Smokestacks rise, cities swell and workers organize. Explore the language of the industrial revolution, the labour movement and the women who fought for a voice in public life.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Individuals and groups associated with the movement to end slavery in the United States. In Canada, abolitionists assisted African-Americans fleeing the United States, whether they were slaves or otherwise. The abolitionist movement built the foundation for subsequent social movements in Canada.
There is a record of Black and White female abolitionists attending lectures on anti-slavery and women’s rights in the 1850s and 1860s.
Established in 1886 as an umbrella organization of craft unions in the United States.
In the United States, this took the form in 1886 of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), headed by the cigar makers’ leader, Samuel Gompers.
A manufacturing process in which assembly or some other part of the production system is performed by machines that are subject to control systems.
Mechanization — and, in the 20th century, automation — would change the way work is done, but its spread was entirely dependent on the ability of capital to invest in emerging technologies.
Sanctions taken by employers against workers whom they associate with labour organization, strikes, certain ideological movements, or other actions contrary to the employers’ interests. Technically, a list of individuals who were denied work on the basis of their involvement in pro-labour activities.
Moreover, involvement in a labour organization or a strike — particularly in a leadership capacity — could result in a worker’s name being added to a blacklist.
21 June 1919; during a mass demonstration of solidarity (after ten OBU leaders were arrested, including J. S. Woodsworth) in which a buildup of state resources (troops, Mounties and Specials) were brought in. 30 protesters were injured and two killed.
The mass arrest launched a demonstration of solidarity and a final buildup of state resources that collided on Bloody Saturday, the 21st of June 1919.
A workers’ party that led the Russian Revolution in October 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin.
The Citizens’ Committee described the strike as a Bolshevik uprising led by foreigners and traitors.
Civic promoters.
While the competition was visibly fierce for investment, giving rise to a generation of civic self-promoters called boosters, it was no less pitched when it came to attracting and retaining a population of wage-earners.
Trade or craft unions that approach activism from a non-revolutionary position; associated with the unions of the AFL, the TLC, and — later — the CLC.
It was this context of growing confrontation and frustration at the intransigence of employers, government, and business unions, which radicalized parts of the Canadian workforce and labour movement.
Founded in 1956 in a merger of the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) and the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL). Subsequently joined with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to create the New Democratic Party (NDP).
This organization had far greater staying power and survives to this day (though considerably altered) in the form of the Canadian Labour Congress (the CLC).
An economic system (and its practitioners) that is based on the ability of private individuals to accumulate and invest money (capital) in profit-making enterprises. Also, a system that is dominated by the private ownership of the means of production.
It also points to a change in industrial capitalism: whereas earlier industrialization depended mostly upon bringing more labour to the task of producing goods, capital inputs were now rewarded.
A significant late 19th century advance in plough manufacturing. Stronger steel enabled the cutting of faster and deeper furrows and the breaking of densely packed prairie soil.
Coincides with the spread of the chilled steel plough in North America, is not a coincidence.
During the Winnipeg General Strike, 1919, an organization established by the city’s business and political elites to break the strike and challenge the authority of the Strike Committee.
The deployment of troops, Mounties, and Specials — volunteer police drawn from the Citizens’ Committee — in the words of one historian, turned Winnipeg into “virtually an occupied city.”
Negotiation of working conditions, pay, and other issues or benefits by an association — a “union” — of employees. Replaced the many individual arrangements made in one-on-one agreements.
In the 19th century, there was little in the way of what we call collective bargaining.
An outlet owned by an employer, one that sells goods to employees of the same firm. Commonplace in company towns. See also company towns.
If they lived in tied housing and carried debt at the truck shop or company store, their vulnerabilities could be greater still.
A community with one major employer and few other employers; one in which most or all services — in some instances including housing and the supply of food — are controlled by the employer. Associated with remote resource extraction communities.
They will take all this with them into the far west, as well, where they will find company towns and new systems of discipline in labour disputes that include the police, local militias, national troops, specials, and private security companies.
Equates subsidies to corporations with social welfare paid to individuals. In 1972, NDP leader David Lewis coined the phrase “corporate welfare bums” as a way of identifying what he perceived as the hypocrisy of attacks on the poor by anti-welfare business leaders.
Employers, at times, sympathized with some of the social goals of workers’ organizations, or unions, and began experimenting with what has come to be known as corporate welfarism.
Refers to a transition to capitalism led by craftworkers.
The significance of class conflict in Ontario has since been questioned by the suggestion that, there, industrialization was more a case of craft capitalism.
Mechanization and automation of work, as well as assembly lines permits the systematization of work and a commensurate reduction in the skills and training needed to perform key functions. The work is said to be deskilled and, thus, the workforce too is deskilled.
As deskilling progressed, some of these unions advised their members against training new craftsmen so as to control the supply (and thus the price) of their labour.
Formal recognition of a widow’s lifetime interest in matrimonial property on the death of her husband. See also homestead rights.
Farm women lobbied for legislative changes which would allow them greater financial independence and power especially as related to homestead rights and dower laws.
In the context of feminism, the belief that rights accorded to men and women ought to be the same. Diverges somewhat from maternal feminism which claims rights based on gendered differences.
First wave feminism engaged ideas like equal rights and maternal feminism: the first emphasizing the similarities between men and women; the latter highlighting differences based on motherhood.
Sectors identified in a crisis (such as wartime) as fundamental to the survival of the economy or society or war effort. Workers in those sectors are typically protected against conscription and may also be restricted in their ability to move to other jobs. In some instances, the state takes direct control of the industries for the duration of the crisis or longer.
At the same time, essential industries required essential workers.
The elite network in pre-Confederation Canada that dominated colonial politics; in Quebec (aka: Canada East, Lower Canada) it was referred to as the Chateau Clique.
The aristocratic airs of the Family Compact in Upper Canada and the HBC squirearchy on Vancouver Island were trademarks of a leadership caste on whom the sun was setting.
Founded in 1907, francophone Catholic women activists who also saw themselves as maternal feminists.
They were not the only ones of course, as francophone Catholic women who became part of the provincial group, the Fédération National Saint-Jean-Baptiste (FNSB), founded in 1907 also saw themselves as maternal feminists.
One of the central issues of the first wave feminists, involving a protracted campaign with feminist activists laying claim to full political citizenship.
One of the central issues of the first wave was the struggle for female suffrage which involved a protracted campaign with feminist activists laying claim to full political citizenship.
An ideological position that advances the ideal of equality of women and men.
Account for the rise of the first-wave of feminism.
More fully: first wave feminists. Advocates for women's rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; also sometimes called "maternal feminists."
Alongside and sometimes overlapping with the various social reform causes which emerged in the latter part of the part of the 19th century was the first wave of the Canadian feminist movement.
Includes coal, oil, natural gas, and petroleum; any fuel based on the compression of carbon matter over geological time.
The ability to consolidate dumps of fuel, whether wood or fossil fuels, was greater in cities that had port and rail, or even canal facilities.
Workers who are not tied to a feudal relationship, slavery, or indentured servitude and are able to move from one employer (or location) to another based on the size of pay and the character of the work.
Free labour (untied to the land or to a feudal relationship) was fundamental to the transition to industrialism.
A labour stoppage involving most or all unions or workplaces. General strikes have been held that call on all workers in a particular city or a particular sector or across an entire country.
The instrument with which the IWW proposed to accomplish this was an all-encompassing labour action, a general strike.
Abandoned communities; associated principally with resource extraction — often mining — towns that have a very short lifespan and which close up once the resource is removed or the market disappears.
Only a handful existed a decade earlier and some would become ghost towns by 1911.
The idea that great change can occur incrementally, in slow, small, and subtle steps, rather than by large uprisings or revolutions. Among left-wing activists, a belief that reforms to capitalism can produce a social and economic order of fairness for working people; sometimes called “Fabianism;” derided by revolutionaries as delusional. In the context of Quebec’s independence movements the equivalent term is étapisme. See also reformist and impossibilist.
This left wing of labour’s political arm rejected reformism and was stridently uncompromising when it came to capitalism and even more so when it came to labourist gradualism — and it was popular.
The Dominion Lands Act protected women’s interest in homesteads by forbidding the sale of the homestead by a husband without the wife’s written consent.
Farm women lobbied for legislative changes which would allow them greater financial independence and power especially as related to homestead rights and dower laws.
A facility typically funded out of philanthropic/charitable donations that provides housing and food for impoverished citizens with the expectation that they will do work in return. In the 19th century, associated with workhouses for the poor.
In Toronto, the local House of Industry received 2,000 applications for refuge between 1879-1882.
A way of measuring income that extends beyond the breadwinner model and incorporates incomes earned by every member of the household/family.
Child labour legislation might protect working children from some hazards but it also barred them from contributing to the household wage.
The diplomatic business of negotiating contracts and conditions between employers and employees; typically between employers and labour organizations (unions).
There was, therefore, a changing urban landscape in some cases, but also a kind of urban template was developed for emergent cities, onto which industrial relations were imposed.
Fully, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. Established in the United States in 1869-70; expanded into Canada in the next decade; organized workers regardless of race (apart from Asians), sex, or skill levels. Competition with the new craft unions resulted in the Knights’ expulsion from the Trades and Labour Congress in 1902, and its gradual disintegration thereafter.
Associations like the Knights of Labor gave a high priority to what were considered at the time to be gender issues.
In Britain, the political face of the Trades Union Congress; established in 1906. While Labour Parties also appeared in Australia and New Zealand, one never fully materialized in Canada.
More definitively, working-class parties also emerged: the Scottish Labour Party was founded in 1888 and the Independent Labour Party in 1893.
Canadian Liberal-Labour (Lib-Lab) candidates promoted an agenda that consisted mostly of democratic reforms, the 8-hour work day, a minimum wage, and educational opportunities for all.
Canadian Lib-Lab candidates promoted an agenda of labourism, which consisted mostly of democratic reforms, the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, and educational opportunities for all.
Typically a pro-labour candidate, sometime running under a Labour or Independent Labour banner, who joined the Liberal caucus on being elected.
In response, in the 1880s, British trade unionists and social reform-oriented intellectuals made their way into Gladstone’s Liberal Party and ran for election (with some success) as Liberal-Labour (Lib-Lab) candidates.
Also called first wave feminism; a movement to achieve greater civic rights for women; based its appeal on the biological differences between women and men, arguing that women have a natural nurturing instinct and ability which ought to be welcomed in a democratic system; women could apply the knowledge and attributes acquired from their universal role as mothers to address various inequities and social ills.
Referred to as maternal feminism, this form of argument emphasized that women could apply the knowledge and attributes they acquired as mothers to address various inequities and social ills.
The process of replacing manual labour with machinery; distinct from automation, which is a later phase in the deskilling process.
Mechanization — and, in the 20th century, automation — would change the way work is done, but its spread was entirely dependent on the ability of capital to invest in emerging technologies.
Also modern and modernism; term given to a constellation of behaviours and beliefs associated with the industrial, urban era. It is associated with challenges to traditional values and ways of looking at the world, and is often used in connection with 20th century artworks, literature, and architecture.
The engagement of the state in the building of an industrial order is itself part of the suite of ideas associated with modernity — a concept pursued throughout this text.
A feminist activist group formed in 1893; predominantly Anglo-Celtic Protestant women who mostly identified themselves as maternal feminists.
They were especially prevalent in the first national umbrella women’s organization, the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC), formed in 1893.
John A. Macdonald’s linkage of three policies into one: a tariff wall to exclude American manufactures; an transcontinental railway (the CPR) to link the Maritimes with British Columbia; and the settlement of the West. Although most of the components were in place by 1876, it was only touted as a single National Policy in 1879.
The most obvious expression of that strategic (and, yes, hopeful) thinking was the National Policy.
In the first instance, the idea (pioneered by the Knights of Labor) that working people should belong to a single organization that can fight for their rights collectively; secondly, an actual organization — the OBU — formed after 1919, as a revolutionary industrial union (which included workers in support of the Bolshevik and other left-wing revolutions).
This interchangeability made it possible for the IWW to talk about one big union, an organization that took in everybody, including Asian-Canadians.
With the passage of the Wartime Elections Act in 1917, female relatives of Canadian soldiers were granted the vote.
At the federal level, decades of struggle resulted in the achievement of a partial franchise with the passage of the Wartime Elections Act in 1917.
In politics, an appeal to the interests and concerns of the community by political leaders (populists) usually against established elites or minority — or scapegoat — groups. The rhetoric of populists is often characterized as vitriolic, bombastic, and fear-mongering.
They weren’t without airs but they were willing to wade into a crowd and take on the mantle of populism.
Industrialists and others who were able to profit from government contracts in wartime.
Profiteers — who were growing fat off government wartime contracts.
A total ban on the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol products.
Taylorism was part of a growing middle class agenda of social reform that included child labour legislation, universal education, and temperance or prohibition.
The transformation of non-industrial workers or skilled workers and small employers into wage labourers.
In places like British Columbia, the choices came down to the proletarianization of Aboriginal people or the import of unskilled and mostly agricultural workers from Asia.
Distinct from the first-past-the-post system; can take several forms but common aspect is that political parties will be elect a number of seats that reflect in some measure the percentage of votes the parties receive. For example, in a first-past-the-post system a party might win 49% of the votes in every constituency but not elect a single candidate if the only other party running wins 51% of the votes; proportional representation (sometimes called PR) would ensure that the second-place party received something closer to 49% of the seats.
Proportional representation Distinct from the first-past-the-post system.
A complex of political, social, economic, and cultural responses to the rise of pro-communist feeling in Canada and internationally; fear of communist revolution at home or abroad and particularly of pro-communist spies and supporters working clandestinely to advance a communist agenda; manifest in security campaigns against perceived enemies of the state, the creation of blacklists, and other acts of intimidation.
After crushing the Winnipeg strike, the federal government collaborated in the anti-radical Red Scare that businessmen and conservative journalists were promoting across the country.
A term used and an ideal pursued by mid-19th century organized labour — particularly skilled craft workers — and some of their successors; embraced the ideals of fair treatment, law-abiding behaviour, equality, and a commitment to the nation’s stability and growth. Manifest in many ways including working class campaigns for literacy, temperance, and rational recreation.
They had something to say about culture and respectability, and they certainly had something to say about class.
Usually placed between ca. 1870 and 1914, renewed technological innovation which saw a significant expansion in iron and steel production, railway construction, and communications technologies like the telegraph and telephone.
Develop an understanding of the causes and contours of the Second Industrial Revolution.
A social reform movement stimulated by Christian beliefs that linked personal engagement with social salvation.
On the 17th of June, ten OBU leaders were arrested, among them the leading Social Gospel Methodist minister in Winnipeg, James S. Woodsworth (see Chapter 7).
Volunteer police drawn from a local population; in the case of the Winnipeg General Strike, the Specials were recruited from the Citizen’s Committee.
The deployment of troops, Mounties, and Specials — volunteer police drawn from the Citizens’ Committee — in the words of one historian, turned Winnipeg into “virtually an occupied city.”
Colloquial term used to describe the elite in colonial British Columbia.
The aristocratic airs of the Family Compact in Upper Canada and the HBC squirearchy on Vancouver Island were trademarks of a leadership caste on whom the sun was setting.
A full-time, permanent, usually salaried army, as opposed to a volunteer militia.
The standing army was a development that coincided with the rise of the Dominion of Canada (and fear of the American standing army was a factor in Canada’s expansion).
Colloquial term for a worker who continues working, or who takes a job, while a strike is ongoing. Also called a scab.
Withdrawal of labour (in a strike) was invariably countered by employers with the introduction of new workers who were referred to as strikebreakers or, in the colloquial, scabs.
Work that takes place over long hours; exhausting and generally poorly paid; very often involves "outwork", the taking home of materials that are assembled there, usually by female employees, who are paid on the basis of output.
This kind of labour (sometimes referred to as sweated labour) could easily be as gruelling as any factory work.
A labour stoppage by supportive workers who are not directly involved in a dispute.
There, the WFM was engaged in its own struggle, one that was painted by the CPR (one of the main clients for coal from the Extension mine near Ladysmith) as an illegal sympathy strike.
Advocate of syndicalism, the belief that industry would be best run by syndicates made up of industrial workers who would own and operate the factories themselves.
Regional leadership subsequently met in Calgary in March 1919, to form a syndicalist organization with roots in the old IWW: the One Big Union (OBU).
Charges (a tax) added to imported goods so as to make their sale price higher than domestic goods and, thus, make domestic goods more competitive.
It combined three core elements – infrastructure, tariffs, and population growth — as a strategy to reshape and expand the post-Confederation economy.
One strand of the anti-liquor campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries, focussed on the personal impact of alcohol and personal resolve in limiting or giving up drink. Contrast with prohibition, which called for an all-out ban on the production, sale, and consumption of liquor.
Taylorism was part of a growing middle class agenda of social reform that included child labour legislation, universal education, and temperance or prohibition.
In company towns, housing that is owned by the employer and provided to employees. In some cases, residence in tied housing is a condition of employment, which enables the employer to evict strikers during labour disputes.
If they lived in tied housing and carried debt at the truck shop or company store, their vulnerabilities could be greater still.
Describes the engagement of the whole nation in conflict, and not just the military. In the 20th century, applies only to the two World Wars.
How labour (meaning working people and organized labour) met the experience of living in a country engaged for the first time in total war is what matters here.
A national association of craft unions modelled on the American Federation of Labor; established in 1883 and merged with the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) in 1956 to create the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
The old tensions resurfaced in 1918-1919, following an attack by the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada on radical (and mostly western) elements within the unions.
An outlet owned by an employer, one that sells goods to employees of the same firm. Commonplace in company towns. See also company store.
If they lived in tied housing and carried debt at the truck shop or company store, their vulnerabilities could be greater still.
Introduced a year after the partial franchise, to grant adults the right to vote; however, select populations of women and men were explicitly left disenfranchised: Aboriginal people, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian immigrants.
Although universal adult suffrage was introduced the next year, select populations of women and men were explicitly left disenfranchised.
Extension of the franchise — the right to vote — to all adult males. In practice in Canada, it excluded non-Euro-Canadians (i.e. Aboriginal and Asian) adult males until the mid-20th century. Also constrained by residency requirements until the mid-20th century.
Federally and provincially, what appears to be universal male suffrage was in fact only extended to males who satisfied residence requirements.
In economics and business, a system in which the whole or most of the supply chain is owned by the same individual(s) or firm. Early examples come from the steel industry which in some cases controlled the production of coking coal, the supply of iron ore, foundries, and railways that consumed the final product.
Increased linkages across industries and systems also meant that capitalists and factory owners in one line of business regularly sought to close gaps in supply lines by means of vertical integration.
An expanding demand for wheat leading to a rapid expansion of farmland dedicated to wheat production; in Canada from ca. 1880-1914.
There were competing railways, Canada had a healthy manufacturing sector, the economy had diversified in ways that would sustain further industrial growth, prairie settlement was well advanced, and the wheat boom was (with a few interruptions) underway.
Former British colonies dominated by a European population or elite; includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Newfoundland to ca. 1934-1949.
For a while something similar happened in Britain and the other White Dominions.
One of the largest and most effective anti-drink lobbies in Canada. Established in 1874, months after its first branch was announced in the United States, the WCTU emerged as a vehicle for contiguous reforms in public behaviour, the political environment, and social conditions.
As with a number of other women’s reform groups at the time, the WCTU did not view the attainment of female suffrage as the primary goal in and of itself, but rather as a means to achieve greater political influence for social improvement.