Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939

Gerald J. Stortz is an assistant professor of history at the University
of Waterloo.

Ruth Frager teaches history at McMaster University; this is a revised
version of her York University doctoral thesis.

As she notes in her conclusion, it is the story of “one of the most
advanced labour movements working people have ever created in North
America. . . . They formed a dynamic movement, born out of the vigours
of a displaced people who had fled from the persecution of the Old World
to find themselves thrust out of necessity into the sweatshops of
Spadina Avenue.”

What is most impressive about this work is Frager’s use of Yiddish
sources, a previously untapped treasure. As one might expect, much of
the book deals with the anti-Semitism of society in general, and of
non-Jewish co-workers and employers in particular. What is more
surprising is the antagonism between Jewish employers and employees.
Another surprise, given the traditional antipathy of Canadian unions to
women, is the degree of success that groups like the International
Ladies’ Garment Workers Union had in organizing the Toronto needle
trades.

Although it sometimes reads a little too much like a dissertation,
Sweatshop Strife is a valuable contribution to the burgeoning fields of
Jewish-Canadian history, women’s studies, labor relations, immigration
history, and Canadian socialism.