In the closing decades of the Victorian period (1870-1900), Canadian trades unionists along with few socialists and agrarian rebels launched more than 133 working-class newspapers. These paperssome of which survived well into the twentieth century-were central to labour's efforts to check the unbridled development of big business in Canada. More important, they were the intellectual forum for the merger of Christian humanism and working-class interests that laid the foundation for the reformist politics that exists in most parts of Canada today. This article focuses on some of those labour journalists and how they sought to reform organized Christianity, invoking Christian theology and tradition in upholding the dignity and rights of the working class. Throughout their long struggle, these journalists battled collusion between big business and institutionalized religion, arguing that industrial capitalists actively exploited the Christian church and co-opted its leadership. These journalists and their ideas are important because they helped to give birth to nonconformist, quasi-secular, reformist, puritanical ideology that eventually provided the foundations for Canadian social democracy and relegated materialist, atheistic socialism to the margins of Canadian political life.' It is not the result that concerns us here, but the path that led to it. Religious reform had to occur before any notions of political interventionism could take root. Labour journalists recognized that religion, specifically the non-theological codes of human conduct contained in Christian teachings, played significant role in defining working-class behaviour. Respect and reverence for clerical figures was an attitude prevalent in working-class communities. It was milder version of earlier deferent social relationships which existed when quasi-feudal Church of England-based institutions shaped Canadian political and social life prior to the coming of democratic government in 1848.' Their autocratic rule ensured that religious notions underscored virtually every detail of daily life in Victorian Canada long after their legal authority had ended. As consequence, Christian and quasi-Christian organizations dominated Victorian Canada during the most active period of industrial development following 1870. Both Catholic and Protestant fraternal societies were among the many through which working-class communities sought protection from the insecurities of factory society.^sup 3^ However, for labour journalists, the Church, its ancillary organizations and established authority were one and the same, the very nature of which made them hostile to working-class interests. Industrialization exacerbated societal conflict. Organized religion tended to side with the newly emergent industrial capitalism.^sup 4^ The line of demarcation between church and state was so fragile in the three decades following Canadian union in 1867 that clerical and secular initiatives were often one and the same. Between 1867 and the turn of the century, this alliance produced distinctive Canadian political culture called Toryism.^sup 5^ In Victorian Canada, Toryism, through its political arm, the Conservative Party, used the levers of the state to lay the infrastructure for modem industrial economy while simultaneously working to preserve the vestiges of privilege and power enjoyed by both clerical and secular elites.^sup 6^ In spite of public claims of sympathy for working-class causes, the Church continually provided ample ammunition for its critics. The Methodist weekly, Christian Guardian, called trades unions a depraved monopoly. In the winter of 1891, Toronto preacher Hugh Johnston attributed all labour troubles to pro-union demagogues. Johnston advised working men to stop striking and rely on the good will of industrialists at the conciliation table. Labour journalist Phillips Thompson observed in the editorial columns of his weekly Labor Advocate that Johnston did not understand basic labour relations. …