Although women were not making headlines, they were very important in the Cape Breton labour movement. Miner's wives joined them in marches and on the picket lines. When the company stores prohibited the use of credit, it was the women of the hunger stricken families that persevered and made it work. However there was not as much support for the Communist movement from women. Much of the anti-Communist backlash in Cape Breton came from miner's wives, who most likely didn't want their husbands partaking in militant activities. However, some women stood with McLachlan and his ideals, particularly Annie Whitfield of the New Aberdeen Women's Labour Club. This club acted as a women's auxiliary for the Communist Party in Cape Breton. Although the…show more content… Two women in particular, Mary Arnold and Mabel Reed, were instrumental in the success of the Antigonish Movement. While many women played key supportive roles, Arnold and Reed were evidently outside of the traditional gender roles at the time. Americans that had just come off a farming venture in California, the two were drawn to the cooperative movement. They traveled around Eastern Nova Scotia, in particular Cape Breton, and helped establish different cooperatives, including a successful housing group in Sydney Mines.16 Arnold and Reed went on to be very successful in getting housing projects off the ground and contributed greatly to the success of the movement in Cape Breton. The importance of these women and others did not go unnoticed by other leaders of the movement either. Moses Coady recognized their importance and Tompkins' housing goals were only met with the help of…show more content… In Cape Breton, J.B. McLachlan's militant Communism provided security for miners within the labour movement, but it did not ultimately secure a Communist presence in Cape Breton. On the other hand, James Morrison's denial of the Antigonish Movement from it's conception in 1908 and lackluster support did not affect the impact that cooperativism would have on Nova Scotia and the around the world. Sacouman agrees with this opinion stating “earlier writers over-emphasized the powers of a dynamic leadership”.21 Remes also expresses this sentiment, reiterating that “without the social and economic context ... the leaders’ organization and ideas would have been for naught”.22 This theory is arguably the best reasoning behind the phenomenon of inversely related successes of leaders and their
