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THIS PAPER PRESENTS a portrait of sub-contracting foresters at work in northeastern Ontario in the opening decades of the 20th century. Drawing upon a little-known source, the provincial forestry registers for Sudbury and North Bay Districts, the author traces the evolution of a sample of 269 sub-contractors. The length and locality of their activities, their ethnicity, the extent and nature of their contracts, and the number of firms they did business with, are the study's main variables. Although there is no doubt about their economic precariousness in some respects, notably the fact that they were constantly moving their operations and suffering frequent interruptions, it appears in the long run to have been exaggerated in the literature. In fact, the economic performance of paper-makers in the region was not much more brilliant than that of the sub-contractors. In addition the way Ontario assigned cutting permits allowed several other regional forestry enterprises to work at the same time. Regional monopolies in the woods, such as we find in Québec and New Brunswick, did not occur. Also, the sub-contractors showed a surprising degree of flexibility by the contracts they negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Recherches Sociographiques is the property of Recherches Sociographiques and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

OVER THE LAST FEW years, the activities of minimum wage commissions in the western provinces and in Ontario have been the subject of several historical studies. Inspired by these projects, this paper examines the work of the Quebec Women's Minimum Wage Commission, from its inception in 1925 to its dismantling in 1937. After giving reasons which forced the Quebec government to legislate on this issue, the author presents the position of international and catholic unions on women in the work force. In his analysis of the operating mode of the commission and, more precisely, his critical evaluation of its mechanism for enforcing the law, the author concludes that as with the other commissions across Canada, the Quebec Women's Minimum Wage Commission would not have allowed wage increases for women. In a socio-economic context where women on average made half of the salary of men, the decision to use the minimum wage as stool to fight the abuse of the capitalist system had the major consequence of keeping salaries low. In fact, the low rate of the minimum wage agreed to by the commission upheld the principle of pay inequity by gender, thus reflecting the dominant ideology of the era during which the work of women was considered marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]