71 et de bureau, infirmière ou modèle» (6), ce suiv.), de l'isolement des contremaî­ qui ne laisse que neuf ouvrières (parmi tresses (30-1 et 77), du travail des infir­ lesquelles trois sont devenues contremaî­ mières (94-5 et 122-3) et de ta diffusion tresses). Ajoutons que la moyenne d'âge de la musique sur les lieux de travail (103 des témoins au moment de l'entrevue (68 et 126) et que les sigles utilisés dans les ans) vient remettre en question l'ambition notes de référence ne sont pas explicitées, d'illustrer par leurs récits de vie «la prise ce qui n'est quère utile au profane (AFUL en main de leur avenir dans le contexte signifie archives de folklore de l'Univer­ industriel et urbain de Québec durant la sité Laval; coll. VQ est utilisé, sauf erreur, première moitié du XXe siècle.» (6; nous pour collection de la ville de Québec). soulignons). L'utilisation même des témoignages Denyse Baillargeon n'est pas toujours des plus éclairantes; les Université de Montréal extraits des entrevues sont en effet sou­ vent rapportés sans que l'on sache qui parle. Par les propos tenus, on arrive généralement à déduire s'il s'agit d'un Evelyne Tardy, Francine Descarries, Lor­ homme ou d'une femme, mais assez sou­ raine Archambault, Lyne Kurtzman et vent on ne sait pas à quel moment la Lucie Piché, Les Bâtisseuses de la Cité personne a travaillé à la Dominion Corset, (Montréal, Actes du Colloque Les Bâtis­ ni toujours quelle fonction elle y exerçait. seuses de la Cité, ACFAS 1992 [Cahiers H arrive également que les témoins fas­ scientifiques de l'Acfas: 79], 1993). sent mention d'événements dont la date aurait demandé à être précisée (76 par ON CONNAISSAIT BIEN sûr Jeanne Mance, Marguerite Bourgeoys et Mar- 326 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

guérite D'Youville. Mais d'énormes la­ ciplinaire (criminologie, théologie et cunes restaient encore à combler concer­ philosophie), l'élaboration d'une critique nant l'apport des femmes à l'essor et au épistémologique menant à une recon­ développement de Montréal. Le Colloque struction interdisciplinaire des connaiss­ des Bfltisseuses de la Cité, présenté lors ances. Une reconstruction qui vise à pro­ du Congrès annuel de l'Acfas en 1992, poser une nouvelle grille de lecture des année des célébrations du 350 anniver­ concepts et des pratiques existants. saire de Montréal, a permis de rassembler L'ouvrage se divise en cinq parties. une brochette de chercheures appelées à Les deux premières traitent de la con­ réfléchir à cette question. Sur les 70 com­ tribution historique des femmes au dével­ munications présentées à cette occasion, oppement de Montréal. Des textes écrits les éditrices en ont retenu trente-trois. majoritairement par des historiennes sou­ Compte tenu de la diversité des textes et lignent non seulement les contributions des interventions, elles les ont regroupés marquantes de Montréalaises méconnues en fonction des thématiques abordées et (i.e., Madeleine de La Peltrie et Éva des lieux d'intervention visés. Un premier Circé-Côté alias Julien St-Michel) mais volet porte sur l'action des femmes DANS proposent également un nouveau regard la ville, privilégiant les domaines du tra­ sur les pratiques de femmes engagées vail, de la santé, de l'éducation, de la dans la vie communautaire montréalaise production intellectuelle et de la vie so­ que ce soit au sein des paroisses (Agathe ciale et politique. Un second volet traite Lafortune), des associations de charité de l'intervention des femmes SUR la ville, (Janice Harvey) ou de la compagnies considérant les aspects de l'architecture, d'assurance la Métropolitaine (Denyse de l'urbanisme, de l'aménagement et des Baillargeon). L'enquête Caron sur le jeu productions artistiques. et le vice commercialisé à Montréal, sujet En guise de premier avertissement à de deux récentes séries télévisées (Mon­ la lectrice et au lecteur, il serait bon de tréal PQ et Montréal, ville ouverte), per­ rappeler que le présent collage regroupe met à l'historienne Danielle Laçasse de un échantillon de textes allant du simple constater que la mainmise des hommes témoignage à l'article scientifique en sur la pratique de la prostitution a conduit passant par le compte rendu de discus­ à une détérioration des conditions de tra­ sions en table ronde. La consultation de vail des filles, la fermeture des bordels les l'annexe I (programme du Colloque) renvoyant à la rue ou au cabaret, milieux s'avère à cet égard plus utile que la table moins protégés. Le monde de l'éducation, des matières qui ne reflète pas cette diver­ où les femmes ont toujours été très sité de traitement des sujets. Une bonne présentes, fait l'objet de trois études qui façon d'aborder le livre serait d'en com­ jettent un éclairage nouveau sur le rôle mencer la lecture par la quatrième partie. des institutrices laïques au début du siècle Les trois textes denses et fort pertinents (Andrée Dufour) et sur celui des commu­ qui la composent constituent le coeur thé­ nautés religieuses féminines (Marie-Paul orique de l'ouvrage puisqu'ils posent la Malouin et Thérèse Hamel). C'est la par­ question de la critique féministe des con­ tie la plus homogène de l'ouvrage en naissances en tant que contribution dis­ terme de structure des textes. Seul l'ar­ tinctive au développement d'une société. ticle truffé de trop longues citations de Si le regard féministe sur l'histoire et les Denise Robillard sur Marguerite Lacorne, réalités de la ville n'apporte aucune alter­ épouse de Jacques Viger, n'arrive pas à native valable à l'explication générale­ énoncer de problématique claire. ment admise, l'ouvrage et les questionne­ La troisième section apparaîtra sans ments qu'il propose est d'autant invalidé. doute novatrice à plus d'un. On y a regroupé Ces textes constituent de solides exposés des articles et des interventions portant qui étudient, chacun dans leur champ dis­ sur la présence des femmes en architec- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 327 turc et urbanisme ainsi qu'en création ar­ sur les femmes migrantes et immigrantes, tistique (musique, arts visuels et littér­ «chantres de l'exil,» raconte dans une ature). Plus hétérogène, cette partie donne langue suave le rapaysement ambivalent, lieu à plusieurs découvertes. On sent bien, souvent douloureux, de celles qui ont d'après l'inégalité des textes, que la re­ choisi de vivre ailleurs ... c'est à dire, ici cherche en est encore aux premiers balbu­ a Montréal. tiements dans certains domaines. C'est le La cinquième et dernière partie traite cas notamment du texte de Katia Trem­ des stratégies politiques des femmes sur blay sur l'accession des femmes a la la scène municipale et dans la ville. Phé­ pratique architecturale féminine. Le va- nomène moins récent qu'on ne le croit et-vient entre les contextes québécois, ca­ malgré qu'il soit généralement attribué nadien et américain permet de poser les aux années 1980 (377), l'engagement po­ jalons de l'accession des femmes aux pro­ litique des femmes dans la grande ville est fessions (voir les tableaux). Par contre, la abordé par quatre intervenantes dont une section portant sur la pratique architectu­ «de l'intérieur» (Léa Cousineau). On y rale féminine est trop rapidement esquis­ rappelle que c'est dans la grande ville que sée pour permettre de conclure a l'hypo­ les femmes semblent atteindre le plus thèse avancée, soit que les femmes «ont haut taux de représentation sur les Con­ préféré s'abstenir d'affirmer une audace seils municipaux (Chantai Maillé). Ser­ réservée aux hommes en adoptant des ait-ce parce que les hommes désertent de styles architecturaux qui tendent davant­ plus en plus le niveau municipal en perte age vers un consensus social.» (188) II de pouvoirs? La question est posée et dis­ s'agirait là, tout au plus, d'une observa­ cutée. Car si le niveau municipal a long­ tion qui mériterait d'être reliée davantage temps été celui de la construction des au contexte social plus vaste précédem­ routes et des égoûts, il y a maintenant ment effleuré. d'autres champs de compétence refilés Les seize présentations concernant aux municipalités qui risquent d'intér­ les femmes-artistes (musique, arts visuels esser les femmes tels l'environnement et et écritures) ont l'avantage d'initier un le développement communautaire (Lyse plus vaste public lecteur à l'expérience Pelletier et Caroline Andrew). L'exemple particulière de la création au féminin. de la sécurité des femmes dans la ville, C'est surtout vrai pour les domaines de la étudiée par Léa Cousineau, montre bien musique et des arts visuels dont on con­ comment l'action d'un collectif de fem­ naît fort peu de choses en dehors des cer­ mes peut amener une municipalité à cles initiés. Soulignons à cet égard la modifier son approche face à un enjeu communication de Hélène Paul sur l'im­ largement ignoré auparavant. portance des femmes dans la vie musicale En somme, malgré l'inégalité des tex­ montréalaise pendant l'entre-deux guer­ tes et des interventions colligés par les res et celle de Esther Trépanier sur les auteures, l'ouvrage demeure utile à notre femmes «peintres de la cité.» La question connaissance des diverses contributions posée, à savoir si l'art a un sexe, attire de des femmes à la vie et à l'évolution de fait l'attention sur les conditions de la Montréal. En fait, on constatera qu'elles pratique et de la reconnaissance par le sont partout, et de tout temps, mais n'en milieu, et l'extérieur, de l'esthétique par­ sont pas pour autant reconnues. ticulière de chaque genre (gender). Les témoignages des jeunes compositrices Odette Vincent Isabelle Panneton et Sylvaine Martin- INRS-IQRC Kostajsnek sont à cet égard très révéla­ teurs. L'écriture des femmes sur la ville complètent fort heureusement cette sec­ tion. Le très beau texte de Lucie Lequin 328 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Andrée Dandurand, Les carnets de David voir reconnaître que c'est dans des situ­ Thomas: roman (Montréal: éditions Qué­ ations de ce genre qu'elle prend du sens. bec-Amérique 1993). Pensons également au sort de Mgr Char- bonneau. Toujours est-il que Burton Le­ LA POSTFACE de ce roman nous livre Doux récidive, en 1952-1953, alors qu'il quelques fragments de la vie de Burton s'intéresse à la condition des mineurs du LeDoux. C'est un Franco-Américain, cuivre de Rouyn-Noranda. Mais LeDoux natif de New Bedford, au Massachussets, crie dans le désert. Dès lors il s'isole dans où il voit le jour en 1893. Il semble, à son une propriété de famille de sa femme, qui retour d'Europe, qu'il fréquente le Qué­ incidemment est un «médecin et cher­ bec à plusieurs reprises entre 1940 et cheur réputé aux Etats-Unis.» (231) Le­ 1953. ému et indigné par la tutelle écon­ Doux y vit donc dans l'isolement jusqu'à omique que les «grandes sociétés mi­ sa mort, en 1979, même s'il manifeste nières et industrielles» (231) imposent toujours de l'intérêt pour le Québec, nous aux populations ouvrières, qui travaillent apprend-on, tout en nous laissant sur dans des conditions totalement irrespec­ notre faim. tueuses de l'hygiène industrielle en gesta­ Dans le but de ressusciter ce person­ tion à cette époque, il va devenir le nage madame Dandurand utilise les fruits pourfendeur des maladies industrielles. de ses recherches pour écrire ce roman en Il s'engage, selon l'expression d'An­ hommage à la mémoire de Burton Le­ drée Dandurand, dans une «véritable croi­ Doux qu'elle glisse dans la peau et le sade: faire connaître l'étendue des coeur de ce personnage sympathique ravages causés par les maladies indus­ qu'est David Thomas. Toutefois c'est trielles au Québec, dénoncer la né­ David Thomas qu'on placarde au risque gligence qu'il qualifie de «criminelle» — de ne pas sortir Burton LeDoux de l'ar­ des pouvoirs qui permettent à ces «abat­ moire dans laquelle notre société l'a em­ toirs humains» de se perpétuer, forcer les muré. Il n'est pas certain que ce roman grandes sociétés et les gouvernements qui suffira à briser le mur du silence qui en­ les appuient à reconnaître les crimes com­ toure les écrits de Burton LeDoux. Pour­ mis et à prendre les mesures nessaires.» tant c'est un précurseur au chapitre de ces (231) Burton LeDoux dénonce le triste maladies industrielles que les ouvriers du sort de la classe ouvrière dans les nom­ roman appellent la «maladie de l'usine.» breux articles qu'il publie dans des revues (145) Doit-on reprocher à l'auteure québécoises et américaines. Il est surtout d'avoir choisi une forme romanesque qui connu au Québec par son article percutant nous révèle la personnalité attachante de que la revue Relations publie en mars David Thomas en occultant la person­ 1948 où il dénonce les méfaits que la nalité réelle de Burton LeDoux? Un per­ silicose produit chez les travailleurs du sonnage du roman — en fait c'est Eli­ petit village minier de Saint-Rémi d'Am- zabeth-Marie, la scientifique qu'aime herst. Puis, en janvier 1949, juste avant le Thomas — tente de réfuter les arguments déclenchement de la grève de l'amiante, que son amant lui adresse souvent lors­ il fait la une du Devoir en y publiant un qu'il lui reproche de s'intéresser plus à la article dévastateur sur les ravages que science qu'aux humains: « ... il n'y a pas l'amiantose cause aux travailleurs d'East de frontière entre les différentes activités Broughton. humaines et que les unes devraient nourrir les autres comme les différents versants Il semble que, par la suite, les forces d'une montagne conduisent tous à son conservatrices du Québec, où il sera, af­ sommet.» (137) firme l'auteure, «en pratique interdit de publication» (232), le réduiront au Bref, le choix de madame Dandurand silence. Sans monter l'expression de est respectable. On peut maintenant es­ «grande noirceur» en épingle, il faut sa­ pérer qu'un cinéaste de la trempe de Gil- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 329 les Carie on de Denys Arcand s'impare de Boulanger et par l'émotion de son témoig­ cette fiction pour nous brosser un portrait nage alors qu'elle réclame justice pour la de David Thomas au pays de Vimy Jonc­ mort de son mari qu'elle impute à la com­ tion. En fait l'auteure bâtit son roman de pagnie qui a fait disparaître le dossier façon telle qu'il se prête bien k un traite­ incriminant. Ce procès émeut David Tho­ ment cinématographique. Ce n'était pas le mas tout comme il conduira le jeune cas de Zola et pourtant Berri en a tiré un ouvrier Daniel à prendre conscience de sa Germinal magnifique. Madame Dandu- condition laborieuse. Membre de rand, qui en est i son premier essai, n'est «l'équipe d'entretien de l'usine» (48), pas comparable à Zola. Il n'en demeure celui-ci s'insurge contre les pressions de pas moins qu'elle nous livre un roman qui la compagnie, les manigances du prési­ «s'inspire largement de la vie et des dent de son syndicat et la lâcheté du maire écrits» (231) de Burton LeDoux. de la ville. D'ailleurs il sera muté dans La postface ne nous révèle que des une autre usine que la compagnie opère fragments de la vie de Burton LeDoux. Le dans le nord. (191) Cette prise de con­ roman ne nous fournit que des fragments science de l'ouvrier évolue parallèlement de la vie de David Thomas qui sont dis­ à celle de l'intellectuel David Thomas. séminés dans ses carnets et dans les notes L'un et l'autre sont subjugués par la lu­ biographiques «recueillies par Ayers, cidité de Lucienne Boulanger qui, selon Bienvenue, Rooney et associés, avocats et les carnets de Thomas, est «comme un procureurs.» (31) Cette firme d'avocats phare dans la nuit.» (ISS) fut chargée par la New Standard Com­ Le problème des maladies industriel­ pany de recueillir des rensignements sur les que ce procès va lui révéler s'inscrit cet étranger qui préfère loger à l'Hôtel du dorénavant au coeur de toute son action. Voyageur plutôt qu'au «Guest House» de On pourrait dire qu'il devient un militant la compagnie et qui apprécie plus la fré­ dont les préoccupations l'éloignent de quentation des ouvriers que celle des ca­ son amante pour qui il devient étranger. dres de l'entreprise. Il faut savoir que ce Ce procès, dont il consigne le déroule­ n'est pas une biographie romanesque ou ment dans ses carnets, est l'élément dé­ romancée de LeDoux. C'est un roman. Et, clencheur d'une enquête qui va le con­ ma foi, c'est un bon roman qu'on peut duire à prendre conscience de la centrante certes classer dans la catégorie du réal­ de ce phénomène dans la vie des ouvriers isme social. et de leur famille. Dès lors, il mène un David Thomas est un Franco-Améri­ combat contre l'injustice. Il récuse cette cain que revient en Amérique après un phrase fataliste, empreinte de désespoir long séjour en Europe. Il effectue ce surtout, qu'une femme de Vimy a pronon­ voyage d'affaires pour le compte de la cée lors d'une entrevue qu'il faisait avec firme anglaise qui l'embauche. Celle-ci son mari: «Seule la mort est juste.» (145) l'envoie à Vimy Jonction pour négocier Cette question de la «maladie de une vente d'équipement industriel avec l'usine» est au coeur de roman. Pour des une succursale d'une compagnie inter- raisons totalement différentes, elle mar­ natinoale spécialisée dans le raffinage des que en profondeur les antagonismes so­ métaux, la New Standard Metal Chemical ciaux qui ponctuent la vie de l'usine et de Co. Dès ce premier séjour à Vimy Jonc­ la ville. C'est le pôle autour duquel gravi­ tion, il est confronté à la triste réalité de tent les peurs et les défis des ouvriers et cette petite ville de compagnie quand il de leurs patrons, des hommes et des fem­ assiste régulièrement aux séances du mes, des ouvriers vivants et des veuves procès que des femmes intentent à la com­ des trépassés, de la mairie et de son archi­ pagnie qui embauchait leur défunt mari. viste, de la compagnie et de David Tho­ David Thomas est particulièrement im­ mas, en plus de briser le couple que David pressionné par la dignité de Lucienne et Elizabeth-Marie cherchaient à former. 330 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

En réalité, la maladie industrielle est au charge avec une requête d'autorisation coeur de la cité. Elle détermine des traits pour construire un nouvel entrepôt en physiques qui colorent le portrait de plein coeur de la ville. Le conseil de ville, groupe des ouvriers observés par David sensible au chantage de la compagnie de Thomas. Lors d'une assemblée syndicale quitter la région, tergiverse. Ce n'est pas convoquée pour annoncer le licenciement le cas d'un groupe de citoyens qui s'y d'une centaine d'ouvriers, notre observa­ opposent fermement; ils déposent une pé­ teur fut: tition à cet effet. Leur pétition rappelle «qu'on en avait assez de voir la ville gru­ ... frappé par l'étroite ressemblance de ces gée par la compagnie et on demandait à la hommes entre eux, chacun portant sous son municipalité d'interdire tout nouveau dé­ individualité les caractéristiques communes d'un même lieu de travail, d'une même usine, veloppement de l'usine en plein coeur de d'une même ville. Généralement petits et min­ la ville.» (119) ces, les gens de Vimy avaient le teint blafard, Un groupe de femmes qui appuient la les joues creuses et les yeux rougis de ceux qui pétition viennent déposer sur la table du vivent en présence continuelle de substances conseil une «boîte cartonnée, tapissée de toxiques et leur dos avait pris la courbure du feuilles multicolores et recouvertes de poste de travail qu'ils occupaient dans signatures.» (120) Cette boîte sert de sup­ l'organisation de la New Standard. (36) port à la maquette d'une conception alter­ C'est le lot de cette ville de compag­ native, dirait-on aujourd'hui, de Vimy nie. Une ville mono-industrielle qui vit au Jonction: rythme et à l'ombre de l'usine. Une usine Au sommet de la boîte, une maquette en papier qui impose à la ville et à ses habitants tant mâché représentait Vimy, ses rues, ses sa discipline et sa loi que sa pollution et maisons, ses écoles, son usine, mais son cadastre. En plus de dicter à Vimy redessinées selon le désir de ses habitants. On Jonction une toponymie anglophone qui y voyait un lac, des arbres, des fleurs et une cadre mal avec sa population ouvrière usine ravalant sa fumée au lieu de la rejeter francophone. (39) vers l'extérieur. On avait peint les maisons de Donc l'usine, avec ses cours à rebuts, toutes les couleurs et tracé des chemins dans les collines en papier qui, à l'image de Vimy, ses entrepôts ceinturés de fils barbelés et ceinturaient la maquette. Tel un voile de ses embranchements de voie ferrée, trône mariée, des rubans de crêpe multicolores au milieu de la ville. (39) Pour David portés par quatre femmes ornaient les quatre Thomas, c'est la même atmosphère, sor­ coins de la maquette. Le tout était dide mais familière, qui nappait la petite grossièrement agencé mais suffisamment ville de son enfance en Nouvelle- évocateur pour qu'on ne puise s'y tromper. Il Angleterre. Il sait bien que «la véritable s'agissait bien de Vimy Jonction, mais d'une osmose entre la population et la compag­ Vimy imaginée et transformée par ses nie» (21) que lui vantait le directeur habitants. (120) général de la compagnie, lors de sa pre­ Quoique cette épisode d'une manifes­ mière visite, n'existe pas. Ainsi Liliane, tation écologiste soit symboliquement in­ la femme de Faniel, n'aime pas du tout la téressante, on peut se demander si c'est petite maison à étage qu'ils habitent. Elle vraisemblable. N'importe, la forme ro­ déteste son environnement extérieur et sa manesque peut faire fi de la vraisem­ rue (67) et même son intérieur dénudé. blance historique. (43) Entre-temps, David Thomas poursuit Cette usine, garante des emplois, hy­ son enquête aux archives de la munici­ pothèque la vie des ouvriers et celle de la palité. Le traitement de ses données lui ville. C'est comme un cancer qui se font réaliser «qu'on mourrait jeune à généralise. Les citoyens mécontents n'ont Vimy, emporté prématurément par des jamais réussi à enrayer son étalement. La maladies dont on taisait la nature et le New Standard revient de nouveau à la nom.» (127) Le concierge va lui appren- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 331 die que les femmes, il y a plusieurs an­ ily roles. Instead of asking why most nées, avaient «pris d'assaut trois fois d'af­ 19th-century working women failed to filée les réunions du conseil municipal form enduring unions. Turbin asks a pour tenter d'empêcher l'expropriation de "new" question: "Under what conditions leurs maisons et la mise à sac de leur were some women able to form relatively quartier.» (129) D'ailleurs, lors de son successful and permanent unions ... and incursion dans les archives, il a découvert form strong alliances with male wor­ une brochure intitulée Vimy Jonction, une kers?" (77) To answer this question, she ville sacrifiée, qui corrobore cette infor­ turns to Troy's collar laundresses, who mation. En effet, l'un des chapitres décrit formed the first continuously organized les nombreux déménagements que les ag­ woman's trade union in the United States. randissements successifs de l'usine impo­ Describing their labour activism as "ex­ sent aux habitants. (131) ceptional but not unique," Turbin asserts Cette brochure lui a surtout révélé que convincingly that understanding how and des médecins avaient étudié et analysé why a minority of 19th-century women l'état de santé des habitants de Vimy unionized is as important as knowing why Jonction durant les années 1920 et 1930. the majority did not (208) Dès lors, David Thomas va consacrer Turbin's study is divided into two toutes ses énergies d'une part à la recher­ parts. Part One, on "Work, Family, Com­ che des résultats de ces enquêtes médi­ munity," traces Troy's emergence as col­ cales et d'autre part à la compréhension lar city and explores the diversity of collar des raisons pouvant expliquer le fait women's working lives. Turbin's skilled qu'ils n'avaient jamais été divulgués. analysis of manuscript census data on L'accident mortel survient juste au mo­ age, marital status, nativity, household ment où il retrouve la piste d'un médecin structure, and occupation paints a remark­ bostonnais qui faisait partie de l'enquête ably vivid and complex picture of Troy's médicale effectuée à Vimy Jonction dans collar women. It shows that Troy was a les années 1920. "good place to work," for working-class Les lecteurs de Labour/Le Travail women there had better employment op­ soucieux de connaître la conclusion du portunities and more economic security procès et les démarches de David Thomas than their counterparts in other cities. devront lire ses carnets. Quant à Burton Troy was a particularly good place for LeDoux, il faudra sans doute attendre un Irish immigrants, many of whom found éventuel Dictionnaire du mouvement employment as collar laundresses begin­ ouvrier avant qu'une biographie lui soit ning in the 1860s. Although physically consacrée. demanding, collar laundering was the most skilled branch of commercial laun­ dering, and it paid relatively high wages. Georges Massé By the 1880s, three-fourths of Troy's col­ Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières lar laundresses, and one-half of its se­ wers, were first- or second-generation Irish women. Carole Turbin, Working Women of Collar The second section, and the heart of City: Gender, Class, and Community in the book, analyzes women's "Ideology, Tory, 1864-86 (Urbana and Chicago: Consciousness, and Labor Activism" by University of Illinois Press 1992). comparing the collar strikes of 1869 and 1886. The Collar Laundry Union, formed CAROLE TURBIN's study of female collar in 1864, was the first woman's labour workers in Troy, New York takes aim at union. Led mostly by single Irish women those historians, mostly writing in the who supported themselves or other family 1970s, who attributed the lack of organiz­ members, the union developed close ties ation among women workers to their fam­ 332 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

to male unionists and, to a lesser extent, ent/independent and temporary/perma­ to middle-class women reformers. Collar nent tell us little about working women's laundresses remained active even after lives. For example, although most collar their union dissolved after the 1869 women were unmarried, they were not strike, and Turbin argues that their experi­ necessarily "dependent," since many sup­ ence and sense of solidarity shaped the ported other family members. Similarly, labour upheavals of the 1880s. In 1886, descriptions of women as "temporary" collar laundresses, along with sewers, and men as "permanent" workers over­ formed the 4,000-member Joan of Arc look variation in male and female em­ Assembly of the Knights of Labor and ployment patterns and minimize the inse­ went on strike again. The Joan of Arc curity of working-class life. Assembly was the largest of Troy's One of Turbin's most important con­ Knights locals and the largest assembly of tributions takes on another enduring — women Knights in the United States. though hardly unchallenged — opposi­ In comparing the Collar Laundry tion, public/private. Through her study, Union and Joan of Arc Assembly, Turbin Turbin shows how family and household seeks to explain what conditions made it experiences intersect with paid work. She possible for collar workers to build a rela­ questions scholars' tendency to classify tively strong union. First, she points out women as "unskilled" workers, pointing that Troy's unusual industrial structure out that expertise in collar laundering facilitated cooperation between male and depended in part on skills learned at female workers. Because Troy's two home. And she notes that family respon­ major industries (collar and iron) were sibilities, and the expectation of continu­ sex-segregated, women's employment ous employment, may have encouraged was not seen as a threat to men's jobs or some women to become union leaders. identity as providers, but as a contribution Despite her skilled use of quantitative to family economic stability. Irish work- analysis to highlight the variations in ingmen recognized that collar women working-class women's views. Turbin — made a significant contribution not only like historians of the 1970s — finds that to the economic survival of individual 19th-century gender ideology is fun­ families, but to the relative prosperity of damental to an understanding of working the city's entire Irish community. Wor­ women's lives and labour activism. The kers in both industries benefitted because ideology of the family wage, which held they could rely on the income of family that women and children should be econ­ members during strikes and hard times. omically dependent on male breadwin­ Turbin's study is not just an analysis ners, was "as relevant for understanding of women's labour activism; it is also a working women who did not live up to the call for "new conceptualizations" about ideal as it was for those who could fulfil gender and a critique of dichotomous nineteenth-century women's destiny." thinking. (13) Rejecting analytic frame­ (210) Turbin uses the collar laundresses' works that rely on oppositional ca­ probable opposition to woman suffrage, tegories, Turbin advances the common- and an 1869 speech by union leader Es­ sense notion that women's ethnic and re­ ther Keegan, to show the complexity of, ligious differences, as well as differences and inapplicability of binary oppositions in age and family status, shaped their to, working-class women's gender ideo­ views of themselves as women and thus logy. Remarking on the courage of her their relationship to the trade union and members, only two of whom had given up suffrage movements. A good deal of Tur­ after a six-week strike, Keegan said bin's challenge to past scholarship is set­ proudly, "I fancy but there are few men's ting up a straw man, but she is right to organizations that can show such a rec­ point out that oppositions such as depend­ ord, and we are nothing but women." (71) REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 333

Equal or evea superior to men as union­ columns, "exchanges" from other reform ists, collar laundresses remained inferior papers and letters to the editor, Wisconsin as women. women articulated and refined their Working Women of Collar City is a critique of late 19th-century American thoroughly researched and insightful rec­ society. onstruction of 19th-century working In Wisconsin as elsewhere, tem­ women's lives and labour activism. In its perance catalyzed female activism, point­ critique of binary oppositions and atten­ ing it in the direction of suffrage. tion to diversity, it reflects the state of McBride draws attention to the surprising American labour history in the 1990s. number of temperance activists who had experience as journalists, including both Molly Ladd-Taylor Annie Wittenmyer and Frances Willard, York University the first two presidents of the WCTU. The familiarity of these female journalists with the mechanics and potential of print contributed significantly to the growth of Genevieve G. McBride, On Wisconsin the temperance movement. In addition, Women: Working for Their Rights from although McBride mistakenly attributes Settlement to Suffrage (Madison: Univer­ the slogan "the Home Protection Ballot" sity of Wisconsin Press 1993). to Frances Willard (Canadian temperance activist Letitia Youmans coined the motto WISCONSIN is a paradox. The cradle of which Willard later adopted), she wisely Progressivism remained determinedly re­ points out something that is all too often calcitrant on the issue of woman suffrage, overlooked in the relationship between yet was the very first to ratify the Nine­ temperance and women suffrage. Suf­ teenth Amendment to the American Con­ frage had as much potential to alienate stitution. Genevieve McBride's case women from temperance activism as it study of why and, in particular how, did to convert temperance supporters into woman suffragists in Wisconsin obtained suffragists. Women who argued that their the vote, explores this paradox and plots apolitical status and altruistic natures jus­ the emergence of female activism in Wis­ tified their temperance activities often be­ consin from its origins in antebellum re­ lieved that the whole rationale for their form movements, through temperance public campaign would be lost if the self- and the club movement to woman suf­ sacrificing work of temperance were frage and beyond into the 1920s. yoked to the self-serving interests of McBride, assistant professor of mass woman suffrage. communication at the University of Wis­ consin at Milwaukee, and an experienced The argument of woman suffragists journalist, effectively examines female and their Progressive allies in Wisconsin activists' use of the press to spread their and elsewhere was predicated on expedi­ message and foster public support. She ence. In order to accomplish goals such as argues that through their activities in tem­ prohibition, women needed the vote. In perance, the club movement, and woman her conclusion, McBride asserts that the suffrage, women skilfully and innovative- philosophical basis of suffrage advocacy ly moulded public opinion. Noting the in Wisconsin did not matter nearly so antebellum origins of female journalism much as the fact that suffrage was event­ in a number of reform-oriented news­ ually achieved. However, the argument papers, McBride observes that beginning from expediency that fuelled temperance, with temperance papers, women editors was inherently linked to the elitist and at and contributors created an effective net­ times racist aspects of Wisconsin's suf­ work for the dissemination of women's frage campaign. McBride acknowledges analysis of social problems. In women's and regrets these tendencies, but her ana- 334 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

lysis fails to disclose that expedience is perance activism. Temperance was to be the inevitable corollary of maternal fem­ enacted to end women's suffering, not to inist rationales for woman suffrage. Argu­ emancipate them. The emotional appeals ments that the votes of women can accom­ of the temperance campaign left the plish a given goal are predicated on essen­ underlying assumptions and motives of tial! st views of women and marginalize women reformers unexamined, masking non-conforming women. The elitism of problematic issues of racism, elitism and woman suffragists was not an accident. religious and ethnic biases as well. Thus The question of expediency has be­ calls for an educated suffrage, the exclu­ deviled the quest for women's rights. In sion of Black clubwomen or the overt the 19th century, women were often de­ racism of Olympia Brown which clearly nied their rights on the grounds of expedi­ embarrass McBridc, were not regrettable ency. In 1840, the radicalism of "the accidents of the suffrage campaign, but woman question" threatened antislavery are absolutely rooted in the philosophical politics and so abolitionist politicians jet­ ground of maternal feminism. tisoned their interest in women's rights. McBride's decision not to extend, for Similarly, contrary to McBride's asser­ the most part, her analysis beyond the tion, the demise of the American Equal activities of white middle-class Ameri­ Rights Association in 1869 resulted not can-bom women subtly underscores this from a failure to organize, but was a con­ problem. Despite the presence of an un­ sequence of a resort to arguments based usually large number of women in Wis­ on expediency. In 1869, former abolition­ consin's labour force, many of them ists in the Republican Party abandoned foreign-born, we learn little of the rights their interest in woman's rights and in for which they contended or the means by rights-based arguments for Black suf­ which they chose to advance their frage in favour of expediency as women struggle. There is scant mention of the were told they should stand aside because admittedly small number of African African Americans needed the vote to American women and no mention of the protect themselves in the post-Civil War conditions or aspirations of Wisconsin's South. Less audibly, but more influen- Native American women, but numbers tially. Republicans acknowledged that are not the point. The elitist underpin­ their party needed African American nings of the suffrage agenda existed irre­ votes in the South if it was to retain the spective of numbers. On Wisconsin Presidency and advance its policies for Women tell us about the winners, rather Reconstruction. Once the Republicans than the actors in the struggle for had sufficient strength elsewhere and no women's rights in Wisconsin. longer needed Black votes, they aban­ doned their efforts to safeguard the fran­ chise for African Americans. Margaret M.R. Kellow University of Western Ontario For tactical and philosophical reasons temperance women concentrated on es­ tablishing their need for the vote. The logic of temperance was inherently anti­ Richard Schneirov, Pride and Solidarity: thetical to rights-based arguments. By the A History of the Plumbers and Pipefitters 1870s, if not before, its goal was to of Columbus, Ohio, 1889-1989 (Ithaca: remove by means of prohibitory legisla­ ILR Press 1993). tion, individual choice where alcohol consumption was concerned. Therefore it PRIDE AND SOLIDARITY'S first audience was virtually impossible to develop a is the members of Local 189 of the United rights-based and therefore an inclusive Association of Journeymen and Appren­ rationale for woman suffrage from tem­ tices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 335

(UA), the organization that commissioned tractors accepted collective bargaining as and assisted in the preparation of the vol­ both inevitable and good. As Schneirov ume. However, labour scholars, members documents for the Columbus scene, the of a secondary audience, will also find "contractors and the building trades much of value in this work, for while the unions have established a tradition of book lacks some academic paraphernalia nonadversarial conflict within a climate like footnotes, it is nonetheless informed of cooperation." (6, 8) by the concerns and conceptualizations Schneirov successfully traces these being bandied around the academy. And themes as they interact from the first so it should since Richard Schneirov of founding of a union among Columbus Indiana State University is an accom­ journeymen plumbers in 1889 as a result plished practitioner of labour history who of the widespread agitation for the eight- has written extensively on the Knights of hour day. Another reason that Pride and Labor and other topics, including another Solidarity is of academic value is that book on a building trades local, the Chi­ there are few histories of the building cago carpenters. trades (scholars being generally preoccu­ One virtue of Schneirov's narrative is pied with factory settings and industrial its skilful development of the parallel unions), fewer still focusing at the local themes of craft pride and union solidarity. level, and none involving a medium-size "These two identities are balanced and city. In actuality it should be noted that intertwined in the experiences and roles, today Local 189's jurisdiction ranges past and present, of all craft unionists and, across a multi-county area in central in particular, of the members of Local 189 Ohio. While in broad strokes the history ... ," Schneirov writes. "But there is a of 189 parallels the history of New York, constant tug and sometimes an outright Chicago and other big city locals in the conflict between the two identities." (3) UA — as they all respond to the forces of The pride derived from mastering skilled technological change, urbanization, econ­ work, combined with the structure of the omic cycles, public sector growth, and construction industry, produces a high affirmative action — the local environ­ level of collaboration between journey­ ment gave Local 189's past unique twists. man and contractors. "Instead of the top- Periods of intense militancy in the 1890s down, hierarchical relationships charac­ and again in the 1970s and 1980s, have teristic of work administered through been offset by a period of conservatism large bureaucracies and so productive of and stability from 1900 to the 1930s, and impersonality and adversarialism," an era of growth, prosperity, and collabor­ Schneirov observes, "construction work ation from World War II until the late tends to breed an ethnic of cooperation 1960s. And while the union has been among individuals based on mutual re­ sharply affected by the economic and con­ spect for craft knowledge, skill and inge­ struction history of Columbus, it has been nuity." Yet, "despite the common bonds less influenced by the broader labour and with employers, most journeymen recog­ social history of the city. For most of its nize that the wage bargain... is inherently history UA Local 189 has been very se­ unequal." To have some control over the cure and insular, with its membership vicissitudes of the labour market and the mainly recruited along family lines and standards of work, journeymen plumbers with the union hall serving for many came together in union solidarity — a plumbers and pipefitters as the centre of solidarity that had significant social as their social life. Consequently, the local well as economic dimensions. The organ­ mixed only occasionally and lukewarmly ization they formed made such a positive with the broader Columbus labour move­ contribution to stabilizing practices on ment or even with the other building the job site that until the 1970s most con­ trades in the city. During the late 1930s, 336 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

for instance, as the city's labour move­ prosperity. Encourage business to pursue ment was fighting the battle over craft profit without restriction, they argue, and versus industrial unionism. Local 189 good jobs are bound to follow. In the stayed removed from the contest, belong­ process, old social relations which keep ing neither to the city body or the associ­ the poor in their place are supposed to be ation of building trades. Only since the swept away. Proof of this proposition lies 1970s, as Local 189 finds itself losing in the Sunbelt South, which in the 1970s jobs to non-union workers tied to the As­ shattered the image of a racist, socially sociated Builders and Contractors (ABC), backward region. Even Blacks, it was no­ do militancy and a search for allies in the ticed, were abandoning the depressed wider labour community become the crime-ridden North to seize the oppor­ dominant motifs for the local. tunities of the New South. Those who find Readers will find places in Pride and the supply-side argument compelling Solidarity where they will wish the may be disabused by James C. Cobb's Schneirov had said more, like the cursory The Selling of the South. treatment — 12 pages — covering "Two In pursuing the "selling of the South," World Wars and the Great Depression." Cobb ransacks the archives of a host of But such gaps generally derive from a state government and local community lack of sources, for as a commissioned organizations set up to attract business to study, the author was not free to pick the the region. The "selling" originally in­ local with the best surviving records. volved subsidies raised from bonds issued Schneirov has, however, successfully off­ by particular cities for factory building. set these shortcomings with a set of en­ Later, development agencies in Southern gaging interviews with various current states offered low-interest loans, relief union members, the main thrust of which from state taxation, improved infrastruc­ is to emphasize the growing diversity ture, and the use of schools for worker within the organization as a result of af­ training. firmative action policies. In addition, Southern leaders offered Pride and Solidarity will provide the what we might call "negative induce­ membership of Local 189 with a respect ments" to bring manufacturing to the for the local's past and a grave concern South. One was freedom from anti-pollu­ for its future as non-union contractors tion restrictions, which became more im­ make deeper inroads into its jurisdiction. portant as the environmental lobby grew Scholars reading the volume will gain in­ in the United States. More important, sights into the historical problems, ac­ however, Southern leaders went out of tions, and attitudes of a group of men, and their way to stress the appeal of low now several women, not extensively wages and a docile work force. Not sur­ studied. prisingly, Southern politicians were among the chief advocates of the Taft- Warren Van Tine Hartley Act in 1947, which put the brakes on the union rights gained under the Wag­ Ohio State University ner Act of 193S. But Cobb also shows how the South could generate a climate inhospitable to unions whatever the letter James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: of the law. Local leaders including cler­ The Southern Crusade for Industrial De­ gymen cooperated in keeping out "labour velopment, 1936-1990, 2nd edition (Ur- agitators" who were labelled "Yankees" bana and Chicago: University of Illinois and "Communists." The notorious suc­ Press 1993). cess of the J.P. Stevens Company of South Carolina in thwarting the right of SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMISTS contend that employees to form a union during the free-enterprise capitalism leads to general REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 337

1970s showed how far anti-unionism became a lovable buffoon in the form of could be taken. A local university even Billy Carter, the brother of the President offered a seminar for business executives On the other hand, behind all the glitter, based on the company's tactics. there were serious problems. Industrial Cobb is also interested in the "buying development on the basis of cheap labour of the South." Using a vast array of con­ had perpetuated poor conditions and low temporary surveys that tried to establish purchasing power. In the final analysis why business moved South, he attempts Southern states remained at the bottom of to determine the success of the selling the standard of living index of the United campaign. One reason often given by mi­ States. Instances of real progress like the grating businesses was the proximity of better schools and higher education in the Southern locations to their markets, North Carolina "triangle" attracted out­ something that Southern leaden ignored siders into the region but did little for in their sales pitch. Although Cobb finds natives. Ironically, smaller local firms that many of the conclusions to be drawn provided more jobs for ordinary people from the data are anything but clear, he is than the big firms that Southern leaders nevertheless convinced that the prospect made it their business to attract Yet the of cheap, union-free labour was the stron­ poor paid for the whole selling of the gest attraction. South since subsidies were drawn from The study of the South's industrial regressive taxes like the sales tax. The development since World War II makes decade that has passed since the first edi­ Cobb reflect on the continuity of Southern tion of the book brings even worse news. history, and this forms a secondary theme By attracting industries that relied on low in his book. Cobb puts himself in the same wages, the South fell prey to third world school as historians like Jonathon M. countries that could offer even less. Wiener and Dwight B. Billings who see Such then is Cobb's morality tale. But the original "New South" — the one that will supply-side economists be con­ followed the Civil War — as engineered vinced? Even while admitting that South­ by the old planter class and aimed at pres­ ern development had its drawbacks, they erving the social status quo. Admittedly might be justified in asking what the situ­ there are many differences in the later ation would have been if the selling of the period, but Cobb concludes that "reduced South had not taken place. Although stat­ to its essentials the so-called good busi­ istics abound in the book, there is no con­ ness climate of which southern politicians sistent examination of jobs created or of remained so protective in the 1990s still wage scales that might throw light on the bore a striking resemblance to the planter- subject. At times, Cobb seems cautious industrialist policy rapprochement of the about bis argument. He admits that "there 1880s." is no evidence that the Southern economy To speak more generally about would have grown more rapidly had the Cobb's work, the book has the charac­ south not received concessions and tax teristics of a morality tale. On the one exemptions." He also points out that wor­ hand, the South seemed to enjoy great kers as well as employers expressed hos­ success in the boom of the 1970s through tility to unions, and that other regions the efforts of its leaders. Cobb's most besides the South suffer in the world readable (and funniest) chapter is a survey economy. Still, it is difficult to read this of all the journalistic ballyhoo about the book without wondering whether the Sunbelt. The image of the south had South paid too high a price for its devel­ changed completely from the murderous opment. habitat of the Civil Rights' era. TV serials like The Waltoru gave a sympathetic ren­ W.M. Dick dering, and even the Southern redneck University of Toronto 338 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Gary M. Fink, The Fulton Bag and Cotton industry, in which profit margins Mills Strike of 1914-1915: Espionage, depended upon low labour costs, condi­ Labor Conflict, and the New South Indus­ tioned management's unyielding opposi­ trial Relations (Ithaca: ILR Press 1993). tion to defeat the strike. Ironically, Fink's story begins with GARY M. FINK's book is a crisp account General Sherman's march across Geor­ of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills strike gia. Among his soldiers was Jacob Elsas, that occurred in Atlanta, Georgia in 1914. a Jewish immigrant, who saw a business The strike was significant because it was opportunity in the war's devastation. an early effort by labour to organize the Upon his discharge from the army he op­ South in order to protect northern wage ened a dry goods store in Cartersville, rates and prevent runaway shops. Labour Georgia, and then a paper and cloth bag hoped the Fulton Bag strike would repli­ factory in nearby Atlanta. The Atlanta site cate General Sherman's victory at the soon expanded into a fully integrated fac­ Battle of Atlanta. The union would march tory that employed over 1,200 workers fresh from its victory in Atlanta to or­ and Fulton Bag approached becoming a ganize the rest of southern textiles, like Fortune 500 company. Sherman marched to the sea. The oppor­ In 1913, loom fixers and weavers tunity for labour to establish a beachhead struck over the firing of a popular fore­ in the South at Fulton Bag appeared man. This brought suppressed grievances brighter than at rural mill villages. First, to the surface. Workers at Fulton Bag grievances among workers ran deep. Con­ were subject to fines and deductions for ditions at Fulton Bag were so bad that it breaking a more elaborate set of work- was considered the employer of last resort rules than at any other mill in Georgia. In by mill workers. Second, the company's addition, their employment contract, efforts at paternalism were so pathetic which required workers to forfeit a that instead of creating loyalty to the com­ week's wages if they failed to give suffi­ pany, they only increased the workers' cient notice of quitting, was unique in the sense of injury. The fact that the mill industry. The militancy of the workers, owners were Jewish and the workers Prot­ the size of the mills and their location in estant, and that the strike followed on the booming Atlanta caught the attention of heels of the Leo Frank case in Atlanta, AFL and UTWA officials anxious to begin only added to the distance that separated an organizing drive in the South. workers and employers. Third, workers At this point, Fink's book becomes could depend upon community support of noteworthy. He reconstructs the strike their demands. Atlanta was a union town mainly through the eyes of labour spies where one-fifth of its white workers and hired by the company. Their reports offer one-half of its registered voters were a revealing and fascinating account of the union members. Employer hegemony did strike's progress, the union's strategy, not extend as far in cosmopolitan Atlanta and the agents' plans to disrupt it. Labour as it did in rural, isolated mill villages. spies passed on transcripts of union meet­ The police remained neutral throughout ings and conversations among strike the conflict, social gospel ministers in leaders to the mill owners. At one point, Atlanta defended the righteousness of the a labour spy became so involved in an strikers' cause, and the Atlanta Feder­ internal struggle for strike leadership that ation of Labor, the AFL and the United he lost sight of his employer's interest and Textile Workers of America (UTWA) pro­ allied with the faction that his own reports vided generous financial support. Despite indicated posed the greater threat! Fink these advantages the strike ended in de­ uses these reports judiciously. While he feat, just as subsequent battles in southern relies upon them to drive the narrative he textiles would fail. The economics of the is never so seduced by them to give es- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 339 pionage much explanatory weight in why decades are the labor and civil rights the strike failed. movements," King declared. "Our com­ Fulton Bag is not only enhanced by bined strength is potentially enormous." the unusual source material Fink draws King's was a plaintive plea, for while upon, but by the photographic record that he was encouraged — at times — by or­ accompanies the text. The strike was one ganized labour's contribution to the civil of the first in which organizers conscious­ rights movement, he was often disap­ ly used the camera as a weapon in a labour pointed. A durable civil rights-labour struggle. Organizers appreciated the emo­ coalition never quite materialized during tive power of the image and took pictures the heyday of the black freedom struggle, of workers being evicted from their and King frequently noted that labour was homes, of emaciated mill children the no longer the fresh, progressive force that company exploited, and of the privations it had been during the 1930s. the strikers endured. These pictures, Alan Draper's new book supports this many of which are reproduced in the last assessment; yet it largely offers a book, were circulated outside of Atlanta revisionist portrait of the connection be­ to raise awareness of the strike and to tween organized labour and the civil generate support for it. rights movement in the South. While it Fink's book is a graphic, engrossing does not deny the shortcomings of labour portrait of the Fulton Bag strike. Al­ in advancing racial justice, it highlights though the topic appears limited in its the constraints and limits that unions in potential. Fink draws rich analytic con­ the South faced on this issue. It counters clusions form it regarding the overwhelm­ the critical tone of scholars (and activists) ing obstacles unions faced in the South. like Herbert Hill who stress the "great Such conclusions are especially welcome opportunity" that the AFL-CIO missed "to today when other historians conjure up make a new beginning in the South" with "lost opportunities" for unions in the a ringing endorsement of the civil rights South and place the burden of defeat on movement. (3) unions instead of on the obstacles they In particular. Draper takes aim at had to overcome there. Fink's book dis­ what he calls the "new southern labour plays clearly that whatever strategic mis­ history" which argues that had trade takes unions made, the greatest obstacle unions employed different strategies they was employer intransigence, which was might have boosted black rights as well as fostered by the kind of market in which working-class organization. As Michael they competed and by their belief in the K. Honey, whom Draper cites as a leading sanctity of private property. practitioner of the new school, has recent­ ly noted in Souther Labor and Black Civil Alan Draper Rights (1993), "Mobilization of the kinds St. Lawrence University of working-class radicalism that existed in the South required a greater degree of confidence in the workers and a broader vision of change than most white CIO Alan Draper, Conflict of Interests: Or­ leaders possessed." ganized Labor and the Civil Rights Move­ Draper contends that union organi­ ment in the South, 1954-1968 (Ithaca: ILR zers and leaders faced "a membership and Press 1994). region that were determined to defend" segregation. (14) This was the fundamen­ ONE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.'s tal reality. There were two competing vi­ persistent pleas was for a close alliance sions held by southern white labour (and between civil rights and labour forces. Draper focuses on white, not black, la­ The two most dynamic movements that bourites) toward the civil rights move- reshaped the nation during the past three 340 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL ment. These competing visions," Draper rights movement." (7) The term "relation­ writes, "of the interests of white workers, ship" is inherently fuzzy and, thus, raises one articulated by the union political expectations that Conflict of Interests leaders, the other by its rank and file, one does not fully meet. desperate to create a class-based party Draper, for example, focuses on la­ system that included blacks, the other bour's responses to the Voting Rights Act determined to preserve a caste-based of 1965, but oddly he says little about party system that excluded them, created those pivotal moments of the civil rights an explosive tension within the southern movement which helped spur national labor movement" (15-6) legislation. There is no mention, for in­ Draper explores that tension in this stance, of the Birmingham campaign short book, with an accent on the advan­ spearheaded by Martin Luther King and ces for black rights, however slight and the Southern Christian Leadership Con­ halting. He shows that although or­ ference in 1963. Nor is there any discus­ ganized labour did not endorse integrated sion of labour's contribution to the Selma public schools in the aftermath of the campaign in 1965 that nurtured the Vot­ Brown decision, its response to the Su­ ing Rights Act. Certainly, labour's re­ preme Court ruling "was no worse" than sponse to these climactic episodes that that of "southern religious and business precipitated national crises must be con­ leaders at their best." (38) In another re­ sidered an important part of Draper's vealing chapter, he traces how southern story. Nor does Draper say much about unions sought to educate their member­ how organized labour responded to the ship on racial justice and how they dese­ evolution of the black freedom struggle, gregated — albeit slowly — their own particularly when militants began to en­ conventions. But most of Conflict of In­ dorse a Black Power stance. In an illumi­ terests is devoted to examining the politi­ nating chapter on Claude Ramsay, the cal strategy waged, particularly by AFL- president of the Mississippi AFL-CIO CIO state councils, to forge a labour-black from 1959 to 1985, we do not learn, for coalition which would ensure a southern instance, how Ramsay reacted to the con­ wing to the Democratic party that would troversial Meredith March in 1966. Fi­ endorse, not obstruct, progressive initia­ nally, Draper neglects Martin Luther tives. King's effort — his last public act — to Souther politics are no longer held connect labour and civil rights issues in hostage to white supremacy and, as Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. Draper suggests, the groundwork laid by Draper might also have profited by organized labour in the late 1950s and setting his story of the 1950s and 1960s 1960s (especially after 1965) has yielded more firmly against the backdrop of the political benefits. By stressing labour's heady days of the expansion of industrial quest for political realignment. Draper unionism in the 1930s and 1940s when opens an intriguing line of analysis. Still, interracial cooperation seemed more one wishes that Draper had widened fur­ possible. To what extent, it is important ther the focus on his study. In many ways, to ask, was this vision reappropriated by this book is episodic and selective, rather union veterans in the 1960s? Draper, too, than comprehensive. To be sure, at the could have followed his own lead in his outset Draper delimits his field of inquiry. chapter on Claude Ramsay by bringing This is not a book about black trade even more personalities to life. unionists, he notes. Nor is it a book about These criticisms should not minimize the records of AFL-CIO affiliates in the the contribution of this study. Draper has South to eliminate discriminatory prac­ composed a readable and valuable book tices within their own ranks. Rather, it which admirably does not lump the South stresses "labor's relationship to the civil into one category but rather accents the REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 341 diversity within the region and which is communists in the Mississippi Delta and based on an impressive range of archival Tera Hunter's work on domestic servants research. Conflict of Interests advances in Atlanta emphasize the hidden history our understanding of southern labour and of the unorganized, everyday conflict civil rights and should serve as a spring­ waged by African-Americans in the 20th board for further investigation into this century South, Korstad's dissertation and important — and until now, largely ne­ Earl Lewis' recent book on Norfolk's glected — subject black community focus on efforts to or­ ganize openly and bargain for change. James R. Ralph, Jr. Michael Honey's marvellous new work Middlebury College on the history of civil rights and industrial unionism in Memphis is the latest con­ tribution to this exciting new subfield of southern historiography. Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Honey's study, which is based on his Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis dissertation, grew out of his experience as Workers (Urbana and Chicago: Univer­ a community and civil liberties organizer sity of Illinois Press 1993). in Memphis in the early 1970s, not long after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was as­ THE PERIOD of southern history from the sassinated there while lending support to end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights striking sanitation workers. This back­ movement of the post-World War U era ground is reflected in Honey's obvious has long seemed a dark age in American passion for his subject. Without seeming historiography. By design or neglect overly romantic, he champions those many historians have led us to believe that Memphis working people who stood up to most black southerners were resigned to the segregationist South and fought for the hardships and indignities of life under industrial unionism in an earlier era Jim Crow. Historians have devoted con­ "when organizing a union was worth the siderable attention to out-migration (both price of one's life." (6-7, 10) His book to Kansas in the 1870s and to northern seeks to provide the missing link between cities during the two World Wars), but in the black freedom movement of the 1950s doing so they have inadvertently given and 1960s and the biracial industrial the impression that those with any fight unionism of the 1930s and 1940s. left in them simply abandoned the South. Honey chose Memphis for less per­ Among those who remained behind, the sonal reasons as well. It was a bastion of more well-to-do African Americans who southern slavery, the centre of post-Civil joined anti-lynching societies or lead the War commerce and industry in the Delta, NAACP have been identified as cham­ and, consequently, an arena of struggle pions of social change, while working- over the meaning of freedom. For much class African Americans appear in the of the 20th century, it was the stronghold pages of southern historiography as of one of the nation's "toughest" political passive victims of debt peonage, lynch bosses, Edward H. Crump. Yet, despite mobs, and desperate poverty. Crumps' iron grip on political life, the In recent years, several southern police, employers, and conservative black studies have shed new light on the South' s leaders, Memphis also saw one of the dark age. Led by Nell Painter's biography most successful CIO efforts in the South of Hosea Hudson and Robert Korstad's in the 1940s. history of Durham tobacco workers, these Honey first provides background on new histories have emphasized both open the Jim Crow economy, demonstrating and underground resistance to low wages, quite clearly that, far from resisting the terrible working conditions, and segrega­ racial division of labour, white workers tion. While Robin Kelley's study of black 342 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

used it to their advantage. By the end of For Honey, it was black workers who World War I, Memphis' skilled workers built the foundation of Memphis' CIO, were among the most organized and high­ and as they did so, "they also began to ly paid workers in the South, but their break the bonds of Jim Crow." The CIO's achievements rested on the exclusion of success required that white workers or­ black workers from skilled jobs and AFL ganize alongside black workers and mod­ unions. This segregated labour market ify their behaviour, if not their racist atti­ paid obvious dividends to white craftwor- tudes. White and black workers struck kers, but. Honey shows, its economic together to increase their bargaining benefits to white unskilled industrial wor­ power, but they continued to struggle kers in general were mixed. The racial among themselves over the meaning of fragmentation of the labour force and the unionism as a social movement, "with repressive social climate maintained by blacks wanting to use the union to batter Crump gave employers the power to hire down segregation and many whites want­ unskilled white workers at the same low ing to use it to keep segregation in place." wages paid to black workers. It exempted (201) If the CIO took greater action in them from the dirty, heavy, and menial combating workplace discrimination, it tasks reserved for African-Americans, but risked alienating white workers who it also kept them from allying with black benefited from their higher wages and workers in a collective effort to improve better positions within Memphis' plants. their condition. Until white workers were Ultimately, Honey shows, the CIO ready to abandon the privileges of race, made real gains for workers black and Honey argues, no industrial union move­ white but fell short of challenging the ment could succeed. fundamentals of the Jim Crow system. Indeed, the success of the CIO, Honey This was its undoing. Employers and pol­ shows, depended on how far it would go iticians used racism and anti-communism to convince white workers to give up their interchangeably to beat down union orga­ privileged position. Textile, auto, dock, nizing and demands for social change. and riverboat unions won their fights Internally divided on issues of race, the when white and black workers, in CIO could not meet the challenges of the Honey's words, coordinated picketing, post-war era. In the face of race riots and held joint meetings, and warmed their the red scare, its more conservative hands by the same fires. He lays to rest leaders sought to make themselves more any notion that black workers were hos­ acceptable to business leaders by purging tile to unionism or had any predilection the movement's strong black-led locals. for strike-breaking. On the contrary, they In doing so, Honey argues, the CIO cut out were the first to join and the last to aban­ its own heart. Memphis' black trade don the CIO, and the most ready to risk unionists continued to fight Jim Crow — body and soul in strikes. This lead to an joining with teachers, deacons, and stu­ inversion of the CIO's established strate­ dents in the civil rights movement of the gy. When the UAW tried to apply the next two decades — but they did so on northern model of CIO organizing to their own, with only a handful of stalwart Memphis' Ford plant, organizing the core white radicals at their sides. of an industry first, and expecting the rest This is an impressively researched to come along, they ran up against hostile and readable book. Honey's sparkling white workers. In contrast, by organizing prose ranges easily from demographic widely among the city's poorest black data to fist fights between organizers and river workers, UCAPAWA was able to shut corporate thugs. The book is ideal for down the shipping industry and win over classes at the graduate or undergraduate white workers in the process. level, and it should be a starting point for REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 343

anyone interested in labour, African- previous published work is in working- American, and southern history. class leisure and struggles for shorter work hours. Cross is interested in intellec­ Cindy Hahamovitch tuals, trade unionists, and managers, and College of William and Mary progressive movements for democratic leisure. Time and Money examines the transformations in the "male" worlds of paid labour and leisure, in time and Gary Cross, Time and Money: The Mak­ money, that were occasioned by, and con­ ing of Consumer Culture (London: Rout- tributed to, the coming of consumer so­ ledge 1993). ciety. Intellectuals, in particular, come in EVER SINCE the prosperous 1920s, ex­ for a good deal of heavy fire from Cross perts have forecast a declining work week for their profound ambivalence about the and a new era of leisure for all. But while prospect of working men enjoying time many people have experienced greater ac­ free from labour. Not only did increased cess to goods, the dream of freely-chosen working-class leisure appear to erode the leisure (as opposed to under- and unem­ work ethic, but it also threatened to ployment) has proved elusive. The thesis weaken "cultural sundards by potentially of Time and Money, a synthesis of work giving the 'masses' time and access to in the fields of labour, leisure, and con­ cultural goods." In the end, anxieties sumption, is that the triumph of con­ about the work ethic were effectively ban­ sumerism in the 20th century was ished with the realization that, while the obtained through the defeat of "the move­ minimum physical needs of human beings ments for the progressive reduction of might be met through mass productivity, worktime and democratic leisure as legit­ there was no brake on psychological imate fruits of productivity." needs and consumer desire. With higher Like much work on consumption, wages, the argument went, workers would Time and Money is very much informed willingly chain themselves to longer by a political and ethical critique: Cross hours in exchange for alluring consumer wants to foster a renewed sense of the goods. Cultural standards, by contrast, politics of time and money and widen the were not so easily rescued. The desire to possibilities for collective action by dem­ save high culture from the encroachments onstrating that the ascendancy of con­ of mass, commercialized culture led sumerism was not inevitable, but rather "a chiefly to increased pessimism, isolation, choice made within complex cultural, and elitism and to a hardening of the lines political, and social contexts." To that between intellectual and popular culture. end, he marshals evidence from three na­ tional contexts (Britain, France and the The closing of cultural and ideologi­ United States) to explore two critical his­ cal options to the market was accompa­ torical junctures: the interwar years (the nied by the loss of political and economic book's real focus) and (briefly) the post- alternatives. In the immediate aftermath 1945 period, when the promises of con­ of World War I, workers in a number of sumerism seemed on the point of realiz­ national contexts succeeded in winning ation for the majority of people. the eight-hour day despite the resistance of employers. But increased global com­ In most recent histories of 20th-cen­ petition, job insecurity, the coming of the tury mass consumption, the role of merc­ Depression, and the weakening of trade handisers, retailers, advertisers, and the union movements meant that the victories mass market magazines is given pride of of 1919 were soon eroded. With defeat place, as is the construction of woman-as- came a transformation in the very defini­ consumer. Cross' cast of characters is tion of time and leisure. The dream of a rather different. A labour historian whose 344 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL six-hour work day gave way to packaged gressive leisure movements ignored at occasions for consumption in the form of their cost. There is no attempt to show the weekend and the annual vacation. how such notions are constructed within The weakness of interwar progressive a given context His account of domestic movements for democratic leisure further spending is similarly limited. While he narrowed the political space for re-think­ cites her work. Cross does not discuss ing the relationship between time and Dolores Hayden's argument in The Grand money. Cross attributes the failure of Domestic Revolution that we need to un­ such movements to an inability to under­ derstand the rise of consumerism in the stand, much less counter, the real popular 1920s within the context of the defeat appeal of consumer pleasures. For the after World War I of feminist visions of millions of unemployed during the De­ Utopian housing and collective house­ pression, Utopian visions of free time had keeping. little allure; instead, in the midst of scarc­ Indeed, a major weakness of Time and ity and the weakening of social solidarity, Money is the lack of attention to women's "the psychological need for consumer experience. While Cross does admit that goods grew in intensity." he provides no systematic analysis of the Exactly why this should be the case is gendered construction of time and money, the focus of the book's penultimate chap­ ne does not consider the ways this might ter. "It was not," argues Cross, "simply seriously weaken his overall argument. the culmination of the anti-democratic No doubt anticipating feminist critiques, biases of the intelligentsia, the political Cross states in the introductory chapter power of capital, or the social and cultural that his focus is the male worker's dilem­ subordination of workers." Rejecting the­ mas of time and money. He argues that it ories of mass consumerism which assume was "the waged worker who has been both consumer passivity and "that social directly affected by increased productiv­ life constructed around goods is somehow ity and the politics of its distribution." inferior," Cross uses the examples of do­ And since waged work in the interwar mestic spending and the vacation to ana­ period was "a lifelong experience primar­ lyze the "positive" meanings of consump­ ily of male providers," the male worker is tion and goods for working-class people, at the centre of Time and Money. and to elucidate the specifics of popular Yet, while women's paid labour force choices with respect to time and money. participation was lower than men's dur­ While in many ways the most interes­ ing this era, that does not mean that it is ting chapter. Cross' analysis is frequently of no consequence for the issues under unconvincing; he assumes what he really discussion in Cross' work. In her ground­ ought to explain, or at least open to ques­ breaking book, Women Assemble, Miriam tion. About vacations, for example, he Glucksmann shows how it was women writes, "The quest was not for the intel­ workers who were drawn into the new lectual's dream of social interaction in consumer goods industries (food and high-minded discussion groups or didac­ electrical goods) of interwar Britain, just tic holiday tours; rather, people strove for as it was women who were primarily re­ a society of consumer symbols, where sponsible for domestic consumption. In their individuality was projected on to the US context, Alice Kessler-Harris has goods. Indeed, consumer items probably argued that new categories of work for provided a valued balance between social women, together with an increase in real identity, on the one hand, and individual wages, "contributed to the advent of the freedom from social intrusion, on the consumer society ... New definitions of other." Cross writes as if there is a self- wants attracted new groups of women to evident, pre-existing need for individ­ the work force and suggested new ration­ uality and privacy that somehow pro­ ales for staying there." And without the REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 345

contribution of women's wages to the the George A. Hormel Company — household budget, many of the new con­ whose most famous produce was the sumer items available in the 1920s could World War II creation of canned spiced not have been purchased. ham, or Spam — announced a 23 per cent Cross's discussion of leisure also fo­ wage and benefits cut for the workers in cuses exclusively on the male worker, its seven plants in the American hear­ this, he argues, simply reflects the inter- tland. Of these workers, it was the 1,500 war debates. Yet feminist social histo­ members of the P-9 local of the United rians such as Kathy Peiss and Victoria de Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Grazia have shown both the importance in Austin, Minnesota (a town of 25,000), of commercialized pastimes such as the who challenged the contract. By the sum­ cinema and popular magazines in the mer of 1986, they had lost their battle, but lives of interwar working women, but also not before showing in action how conces­ how much official anxiety and commen­ sions and the employers' offensive could tary these pleasures generated. Similarly, be opposed. This is captured marvellous­ nowhere in his lengthy discussion of in­ ly in Hardy Green's account of the battle tellectuals and mass culture does Cross at Hormel. consider the gendered organization of de­ This "middle America" strike took bates about high and low culture, the place at the mid-point of the Reaganite "traditional" and the popular. Yet, as de 1980s. The state and the employers saw Grazia and others have argued, "prevail­ the 1980s as marking the triumph of the ing intellectual opinion identified mass market and free enterprise. This capitalist culture with femaleness." victory was supposed to lead to wealth, In the end, then, the book's claim to prosperity, and all the good things "trick­ be about "the making of consumer cul­ ling down" to the workers below. But the ture" is limited by Cross's failure to fully triumph of the market at Hormel produced take into account the gender processes at not a trickle but a stream that flowed up work in the material he analyses. At the to the rich, not down to the poor. To cite same time, while often buried in inelegant just one example, after the defeat of the and dull prose, the book does raise some strike, wages plummeted from around stimulating questions about the central $10 an hour to $6.50 for those 300 wor­ dilemmas of time and money. While they kers whose jobs were subcontracted to may quarrel with some of Cross's argu­ Quality Pork Processors. (293) ments, interpretations, and evidence, his­ Much of the academic left saw the torians of labour, leisure, and mass con­ 1980s as marking the disappearance of sumption/culture should nevertheless the working class. But "during 1985-86, find Time and Money worthwhile. P-9 received thousands of letters of sup­ port. ... Many union officers and individ­ Cynthia Wright uals said that they had walked on picket York University lines and knew all the associated anxieties well." (287) In the course of the strike, "over three thousand unions and other organizations from every state re­ Hardy Green, On Strike at Hormel: The sponded" to P-9 appeals for solidarity. Struggle for a Democratic Labor Move­ "Supporters from across the country came ment (Philadelphia: Temple University to Austin to attend mass demonstrations, Press 1990). marches, and rallies. Thousands sent let­ ters of support, food, and funds and joined THIS YEAR MARKS the tenth anniversary in the anti-Hormel protest activities that of the beginning of the great Hormel took place in virtually every U.S. city." meatpackers' strike, one of the central (4) Even deep in the heart of Texas, industrial disputes of the 1980s. In 1984, 346 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

"sponsors of a heavily publicized annual of these three factors. He is not clear, spoof event, the SPAM-O-RAMA bar­ however, on the third — the limits inher­ becue, announced the event's postpone­ ent in the corporate campaign strategy. ment, saying that they had instead 'de­ Let us look at each of these three factors cided to honor the nationwide Boycott of in turn. Hormel products.'" (254) The spread of Green shows how employers and the T-shirts, buttons, and posters invoking state acted in conceit to attack the P-9 the viewer to "CRAM YOUR SPAM" be­ strike. The strikers at one point were pic­ came the slogan which demonstrated that keting branches of First Bank as part of the working class in the US was indeed far Rogers' strategy of making any corpora­ from dead. tion closely linked to Hormel suffer econ­ Finally, the official union leadership, omically. On 23 September 1985, US Dis­ particularly in the US, saw the 1980s as trict Court Judge Edward Devitt "issued a marking the end of the era of class temporary injunction prohibiting any fur­ struggle and the "traditional" tactics of ther First Bank activities." (79) In April the workers' movement, and the time for 1986, the same judge issued an injunction a transition to the realm of reason and "prohibiting threatening or harassing compromise. But as Green clearly shows, scabs by any means." (241) On 2 June, it was only class struggle unionism which Devitt upheld the righto f the anti-Hormel allowed the workers to fight at all. In strike UFCW bureaucracy to place the P-9 January and February 1986, mass pickets local under trusteeship. (253) And one again and again kept scabs out of the month later, he ruled that P-9's union hall plant, fought the National Guard, and was no longer theirs — that it was now the brought out several Hormel-owned plants property of the UFCW leadership who had in nearby towns in sympathy strikes. sabotaged the strike. (261) Green sees these class struggle highpoints The close link between state and em­ as the key to the strike, and that had the ployer did not end with the judiciary. On strike leaders gone just a few steps fur­ 13 January 1986, the company tried to ther, "Hormel would have had to find a reopen the struck plant. After mass pic­ way out." (286) There is no doubt in my kets prevented them from doing so, Gov­ mind that Green is absolutely right. ernor Rudy Perpich called in the National However, the strike was lost, and Guard. They, together with local police, after reading Green's account, three fac­ used tear gas, mass arrests, and armoured tors seem to have been all-important in personnel carriers to allow scabs to slow­ that defeat. First, the concerted and often­ ly filter into the Austin plant. Even the times illegal violence organized by the State Highway Patrol, "supposedly employer and the agencies of the state banned by law from any involvement in a kept workers on the defensive. Second, labor dispute," at one point prevented P-9 the incredible betrayal and pro-employer, strikers from keeping scabs out of the pro-concessions stand of the national plant. (137) This, then, was the real face leadership of the UFCW undercut labour's of "free" enterprise triumphant — an in­ resistance. Third, the limits inherent in transigent employer, with access to the the "corporate campaign" in which Green courts, the cops, and the army, unencum­ was centrally involved (he was, at the bered in its use of any and all means to time of the strike, employed by Ray Ro­ crush the P-9 strikers. gers' union consulting firm, Corporate But vicious as the attacks of the em­ Campaign Inc.) circumscribed and con­ ployer and the state were, they could not tained the challenge to Hormel. Green is in themselves have defeated the strike if without question right to lay the principle it were not for the role of the national blame for the defeat of the strike at the leadership of the UFCW. Along with the foot of boss and bureaucrat, the first two entire union leadership in the US, the REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 347

UFCW bureaucrats strongly believed that March 1986, they killed the strike. A P-9 resistance to attacks on wages and jobs in local meeting had passed a resolution the early 1980s was impossible. The calling for unity between their local and 1979-82 recession had a devastating im­ the UFCW national leadership. Wynn pact on US employment In that context, "seized upon the resolution to order an under the sheltering umbrella of Reagan- end to the strike and cut off strike bene­ ism, employers everywhere threatened fits" (200) something no one voting for plant closures unless their workforces the resolution had in any way intended. In agreed to wage cuts and reductions in May and June, the UFCW took legal steps benefits — in short, the type of conces­ to place the local under trusteeship. With sions over which the Hormel strike was the enthusiastic cooperation of the judi­ fought. And the US union bureaucracy, ciary, it seized P-9's assets, occupied the perhaps more than any other national union hall and even went so far as to union leadership, believed that not to sandblast an internationalist, class agree to concessions would mean an ine­ struggle mural painted in support of the vitable loss in jobs. UFCW national P-9 struggle. The betrayal was complete leaders were enthusiastic backers of this when they "signed a strike settlement pro-concessions policy. with Hormel that gave scabs priority job In 1981, this UFCW bureaucracy de­ rights... And the 1,000 loyal union people cided that all Hormel locals should agree were issued withdrawal cards, forcing to concessions (41) to "bring lower wage them out of the union altogether." (5) operators more in line with master agree­ Boss and bureaucrat together broke ment companies" and "minimize the the strike. But the defeat did not go un­ wave of plant closings." (46) The re­ challenged. The best part of Green's book sponse of the company was to use the is his documentation of the tremendous money saved to finance a new SlOO-mil- self-organization and self-activity of the lion plant opened in August 1982, get rid P-9 strikers and the Austin working class, of 2,600 of the 3,000 old-plant workers, and the way in which this inspired mass and hire on 1,000 new workers with little working-class support across the US. or no union experience. The result was a Green provides pages of evidence show­ workforce of 1,500, half the size of the ing that there was, in this self-activity and 1970s, and with many of the most experi­ solidarity, the potential to beat back Hor­ enced unionists no longer employed. This mel, setting the employer and the defeat­ done, Hormel imposed their drastic con­ ist union leadership on their heels. cessions package in 1984 — a 23 per cent In response to the company's attacks, wage and benefits cut that became the spouses of the workers, "primarily wives spark for the strike. and a few husbands," formed the United Agreeing to concessions had done Support Group. Two wives called a meet­ nothing to save jobs. But the UFCW bure­ ing in a park in September 1984, almost a aucracy still refused to fight. Worse — at year before the strike began, and 300 every point it actively sabotaged the P-9 women and men attended. (13-4) In Oc­ strikers. Lewie Anderson, director of tober 1984, the dispute captured the atten­ UFCW's Packinghouse Division, began tion of Rogers' Corporate Campaign. openly denouncing the tactics of the local "When Rogers and his partner Ed Allen as early as 1984. (26) In March 198S first came to town in October 1984, they UFCW president William Wynn "sent out were amazed ... [to find] several hundred a letter notifying all UFCW meatpacking women with signs and banners waiting locals that they should offer neither moral outside to greet them. And rather than the nor financial support for P-9's 'ill-ad­ anticipated fifty-odd union members, the vised' campaign" (27) of picketing cor­ hall was crammed with over three thou­ porations with links to Hormel. And on IS sand P-9ers and family members." (14-5) 348 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Again and again the mass self-activ­ were other aspects of the campaign whose ity of the P-9 strikers pushed the strike long-run impact was to demobilize rather forward. On 23 August 1986, one week than mobilize the rank and file. At its into the strike, "a thousand strikers and core, the campaign was based on an as­ supporters ... completely ringed the sumption that the UFCW leadership would downtown block" containing First Bank respond to reason, that management at headquarters in Minneapolis. More signi­ Hormel was essentially rational, that ficant was their direct approach to other much of the dispute at Hormel, as else­ Hormel workers. Between 26 August and where, was based on misunderstanding, 31 August that year, 300 P-9 members and that therefore the rank and file should went on a car caravan to hit every Hormel structure the mass pressure exerted facility within driving distance. The through the corporate campaign to appeal strategy included "leafleting every home to the positive side of bureaucrats and in the town, then lining up P-9ers in front businessmen, people who were essen­ of the plant, not to block entry, but to tially "good." Thus Rogers emphasized show their potential strength and to get information pickets, consumer boycotts, workers as they came off shift." (63-4) At and civil disobedience, as opposed to the large Hormel plant in Ottumwa, Iowa mass pickets designed to result in sym­ the 300 P-9ers formed two lines of pickets pathy strikes, militant and large pickets in "along both sides of the road and extend­ front of the struck plant, and self defence ing 300 feet on each side of the plant... against the organized violence of the The reaction was electric. Truck drivers state. The corporate campaign was a step making deliveries to the plant and others towards self-activity, solidarity, and the who drove by showed enthusiastic agree­ politics of class-struggle unionism. But it ment with the ... P-9 signs ... From the always stopped short, derailed by a naive dock at the rear of the plant workers raised trust in the good will of the powers that clenched fists to show solidarity with the were confronting the strikers. P-9 members." And after work, 80 per Immediately on becoming involved cent of the local's membership came in the dispute, several months before the down to the city park. Local executive strike began, Rogers argued that Bill board member Lynn Huston described the Wynn of the UFCW was a "reasonable meeting. man." (15) This left P-9ers who believed Rogers unprepared to deal with the real One after another they [the Ottumwa workers] Wynn, a cynical bureaucrat who had no got up and talked ... A lot of them had tears in intention of being reasoned with, who did their eyes. They said we had to stick together, that it was the only way we'd get fair treatment everything in his not inconsiderable ... Guys would say, I haven't always been a power to wreck the strike. good union man, but I'm here to tell you that Instead of using the consumer boycott I've changed. About seven or eight said that as a tactic to pull supporters to the picket they'd never been able to say the word Austin line — an effective and frequently used before without following it with the word as­ method of strike organizing — Rogers sholes. They'd always wondered what Austin counterposed boycotts to picket lines, ar­ people looked like. Now, they said, we know that you're just like us. (68) guing that staffing the picket line around the Austin plant was very much a second­ This was the great strength of Rogers' ary activity. He argued for a "minimum corporate campaign. In using a car ca­ number of pickets" (63) outside the Aus­ ravan of dozens of striking workers, a tin plant while the caravans to surround­ ing towns were being organized. This left powerful message of solidarity was de­ the local less prepared than it might other­ livered, far more direct and effective than wise have been fora mass defence of their any leaflet or newsletter. However, not all plant when the company, sheltered by the of Rogers' approach had this effect. There REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 349 armed might of several agencies of the that had the whole caravan arrived, there state, began running scabs into the struck is a very good chance that Fremont would facility in January. have closed, and the Austin strike would True, it might have made sense to have been immensely strengthened. The "minimize" the Austin pickets if the ca­ phones should have rung all night to build ravans were travelling to other Hormel the picket, rather than call it off. But by facilities to try to shut them down. But for looking to show "good faith" to the "rea­ months they were instructed to have in­ sonable" men of Hormel management, a formation pickets only. It was only out of magnificent opportunity was thrown away. desperation, five months into the strike, Green sees clearly that these events of that these changed to real picket lines, as 24 January were the key to the strike. the strikers began to realize that Hormel Never again were the P-9 workers to be so was determined to reopen the Austin fa­ close to shutting the three decisive Hor­ cility with scabs. mel plants simultaneously. But he does When the information pickets were not see how this decision was linked to scrapped for pickets calling for solidarity the logic of Rogers' whole approach. The and sympathy strikes, the initial result failure to shut Fremont cannot directly be was spectacular. On 21 January 1986, 75 pinned on Rogers. In fact he was furious P-9 striken closed Hormel's Ottumwa at the local executive for calling off the plant when 850 refused to cross their line. 24 January picket. But because the whole On 22 January, P-9ers had less success at corporate campaign strategy was based two other Hormel plants. But the key was on appealing to "reason" — exactly the Fremont, Nebraska. If the P-9ers could argument used by the executive — Rogers shut the Hormel plant in that town, along­ must take indirect responsibility. Em­ side the plants in Ottumwa and Austin, ployers are not reasonable — they under­ enough Hormel production would be af­ stand only the rational of profit and loss. fected that the company would be econ­ The state is not reasonable — in a capital­ omically hurt. On 24 January, then, a ca­ ist society, its only reason for involving ravan of pickets set out for Fremont to try itself in industrial disputes is in order to and close the plant. Then the executive assist employers with their profit and loss board [of the local] flinched." They difficulties. For strike leaders to appeal to thought the attempt to shut Fremont was reason serves, then, to sow illusions that "too rash," that they had to show Hormel management will listen to a rational argu­ management some "good faith." By the ment, leaving the rank and file unpre­ time this decision was reached, the ca­ pared for the cynicism and brutality ravan had already set out. So they worked which is the essence of employer-side the phones all night to get the caravan collective bargaining. stopped. In the months to come, many of As an issue in the labour movement, those on the phones that night would see this is a major point. There is a need to this as an enormous mistake. return to class-struggle unionism, a need Most cars and vans were contacted to dispel any and all illusions which stand and instructed to return home. At least in the way of that return. As a criticism of one van was missed. The 5 P-9ers in that this book, it is a minor point. For this van, not knowing that their executive had account of a major strike breathes with the called off the picket, set up a line by life of the picket line. It shows the deep themselves at 4:45 am on Saturday morn­ humanity and heroism of ordinary wor­ ing, in spite of the presence of 50 deputy kers in small-town America. It shows no sheriffs and the Highway Patrol. These mercy to a union bureaucracy ossified and five kept over 200 people out for 2-1/2 corrupt in a way that is almost beyond hours. The 200 went to the union hall belief. It provides powerful evidence that instead of to work. There is no question 350 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the state in capitalist society is very far life and work as a case study illuminating from being neutral. both women's history and mainstream The lessons of Hormel are there for political history, and breaks down the ar­ all to see in this first-hand account And tificial barriers that have developed be­ in spite of the defeat, these lessons need tween them. Paying particular attention to not make one pessimistic. There are only the years from 1907, she explores the a handful of former strikers at work in the suffragists' fight to induce an all male plant today — more than 1,000 were parliament to give women the vote, Mar­ driven out by boss and bureaucrat. shall's singular contribution to "The "Nevertheless," as one account recently Cause," and "The Cause's" contribution reported, "in 1993, candidates from the to her conversion from a naive and pur­ relative handful of former strikers still in poseless country girl into a courageous the plant won a majority on the local's and politically astute woman with re­ executive board, and a former worker at markable organizational and communica­ Hormel's Ottumwa, Iowa plant, who had tion skills. In the course of so doing, the helped to lead a solidarity walkout of 500 author gives credit to the National workers in January 1986, was elected Union's committed male allies, a wel­ Local 9 secretary.'' So don't discard that come change from feminist studies that "CRAM YOUR SPAM" t-shirt. It just may ignore the assistance of men and at times become fashionable again. even their existence as other than enemies. Most important, she makes cru­ cial linkages between the work of the suf­ Paul Kellogg fragists and mainline political history. Ryerson Polytechnic University These linkages are the book's primary contribution, for they illuminate the on­ going exploration of Liberalism and La­ Jo Vellacott, From Liberal to Labour with bour, the place therein of middle-class Women's Suffrage: The Story of Ca­ women and women's issues, and the com­ therine Marshall (Montréal and King­ plex cross-currents running through and ston: McGill-Queen's University Press between them. 1993). Secondary themes involve the inter­ national dimension of the campaign for THE NON-MILITANT CAMPAIGN for women's suffrage; the connection be­ votes for women in England by the Na­ tween the international women's and tional Union of Women's Suffrage So­ peace movements; the vocational oppor­ cieties between 1907 and 1914 comprised tunities suffrage work provided to other­ most of the work for women's suffrage, wise under-occupied and unfulfilled and certainly the most effective, in the middle-class women; the unusual degree pre-World War I era. But it has received of independence it provided them; and the much less attention from historians than continuing power of the repressive cul­ the militant and more spectacular acti­ ture of the age to limit that independence. vities of the Women's Social and Political (Although Catherine Marshall was Union. Jo Vellacott sets out to remedy blessed with liberal and very supportive this by studying Catherine Marshall, who, parents, she remained financially depend­ as a brilliant organizer and influential lob­ ent on them and at their beck and call.) byist in the main (male) circles of politi­ cal life in the pre-War period, was one of Throughout the work the author the National Union's vital figures. manifests a commanding knowledge of contemporary personalities, issues, and In 15 chapters that cover chronologi­ power struggles, an awesome mastery of cally the period between Marshall's birth detail and chronology, and an enormous in 1880 and the outbreak of war on 4 amount of research. She has meticulously August 1914, Vellacott uses Marshall's REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 351

examined the previously unstudied therine Marshall, who did not die until papers of Catherine Marshall in the Cum­ 1962. It is to be hoped that Dr. Vellacott bria archives, as well as numerous other completes her study. archival collections, newspapers, peri­ odicals, memoirs, and correspondence Kathleen E. McCrone ranging from Bertrand Russell to Lloyd University of Windsor George, and Barbara Strachev to Labour officials, and a plethora of secondary sources. Her prose style is pleasingly clear and elegant; her selection of illustra­ John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: tions enlivens the narrative; and her ap­ British Foreign Policy and the Labour pended biographical notes provide much Government: 1945-46 (London: Verso needed assistance in sorting out the large 1993). case of characters. Her arguments are well balanced and convincing, and her conclu­ THE ATTLEE GOVERNMENT was elected sion, that it was the National Union's in July 1945, midway through the Pots­ work that managed to make women's suf­ dam conference which was to define the frage a respecuble cause among par­ postwar political shape of Europe and the liamentary suffragists and brought it to world. Tlié new premier and his foreign the point of inevitability by 1914, is secretary, Ernest Bevin, took over as Brit­ sound. ish representatives from Churchill and Unfortunately neither as biography Eden. There was no discernible shift in nor political history does the study show policy. It is a familiar story thai the first particular originality or critical analysis. majority Labour government in Britain The narration of minute detail at times made no gesture towards the 'socialist overwhelms and obscures meaning and foreign policy' which some on the left had significance. For example, despite the hoped for. The dominant influences on tremendous amount of information Vella­ government perspectives were a profound cott collected, she does not give her anti-communism linked to an exagger­ readers — who are told in exhaustive and ated suspicion of Russian aggressive ca­ at times exhausting detail what Catherine pacity and intentions; a pro-Americanism Marshall did — a clear idea of what made reinforced by dependence on US econ­ her tick; and the play-by-play chronology omic backing; and a commitment to sus­ of the National Union's activities is most­ tain a global military and colonialist role ly straightforward historical narrative. at odds with new geopolitical realities and While her summaries of what happened with Britain's diminished economic re­ are excellent, Vellacott asks few probing sources. Indeed the priority of maintain­ questions of her material. ing Britain's traditional position as a 'world power' imposed an economic These criticisms notwithstanding, as burden which in the short term locked the a partly biographical, partly feminist, and government within the US embrace and in partly political history of the Edwardian the longer term accelerated national de­ period. From Liberal to Labour with cline. Women's Suffrage provides much infor­ mation on the philosophy, aims, and Critics on the left were marginalized methods of the major non-militant or disciplined: the cold war, in effect, women's suffrage organization prior to provided its own justification. Yet was 1914 that has not been available pre­ there really no alternative? And if the viously in book form. It should thus be a defeat of Hitler did offer a window of valuable resource for scholars working on opportunity to a new Labour government, related topics. The work is intended as why was this not taken? Part One of a complete biography of Ca­ John Saville — at the time a young communist historian — has turned his 352 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

scholarly attentions to such issues. His Cadogan, the senior official until 1946, is detailed archival investigations — com­ revealed by his diaries as sharing the pol­ plementing parallel work in the US in itical sentiments of 'the reactionary core recent years — puts to shame the neglect of Tory backwoodsmen.' His successor, by many specialist historians of the peri­ Orme Sargent, suffered from 'some kind od. of neurotic phobia which apparently The Politics of Continuity is not an made foreign travel impossible.' Their easy book to review: in many ways it can world view was that of the 19th century be regarded as a set of linked essays as when Britannia ruled the waves. Three much as an integrated text. The specific assumptions predominated. The Soviet historical focus differs between chapters: Union was a dangerous threat. The United in some cases concerned solely with the States, because of its size and economic brief period indicated in the book's title; strength, would inevitably play an im­ in others, ranging over the whole decade portant role in the postwar world; but it of the 1940s or indeed beyond. Themati- lacked diplomatic experience, and could cally, too, there is an unexplicated selec­ and should be guided by Britain. (Saville tivity. The British military role in Greece has unearthed a remarkable minute from in suppressing the EAM/ELAS forces and a junior official which in a fascinating reimposing the monarchist regime is dis­ mixture of metaphors exemplifies this at­ cussed only in passing; so is the secret titude: "They have enormous power, but decision to build the atomic bomb. One it is the power of the reservoir behind the important issue which is barely men­ dam, which may overflow uselessly, or be tioned is British policy towards postwar run through pipes to drive turbines. The Germany: in short, could there have been transmission of their power into useful an 'Austrian solution' involving demili­ forms, and its direction into advantageous tarization and neutrality? This is import­ channels, is our concern.... if we go about ant. Saville's position on the 'Soviet our business in the right way we can help threat' is in essence that Russia was war- to steer this great unwieldy barge, the weary, had suffered horrific human and United States of America, into the right material damage, lacked the logistical ca­ harbour. If we don't, it is likely to con­ pacity for a western offensive and was tinue to wallow in the ocean, an isolated primarily concerned to protect its already menace to navigation.") The third — and extended borders. (He concedes, though, in many ways most crucial — assumption that Stalin's actual behaviour seemed cal­ was the importance, both economic and culated to reinforce suspicion in the strategic, of maintaining the British em­ west.) Against this background, it seems pire. The strength of nationalist senti­ plausible that a different mode of German ment, and the capacity for self-govern­ reconstruction might have been recipro­ ment, within much of the colonial empire cated by a very different post-war history were in no way comprehended. On this east of the Oder-Neisse line. How far was one issues — at least until the State De­ such an option considered, and was there partment discerned dangerous links be­ any difference in British and US perspec­ tween anti-colonialism and communism tives? — British policy was at odds with import­ ant sentiments in the US. Saville's book consists of five sub­ stantive chapters together with some brief From the civil servants, Saville pro­ appendices. The first, and longest, ex­ ceeds to the minister. Bevin's role as plores 'the mind of the Foreign Office.' foreign secretary has been eulogized by The top civil servants were products of his biographer, Alan Bullock. Not sur­ the pre-1914 era, to a large extent edu­ prisingly, Saville is more critical. Bevin cated at Eton, and informed by the shared the anti-communism of the prejudices of upper-class conservatives. Foreign Office, and had no sympathy with REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 353 anti-colonialism. His own trade union pying army. But the insurgent Viet Minh career had brought him close, and cordial. was set to take over the county; and the links with the US. On broad policy com­ British, anxious to bolster their own mitments, then, he was at one with his claims to resume control of their prewar advisors. Bevin came to the Foreign Of­ colonies, made common cause with the fice after great success as Minister of La­ French. Rather than disarming the bour in the wartime coalition govern­ Japanese — the largest force on the ment, and with the self-confidence to ground — the British command therefore match. But in the earlier position he could used them to oust the Viet Minh from draw on his personal experience and com­ Saigon and re-impose French colonial prehensive knowledge as a trade union rule — with barbaric results. Oversha­ leader, in the new role he had none of dowed by the somewhat analogous Brit­ these advantages. His health was deterior­ ish role in Greece, this cynical interven­ ating; and the capacity which be most tion demonstrated the degree to which obviously lacked was the organization of reactionary Realpolitik from the outset arguments and their formulation on dictated Labour's foreign policy. paper. For all these reasons, argues Sa- ville, on the specifics of policy he was Richard Hyman very much the mouthpiece of his civil University of Warwick servants. The third chapter reveals previously undisclosed differences between Attlee and Bevin during the early period of the Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barri­ Labour government. Foreign Office or­ cades: Class Formation and Republican thodoxy assumed that British strategic Politics in France, 1830-1871 (Princeton: and economic interests required a (re)im- Princeton University Press 1993). position of colonial control in the Me­ diterranean, in particular in the former CATASTROPHIC MILITARY defeats in Italian colonies of North Africa. Attlee 1870 stimulated republicans in several disagreed — partly on grounds of ex­ provincial French cities to topple the im­ pense, partly because the advent of air perial authorities, proclaim a republic, warfare made obsolete a colonial policy and institute a regime of the people, a founded on the requirements of naval Commune. While all of these revolution­ power. His memoranda provoked great ary movements eventually foundered, alarm among the civil servants, who re­ Toulouse witnessed an energetic work­ ceived Bevin's backing. Attlee himself ing-class rebellion in 1871; in Saint- never pressed his 'slight case of heresy' Etienne, workers needed the cooperation to the point of explicit disagreement with­ of a radical bourgeoisie to make a revol­ in the cabinet. ution; in Rouen attempts to establish a Commune failed entirely. Why were there A brief and somewhat discursive these differences? Was the level of indus­ chapter on the interconnections between trialization in each city the crucial factor? economic policy and foreign policy is fol­ Were workers more class conscious in lowed by an account of a disgraceful and some of the cities than in others? If so, hitherto neglected aspect of British action why? Aminzade believes such explana­ in the aftermath of war. The corrupt and tions rest on faulty assumptions and are brutal French colonial rule in Vietnam wrong-headed. They represent a reduc­ gave way to wartime collaboration be­ tionist way of thinking about class be­ tween a colonial regime loyal to Vichy cause they take for granted that being a and the Japanese occupying forces. After worker yields a clear-cut set of interests the Japanese surrender in 194S a small and political strategies. Aminzade offers British force was sent to disarm the occu­ a new approach to class analysis which 354 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL bridges differences between materialists eralism, isolating the workers. Amin­ and culturalists and which should be intri­ zade's detailed narratives point to the cru­ guing to everyone. Insisting that class as cial role that timing, fortuitous national a material reality is crucial to political events, and even personality played in behaviour, he revises economic determin­ setting the direction for party develop­ ism by making the implications of class ment. The comparative histories leave much more complex and uncertain than little room for assuming that shop floor ever before. His book contains both a developments predetermined the lines of theoretical statement about the problem worker defense. of class formation in 19th-century France Conventional class analysis would and a practical application. The book is probably explain the differences by re­ compelling on both levels. sorting to a language of "consciousness." Aminzade's analysis begins with the If Toulousan workers were more active claim that there is no a priori way of than the Rouennais, it was because they knowing what class interests are, for they had a higher level of class consciousness are embedded in concrete situations, with and, therefore, could act with more force strong elements of contingency. More­ and unity. Without explicitly discussing over, rather than shaping politics in an the problem of consciousness, Aminzade autonomous manner, class interests are puts aside this sort of explanation. He "constituted through political activity, via does not see it as relevant because wor­ organizational and ideological mechan­ kers based their political behaviour on the isms that link social structures ... to pol­ opportunities available to them at any par­ itical behavior." (6) Though grounded in ticular moment. This could entail alliance material realities, not just discourses, in­ with a radical bourgeoisie at one time and terests and identities are complex and un­ autonomous action at another. Indeed, the stable, in the author's view. Workers author has no trouble showing the ab­ make political choices based on the range sence of a close link between levels of of available options, and these, in turn, industrialization and working-class pol­ define their interests. Singular events or itical activity. He also demonstrates that, the conjuncture of long- and short-term in some instances, autonomous working- developments present or suppress oppor­ class parties were not at all a sign of tunities, and workers respond accordingly strength, but rather of marginality. What to these concrete developments. In short, this implies to him is that consciousness Aminzade's theoretical position leaves no is determined by the interests and oppor­ room for what "should have been" in la­ tunities available to workers. bour history, and for that very reason, he While the case studies give the ambi­ is proposing a new kind of labour history. tious theoretical claims plausibility, this Aminzade seeks to justify his abstract mode of class analysis is bound to remain ideas about class by presenting com­ controversial and even unsatisfactory to parative case studies of working-class economic determinists. Class, as Amin­ formation in Toulouse, Saint-Etienne, zade uses it, is no longer a simplifying and Rouen. In the first of these cities, concept which cuts through complexity workers grew as a class in the context of and shows what is "really" happening. strong Legitimist and liberal republican Suddenly, all categories become proble­ movements. A working-class insurrection matic and contingent. Marxists will won­ in 1834 radicalized Stéphenois republi­ der whether there is an element of circu­ canism and ensured continued cooper­ larity in Aminzade's thinking. If workers ation between socialists and radicals. By did not build parties of their own, based contrast, early workers' violence in the on a revolutionary overthrow of capital­ Norman capital polarized class relations ism, was it because they lacked the capac­ and made bourgeois leaders lean to lib­ ity or because circumstances did not make REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 355 it reasonable to strive in that direction. By portrait of Zetkin as largely compliant throwing out the category of conscious­ with the Soviet line after 1928. ness, Aminzade brings in the assumption The historical debates about Zetkin's that what workers did was a rational re­ feminism seem to interest Badia relative­ sponse to the available opportunities. Per­ ly little; nor do questions raised by the haps social scientists are on safest ground exercise of the biographer's craft and the in making this assumption, but it does immense power of the living to construct discourage asking about the paths not and reconstruct the dead enter into what taken. is a straightforward narrative of her life Ballots and Barricades is an import­ and attitudes on major question facing the ant and original book. Students of politics socialist and communist movements dur­ will have to grapple with its rich implica­ ing her lifetime. "Qui dit biographie dit tions. Possibly, it will launch a new sort chronologie" is his approach, and the of labour history. It certainly marks an book proceeds in just that fashion. The important moment of revisionism in the bibliography also neglects some major field. German secondary sources, such as works by Karin Bauer and Joan Reutershan, published in 1978 and 1985 respectively. Lenard R. Berlanstein University of Virginia Overall, the work serves as a good introduction to the life and work of Clara Zetkin, and despite a certain element of "heroine worship" it remains a solid and Gilbert Badia, Clara Zetkin: Féministe readable introduction for the non-special­ Sans Frontières (Paris: Les Editions ist to this remarkable woman. Ouvrières 1993).

GILBERT BADIA's delightfully written Rosemarie Schade and jargon-free biography of Clara Zetkin Concordia University is die most recent addition to a body of work thus far available mainly in German and English. Unlike earlier biographers, Eduard M. Dune, Notes of a Red Guard, who were denied access to papers held in trans, and ed. by Diane P. Koenker and East Berlin, Badia was permitted in 1991 S.A. Smith (Urbana and Chicago: Univer­ to see hundreds of previously unavailable sity of Illinois Press 1993). letters written by Zetkin. This has shed new light on her last IS years, and chal­ AT ONE POINT early in his memoir, lenged previously held assumptions about Eduard M. Dune asks himself, "Am I her relationship to those years both to idealizing the past, like all old men?" (IS) Stalin and the International. In particular, His fascinating account of the Russian Badia has revised the depiction of Zetkin Revolution and Civil War was written in the magisterial 500-page biography more than 30 years after the events by written by Louise Dornemann in 1974 by what we would more generously call "a pointing out that in these letters a great middle-aged man" in his early 50s. Rather deal of opposition to the pro-Stalinist di­ than idealizing, Dune in fact writes vivid­ rection taken by the Kommunistische Par- ly and frankly of his experiences as a tei Deutschlands (KPD) emerges, a fact factory worker, Red Guardsman, Com­ that Dornemann ignores. What is unclear munist, and prisoner-of-war held by the in this criticism, however, is whether Dor­ Whites. A Latvian, bom in Riga, Dune nemann was genuinely unaware of Zet- was evacuated with his parents to Mos­ kin's analysis because of missing cow during World War I and there became documentation, or whether she chose to a worker in the same factory as his father. ignore any materials that contradict her A fellow worker from a printshop opened 356 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

the road to the socialist movement by on the revolution, this memoir, long bu­ passing along Lily Braun's Diary of a ried in the Hoover Institution archives, is Socialist which, in conjunction with sub­ a wonderful supplement to the mono­ sequent readings of Engels and others, graphs that have deepened our knowledge offered an interpretive matrix through of the revolution in the last several de­ which the young Dune gave new meaning cades. The volume has been prepared in to his childhood and young adult experi­ such a way as to be not only informative ences. Dune soon met the Social Demo­ for the specialist, but particularly useful crat Timofei Sapronov, who proved to be for adoption in college-level courses. At his life-long friend and political mentor. a time when the images of the Russian He took up arms in 1917 and fought in the Revolution are being darkened in light of south of Russia and Daghestan during the its consequences. Dune's story will re­ civil war. mind readers of the profoundly emancipa­ Dune is particularly interesting when tory impulses that led young men and he leads the reader through the confusion women into battle against earlier tyrannies. of the civil war campaigns. In an unfor­ gettable scene he describes his capture by Ronald Grigor Suny Greens (peasant rebels), who turned him University of Michigan over to the Whites. As the Cossack com­ mandant reviewed the prisoners, he arbi­ trarily selected those to be shot, pulling from the ranks people he suspected of Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: being commissars or Jews. The memoir Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880- ends in 1921 with the author in the moun­ 1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University tains of the North Caucasus receiving dis­ Press 1993). tant echoes of the post-revolutionary poli­ tics of the new regime. The idealism and SINCE THE PUBLICATION of Harry humanism that characterized people like Braverman's important 1974 study of Dune during the revolutionary years was capitalist labour processes labour histo­ overwhelmed by the tougher and more rians have been interested in workers' re­ pragmatic currents in Bolshevik political sponses to changes in work processes and culture and practice, and Dune eventually how "skill" has been socially constructed. fell afoul of the authoritarians who con­ Feminist critiques of Braverman's argu­ trolled party and state. He joined the op­ ment have illuminated the ways in which position in the Communist Party, was ex­ gender inequalities shaped work pro­ pelled, arrested, and exiled to Siberia. cesses and definitions of skilled work. During World War II he returned to his These writings have done much to explain family briefly, but was then separated why women occupy lesser-paying, lower- from them, captured by the Germans, and status jobs in the wage labour force. deported to France. There he wrote his Raelene Frances' The Politics of Work is reminiscences and sold them to interested a contribution to the growing body of journals and scholars in order to live. He literature which argues that gender is cru­ died in 1953 without ever learning that his cial to understanding transformations in wife and son had survived the war and the work processes. Stalin years. One of the editors of this Frances focuses on three industries, volume, Diane Koenker, met Vladimir namely, clothing, boot and shoe, and Dune while preparing his father's memoir printing in the state of Victoria during a for publication. formative period of manufacturing With a first-rate introduction and ex­ growth in Australia between 1880 and cellent notes by Koenker and Smith, two World War II. Victoria was at the fore­ of the most insightful historians writing front of the early development of the na­ tion's manufacturing industries. Al- REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 357 though New South Wales eventually family breadwinners and women as de­ overtook it in terms of total manufactur­ pendent housekeepers and child-bearers. ing output in the 1890s, Victoria re­ Already socially defined as women's mained the leading employer of female work, much of the stitching work in the labour and an important centre for the clothing industry was carried out by production of clothing and footwear. women homeworkers. Gender inequal­ The book is divided into three broad ities also functioned to keep the wages of sections defined by the level of state in­ women down and curtailed union organ­ volvement in wage-fixing. Part one con­ ization and worker militancy. Within the siders each of the three industries during tailoring trades, a traditionally male sec­ the period before the establishment of the tor, tailors successfully protected their wages board system following the pas­ position of gender privilege as skilled sage of the Shops and Factories Act in workingmen. The growth of the "slop 1896. The state wages boards were com­ trade" in ready-made garments in the prised of five representatives each from 1870s, accompanied by an expansion of the employers and workers and an "inde­ factory production, provided the structu­ pendent" chair, usually a police magis­ ral preconditions for the organization of trate or a formal civil servant. They were the Tailoresses' Union in 1882 in the organized to regulate wages in the midst of a strike by tailoresses over wage- sweated trades. Part two embraces the era cuts. While the 1896 legislation estab­ of state wage-fixing between roughly lished piece rates slightly higher than 1896 and the end of World War I. In part weekly wage rates, overall the wages three the period of federal wage-fixing board system provided little protection under the Commonwealth Court of Con­ for women workers. Similarly, Frances ciliation and Arbitration is examined. suggests, the federal arbitration courts Whereas the object of the wages boards merely reinforced existing trends in the was to prevent sweating, the intent of the trade and little headway was made in federal arbitration court was to preserve regulating women's outwork. industrial peace. Using in-depth case In contrast to the clothing industry, studies of each of the three industries, the actions of organized male workers in Frances examines how "the structure of the boot and shoe trade played an import­ work arose out of the interplay between ant role in precipitating the mechaniza­ product and labour markets, capital sup­ tion and fragmentation of the labour pro­ ply, technology, racial and gender orders cess. Previous to the widespread intro­ and the activities of the state." (11) duction of specialized machinery into the The complexities of industrial trans­ Victorian boot and shoe factories in the formation and the diversity of workers' early 1890s, male workers possessed a experiences are well-illustrated by the defined "skill" in the trade and enjoyed a author in her case studies of the three high degree of independence in the work­ industries. Within the state's clothing in­ place. In Chapter two Frances explains dustry several structural factors were sin- how the workplace control of male gled-out as primary determinants affect­ shoemakers rapidly eroded in the 1890s ing the nature of work processes, notably under the combined effects of economic the limited colonial market, a chronic depression, mechanization, further subdi­ shortage of capital, the suitability of vision of production processes, and the clothing manufacture for home produc­ substitution of weekly wages for piece tion, and the gender division of labour. rates. Fuelled by the growth of wholesal­ The organization of the late 19th-century ing and a demand for mass-produced pro­ clothing industry was heavily influenced ducts, manufacturers sought to reduce la­ by the sexual division of labour in the bour costs by intensifying production. home whereby men were defined as the The result of the mechanization of the 358 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

production process in the 1890s was the skill. Despite these criticism, The Politics replacement of hundreds of male craft­ of Work does much to explain how "skill" smen with male machine operatives. Em­ has been gendered historically and how ployer-worker hostilities after 1896 cen­ women have come to occupy an inferior tred around the meeting of the wages position in the capitalist labour market. boards. The fixing of a minimum wage sounded the final death-knell of the piece Christina Burr work system and encouraged the intens­ University of Ottawa ive mechanization of the production pro­ cess. Male unionists, furthermore, looking to protect their own interests in the trade ignored the concerns of women workers. Walton Look Lai, Indentured Labor, Ca­ The third industry considered in the ribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Mi­ book is the printing industry. Tradition­ grants to the British West Indies, ally a male domain, women seeking em­ 1838-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins ployment in the printing trades during the Press 1993). 1880s and 1890s were restricted to a nar­ row range of occupations, namely fold­ GENERALIZATIONS about migration to ing, sewing, collating and gluing in the Americas before the 20th century bookbinding and stationary manufacture. usually focus on the North American How male bookbinders successfully re­ mainland, and have European free mi­ sisted attempts by employers to have ma­ grants and African slaves arriving concur­ chine case-making classified as "un­ rently before 1800 — with the huddled skilled" women's work is discussed in European masses swamping all there­ Chapter three. The successful appropria­ after. The reality is quite different. First, tion of machine typesetting by male typo­ post-Columbian immigration to the graphical unionists for their male mem­ Americas changed from mainly free to bership during the 1890s is also con­ mainly indentured servants in the 16th sidered in the chapter. Both the wages and 17th centuries. Thereafter, African boards and the federal courts of arbitra­ slaves quickly became numerically over­ tion reinforced long-standing divisions whelming until well into the 19th century, between men's and women's work in the but even when European free labour printing trades. emerged as the largest branch, Asian in­ dentured labour was crucial in some re­ Frances argues convincingly that la­ gions. Free migration dominates the bour and product markets, technology, literature, but not the pre mid-19th cen­ the supply of capital, and gender and class tury historical reality. Second and more relations all affected transformations in important, the North American mainland the labour process in the three industries was something of a backwater in relative in trade-specific ways. At times, how­ terms before the 1830s. By far the greatest ever, she tends to fall into a kind of "struc­ number of migrants before 1840 went to tural determinism," and less of the actual the Caribbean — mainly the offshore experiences of the workingmen and work- Americas — rather than the mainland. As ingwomen of Victoria comes through to the dominant reception zone for two cen­ the reader. I would have liked to have turies, the Caribbean received mainly in­ heard the voices of Victoria's workers dentured Europeans before the late 17th more often. Also, somewhat surprising century, followed by millions of African given the organization of the book, state slaves, and then, after 1850, indentured or and federal wage boards and the courts of contract labour from various parts of arbitration appear to be of comparatively Asia. William Look Lai's book is about lesser significance to changes in the la­ the last — and often forgotten — of these bour process and gender definitions of three distinct phases. REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 359

Of coarse, for many historians these is centred on the Americas and examines categories of migrants appear artificial. If behaviour of the migrants themselves, those thrown on to the labour market particularly in Trinidad and British Guia­ could be described as wage slaves — a na. The fate of the migrants and the evol­ term making a strong comeback in the ution of the communities they established post-slavery literature — then how much received particular attention. There is sur­ closer to chattel slavery was indentured prising new information on return flows labour? Hence the title of the standard (especially to India) and reindentures. Lai work on Asian contract labour in the West makes clear that, as with the slave trade Indies, published 20 years ago, is A New itself, the contract labour traffic did not System of Slavery (Hugh Tinker). Yet fade away in any economic sense; it was surely no one but academics truly believe legislated out of existence by outsiders — in this tendency to lump all labour in this case, in response to the nascent regimes together under the nomenclature nationalist movement in India, rather than of the most severe. The historical figures metropolitan reformers. themselves, slaves, wage earners, and The book's weaknesses do not appear contract workers, were as acutely aware to be crippling. There is a tendency to lose of, and shaped by, these different ca­ sight of broader global trends, and com­ tegories as the elite that organized long­ parisons are limited to Chinese and In­ distance migration. Lai's book presents a dians. The economic component is not as clear-headed overview of the contract prominent as it need to be, though for system, yet in the end fully recognizes the many readers this is no doubt a recom­ differences between on the one hand the mendation rather than a criticism. Finally, traffic in long-distance contract labour I am somewhat surprised at the lack of and the labour regime it supported, and on citations to the original Colonial Office the other, their slave and free labour documents. References to the Parliamen­ counterparts. More, where many authors tary Papers outnumber those to the CO see only social injustice and unrelieved series by about twenty to one. Even allow­ exploitation, Lai is prepared to search for ing for 19th-century British officialdoms paradox. Clearly, many migrants event­ tendency to publish everything to do with ually increased control over their lives by migration, such a ratio suggests that still leaving Asia, and the traffic itself was another layer of the story remains to be abolished against the wishes of the Indian explored. Nevertheless, this book will, I communities in Trinidad and British hope, become accepted as the new stand­ Guiana. ard treatment of the subject. Lai aims for comprehensive coverage of his subject. He begins with an intri­ David Eltis guing, and all too brief chapter on the Queen's University Indian and Chinese background to the traffic, and a particularly useful examin­ ation of the contracts themselves, which are depicted as civil contracts, backed up Eero Loone, Soviet Marxism and Analyti­ explicitly by criminal law sanctions. Lai cal Philosophies of History (London: interprets this as an exceptional, hybrid Verso 1992). response to a post-emancipation labour supply crisis that incorporated aspects of THIS WORK, by a distinguished Estonian wage and slave regimes. But Robert philosopher, attempts to define a role for Steinfeld's recent book, The Invention of the philosophy of history in Marxist the­ Free Labor (not cited here), shows the ory. The main body of the text was com­ strong English and American precedents posed in the late 1970s and published in for this arrangement. The bulk of the book Russian in 1980. It appears here, in Brian 360 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Pearce's translation, together with a post­ pothetico-deductive" model. If historians script written in 1989. seek knowledge, Loone argues, they must The book opens with a discussion of establish laws entailing predictions the nature and purpose of the philosophy which, if correct, confirm the law and the of history itself. Stressing the diverse theory in which the laws figures. While ways in which the discipline has been Loone claims — remarkably — that "at understood, Loone charts its development the reconstructive level everything of from Hegel's idea of a universal history major importance has already been done of mankind to Collingwood's study of the as far as European history is concerned," nature of historical knowledge. Like Col- (74) he maintains that genuine historical lingwood, who he evidently admires, theories are few. He thus proceeds to an Loone's own conception of the discipline examination of one of this rare breed: the is primarily epistemological: philosophy Marxist theory of socio-economic forma­ of history concerns itself with how histo­ tions. Here Loone is concerned not so rians cognize the world. But unlike Col- much to evaluate the theory as to explore lingwood, who "belonged to the party of its conceptual structure and to consider philosophical idealists," (31) Loone's ap­ ways it may be developed while remain­ proach is materialist and scientific in as­ ing compatible with Marxism. piration. He rejects not only speculative While readers will admire the clarity Hegelian visions of history, but all at­ of Loone's presentation and his famil­ tempts to argue that historical enquiry iarity with Western sources, they are un­ involves modes of explanation that are likely to find his position particularly in­ qualitatively different from science. He novative or illuminating. He shows little thus downplays the significance of his­ feel for the interpretative dimensions of torical narrative and rejects outright the historical research and the distinction be­ supposed distinction between the Geis- tween reconstruction and explanation is tes- and Naturwissenschaften. Marxism, strikingly naive. Moreover, too many big he insists, upholds the unity of science as issues receive scant attention. There is not a single body of knowledge with includes much discussion, for example, of exactly history. how economic factors have a determining Loone offers a hierarchical concep­ influence in history, or of how the notion tion of historical knowledge. At the rec­ of a historical "law" is to be understood. onstructive level, historians draw on sour­ Yet despite these weaknesses the ces to sketch a map of the past, describing book is not without interest. It is import­ it "as we should have observed it if we had ant to remember that it was originally lived at that time." (69) Such reconstruc­ written for a Soviet audience in the Brezh­ tions form the basis of empirical investi­ nev era and as such it has a pronounced gations which identify historical phe­ sub-text. Loone's concern to establish nomena and establish regularities, enab­ philosophy of history as a genuine disci­ ling historians to form concepts which pline, his hostility to speculative theoriz­ figure in explanations. These explana­ ing and commitment to rigorous analysis tions are given by theories, which repre­ all stand as challenges to the Soviet estab­ sent the highest level of historical cogni­ lishment to replace shoddy ideology with tion. Though this tripartite account recalls a critical intellectual culture. In this, the distinction between "everyday," "em­ Loone's approach is representative of pirical," and "theoretical" knowledge those Western-looking Soviet philosop­ common in Soviet epistemology, it is to a hers who sought to rationalize Soviet Western philosopher, Carl Hempel, that Marxism by shrugging off the influence Loone turns for his view of the scientific of Hegel, establishing a principled dis­ status of historical explanation, adopting tinction between "normative" and "fac­ Hempel's celebrated (if now dated) "hy- tual" questions, and adopting the methods REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 361 of natural science as the model of serious socio-economic formation, but a transi­ theorizing. tion between formations. Such a transfor­ Recognizing this sub-text does not re­ mation, Loone far-sightedly argues, can­ deem the work entirely. On the contrary, not proceed without a fundamental it helps reveal the book's fundamental change in the role of the CPSU. As for flaw. For when Loone himself is doing Marxism itself, Loone suggests that it has history, be lapses into precisely the specu­ failed both as a secular religion and a lative, unsubstantiated posturing he is speculative theory of history. The notion supposedly attacking. For example, of a centrally planned economy has been Loone asserts that theories which deny discredited and, Loone curiously argues, the existence of historical laws were fos­ egalitarianism must be rejected as "a feu­ tered and nurtured by the Western Euro­ dal idea." (229) He maintains, however, pean bourgeoisie because they "feared in­ that Marxian concepts still have signifi­ stinctively any study of the laws of social cant explanatory potential, despite the development." (24) We are further told fact that Marxism's lack of sophisticated that, by the mid 20th century, "the forces theories of political institutions and eth­ of socialism had grown to such an extent nic identity is an obstacle to perestroika. ... that the bourgeoisie was ready to tol­ Though flawed as an exercise in the erate and support any non-Marxist world- philosophy of history, Soviet Marxism view" and that "this situation gave rise to and Analytical Philosophies of History analytic philosophy." (23) Loone fails to has much to teach us about the nature of support these contentious claims with evi­ the Soviet intellectual climate and its re­ dence of any kind. It may be, of course, levance to the political scene. It also that he included such passages in order to shows Professor Loone to be a thinker of appear faithful to a worldview of the So­ stature. His analysis of the present situ­ viet establishment; throughout the main ation in the "former Soviet Union" would text, he is anxious to protect himself from no doubt be interesting to hear and it is to criticism by representing his position as be hoped that more of his writings will orthodox. Nevertheless, the presence of become available to Western audiences. such poor history in a book devoted to upholding high standards of historical re­ search undermines the integrity of the David Bakhurst text. By protecting himself this way, Queen's University Loone contributes to the problem rather than its solution. The 1989 postscript finds Loone more Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith, openly critical of the Soviet Union and its The Social origins of Democratic Social­ ideology. This piece, which originally ap­ ism in Jamaica (Philadelphia: Temple peared in Soviet Studies, represents a typi­ University Press 1992). cal contribution to Soviet debates about the fate of Marxism that became so com­ THIS BOOK Tills a gap in the literature mon under glasnost (see Studies in East pertaining to the Manley era in Jamaican European Thought, I, 1993). He argues politics. In the studies that have appeared that the USSR is not even a distorted form since 1972 when Michael Manley em­ of socialism, but either a mixture of barked on the path of democratic social­ slavery and feudalism or a distinctive ism, much more attention has been paid socio-economic formation in its own to external and third party influences on right. Thus, the widely acknowledged the Manley government than on its own tension between the forces and relations internal dynamics and assumptions. of production in the Soviet Union pres­ Apart from the critiques offered by the ages not a transformation within a single Jamaican left, and particularly by the Workers' Party of Jamaica, no sustained 362 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

account focusing on the peculiarities of This is not to say that the authors are national class formation, and the People's unequivocally successful in their attempt National Party (PNP) place in it, has been at a fuller analysis of the period. Their offered to explain what happened in those crucial submission turns upon two spe­ years and why. cific propositions. First, they argue that And yet, few political developments democratic socialism, Jamaica style, was in Jamaican history are as startling as the a badly flawed concept from its inception, reversal of the PNP, and of Michael Man- in part because the definition of demo­ ley himself, from the radical postures of cratic socialism was much more aimed at the 1970s to the much more conservative disarming and incorporating critical so­ stance of the 1980s and 1990. Michael cial sectors running the range of tradi­ Manley himself significantly contributed tional Christians to Rastafarians to "pa­ to the bibliography of the period with triotic" businessmen to workers than with three notable publications which caught offering a reliably rigorous dennition of the essence of the adversarial and combat­ the term which would translate into spe­ ive position of the PNP in the period 1972- cific and consistent policies and initiatives. 1980. His books. The Politics of Change Second, they affirm the unchanging (1974), Jamaica: Struggle in the Periph­ character of the PNP which remained ery (1982) and Up the Down Escalator more the party that the older Manley, Nor­ (1987), reflected the outlook of a radical man, had created and less the vehicle for Third World politician on the frontline of radical change that the younger Manley, the struggle for change against the histori­ Michael, yearned to posses. The stamp of cal legacy of colonial domination, dispos­ 1938 weighed heavily on the party of the session, under-development and what an­ 1970s and 1980s, as did the conservative other noted Jamaican, George Beckford, influence of "old hands" within it. En­ had adequately described as a state of lightened, democratic, liberal and popu­ persistent poverty. Secondhand accounts list, the party's dominant ideological po­ did the same: Michael Kaufman's Jamai­ sition was "Manleyism" defined as an es­ ca under Manley: Dilemmas of Socialism sentially centrist construct committed to: and Democracy is one useful example of the genre. the global radical tradition while managing to remain faithful to capitalism ... [occupying] These interpretations were neither er­ the contradictory positions of pillar of roneous nor inaccurate; but they were in­ capitalism and haven of radical tenets and complete. It is well understood that the practices that are inimical to the capitalist political history of Jamaica in the last two mode of production ... [possessed] of a blend decades can not be understood outside the of political philosophy and economics whose framework of Cold War conflicts and ri­ strongest suit was perhaps the ability to offer valries, sharpened by the turbulent events realistic promises, generate political progres- of Caribbean affairs in the period 1968 to sivism through the advocacy of the common 1983, from the Rodney riots down to the good, and thereby contain the forces of discon­ tent kept alive by a long and seemingly unend­ Grenada revolution and its demise. At the ing tradition of want. (109) same time, though, a deeper under­ standing of Jamaican political strife in the I should have said, though, that period concerned, and of its outcome, re­ "populist" was my word, not the authors'. quires an analysis of the activities of the Their word would be "popularist." The major players, as well as their declara­ distinction is at the hart of their enquiry tions. It is in explaining this counterpoint into the Jamaican problematic. National between rhetoric and reality, between popularism is defined as "a model of in­ words and deeds, that the book finds it terpretation that explains the socio-politi­ greatest strength. cal correlates of a crisis in capital accu­ mulation." It is a device resorted to, argue REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 363

the authors, by Third World leaders who not be the whole view. As the authors opportunistically align themselves with themselves argue, the ascendancy of the radical social theories, for example, so­ PNP in historical perspective, and of the cialism, egalitarianism and anti-imperial­ middle-class entrepreneurs who support ism "though everything else about them it, has been at the expense of the genuine­ stands in stark contrast" (reviewer's ita­ ly popular and lower class sectors and lics) to their articulation of those views. their organizations. It is fanciful to be­ Such alignments have produced, the auth­ lieve that these sectors will be permanent­ ors remind us, "Kenyan» in Kenya, For­ ly reconciled to an acceptance of "the bes Burnham and cooperative socialism tradition of want," the "persistent pov­ in Guyana, and many others." (28) Fur­ erty" to which generations of PNP and JLP ther, national popularism aims at some politics have sentenced them. re-distribution of the social product; but it avoids the formal empowerment of the James Millette subordinate, popular elements through Oberlin College formal institutions like unions and peas­ ant organizations. Simply put, the PNP of the period 1972-1980 was not populist, but popular­ Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian, ise or, to say it another way, it was popu­ Strike Across the Empire: The Seamen's list from above, not from below, often in Strike of 1925 in Britain, South Africa and response to theoretical and ideological Australasia (London: Clio Publications challenges launched from the Marxist left 1992). and, less often, by its own increasingly alienated left-wing. To which, of course, FROM TIME TO TIME, an event of poten­ must be added the external seduction of­ tially great significance is, for one reason fered to its main players by the oppor­ or another, ignored by historians. This is tunities provided on the global stage for no less true of labour history than of other vocalizing the rhetoric of change and branches of the discipline, and many a renewal. vital moment in the history of class struggle has, for want of attention, re­ The explanation of what has hap­ mained lost from our collective memory. pened in Jamaica since 1980 is, of course, Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian un­ more complex than this theory affords. earth such a "forgotten" occurrence, one The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) interreg­ which may force revisions in the historio­ num, the debacle in Grenada, the popula­ graphy of labour in Britain and its late rizing of conservative, market-oriented Empire. The strike in question, which social and economic policies in the Rea­ spread beyond the United Kingdom to the gan-Thatcher years, the collapse of so­ self-governing dominions of South Afri­ cialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern ca, Australia, and New Zealand, has gone Europe, are all part of the explanation of almost entirely unmentioned in histories the great reversal in Jamaica. What the of the British labour movement. Its ab­ book does, however, is to suggest that sence is, according to Hirson and Vivian, even without these developments the in­ nothing less than astounding, particularly ternal dynamics would very probably given the role played by union bureau­ have led to the same conclusion because crats in the strike, the significance of the of the ideological confusion within, and "race" question in shaping its trajectory, the fundamentally conservative position its "international" dimension, and its of the principal agent for change, namely, proximity to the unsuccessful General the People's National Party. Strike of 1926. It is a view that finds many supporters inside and outside of Jamaica. Yet is can­ As described by Hirson and Vivian, the 1925 strike was largely a spontaneous 364 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

action undertaken by the rank and file of bureaucrats played upon white seamen's British seamen. Indeed, it was directed fears that their jobs might be lost to lower- not only against a powerful cartel of shi­ paid "Lascar" (Indian) and Chinese sai­ powners but against the upper echelons of lors in defusing the rank and file walkout. Britain's largest seafarer's organization, Scattered attempts at cross-racial soli­ the National Sailors and Firemen's Union darity, meanwhile, were ineffective in (NSFU), presided over by the jingoistic, overcoming the racist attitudes which per­ red-baiting J. Havelock Wilson. As head vaded the British Empire. of this archetypical "company union," Despite its importance in bringing to Wilson in August 1925 unilaterally of­ light a vital moment in labour history, this fered employers a 10 percent wage reduc­ treatment is not without its shortcomings. tion without consulting the union mem­ First, while Havelock Wilson is the cen­ bership, sparking a walkout by thousands tral character in Hirson's and Vivian's of seamen. Their strike was unsuccessful, account the NSFU president remains however, receiving little or no support something of an enigma. As a vocal and from any established working-class or­ indeed violent opponent of the strike, he ganization. Most notably, the Trades is portrayed in stark terms throughout. A Union Congress remained aloof from the loyal collaborator with employers struggle, rejecting any attempt at soli­ through the mechanism of the National darity with the striking seamen. This, as Maritime Board, Wilson emerges, quite Hirson and Vivian note, would have dire rightly, as the villain of the piece. Yet consequences a year later, when the NSFU Wilson had not always been such. Though would play a pivotal part in defeating the always an opponent of socialism, he was, General Strike. Moreover, the authors at least until 1911, a militant organizer suggest in their preface that the 1925 and a thorn in the side of shipowners, a strike may have been "provoked in order fact noted by Hirson and Vivian. Never­ to undermine the seamen before the main theless, his conversion to a right-wing, action was played out." (ii) While they almost fascistic, demagogue receives admit being unable to confirm this specu­ only a cursory treatment in their account. lation, it is nevertheless intriguing, and This is unfortunate, since Wilson's, while poses a clear challenge to other historians. an extreme case, was not an isolated one. The seamen's strike also provides la­ John Burns, Ramsay MacDonald, and Er­ bour history with a much-sought-after nest Bevin, to name but a few, were trans­ rarity: a working-class action which man­ formed over time from militant radicals to aged to cross national boundaries. Al­ "respectable" collaborators with the rul­ though still technically within the Em­ ing classes. A more indepth analysis of pire, South African and the Australasian Wilson's political background would not dominions were effectively autonomous only throw more light on this general phe­ states by the 1920s, and their labour nomenon, but would assist in explaining movements had few connections to that of his endurance in the face of a rank and file the "Mother Country." In examining the revolt. course of the strike in each country, Hir­ Hirson's and Vivian's treatment of son and Vivian bring to light both com­ the question of racism in shaping the monalities and divergences in the experi­ course of the strike is similarly lacking in ences of seamen in these different na­ analytical depth. This is especially curi­ tional contexts. The strike, for instance, ous given the large and growing body of though it began in Britain, was both more theoretical work on the relationship be­ widespread and longer-lived in the domi­ tween race and class, and in particular on nions. It was also in the dominions that the language of racism and colonialism. the strike's racial aspect was most pro­ Their failure to bring such analysis to bear nounced. Both shipowners and union upon the racial attitudes of white seamen REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 365

leaves race as a "given" and, at times, Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler, eds., results in important inconsistencies. Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (At­ Early on, for instance, the authors con­ hens: Ohio University Press and Pieter- demn as "absurd" an allegation that Asian maritzburg: University of Natal Press seamen were "much cheaper than white 1992). men [and would] live anywhere, and any­ how on the meanest fare imaginable — JONATHAN CRUSH and Charles Ambler curry and rice, for instance...." (38) Later have brought together the most thorough in their account, however, they endorse and wide-ranging collection of carefully- another writer's "courageous" assertion researched essays to date on the import­ that "because the subsistence level of the ance of alcohol in the social and labour Lascar was so low... his wages were kept history of southern Africa. These essays down." (76) Yet, aside from the obviously are primarily case studies where each of pejorative tone of the first statement, both the twelve contributors focuses on some passages refer to the same phenomenon: aspect of the complex relationship be­ that employers could, and did, pay Asian tween liquor and labour within a particu­ workers less than they did Europeans. lar time-place setting. This fifteen-chapter Hirson and Vivian ultimately do little to volume includes contributions from a di­ enlighten us as to why this was so, or why verse group of academics, drawn mainly those who sought to achieve inter-racial from history, sociology, and geography, solidarity found their efforts frustrated. thus fulfilling an important objective of An understanding of the role played by stimulating collaboration across disci­ racism in the 1925 strike would benefit plines and bringing a variety of voices greatly from closer attention to the mech­ into scholarly discourse. While some anics of a racially structured work force, focus on earlier periods, the bulk of these as well as to the centrality of the concept essays concentrate on the period from the of race within the context of British dis­ 1930s through the 1950s. The geographi­ course on class relations. cal distribution of these studies is im­ These criticisms aside, Hirson and pressive. Most are primarily situated in Vivian have produced a stimulating and South Africa proper, although the North­ valuable study of a little-known event, ern Rhodesia Copperbelt, Salisbury, Swa­ which succeeds throughout in bringing to ziland, and Botswana are also included. life the voices of those on both sides of This provocative volume accomplishes the dispute while not shrinking from plac­ more than simply informing the scholarly ing blame where they believe it is debate: it also promises to stimulate new deserved. Despite its brevity, clocking in historical scholarship on the importance at a mere 94 pages, their book represents of alcohol in the social and labour history a prodigious effort of combing through of southern Africa. the newspapers of four countries, with As Jonathan Crush and Charles Am­ little other primary or secondary work for bler point out in their excellent introduc­ guidance. Without question, the 1925 tory essay, the volume aims to "explore strike requires more work, particularly in the complex relationship between alcohol integrating it into the broader scope of use and the emergence in southern Africa British labour history. In the meantime, of a modern urban-industrial system, Strike Across the Empire will remain es­ based on mining and the exploitation of sential reading for those interested in the migrant labor." (2) Despite the pro­ history of the working classes of Britain minence of alcohol production and con­ and the dominions. sumption in descriptions of southern Af­ rican social life, this subject has received Mike O'Brien little systematic scholarly attention. What Queen's University becomes readily apparent from the intro- 366 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

duction is that studying the historical con­ This theme of social control is echoed in text of liquor offers a unique opportunity the essays by Richard Parry on Salisbury, to discuss broader patterns of change and Ruth Edgecombe on the Natal Coal resistance in southern Africa history. Mines, Sean Redding on Umtata, Charles With one or two exceptions, liquor is Ambler on the Copperbelt, Jonathan the central organizing principle of each of Crush on Havelock (Swaziland), and these essays. Yet what emerges is less a Pamela Scully on the Western Cape. What single causal chain connecting liquor emerges from these studies is a common with labour than a complex mosaic where conclusion — namely that the state auth­ liquor — its manufacture, its consump­ orities were unable to unilaterally impose tion, and multiple socio-cultural their will and to use alcohol as a tool of meanings — becomes a site of struggle in manipulation as they would have liked. its own right. On balance, the essays os­ The resistance of common people to cillate between two polar positions: on state alcohol policy is a powerful theme the one side, some tend to treat the manu­ that runs throughout all the essays, and facture and sale of strong drink as a capi­ some contributors do an excellent job in talist plot to ensure a docile labour force placing it at the centre of their analyses. and as a ready mechanism to increase For example, in taking women-organized state revenues; on the other side, there are beer protests in the Natal countryside in those who regard clandestine manufac­ 1929 as her starting point, Helen Bradford ture of backyard alcohol and its place in — in what I think is the most strikingly social life as a form of resistance to colo­ unique and best argued piece in the vol­ nizing power and domination. There is a ume — is able to show how men and creative tension here, and the various con­ women experienced capitalist penetration tributors demonstrate with great clarity of the countryside differently and hence that these are not contradictory positions, responded in ways shaped by gender rela­ but that the understanding of liquor and tions and patriarchy. Similarly, in adopt­ class varies in accordance with the vant­ ing a 'moral economy' frame of refer­ age point from where this complex rela­ ence, Dunbar Moodie is able to demon­ tionship is observed. Crush and Ambler strate how illicit brewing and illegal capture this fundamental ambiguity in drinking on the South African gold mines their Introduction. "Those in power saw "helped support ethnic solidarities sus­ alcohol as a source of revenue and profit taining resistance to proletarianization." and as an effective tool of social engineer­ (163) ing and control," the editors suggest, "but Some of the essays in the volume ad­ they often viewed drink also as a danger­ dress the problems of liquor and labour ous source of disorder, indiscipline, so­ from what appear to be rather odd vantage cial deterioration, and human degrada­ points. While his essay does not focus tion." (2) primarily upon the conjoined issues of Because the contributors to the vol­ alcohol consumption in any detail, Phil ume do not share a common point of de­ Bonner provides an excellent study of parture, the essays focus on widely differ­ "disorderly" urbanization on the East ent aspects of the liquor question. In his Rand. In a similar vein, Patrick McAllis­ carefully argued study of the municipal ter emphasizes the cultural meanings of beer monopoly in Durban, Paul la Hausse beer drinking and brewing rituals in a documents how the so-called "Durban detailed investigation of the Xhosa in­ system" became a "model for the control habitants of Willowvale district, Trans- and exploitation of Africans living and kei. The emphasis on the importance of working in South African towns" and how social geography in Christian Rogerson's this model was exported to other parts of essay on the removal of beerhalls close to the British overseas Empire. (79, 105) Johannesburg's central business district REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 367

in the early 1960s gives location the close brought into being and maintained attention that is missing in other studies. through the organized violence of im­ In Steven Haggblade's careful study of perial and later nominally independent Botswana, we learn that, for example, states. Moreover, it is argued, plantations roughly 30 per cent of all households have served not to meet the consumption earned regular income in the 1980s from needs of those who labour in and live sorghum beer production, making it the amidst them but rather the criteria of largest nonfarm employer in the country. profitability. Moreover, the health conse­ (395) quences of plantation agriculture have Despite the apparent commonality of been universally deplorable as a result of subject matter, the individual studies in low wages, poor living conditions and this book are surprisingly different, not increasing exposure to herbicides, fertili­ only regarding the topics covered but also zers, and pesticides. The large scale farm­ the style of presentation. The contribu­ ing or plantation sector in Rhodesia was tions to this volume are both academically no exception to this pattern. Land was sound and interesting reading. For anyone expropriated from its prior African users interested in the social and labour history by the nascent colonial state and made of southern Africa, this book must be available to European settlers. Forced read. onto what became steadily overcrowded reserves, Africans had little choice but to labour on what was once their own land. Martin J. Murray Pay was low, living conditions squalid, State University of New York education barely existent, and health at Binghamton poor. The end of white minority rule in the reincarnation of Rhodesia as Zimbabwe Rene Loewenson, Modern Plantation Ag­ was meant to change all — or at least a riculture: Corporate Wealth and Public substantial part — of this dire reality. Yet Squalor (London: Zed Press 1992). it has not. And it is in detailing and under­ standing why not that Loewenson runs THIS WORK, written by an occupational into trouble. We are never really told just health specialist with the Zimbabwe Con­ why it is that the agrarian sector of Zim­ gress of Trade Unions takes as its primary babwe has not been transformed. Yet, al­ focus the health implications of the devel­ most a decade ago, Andre Astrow put opment of plantation agriculture in Zim­ forward a case for the betrayal of the babwe and its predecessor state, hopes and aspirations of, among others, Rhodesia. The book is divided into three farm workers in his Zimbabwe: a revol­ sections, the first providing a brief over­ ution that lost its way? (1983). It is dis­ view of the origins and evolution of plan­ turbing that Astrow's work does not fig­ tation agriculture as a form of production ure in Loewenson's account nor does it within capitalism. The second section, appear in the latter's bibliography. Yet comprising the bulk of the book, outlines Loewenson's concluding remark that, the specific history of the plantation or large farm sector in Zimbabwe (Rhode­ One of the most serious contradictions be­ sia). The final section, made up of one tween the stated aspirations of both ZANU (PF) chapter, is concerned with the prospect and early government policy documents and and the reality of transforming the Zim­ the real situation in the agricultural sector, has babwean countryside with the re-organiz­ been the continued profound social and ation (abolition?) of the plantation/large economic marginalisation of a substantial sec­ farm sector. tor of the rural working class population. The thesis here is that plantation economies world-wide have only been 368 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

This statement cries out for an updat­ original criticism of the liberal idea of a ing, or at least an engagement, with As- system of self-regulating markets, this trow's work. Is such engagement an im­ rather back-handed "thank you" intrigued possibility in a 'free' Zimbabwe? me. I found it interesting, then, as a matter of 20th-century intellectual history to Bob Shenton read the present sampling of Drucker's Queen's University essays over the last half century. The first piece in the volume was written in 1946 and one immediately sees why Polanyi could hardly disregard him. We see Peter Drucker, The Ecological Vision Drucker struggling to express his sense (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers that American has distinctive institutions. 1993). I can imagine him gesturing to these in order to counter Polanyi's foreboding AS A BEGINNING graduate student in pol­ sense of what the post-war period was itical economy I soon became dimly going to be like. One thing that bothered aware of Peter Drucker as a contributor to Polanyi was he could not see how the the literature advocating taking the economic forces unleashed over the peri­ American large corporation seriously on od since 1800 were going lo allow room its own terms as a kind of new social form. for the free development of the individual I also got the impression that Drucker had human spirit, of the kind Protestant Chris­ played a key role in the normalizing of the tianity had promised, but which capital­ notion of the giant firm, making it fit for ism cannot tolerate. It is clear from public consumption, as it were. I left it at Drucker's interesting essay on Kierke­ that I "knew" that North Americans had gaard (written in 1949 but revealingly been given to understand that at least placed at the end of this volume) why he these powerful new entities were not like unlike Polanyi simply gave up on that the "robber barons" of days of yore. problem. For overall this book is a series Above all they were different and more of hymns to the American middle-class complex. In terms of sociological detail way whereby true spiritual freedom and Drucker was right of course. In terms of democracy are left to fend for themselves overall class analysis I'm not so sure the against the new corporatism. They are not reality is functionally so very different, to be explicitly aimed at institutions. It although the wasting of human energy is would be a hasty and utter fool however on a vastly larger scale. We will return to who would take my last remarks as an these points later. excuse not to read Drucker. My a priori image of Peter Drucker The thirty pieces (all previously pub­ first sharpened when I read the "Author's lished) range over many topics (with truly Acknowledgements" in Karl Polanyi's admirable coherence), are well-written The Great Transformation: the Political (beautifully concise), very provocative and Economic Origins of Our Time which (usually iconoclastic) and deeply (albeit was completed over the years 1941-3 at randomly) seasoned with doses of sharp Bennington College (Vermont) where realism. It may be the abandonment of Drucker was apparently on staff. Polanyi high ideals for society that makes the re­ says that Drucker "and his wife were a alist stance so easy to maintain, but the source of sustained encouragement, fact remains that this text is crammed full notwithstanding their wholehearted dis­ of profound insights into American so­ agreement with the author's conclu­ ciety and culture, in particular the way sions." Since Polanyi was a socialist problems due to large-scale institutions whose unwillingness to embrace the Mar­ are handled. Since American social forms xist analysis of capitalist societies was are proliferating world-wide at the près- only matched by his relentless and wholly REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 369 ent, we are not talking about a trivial seemingly infinite number of ways. Any subject here. I would certainly like to mere individual doesn't stand a chance of thank Drucker for further clarifying why influencing such a leviathan, and cooper­ I dislike so much what he so uncritically ating groups are bound to soil their prin­ loves. It is not that he is a conservative in ciples if they try to work together to alter any ordinary sense. Indeed Drucker is the sociological ground rules. It is Tho­ classically liberal in his absolute accept­ mas Jefferson's nightmare, but also Karl ance of what has happened. History could Marx's nightmare. We see now that so­ not have taken us anywhere other than ciety passed from feudal corporatism where it took us. As a Marxist of the Kozo through to contemporary corporatism Uno persuasion I find that kind of casual with only a brief interlude during the libe­ implicit determinism extremely offens­ ral era when it looked as though prin­ ive. Lamentably I know (from experi­ cipled individualism might eventually ence) that it would take an entire essay win the day. It is worth reminding our­ properly to explain why I think, contra selves that the new social movements on Drucker, that modernity could have taken which many pin elaborate hopes today are and sti|l could take other forms. Here I the offspring of liberal individualism: the can only say Drucker helps a lot to explain general idea that individuals must not be how the current form works, but not why discriminated against arbitrarily. What it was tolerated. For instance, he says that has counted as "arbitrary" has had of mass transportation is what made the course to be extended many times but the large-scale organization possible. This in­ logic of the principle has always been the terests him because large-scale organiza­ same. Unfortunately these direct descend­ tions have special management problems. ants of liberalism did not inherit the rela­ Well, one can look at this same point and tively open 19th century sociological con­ say that one now sees more clearly than text which alone made it seem a viable ever why constructing mass transport­ picture of the modern future. It is always ation systems was such an appalling disturbing to be reminded how much the waste of the lives and energies of working possibility of socialism as originally con­ class people. Without these crazy bour­ ceived depended on getting there first. It geois projects ordinary people could have is extremely hard to envisage either spent their time (and the materials) im­ classical liberalism or socialism taking proving their housing stock. root inside modern societies of the sort It was when I was still only in Drucker describes. Drucker's first essay that I recognized the It is necessary to comment on the old- confident tone and the analytical style and fashioned title which is liable to mislead the bizarre anti-non-conservative outlook most people very seriously by seeming as strongly reminiscent of Walter Bage- highly topical. By "ecology" Drucker de­ hot, who wrote on The English Constitu­ cided (evidently many decades ago) to tion in the second half of the 19th century mean something like: the study of socio­ with a mixture of fondness and sharpness political or institutional context. His that remains profoundly disconcerting to "ecological vision" then consists in this day. Similarly, Drucker clearly seeing how America works on analogy adores the way corporatist America works with the way a biologist might try to see but his foremost aim is to explain that it how an ecosystem works. As I see it this doesn't work in anything like the way allows me to reiterate the significance of most of its admirers think it does. He Drucker's work by saying that modern lovingly details how, for example, demo­ progressives are about as likely to be able cratic principle is virtually irrelevant in to change the ground rules of the condi­ American government and how sectional tions of their existence as a few species of interests can manipulate this fact in a 370 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

butterflies would be able to unravel a and "communicate" would have to toil tropical ecosystem. with things just like in the old days are There is one line which neatly illus­ nowhere acknowledged. Since I could go trates how distressing this book must be on for pages about the problems raised in to conservatives, liberals, and socialists Drucker's fascinating collection of essays alike (although the reasons would but mustn't, I will indulge in one more diverge). It also indicates a rather more observation. When I found out very late insidious side to Drucker's sociological at night from the "Afterword" that spring-cleaning. "Increasingly, espe­ Drucker's main intellectual hero has al­ cially in the United States, the only way ways been none other than the above- in which the individual can amass a little mentioned Walter Bagehot my delight at property is through the pension fund, that my own perspicacity was only matched is, through membership in an organiza­ by my political chagrin. But I for one have tion." This is one of the relatively few long insisted you cannot understand any­ places where the word "own" appears and thing about modern England until you it is the only one which says much, but read Bagehot. Drucker is arguably in the what is amazing is what it doesn't say. same league but (thanks, incidentally, to One has to conclude that Drucker would Hitler) talks about America. simply nod smiling approval if one sug­ gested that the average feudal serf had a Colin A.M. Duncan slightly greater chance of successfully Queen's University challenging the ownership patterns of so- ciety than the average American "citizen." But Drucker's claim about pen­ sion funds, if true (and he wrote a book Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey, The on them and so presumably knows), cries New Unemployed: Joblessness and Pov­ out for comment and analysis. For while erty in the Market Economy (London: Zed membership in the club of American Books 1992). owners is now I daresay fully as exclusive as Drucker's aside implies (and it was just THIS BOOK examines unemployment in an aside), it surely follows that it must be the European Community, Northern Ire­ especially nice to be among those who got land, the Republic of Ireland, the UK, and in before the gates closed. But there is not the US. Packed with useful statistics and even a whiff of class analysis in this col­ tables on productivity, GDP, income, pov­ lection which ranges so widely over do­ erty, welfare expenditures, labour force, zens of key American institutions. Are we and trends in employment and unemploy­ to conclude that every society in which ment, it also contains illuminating discus­ access to property has been discontinued sions of government policies, their is no longer to be counted a class so­ informing economic theories, and evalu­ ciety??!! ations of their impacts. Economic debates and competing interpretations of econ­ In comparison it was a blessed relief omic patterns are interwoven throughout to see that Galbraith in The Culture of the text. Contentment was able to declare that very recently it has become "o.k." in the US to Although never defined, the term speak of the "underclass." Another ele­ "new unemployed" refers to more than ment of American life missing in recency. First, unemployment rates in the Drucker's account is the myriad workers 1980s and 1990s, especially in the EC, outside America who produce so many of were substantially higher than in previous the things Americans consume. Likewise post-World War II decades. In the 1960s, the high-grade fuels and raw materials for example, the average rate in the UK without which most who now "manage" was under 2 per cent and less than 1 per cent in France and West Germany. In REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 371

1989 rates in these countries ranged from One chapter deals with programs de­ roughly 6 to 10 per cent, despite having veloped by the EC to combat poverty. experienced real economic growth. Sec­ Half-hearted and poorly funded, these ond, in contrast to earlier decades, recent programs were not intended as a sub­ unemployment features a significantly stitute for national initiatives. The authors higher proportion of long-term jobless­ view the social charter of the EC as long ness (without work for over a year). on rhetoric but short on substance. Third, governments of the 1980s and There is a chapter on the Irish Repub­ 1990s devalued unemployment as a social lic and Northern Ireland (whose unem­ concern, choosing instead to contain in­ ployment rates in the late 1980s exceeded flation. The mid-1970s marked the point 17 per cent) and another on the Thatcher when Keynesian policies of stimulating years in the UK subtitled "Engineered demand to achieve full employment were Mass Unemployment?" A deteriorating supplanted by monetarist and supply-side British economy in the 1980s marked by economics. the simultaneous rise of unemployment Two chapters assess the Reagan-Bush and inflation undermined Keynesianism years in the US. Reagan slashed spending and paved the way for the emergence of on public works and welfare, deregulated the New Right. Thatcher first opted for a economic sectors, and instituted supply- monetarist strategy — keeping a lid on the side programs based on corporate and in­ money supply via high interest rates and come tax cuts. These measures were de­ reduced government spending — and signed to stimulate investment and job later a supply-side strategy of lowering growth, but the resulting increase in taxes to stimulate investment. These profits was used not for job creation but policies were accompanied by rampant for mergers and takeovers. Under Reagan privatization and deregulation. While in­ the government spent over $1 trillion flation was brought under control, these more than it took in from taxes and gov­ measures accelerated the decline in manu­ ernment receipts. In less than three years facturing and created "levels of Unem­ the US was transformed from the world's ployment far beyond anything envisaged largest creditor to its largest debtor. The or considered acceptable in the previous income gap between the rich and poor 30 years." I got a sense of déjà vu from widened, with the top 1 per cent enjoying reading about the Thatcher years because an 85 per cent increase in real income they parallelled in so many ways the situ­ while the income of the bottom 20 per ation in Canada under Mulroney. cent fell by 20 per cent. A chapter is The authors lament the tragic failure devoted to discussing the US underclass of neo-conservative economic policies and competing explanations of its persist­ and their victim-blaming programs to re­ ence and growth. Still, despite fluctua­ integrate the jobless through reducing tions, unemployment rates in the US in the their social benefits dependency and im­ 1980s were lower than in most EC coun­ proving their marketability, thus ignoring tries, and the US rate in the late 1980s was the structural sources of the problem. lower than it was in the 1970s. The main With no end to capitalism in sight, the explanation — military Keynesianism in authors' solution is a revitalized social which about 60 cents of every tax dollar democracy. Revitalization is needed be­ was absorbed by military spending. But cause social democratic parties have military pump-priming failed to prevent a adopted technocratic, market-dominated steep decline in manufacturing (deindus- strategies and soft-pedaled increased tax­ trialization), and over the past decade ation and expenditures. In an indictment many new jobs in the US (as well as in that will sound familiar to those who have Canada and the EC nations) were poorly followed the actions of recently elected paid, part-time, and in the service sector. provincial New Democratic parties in Ca- 372 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL nada, the authors state that social democ­ soccer cleats? The point, of course, racy "embraced markets, preaches fiscal becomes clearer in its deconstruction: rectitude, promises to reconstruct the sup­ sport is a bastion of male power; sports ply-side, but continues to assert a margi­ magazines cater to traditional male tastes; nally more ambitious social agenda." and males do not wish to look at other The key to resuscitating social males, unclothed. They want to look at democracy is democratization. The auth­ females, unclothed, or, at most, scantily ors point to sections of the UK, Spain, clad. Northern Italy, and West Germany where Or do they? This question provides community-based development projects one prism through which to view Brian have been successfully implemented. Un­ Pronger's study of the ways in which as­ fortunately, no details are provided. They sumptions about sex and sexuality per­ recommend restructuring electoral sys­ meate and structure the world of white, tems, greater regional autonomy, facili­ middle-class athletic endeavour. Publish­ tating local economic development and ed in hardcover in 1990 and now available public participation in planning. They in paper, The Arena of Masculinity pro­ speculate that the power of transnational vides a pioneering synthesis that makes corporations might only be checked by use of a wide range of cultural sources: the establishment of a supranational body films, pertinent journal articles and and understand such an overarching in­ monographs, photographs, and — most stitution would further complicate demo­ interesting — interviews with thirty-four cratization. They conclude that social predominantly gay Canadian athletes. democracy must "offer a broader, more Pronger seeks to provide an interpretation pluralistic vision of social change based of the unique perspectives on sport of gay on a radical democratization" and a rea­ men and to ponder cultural meanings of sonable balance between market forces homosexuality, as well as of sex and gen­ and state intervention. der generally, within contemporary ath­ letic environments. James Rinehart The homoerotic potential within sport University of Western Ontario constitutes a force profoundly subversive to dominant patriarchal and sexist values. No less than the military, the organized sports world enshrines competition, Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: toughness, the will to win — and bonding. Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning For this reason, perhaps, just as the domi­ of Sex (Toronto: University of Toronto nant culture assumes that women in com­ Press 1992). petitive sport (also as in the military) must be lesbian, the corresponding premise IT WASN'T MORE THAN a kafuffle in the holds that men in athletics must be as advertising wars, but when the New York straight as they are manly and powerful. editors of the Canadian edition of Sports But if this cultural axiom is potent, it Illustrated declined in late June 1993 to also is erroneous. The middle-class sport­ feature a photograph of a North York soc­ ing milieux that Pronger explores provide cer team — wearing Adidas running an ambience rich in sexual imagery and shoes and nothing else — the masculinist fantasy, as well as the possibility of re­ ideology of sport once again struck its making the gender order. On one level, colours. For most SI readers drool at the homosexuality not only violates mas­ magazine's hugely successful annual rit­ culine norms and denigrates mythic male ual, the swimsuit issue, featuring gor­ power, it becomes a key contradiction in geous and nearly nude females in suits the myth of gender. Hence, while reject­ that no one would or could wear to the ing Alfred Kinsey's conclusion that most beach or pool. But nude men? Wearing REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 373

homosexual men behave in ways as "nor­ shape?) share in Pronger's judgment an mally masculine" as heterosexual men, "unthinkable" secret that most men think Pronger also challenges views that have but few admit. The secret is safe because governed cultural definitions of homo­ in sport, all are assumed heterosexual. sexuality for the last century — that ho­ Gays who move through sport environ­ mosexuality should be understood as ments, therefore, may "pass" undetected. either essence or identity. For the author, And, Pronger avers, many gays who use being gay (or heterosexual, for that mat­ this incognito power achieve increased ter) is less a sexual drive, per se, than "a ironic awareness of themselves and their way of being and understanding." (8) Ho­ masculine environment. mosexual men possess great insight into Indeed, it is not surprising that in the the gender myths and paradoxes of North last quarter-century sporting motifs have American culture, although Pronger ad­ come to provide gay communities with a mits — and the point makes his analysis pivotal mode of definition. The antithesis problematic — that "homosexual knowl­ of the stereotypical limp-wristed cookie- edge" ("paradoxical intuition") is fluid, pusher, gayness now leads to explicit varies considerably in intensity, and af­ brawn and active lifestyles. On one level fects different men at different times and the muscularly masculine athlete is now a in assorted circumstances. sex symbol par excellence, the object of In his chapter on "Gay Sensibility," sexual desire for that archetypal and the linch-pin of the book, the author sug­ mythic model — and the author does a gests that homosexuals react to the world perceptive job in delineating ways in in three different ways: suppressing their which straight film, journalistic, fitness, intuitions and embracing (as much as and advertising media contribute to this possible) cultural orthodoxy; compre­ milieu. More important, Pronger shows hending the paradoxical irony within the how desiring gay sex with robust athletes gender myth; or viewing their lives within is at once — again paradoxically — both the framework of potential challenge to reverence for, and violation of, traditional the primacy of this fiction. Because of the masculinity. If the male organ serves as diversity of gay men's lives, these sensi­ the apotheosis of this masculinity, the bilities are not exclusive, but appear in jock strap, especially after use, serves as different blends at different times in dif­ its "shelter and shrine" and "sacramental ferent venues. element" (159, 161) Gay pornography is Pronger argues that most sporting ac­ loaded with jocks and jock-straps, men tivity involving men (the Gay Olympics who are fit (in keeping with the recent gay provide one notable exception) proceeds discovery of the fitness industry) but not on the assumption that participants are necessarily brawny, and who are decked heterosexual. Yet within contact sports to the nines in the latest pretty, colour-co­ like football or hockey, non-contact ordinated outfits. In the larger culture, sports like figure skating or gymnastics, Pronger suggests, the emphasis upon in the shower after a workout, or within muscularity — emphasized in body­ the close relationship that may develop building — extends the ironic gay fasci­ between coach and performer, there al­ nation with appearance; the muscles are ways exists homoerotic potential. But developed not for actual athletic activity, only the participants who have grasped but for posing. Here, in short, is ho­ the gender paradox know for certain the moerotic burlesque at its utmost — gay erotic impulse that may lie ahead (no pun irony at its zenith. One need not be Ein­ intended). stein to appreciate why the annual New York City Police body-building competi­ We heterosexuals who cast glances at tion appears on video in Big Apple gay our showermates (and who among us has bars. not checked our fellows for size and 374 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

Ultimately, Pronger suggests, the by Berkeley anthropologist Alan Dundes dominant perception of sport as hetero­ and Canadian sociologist Gary Kinsman. sexual in its premises and expression re­ Both scholars have written seminally on flects neither the fear of physical pleasure sport, sex, and questions of social regula­ (one of the prime reasons for athletic ac­ tion of gender. tivity) nor the anxiety about the experi­ ence of masculinity (which drives men to Geoffrey S. Smith excel and achieve mythic success). No, Queen's University the answer lies in the dominant culture's perception of athletic arenas as sites of apprenticeship to orthodox masculinity. The institutions that buttress contempor­ William J. Puette, Through Jaundiced ary sport — corporations, churches, Eyes: How the Media View Organized media, the military, and government itself Labor (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press 1992). — are all heavily invested in conventional definitions of sex and gender. The AIDS READERS of this journal will not be sur­ crisis seems to have strengthened this he­ prised to learn that the mass media view terosexual matrix. Hence few gays in big- organized labour and the working class time sport (former NFL star Dave Kopay "though jaundiced eyes." William J. and body-building champ Bob Parish are Puette's monograph provides all the evi­ two notable exceptions) have declared dence one would ever need to prove that openly their homosexuality. Yet if most point or to demonstrate it to students. gay men involved in sport seem to em­ Nevertheless, despite its detailed descrip­ brace the "rules" of heterosexuality, there tion of the prejudice against labour to be can be no doubt that those who appreciate found in the American media, the book is the gender paradox subvert in their own somewhat unsatisfying because of its lack way the dominant culture's assumptions of analysis of the reasons for this bias or about the meaning and function of athletic of its consequences. activity. Puette's main purpose is to expose to In sum, Pronger does for gay, middle- view the negative stereotyping of the la­ class culture what Donald J. Mrozek did bour movement in the contemporary mass for heterosexual, middle-class culture in media. Chapters on movies, television the United States at the turn of the 20th news, television dramas, newspapers, and century in his intellectual history, Sport cartoons are supplemented by two case and American Mentality, 1880-1910 studies — one being the local newspaper (1983). Even more than Mrozek, Pronger coverage of the treatment of Walter deconstructs the meaning of athletic cul­ Kupau, a Hawaiian union leader (Puette ture generally and the tensions between teaches at the University of Hawaii), and and within dominant and contending the second an examination of the cover­ communities. age of the Pittston mine workers' strike in 1989-90. One chapter also briefly surveys Two queries end this review. First, the labour movement's response to its Pronger's sources suggest that the author media image. While most of the emphasis finds a seamlessness between British, Ca­ is contemporary, many chapters also have nadian, and American sporting environ­ a brief historical retrospective. Useful ap­ ments. May a historian of sport — gay or pendices provide lengthy lists of exam­ straight — use such scholarship inter­ ples of cinema and television repre­ changeably? How might we seek to com­ sentations of labour. pare and contrast distinct national gay and lesbian environments and cultures? Must To summarize a great deal of fascinat­ we? Finally, one wonders about the ab­ ing material briefly, Puette concludes that sence in Pronger's bibliography of work each medium tends to reveal one facet of the stereotype of labour. Movies, for REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 375 example, over the years have often port­ Despite the occasional exaggeration, rayed unions as corrupt and tied to or­ all of this material is convincing enough. ganized crime. Like many media, movies Where Puette is not so successful is in have also frequently depicted union explaining why these negative stereo­ leaders as alien communist agitators. types abound. Lacking either a historical Walt Disney's 1925 short, "Alice's Egg or a class analysis, he falls back on some Plant," in which the "little Red HenskT dubious and dated assumptions. More­ leads the hens out on strike is one over, his understanding of the role of the example. Television, both in news stories media in modern society is simplistic and and in serial dramas, often emphasizes the superficial. pettiness and foolishness of bargaining One of Puette's central concerns, for goals. Sitcoms, like movies, are particu­ example, is to try to explain why the larly powerful in conveying stereotypes American media, normally assumed to be because the negative images are dominated by "liberals," are so unsym­ presented tangentially in an entertain­ pathetic to labour. But his answers are ment format. Both television and the print brief and ahistorical. Perhaps, he sug­ media disproportionately emphasize gests, liberals and labour have "sold one strikes in their labour news coverage. another out" in the race to achieve re­ Strike stories, as we know, often portray spectability in American society. Poss­ both the employers and the public/readers ibly there is some "class antipathy" at as hapless victims of selfish unions. work. Perhaps liberal journalists perceive Headlines, captions, and placement sub­ organized labour as a powerful interest tly bias the stories as well; all too often group. All of these suggestions raise in­ labour news appears next to coverage of teresting possibilities, but none is pursued crime and violence. Interestingly, Puette or analyzed. suggests that some of the best labour re­ Puette also raises the issue of whether porting is to be found in the Wall Street the negative portrayal of labour is deliber­ Journal. Despite its conservative agenda, ate or unconscious. Is there some sort of that newspaper cares enough to assign the "institutional" bias in the media that pre­ labour beat to experienced reporters who vents them from treating labour fairly? cover it in depth. Cartoons and comic Here he offers off-hand suggestions that strips, Puette argues, portray blue-collar most media "gatekeepers" are middle- workers as unproductive and overpaid. class professionals, that they themselves They also reinforce other stereotypes. employ unionized workers, and that the One illustration in the book depicts a media are increasingly concentrated in high-walled prison decorated with a ban­ the hands of a few big corporations. ner: "Welcome Teamsters Convention." Again, however, none of these ideas is As Puette points out, twenty or thirty pursued into an explanatory framework. times as many readers probably smiled over that cartoon as read news stories or Most disturbing to me were Puette's editorials on labour subjects. The general unexamined assumptions about the power image of the labour movement to be found and influence of the media in our society. in the contemporary mass media, then, is The best of today's media scholars are of corruption, greed, power, and self-in­ attempting to explain and disentangle a terest. While the "little guy" may indeed complex process that involves not only be oppressed, he is as much oppressed by the power of those who control the tech­ unions as by business or government. nology and the enterprises of big media, Moreover, many of these negative mess­ but also the professional practices of the ages are all the more effective because journalists and producers, and especially sent indirectly and subliminally. the unique responses of individual vie­ wers and listeners who may not necessar­ ily buy into what they see and hear. It is 376 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL quite a balancing act, but a useful one, are the result of economic, cultural, and because it is sophisticated and subtle and political particularities, analysts must be much closer to reality than simple em­ careful about devising proper categories phasis on media manipulation. But Puette of investigation, interpreting results, and barely acknowledges the work of the last making conclusions of a generalized na­ two generations of media scholars and ture. This is particularly true if the re­ seems still to believe that media content search has a proscriptive intent; that is, if is some sort of "bullet" that penetrates one of the purposes of a study is to address and changes minds. His main source on the question whether all or some aspects the subject is a work published in 1961 ! of one country's institutions and/or ways The problem with Puette's book, of life should, or ought to be, adopted by then, despite its overwhelming success in other nations and peoples. adducing the evidence to show thai the Richard Wokutch's study of occupa­ media present a distorted and negative tional health and safety in the Japanese view of labour, is that it rests on several and American automobile industries sim­ dubious assumptions. Most importantly, ultaneously illustrates both the positive the book's underlying premise, that trie and potentially negative features of com­ mass media's negative images of the la­ parative research in graphic fashion. On bour movement have taken over the the one hand, those individuals and minds of Americas, is never proven. A groups whose intellectual and political more analytical approach would have interests revolve around occupational strengthened the argument and the utility health and safety are exposed to a number of the book. of illuminating and distressing observa­ tions about the health and safety of Mary Vipond Japanese and American autoworkers. We Concordia University learn, for example, that while severe and fatal injuries among autoworkers in both countries seem to be on a long-term de­ cline, occupational diseases such as "cu­ Richard E. Wokutch, Worker Protection mulative trauma disorders" (illnesses Japanese Style: Occupational Safety and caused by the stresses and strains associ­ Health in the Auto Industry (Ithaca: ILR ated with repetitive motions) are unques­ Press 1992). tionably on the rise in both nations. On the other hand, however, because of al­ COMPARATIVE RESEARCH is an import­ most woefully inadequate comparative ant tool of analysis. The major reason for statistical information, Wokutch's efforts this is obvious: we can learn about the at interpretative and proscriptive conclu­ dynamics of our own society by placing sions are most notable for their shortcom­ them alongside those of another or others. ings than their value in guiding us to pro­ Indeed, sometimes it is only by making duction practices that will produce both a the comparisons that certain features of safe car and a healthy worker. one's society that have defied clear under­ Wokutch introduces his investigation standing come shining through. More­ within the now familiar context of post­ over, there is the undoubted value of war Japanese economic success. Within simply finding out about the ways in this context, his intention is to contribute which people in other lands think, act, to breaking down two myths that have work, play, engage in cultural and politi­ become tightly intertwined with this un­ cal life, and the like. paralleled economic growth — the first But doing comparative research is being that Japanese prosperity has come also fraught with conceptual and practical as the result of the super exploitation of difficulties. For example, given national its workers, and, second, that Japan is a differences in historical development that REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 377

workers' paradise. His conclusion, not force. As we have come to learn from surprisingly, is that neither myth is true. other studies of Japanese workers and However, he does argue that there are workplaces, understanding the power and important areas where occupational place of the Japanese corporation is cru­ health and safety regulations and prac­ cial to analysing the actions, or lack there­ tices at Jidosha (the fictional name Wo- of, of Japanese workers. The much-her­ kutch employs for the auto plant he stu­ alded systems of payment by skills and died in Japan) are superior to both its seniority, life-long employment, and em­ American subsidiary (Jidosha-USA) and ployee involvement in production deci­ the American auto industry in general — sions through teams, while applying only regulations and practices which result in to the core section of Japanese industry lower rates of acute and chronic injury and workers, has as its flip side the build­ and occupational disease. This supe­ up of loyalty and dependence. In essence, riority stems from the largely successful workers fortunate enough to work in sec­ efforts of Jidosha management to develop tors such as auto and steel make good and institute policies and programs aimed wages and have employment security; at developing cooperation and loyalty but, they are, concurrently, drawn into a among its workforce. This situation is in web of corporate paternalism that whittles growing contrast to Jidosha-USA where away at their workplace autonomy and more traditional adversarial and confron­ means of resistance. tational worker/union/management rela­ In the context of health and safety in tions are increasingly coming to the fore the Japanese auto industry, Wokutch after a honeymoon period associated with highlights Honda's Ten Golden Rules," the start-up of the plant in the 1970s. most of which are directed at instilling Why is worker/management cooper­ obedience in its workforce. Rule seven, ation achieved at Jidosha and not at Jido­ for example, is entitled "Life By The sha-USA? According to Wokutch, the Rules," and "refers to life off the job and answer lies, first, in understanding that suggests refraining from activities such as the Japanese flexible manufacturing sys­ heavy eating or drinking, which could tem demands a high degree of employee lead to lethargy and tiredness, or wor­ involvement and cooperation while sim­ rying about home life, which could affect ultaneously exhibiting a low tolerance for concentration and performance on the job down-time associated with injured or ill and lead to injuries." These Golden Rules, workers. That is, the overall efficiency of together with the "Four Cs" of control a production system which is based on ("distinguishing between activities that lean production can ill-afford the disturb­ are necessary for production and those ances associated with poor health and that are unnecessary and getting rid of the safety practices. Hence, it is not out of latter"), conformity ("putting necessary altruism that Jidosha management items in a predetermined location for easy stresses employee involvement and re­ accessibility and use"), cleaning up, and sponsibility in health and safety. Rather, cleanliness have, Wokutch writes, "social it is "enlightened self-interest" that moti­ and value implications that go beyond vates company officials to put front-line health and safety. They are clearly in­ management and workers alike through tended to promote the corporate culture extensive health and safety training ses­ and values that are deemed important sions, to institutionalize morning safety throughout Japanese society." checks, and to establish management/ As with many studies that purport to worker health and safety committees. demonstrate worker consent and loyalty The second part of the puzzle is filled to corporate practices and objectives, Wo­ in by reference to the paternalistic power kutch fails to provide us with good first­ of the Japanese corporation over its work­ hand evidence that Jidosha workers are in 378 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

essential accord with their employer's Directions movement, such disciplinary views of what constitutes satisfactory methods are not in evidence at Jidosha- means for ensuring a safe and healthy USA. Nor are other policies, practices, workplace. In fact, be seems not to have and ideas relating to health and safety that interviewed Jidosha workers in any syste­ Jidosha management hope to install and matic manner. Hence, he is left to surmise instill in its American plant. For example, consensual attitudes concerning health after an initial burst of enthusiasm con­ and safety from accident and illness rec­ comitant with the opening of the plant, ords that Wokutch himself holds suspect. most workers no longer engage in morn­ That is, his conclusion that the lower ac­ ing exercises or exalt in the philosophy of cident and illness rates at Jidosha as com­ teams and teamwork. Instead, a growing pared to Jidosha-USA are due to the number of workers are complaining about ability of the company to successfully the pace of the line — a grievance that has incorporate the hands and minds of real foundation in the "alarming ... in­ Japanese workers is undermined by the cidence of stress-related cumulative trau­ acknowledged propensity of Japanese ma disorders, including carpal tunnel syn­ employers to under-report work-related drome, relative to the rest of the US auto injuries and illnesses. Wokutch would industry." According to management, the rebut this, point by stating that under-re­ causes of cumulative trauma disorders at porting is endemic in the US auto industry its American plant have more to do with as well. But this does not prove his point; improper ergonomics (machinery de­ it only leads us into a infinite, and not- signed for smaller Japanese workers), and very-useful (from an injured worker's the inexperience of the workforce. standpoint), regress of charges and Workers and union officials at the countercharges about which company is plant take a different view. They place the more guilty of under-reporting. onus for the rapid proliferation of cumu­ Under-reporting of occupational in­ lative trauma disorders squarely on the jury and illness in Japan has a corollary dynamics of an assembly line system that — especially in the context of strong cor­ favours production over safety and porate power and enterprise unions — of health. Wokutch reports of Japanese per­ workers themselves not reporting bruises, sonnel at Jidosha-USA gaining the admir­ cuts, and chronic pain for fear of not being ation of their American colleagues "for seen as team players, or, worse, losing their willingness to fix malfunctioning their jobs. With reference to honour, Wo­ machines while they are still powered up kutch relates an incident where a worker ... Such practices obviously send the "was dismissed from his normal produc­ wrong message about the priority of tion activities [for a health and safety vi­ safety relative to production. Such appar­ olation] for two hours and required to ent conflicts between Japanese produc­ stand beside the department manager. The tion methods and safety health concerns following day he was permitted to go had led one UAW safety and health expert back to his job but was required to wear a to quip that kaizen means 'take off all the yellow shirt designating him as a rule guards, jump into the machine, and the breaker. The department manager felt that foreman works.'" this discipline was very effective in dis­ What conclusions or general observa­ couraging a recurrence of the violation tions can be gleaned from these few but and in dissuading other workers from nevertheless revealing scenarios? Ac­ such behaviour.'' cording to Wokutch, when it established Largely because of the presence of a its plant in the US, Jidosha hoped to be local of the United Automobile Workers able to transfer the health and safety (UAW), now directed by a slate of officers model developed at its central plant in affiliated with the anti-concessionist New Japan to its American operations. This REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 379

has not occurred, with the result, at least plexing, than, that directly after this ob­ from Jidosha management's perspective, servation, he sûtes that "Cooperative re­ that workers at the US plant suffer from lations appear to work less well... when high rates of injury and disease. That is, one or more of the parties are relatively given that they work with the same ma­ powerless and unable to assert their chinery and processes as their counter­ rights." Interestingly, Wokutch is refer­ parts in Japan, the aches, pains, temporary ring here, not to workers in major corpor­ and permanent disabilities of workers at ations such as Jidosha, but to smaller Jidosha-USA are largely their own fault: firms in the more highly competitive sec­ if they followed proper procedures, as do tors of Japanese society. They are the workers at the plant in Japan, there would ones which are weak and require the legis­ be far fewer accidents and illness. lative powers of the state to promulgate The major lesson that Wokutch draws and ensure their rights to a safe and from his study, then, is that labour/man­ healthy workplace. agement cooperation produces a safer and Whether a basic contradiction or a healthier workplace. Despite difficulties conceptual conflict, the above assertions in comparing accident and disease rates point to a fundamental weakness in Wo- because of marked disparities in bow stat­ kutch's formulations: there is no theory of istics are gathered and how injuries are power. Nowhere in his book does Wo­ defined and recorded (in Japan a worker kutch discuss the bases of the economic must be off-tbe-job for four full days be­ and political power wielded by Japanese fore it is recorded as a lost-work accident; corporations — both in Japan and increas­ in the US the time period is much the same ingly in the United States. It is power but lost work days also include restricted based on the ownership of private work duties whereby an injured worker property, which in Japan is augmented by comes to work but is unable to perform the historically close relationship be­ her/his normal labours), Wokutch con­ tween government and business that pro­ cludes that "in spite of several significant vides corporations such as Jidosha with weaknesses, the safety and health condi­ its administrative and persuasive power. tions and practices in major Japanese cor­ Health and safety legislation in Japan is porations are superior to those in com­ the fruit of much discussion among gov­ parable American firms...." The prime ernment and business officials charged reason for this superiority, Wokutch be­ with this set of responsibilities. As Wo- lieves, lies in Jidosha's success in getting kutch's recounting of these laws attests, management and workers throughout the they are based on a philosophy of "admin­ firm to take responsibility for the health istrative guidance" rather than, as in the and safety of themselves and their cowor­ United States, punitive sanctions such as kers. From this it is but a small step to a fines and jail sentences. (This is not to final point: "safety and health, product argue that the latter system automatically quality, and productivity can be positiv­ works in the interests of workers. Evi­ ely related in practice in much the way dence from Canada and the United States safety and health rhetoric in the United suggests persuasively that it does not.) Sûtes claims they are." Moreover, they depend on an inspectorate What does all this say about Wo­ that has minimal enforcement powers. kutch's theory of cooperation versus con­ Combine each of these factors with a flict in the arena of occupational health legislated health and safety committee and safety? His summary argument is that system that does not require worker/man­ his study demonstrates the value of co­ agement parity, and one is left with an operation over confrontation: more co­ overall structure that is voluntarist in es­ operation means few accidents and lower sence and in practice. And, with voluntar­ rates of occupational disease. It is per­ ist health and safety structures and prac- 380 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

rices dominating, it is not evident that has the potential to divide workers against lower rates of accidents and illness are the one another (especially men against result of cooperation rathertha n manage­ women) and disempower them (by plac­ ment under-reporting and worker fears. ing the technical fight for equal wages in As Wokutch alludes to in an all-too- the hands of tribunals, consultants, ex­ brief paragraph, national differences in perts, and lawyers and foreclosing work­ health and safety regulations and enforce­ ing-initiated struggles for equal pay). Yet ment activities are directly contingent on in business and management, and among the success that various acts and classes many academics in these fields, equal have in securing their interests and de­ value is often critiqued for violating the mands in the economic and political are­ free market ideal of wage-setting by the nas. The rise of neo-conservatism and the supply and demand of labour power, for accession to power of conservative par­ increasing a host of costs (monetary and ties in countries such as the United States, administrative costs, loss of productivity, Britain, and Canada, has witnessed the rising prices and taxes), and for subjectiv­ weakening of occupational health and ity, biases, and politicking in the applica­ safety legislation. Workers' compensa­ tion of job evaluation methods. This book tion systems are being attacked by busi­ by Steven Rhoads falls solidly into the ness interests as being too generous to second category. workers and too expensive for employers. Rhoads attacks equal pay for work of Some advances made by workers in the equal value for violating the market prin­ 1970s have now been institutionalized, ciple that freedom of supply and demand leaving a coterie of trade union, business, of workers should solely determine and government health and safety experts wages. In many cases women's wages are to preside over an increasingly dispirited artificially elevated above levels dictated and alienated population of health and by the supply of women for female-domi­ safety activists. All of these develop­ nated jobs, thereby forcing even more ments point to the overwhelming import­ competition for such jobs (without a de­ ance of political factors when considering pression in wages). Employers respond occupational health and safety. Anyone by introducing labour-saving technology, reading this book will be able to under­ thereby increasing unemployment among stand the relevance of politics even if its women. Wages for many male-dominated author ultimately does not. jobs are held in check, despite scarcity of supply, resulting in decreases in appli­ Robert Storey cants for such positions. Rhoads suggests that comparable worth reinforces or in­ McMaster University creases gender segregation of occupa­ tions by encouraging women to stay in female-dominant jobs where wages are Steven E. Rhoads, Incomparable Worth: rising, and discouraging them from ap­ Pay Equity Meets the Market (Cambridge, plying for male-dominant jobs in which UK: Cambridge University Press 1993). remuneration is not rising as quickly. Steven Rhoads focuses his critique of TWO CATEGORIES of critiques have the implementation of pay equity on four emerged in the vast international lit­ jurisdictions — Minnesota in the United erature on equal pay for work of equal States, Australia, the European Com­ value (pay equity or comparable worth). munity, and the United Kingdom. His in­ Some proponents of pay equity in the formation is derived from reading the feminist and trade union communities large literature on this topic, and inter­ suggest that equal value legislation has viewing the experts, consultants, and ad­ not gone far enough in closing the wage ministrators of pay equity in these regions gap between women and men; further, it REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 381

of the world. Ontario was specifically ex­ the European Community have forged cluded because its new pay equity law has ahead of the legislative process to make not had a sufficiently long gestation period. some gains. Rhoads notes that there is less After an introductory chapter, Rhoads support now for equal pay than in die summarizes the debates between propo­ 1970s. Out of all the European states, the nents and opponents of comparable greatest support and activity is in the worth. Proponents argue that pay equity United Kingdom. Unlike the United is necessary because employers discrimi­ Sûtes, there is very little criticism of nate against women by crowding them equal value here. The 1970 Equal Pay Act into a narrow range of occupations or by came into full force in 1975. Tripartite undervaluing their work precisely be­ industrial panels, with advice from an cause it is done by women. Rhoads spends "expert." hear equal pay cases. Rhoads considerable time attacking such argu­ criticizes this system for the inconsisten­ ments by belittling the existence of gen­ cies in the values the experts assign the der discrimination in the labour market, same jobs across companies, its monetary suggesting that women choose to work in and administrative costs, the increased lower-paid flexible jobs that allow them unemployment and low in productivity it to take time off to perform household and causes, its violation of labour market sup­ childcare responsibilities. He also ply and demand factors, iu biases against critiques the way proponents have used male-dominant jobs, and its ultimate job evaluation to correct gender ine­ failure to make much difference in the quities in wages (for instance, by stacking overall wage gap. job evaluation committees with 'femin­ Rhoads takes dead aim at the argu­ ists' and 'unionists.') ment that Australia has the most success­ In two chapters on Minnesota, despite ful pay equity in the world. The Austra­ the apparent success of the 1982 State lian Conciliation and Arbitration Com­ Employees Pay Equity Act (27 per cent of mission established equal pay for equal the pay gap was closed), Rhoads critiques work in 1969, and equal pay for work on its implementation largely because under­ equal value in 1972. Even though the gen­ paid men have difficulty qualifying for dered wage gap closed dramatically, pay equity increases, and because of the Rhoads questions whether this is due to intense opposition to pay equity from pay equity, suggesting it results more local government authorities. He suggests from raising minimum wages. He ques­ that job evaluation techniques are subjec­ tions R.G. Gregory's and R.C. Duncan's tive and arbitrary, open to politicking by widely-cited finding that pay equity did affected groups, with wide variation in not lead to a noticeable increase in job factors, criteria, and weights. Job women's unemployment. Relying on evaluation between women and men, and P.A. McGavin's PhD thesis, Steven in some cases inversions in pay hierar­ Rhoads suggests that women's employ­ chies (rating police lieutenants higher ment increased mainly because of the than police chiefs). Most of ail, it violates government's huge stimulation of public the market as some women are paid over service jobs, while women's employment their market rates, while others are paid in manufacturing decreased. Raising less, thereby creating inefficiencies in the doubts about whether Australia does, in­ management of labour, resulting in an deed, have comparable worth, Rhoads ar­ 'unnecessary' escalation in wage and gues that women are better off having other costs. their wages determined by skills short­ In Europe, equal pay for work of ages in the labour market than by the rigid equal value gets little support (especially and highly centralized wage-setting Con­ in Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Lux­ ciliation and Arbitration Commission embourg), although the civil servants in which has impeded economic growth, in- 382 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL

creased inflation and unemployment, and and soulless science which displaced it in hurt Australians' international competi­ mainstream thought. Many years ago tiveness. Maurice Dobb observed that modern This book is a relentless attack on pay economics was little more than a study of equity or comparable worth from the busi­ the exchange process. He was critical of ness viewpoints on markets, profits, economists' preoccupation with the mar­ wages, unions, and feminists. Rhoads' ket, dissatisfied with their readiness to ideal world is one where workers compete assume hypothetical conditions of market against one another at low wages so busi­ equilibrium, and contemptuous of prop­ ness can remain competitive internation­ ositions which treated labour as a produc­ ally. He completely fails to understand tivity factor no different from any other. how women's labour may have histori­ For the inspiration to alternative under­ cally come to be undervalued by the divi­ standings, Dobb and others returned to sion between unpaid work in the house­ Smith, Marx, and Ricardo. In these wri­ hold and paid work in the market. Al­ ters they found a larger conception of the though he touches on this, he refuses to proper sphere of economic enquiry. Most accept the principle that wages can be important was Marx's concept of the so­ determined by any standard other than cial relations of production. It embodied cut-throat competition between workers. an uncompromising view of the workings Por Rhoads, work has no intrinsic value. of capitalist economy and society. It is merely an extrinsic instrument by Picchio, too, returns to the classical which employers make profits. This book economists. Her thesis is that child bear­ will warm the hearts of business and man­ ing and child rearing has an essential, but agement But it should not be ignored by frequently unacknowledged, relevance to feminists and unionists. To adequately economics as the source of labour's re­ promote and defend pay equity, they need plenishment. Smith, Ricardo, and Marx to understand thoroughly the position, ra­ were aware of it, but, she argues from an tionales, and analyses of their opponents. examination of their writings, Mill, Tor- Although Rhoads did not intend this, his rens, and McCullOugh were not. The lat­ book is an unwitting argument for ter are blamed for obscuring the signific­ massive worker ownership domestically ance of social reproduction. They coined and internationally. Since wage-setting in an economics of the labour market in the hands of the state and employers has which it had no place. Picchio laments failed, the only realistic alternative is to their influence upon policy-makers in the leave it in the hands of workers in worker- 19th century and down to the present day. controlled enterprises. Towards the end of her book she links the contemporary world-wide crises of re­ source use and allocation to the wrong- Carl J. Cuneo headed ideas of these economists. Her McMaster University commitment, revealed in these final pages, is to change our thinking before these crises become insuperable. Antonella Picchio, Social Reproduction: The early chapters, where Picchio un­ the political economy of the labour mar­ folds her thesis through a study of the late ket (Cambridge: Cambridge University 18th- and 19th-century British econo­ Press 1992). mists, are the most coherent and scholarly part of her book. Textual analysis of great IT IS FREQUENTLY CLAIMED by left- economic thinkers is decidedly out of fa­ wing historians and economists that vour in the history departments of our classical political economy offers more universities, and it is good to see Picchio robust and rounded understandings of the arguing her case from a reading of their economy and society than the atrophied REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 383

works. Here she makes her most incisive non-specific nature of her comments and points. Key emphasis is placed upon the unable to discern a direct line of argument disembodiment of labour in neo-classical from the book's previous sections. In paradigms. Picchio suggests that when short, she does not carry her case by the the neo-classicists adopted market-based intellectual force of arguments pre­ supply and demand models, they dis­ figured earlier. It is a pity since, poten­ guised the costs of labour's (re)prodoc- tially, she has important things to say. tion. These costs did not vanish: they Is the brevity of the book the reason were switched, unacknowledged, to ordi­ for this failure? At less than 160 pages nary men and, even more so, to women. Picchio has precious little space to de­ Policy makers, taking their lead from the velop an argument with such wide rami­ neo-classical economists, consolidated fications. Even so it is a curiously-con­ these assumptions in public policy. The ceived book. Early on Picchio tells us that reformed poor law of Victorian and Ed­ she is not setting out to produce a theory wardian Britain was critical. It instituted or history of the social reproduction of punitive sanctions and the power of per­ labour one has no illusions on that score. suasion to make child bearing and rearing Nevertheless Picchio is committed to a the duty of working class families. There chronological structure and to a form of was no question but that the expense historical analysis which obliges closer should be borne out of the wages of a male references to changes in the capitalist breadwinner and the unremunerated do­ economy over time. If we are to take seri­ mestic labour of his wife. Picchio em­ ously her suggestion that the costs of la­ barks on a study of the ideas of the makers bour's reproduction were subsumed in of poor law policy from official par­ men's wages and women's unremun­ liamentary reports. Her focus is the 1909 erated labour by the sleight of hand of the Royal Commission. She claims to encom­ neo-classical economists, we might rea­ pass a longer time-span, but that claim sonably want to know more about the does not hold up, and she fails to add relationship of the accumulation of capi­ much to the arguments made in the first tal to the costs of reproduction as it section of the book. The short-comings of changed over time. Fortunately this sort a patch-work approach to this topic begin of work is underway. Picchio's study (at to show. least its first section) is important enough The book's final section is different. to merit attention, but others are pushing Broad in scope and speculative, it high­ similar insights further, and are doing so lights contemporary problems which Pic­ in a more sustained manner. chio believes have resulted from the con­ tradictions produced by the post-classical Valerie Burton separation of social reproduction from the Memorial University of Newfoundland economics of the labour market. This re­ viewer was, however, left confused by the