Lunch-Bucket Lives

Remaking the Workers’ City

Craig Heron

• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781771132121
• eBook ISBN: 9781771132138
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Lunch-Bucket Lives takes the reader on a bumpy ride through the history of Hamilton's working people from the 1890s to the 1930s. It ambles along city streets, peers through kitchen doors and factory windows, marches up the steps of churches and fraternal halls, slips into saloons and dance halls, pauses to hear political speeches, and, above all, listens for the stories of men, women, youths, and children from families where people relied mainly on wages to survive.

Heron takes wage-earning as a central element in working-class life, but also looks beyond the workplace into the households and neighbourhoods—settlement patterns and housing, marriage, child care, domestic labour, public health, schooling, charity and social work, popular culture, gender identities, ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and politics in various forms—presenting a comprehensive view of working-class life in the first half of the twentieth century.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• Map: Hamilton c.1930
• 1. Opening the Lunch Bucket
• Part I: The View from the Mountain
• Part II: Keeping the Wolf from the Door
• Part III: Punching the Clock
• Part IV: The Ties That Bind
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index