05 Feb 2010
So here we have three articles under the analysis. These are “The Honest Workingman and Workers’ Control: The Experience of Toronto Skilled Workers, 1860-1892″ by G. S. Kealey , “Joe Beef of Montreal: Working-Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889″ by P. DeLottinville, “After the Fur Trade: The Aboriginal Labouring Class of British Columbia 1849-1890″ by J. Lutz. Every article is telling its own unique story about the development of a working class in America.
The first Article “The Honest Workingman and Workers’ Control: The Experience of Toronto Skilled Workers, 1860-1892″ by Gregory S. Kealey is divided into three parts and tells us about the struggle of three working classes (coopers, moulders and printers) for their rights and deserved wage. In each part of his work the author describes all the difficulties the workers had to overcome to achieve the aims set. The author uses great number of historical documents and newspaper articles of that times to show the real picture of the situation happening at that time. The subject of the article is underlines in the following sentences of the article: “In the late nineteenth century Toronto skilled workers came to terms with the new industrial society but the terms they arrived at were those of constant resistance and struggle. The successes that they and other workers achieved forced management and government to devise entirely new strategies which have become commonly known as “scientific management” and “progressivism”. This analysis applies to workers undergoing the process of industrialization and will account for the Coopers* early Toronto experience but in studying the history of Toronto moulders and printers we will need other explanations” (Kealey, 1976. p. 34)
