Using Hamilton's local history to tell the wider story of the North American working-class, Lunch-Bucket Lives investigates how workers dealt with the profound changes in their lives between the 1890s and the 1930s, as wage-earners, family members, and participants in various social networks. 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.