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A Mighty Power against the Cost of Living: Canadian Housewives Organize in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2010

Julie Guard
Julie Guard
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba, Canada
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Abstract

Consumer activists organizing in the 1930s against rising milk prices demonstrated the power of a strong grassroots movement to enlarge prevailing understandings of the political and to wring responses from an unwilling state. Their maternalism, combined with milk's emotional, social, and political meanings, attracted broad popular support and deflected criticism from the dairy industry, hostile public officials, and anticommunists. Their campaign for affordable milk became a synecdoche for broader demands that the state restrain business in the interests of consumers and protect ordinary people from the harsh injustices of the Depression. After winning immediate concessions, the Toronto Housewives Association failed to achieve their long-term goals, but their impact was nonetheless significant. Their campaign fueled and informed public debates about the political economy of food and government's responsibilities to protect citizens, pushing socialist policies onto the political agenda under the cover of maternalism. Participation in Housewives' campaigns transformed powerless victims into effective political actors. Housewife-activists challenged prevailing notions of normative feminine behavior, creating social space for ordinary women acting within their domestic roles to engage in direct political action.

Type
Gendered Activism and the Politics of Women's Work
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 27 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

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References

Notes

1. “Housewives Plan ‘High Prices’ Boycott: Plan City-Wide Union to Fight Food Costs Control Board Told,” Toronto Daily Star, November 3, 1937, 1; “Women Uniting Against Prices Mrs. Lamb Says,” Daily Clarion, November 8, 1937, 1.

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36. Clarke, Toronto Milk Producers' Association, 1.

37. “Drink More Milk Drive Urged on Jersey Breeders,” Toronto Daily Star, July 11, 1938, 6.

38. DuPuis argues that advertisements suggest a related construction, nativism. DuPuis, 117–119.

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52. “Won't Buy, Say 4,000 Women if Butter over 30 Cents,” Toronto Daily Star, February 22, 1938, 5.

53. “Housewives Plan Boycott to Fight Gas Meter Fee,” Toronto Daily Star, December 1, 1938, 22; “Chart Great Crusade to Gain Lower Prices: Housewives' Resolutions Present Plan of Action,” Daily Clarion, December 2, 1938, 2.

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72. “Relief Milk Expense Raised $1,000 Week,” Toronto Daily Star, November 18, 1937, 1.

73. “Administration Body on Relief is Vetoed,” Toronto Daily Star, November 30, 1937, 5; “Relief in Toronto Off $1,570,100 in ‘37,” Toronto Daily Star, January 26, 1938, 6.

74. “City's Tax Rate Seen Cut by New Relief Cost Plan,” Toronto Daily Star, February 10, 1938, 1.

75. Struthers, No Fault, 173.

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