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Very early political pamphlet for the League. The League was formed in the turmoil of the Depression and provided the founding principles for the CCF. Rare. Could not find any examples.
This handbook was printed after the second annual convention, held in Toronto on January 28th and 29th 1933.
“The League for Social Reconstruction is an association of men and woman who are working for the establishment in Canada of a social order in which the basic principle regulation production, distribution and service will be the common good rather than private profit...’
Name of owner written at top ‘W (M?) Thomas’. Notes written by owner on back page: list of books: "Laski’s Grammar of Politics, Shaw …, Cole …". I note that the National Secretary-Treasurer was a Miss Isabel Thomas, same?
Water stain at centre of pages throughout. Some red ink transfer on back page. Front cover detached, some chipping. Horizontal fold.
16 pages.
23 x 15 cm
League for Social Reconstruction, organization of left-wing intellectuals, founded 1931-32 in Montréal and Toronto, largely in response to the GREAT DEPRESSION. Although it soon had almost 20 branches elsewhere in Ontario and the West, the founding branches proved the longest lived and most active in political education. Led by historian Frank UNDERHILL and law professor F.R. SCOTT, the LSR was critical of monopoly capitalism and demanded economic change by parliamentary means. Never formally linked with a political party, it made its sympathies clear with the annual re-election of J.S. WOODSWORTH as its honorary president.
The Regina Manifesto (1933) of the CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH FEDERATION was largely written by LSR members. The league's ideas found fullest expression in the books Social Planning for Canada (1935) and Democracy Needs Socialism (1938), and in the CANADIAN FORUM, acquired in 1936. Disillusionment with SOCIALISM in the late 1930s weakened the LSR. WWII and the increased organizational demands of the CCF led to the LSR's quiet demise in 1942. Its influence on the CCF was great; its influence on Canada is still a matter for speculation.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
