A meeting of twenty-four journeymen printers at the York Hotel in Toronto in 1832 marked the birth of Canada’s earliest and still continuing labour organization. This case study of the printers of Toronto traces the development of the union which began as the Toronto Typographical Society. Through a close examination of this Canadian local’s relations with its eventual parent organization in the US, Zerker reveals the ‘domination’ and brings into question the advantages of an international connection. In 1866, under pressure from the American federation of printing unions, the Toronto body became an affiliate of the International Typographical Union, thus forming the crucial relationship which, as Zerker shows, came to govern every element of local decision and policy. Though the TTU achieved a pioneer victory in independently leading its members in their struggle for a shorter working day, from 1885 on the ITU directives and programs came to rule the Toronto union, causing enormous losses in membership and industry control. Zerker cites as examples the ITU program in the 1920s which resulted in a bitter strike which broke the Toronto union’s control of the labour force in the commercial sector; and, more recently, its misdirection of the printers’ strike of the Toronto newspapers in the 1960s which resulted in the expulsion of members from the workplaces that had been the preserve of the organization for nearly a century. Zerker blames the failure to respond effectively to the technology of the computer age on poor TTU management in pre-strike negotiations but, above all, on ITU intransigence, ignorance, and arrogance. In more recent years, after the end of this history, TTU membership has increased substantially and the local has been revitalized under its new leadership; the International, too, shows signs of being on the way to much-awaited reforms. This history is in many senses a microcosm of the Canadian labour movement and forms an important strand in general cultural history of Toronto.

Every day millions of Canadians go out to work. They labour in factories, offices, restaurants, and retail stores, on ships, and deep in mines. And every day millions of other Canadians, mostly women, begin work in their homes, performing the many tasks that ensure the well-being of their families and ultimately, the reproduction of the paid labour force. Yet, for all its undoubted importance, there has been remarkably little systematic research into the past and present dynamics of the world of work in Canada.

This is a study of international print networks developed across the English-speaking world over a significant part of the long nineteenth century. The first study of its kind, it draws on unique sources from Australasia, North America, South Africa, the British Isles, and Ireland, to explore how printers interacted and shared trade and cultural identities across international boundaries during the period 1830-1914. Morality, mobility, mobilisation, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such actors, the global networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information-sharing across the printing world, and the creative ideas that printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to print trade journals and other public outlets.

This collection of twelve essays by Gregory Kealey, will be of great interest to students and scholars of Canadian history, labour history, Marxist and socialist theory and history, and political science.

This second of three volumes in theHistory of the Book in Canada demonstrates the same research and editorial standards established with Volume One by book history specialists from across the nation.

In a few short decades before the First World War, Calgary was transformed from a frontier outpost into a complex industrial metropolis. With industrialization there emerged a diverse and equally complex working class. David Bright explores the various levels of class formation and class identity in the city to argue that Calgary's reputation as a prewar centre of labour conservatism is in need of revision.

The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest scholarship of Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists as well as U.S. historians. These essays highlight both the supra- and sub-national aspect of selected topics without neglecting nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies, and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and advance their interests. What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich lead off the volume with critical commentaries on the project of transnational labor history. Their responses offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of labor and empire, indigenous peoples and labor systems, international feminism and reproductive labor, labor recruitment and immigration control, transnational labor politics, and labor internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars introduce each section and recommend further reading.

The long decade from the October Revolution to 1930 was the beginning of a great experiment to create a socialist society. Throughout these years, socialist trade unions attempted to transform the Russian worker into a productive and enthusiastic participant in this new order. How did the workers themselves react to these efforts? To what extent were they and their culture transformed into the ideal forms proclaimed in the official ideology? In Republic of Labor, Diane P. Koenker illuminates the lived experience of Russia's printers, workers who differed from their comrades because of their skill and higher wages, but who shared the same challenges of economic hardship and dangerous conditions. Paying close attention to the links between work, politics, and the everyday, the author focuses on workers' efforts to define their place in socialist society. Gender issues are also emphasized, and here we see the persistence of a masculinist working-class culture counterposed to an official culture promoting gender equality. Through this engaging narrative, Koenker develops a highly original discourse about class in Soviet society that will interest all students of Russian history as well as those readers who wish to reinvigorate class as a historical and sociological tool of analysis.

Contemporary research in periodical literature has demonstrated conclusively that the nineteenth century in Britain was the age of the periodical. It also has shown that, in Victorian society, the circulation of periodicals and newspapers was both larger and more influential than that of books. The six essays in this volume investigate the extent to which this was equally true of Britain's colonies during the period up to 1900. In chapters devoted to periodical publishing in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Southern Africa, and the 'outposts' of the Empire (Ceylon, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, Malta, and the West Indies), the contributors also consider the function and importance of periodicals in colonial life. They identify and describe all locally produced publications that appeared at weekly or longer intervals and that contained, for example, local news, poetry, fiction, criticism, commentary on the arts, news from home, shipping information and commodities reports. Each chapter presents an evaluation of the quantity and quality of guides available to periodical literature in each region, from basic bibliographies of periodicals, directories, and finding aids, to microfilm records and databases on the Internet. Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire is an initial step towards understanding and analyzing what its editors regard as the 'unseen power' of the periodical press in the British Empire of the nineteenth century.

Craig Heron is one of Canada's leading labour historians. Drawing together fifteen of Heron's new and previously published essays on working-class life in Canada, Working Lives covers a wide range of issues, including politics, culture, gender, wage-earning, and union organization. A timely contribution to the evolving field of labour studies in Canada, this cohesive collection of essays analyzes the daily experiences of people working across Canada over more than two hundred years. Honest in its depictions of the historical complexities of daily life, Working Lives raises issues in the writing of Canadian working-class history, especially "working-class realism" and how it is eventually inscribed into Canada's public history. Thoughtfully reflecting on the ways in which workers interact with the past, Heron discusses the important role historians and museums play in remembering the adversity and milestones experienced by Canada's working class.