Amassing Power: J.B. Duke and the Saguenay River 1897–1927 by David Massell (review)

HUMANITIES 289 term double militancy, meaning the effort to advance on issues of wages, hours, working conditions, and the creation of a vibrant left politics, and, at the same time, to agitate for the equitable treatment of women in unions and parties. Kealey=s study suggests double militancy presented a difficult challenge in the early twentieth century. The burdens of industrial capitalism weighed heavily on the shoulders of working-class immigrant women in the sweatshops of Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Male trade unionists often held discriminatory attitudes towards female workers, viewing them as threatening, low-wage competitors who belonged in the private sphere. The interest of the former in organizing large numbers of the latter was thus limited. Middle-class feminists in such groups as the National Council of Women of Canada were anxious to recruit immigrant women to domestic work, away from industrial jobs where working-class consciousness might develop. Ethnic tensions in burgeoning cities further complicated matters; according to Kealey, anti-Semitism was so powerful that the Eaton=s boycott of 1912 hardly extended beyond Toronto=s Jewish community. From a contemporary perspective, the sections of Enlisting Women for the Cause that address hierarchies of gender and class are especially compelling. Linda Kealey shows how gender issues including votes for women remained subordinate in the standard left pecking order, such that revolution and class solidarity became defined as critical, masculine goals while suffrage and other women=s objectives were treated as sentimental, secondary, and feminine. Even in the boom times of the First World War, when women=s job opportunities widened and unions expanded rapidly, few women assumed leadership positions in either labour organizations or left parties. Then, as now, a few courageous souls thought about how to ensure that women won half the top political jobs. Linda Kealey does a fine job of detailing the early contours of what she terms >a working-class feminist project= in Canada. Her account is sensitive to regional, ethnic, and racial differences, as it carefully places these variations in the context of ongoing class and gender debates. Although it does not pursue them directly, Kealey=s study opens up larger questions about women, politics, and participation. Was working-class Toryism as common among women in Canada as it was in Britain during this period? How did the dynamics of double militancy unfold on the Canadian centre and right? Over time, as more women were employed for pay and as more trade unions recognized the importance of organizing female workers, did women challenge Canadian trade unionism in substantive ways? And, returning to the Vancouver picnic, can unions and left parties remain relevant to women in an age when other avenues for militancy seem far more attractive? (SYLVIA BASHEVKIN) David Massell. Amassing Power: J.B. Duke and the Saguenay River 1897B1927 McGill-Queen=s University Press. xxviii, 302. $49.95 290 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 J.B. Duke stands on the banks of the Saguenay River in 1912. The > tobacco king= is looking for power development opportunities B his new line of business. Following a half-hour on the river, he thinks he has found one. He turns to his associate and says, >I=m going to buy this.= Within two years, having pieced together rights to the river with some deft business manoeuvres, he does. This image of the tobacco magnate appraising the Saguenay does little to alter long-standing assumptions about the unfettered reach of American investment capital in the Canadian economy in the early twentieth century. And, yet, as David Massell argues in Amassing Power, the intentions of American investors did not simply produce their desired outcomes. Entrepreneurial activity met a complex business, regulatory, and social environment that constrained investment, delayed construction, and ultimately altered the form of development on the Saguenay River. The early development of the Saguenay River is a study in power promotion driven by the problems of unused capacity. Early developers overbuilt and spent considerable time luring chemical firms to relocate to the Saguenay to take advantage of cheap power. They met with little success until the arrival of American investors with deep pockets and transatlantic connections. Enter J.B. Duke. Duke and his associates proposed...