Working Life 1886-1940: Factories, Townships, and Popular Culture on the Rand by Luli Callinicos

ISBN: 9780869752784

Ravan Press, 1987

263 pages, Paperback

A central theme to this volume is the development of a new form of capitalism, the manufacturing industry, which began to grow up alongside the mines and towns on the Rand. With the growth of industry, the number of wage-earners was growing. In the factories, the most powerful wage-earners in the early years were white skilled workers. But in this book we begin to see how the nature and composition of the workers began to change. From skilled to semi-skilled workers, from men to women, from white to black. And we see, too, the change in the nature of their organisations.