Working in Steel
Product details
- ISBN 9781442609846
- Weight: 300g
- Dimensions: 132 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2008
- Publisher: University of Toronto Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In this indispensable study of Canadian industrialization, Craig Heron examines the huge steel plants that were built at the turn of the twentieth century in Sydney and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and Trenton, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Presenting a stimulating analysis of the Canadian working class in the early twentieth century, Working in Steel emphasizes the importance of changes in the work world for the larger patterns of working-class life.
Heron's examination of the impact of new technology in Canada's Second Industrial Revolution challenges the popular notion that mass-production workers lost all skill, power, and pride in the work process. He shifts the explanation of managerial control in these plants from machines to the blunt authoritarianism and shrewd paternalism of corporate management. His discussion of Canada's first steelworkers illuminates the uneven, unpredictable, and conflict-ridden process of technological change in industrial capitalist society. As engaging today as when first published in 1988, Working in Steel remains an essential work in Canadian history.
Craig Heron is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at York University and author of Working Steel: The Early Years in Canada, 1883-1935, also published by University of Toronto Press.
