Portrait Of Working Life Some 170 Years Ago ...

"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it, but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of steam engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next."   
Charles Dickens, Hard Times, 1854

Regular readers of our monthly report will have noticed that, so far, we have not provided a detailed analysis of the friction between the American and Canadian governments over NAFTA. This is because of lack of space. We have merely said it is a trade dispute between rival groups of capitalists and therefore the working class has no stake in the matter. For those who wish for a deeper analysis, there will be one in the upcoming edition of our journal ''Imagine''; don't forget to get a copy.

For socialism,
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC