“The Dirty Scruff”: Relief and the Production of the Unemployed in Depression-era British Columbia

Antipode ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 1119-1142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ekers
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The Unemployed

“California’s Unemployed Feed Themselves”

2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-62
Author(s):  
Laura Renata Martin
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Material Deprivation ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Material Support ◽  
Cooperative Movement ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
A Site ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The Unemployed

This article considers the unemployed cooperative movement in Depression-era Los Angeles, an understudied component of unemployed organizing in the 1930s. Cooperativism allowed unemployed people to avoid material deprivation and build political power, but it also became a site of sharp political contestation. I examine how conservative elites intervened in a movement that was in many ways politically ambiguous. These conservatives saw both danger and possibility in the movement—danger because economic collectivism hinted at a socialist ethos, and possibility because it offered a way for poor people to provide for themselves without state support. To describe how these elites gained influence over the movement, I analyze the proceedings of a cooperative convention held in Los Angeles in 1933. I show how elites at the convention gave material support to cooperative leaders and rhetorically crafted a conservative version of cooperativism that emphasized anti-communism, self-sufficiency, and nativism.

Locating the Unemployed in Urban British Columbia: Evidence from the 1891 Census

1990 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric W. Sager ◽  
Peter Baskerville
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
The Unemployed

Baird, Irene (1901–1981)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misao Dean
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Promotional Material ◽  
World War ◽  
Financial Failure ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
National Film Board ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The Unemployed

Canadian novelist and civil servant Irene Baird is best known for her second novel, Waste Heritage (1939), which was based on firsthand research into the Vancouver "sit down strike" of the unemployed in 1938. Waste Heritage was remarkable in its time for its use of colloquial idioms, its realist representation of the lives of the unemployed, and its naturalist approach to sexuality and violence. Often cited as the best Canadian novel of the Depression era, Waste Heritage was nonetheless a financial failure for Baird, and she sought a more reliable source of income writing promotional material and lecturing for the National Film Board during World War II, spending the balance of her career as a civil servant based in Ottawa.

La Pasionaria (the Passionate One)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela González
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Reform Politics ◽  
Organizational Work ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The Unemployed

This chapter explores how the organizational work of Mexican-origin people in Depression-era San Antonio reflected a diversity of ideas and strategies. Responses to the challenges of racial discrimination and severe poverty in the city’s Westside ran the gamut from Carolina Munguía’s maternalist and benevolent practices to Emma Tenayuca’s radical reform politics. Tenayuca believed that communism could serve as a means to strengthen labor—by organizing the unemployed so they would have rights. Although Tenayuca married during the height of her political activism, she did not arrange her activities around the mantle of domesticity. As an activist, she turned to the Communist Party and functioned as a worker, not as a mother, which often placed her at odds with gender and class conventions.

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