THE ORIGINS OF THE ONTARIO WORKING CLASS, 1867-1914 Michael J. Piva The nature of an economy will determine the structure of the labour force which, in turn, provides the most powerful single variable conditioning the evolution of working-class culture. The Canadian economy has traditionally been export led; the favourable man/land ratio tended to place a premium on the exploitation and subsequent export of resources which had a competitive advantage in the metropolitan markets of the Old World. The first several centuries of economic growth in Canada were characterized by the dominant position within the economy of a relatively small number of export staples: fish, fur, timber, and wheat. The Staples Trades and the Labour Market During the ancien regime there were no settlements of significance in what is today Ontario, although there were important fur trade posts at Kingston, Toronto, and elsewhere. The fur trade retarded settlement; the need for labour was relatively small and settlement threatened the fur-bearing animal population in a given area. Not until the arrival of the Loyalist immigrants following the American Revolution did forests begin to give way to farms. Opening a settlement frontier, however, was a long, slow and tedious process. It was not until the turn of the nineteenth century that Upper Canada, as the colony was then known, emerged out of the pioneer stage and began to participate in the international commercial system as both a producer and a consumer. The two most important developments during these years were the emergence of new staples and the increased immigration from the United Kingdom. The new staples, timber and wheat, were both labour intensive they both required large numbers of workers. This in turn encouraged population growth at a time when population pressures and economic dislocations in Britain and Ireland were forcing large numbers of people to emigrate. Immigration began to outstrip economic growth in the colony, and, as a consequence, the labour market was fundamentally altered. The fur economy had been characterized by labour scarcity: the timber and wheat economy was characterized by labour surplus. In addition to being labour intensive, the production of timber and wheat necessitated the development of internal transportation facilities for the movement of the bulk commodities to market. To improve water communications the imperial and provincial governments began construction of a canal system which was finally completed in 1848. Canal projects employed large numbers of unskilled workers, particularly Irish immigrants, and it was in this construction that the emergence of a capitalist labour market was clearly visible. Labour became a commodity to be bought and sold like any other in a market. The capitalist labour market was characterized by the dominance of day-labour and the subsequent absence of any job security. The worker was hired by the day, and if he was not needed, he was let go. The employer assumed no responsibility for the worker during slack periods the employer simply purchased the labour actually performed. It was this lack of security which together with low wages provided the basic problem confronting all workers for the rest of the century. Manufacturers and Artisans Within this staple economy a small manufacturing sector began to emerge. By Confederation, Ontario produced a wide range of industrial products in a multiplicity of small factories scattered throughout the province. In 1881 about twenty percent of the population was employed in manufacturing. Of the twenty-seven major manufacturing industries only eight averaged more than ten workers per factory. The still incomplete transportation system dictated a pattern of industrial growth which insulated the small manufacturer from outside competition; the high cost of marketing restricted manufacturers to a small regional market. Railway construction, which picked up where canal construction left off, altered this situation. The railway allowed the local manufacturer to expand his potential market, but it also increased competition within his traditional regional market. The railways tended to undermine the small local producer who was driven out of business by larger corporations located in the biggest urban centres. Thus, the most important characteristics of industrial expansion throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were: 1) the increasing relative importance of the manufacturing sector within the economy as a whole, 2) the concentration of population within the largest cities, particularly Toronto, 3) the concentration of production in the largest cities, and 4) the growth of larger factories and the disappearance of smaller ones in declining towns. By 1911, for example, roughly seventy percent of all manufacturing workers in south-central Ontario lived in Toronto. The emergence of manufacturing industries completely altered economic and social relationships in the workplace. Traditionally workers in manufacturing were semi-independent artisans. They possessed a high degree of skill and exerted considerable control over the product of their labour. During the nineteenth century, however, artisanal production would be eclipsed by modern industries based upon the application of mechanical power and a further division of labour. No longer would a product be made from start to finish by a single worker. Rather, the new industrial system required each worker to perform only one of several tasks that went into the production of a particular commodity. Such tasks might still require considerable skill, but skills were, nevertheless, being watered down. The small independent artisan-producer gave way to the wage-worker who owned neither the product nor the means of production and who toiled in a larger shop or factory. By Confederation, the wages system had already established a dominant position and skilled workers, now threatened with the loss of independence, responded with trade unions to protect their economic and social position. The Rise of the Labour Movement From an early date workingmen had congregated and organized themselves in clubs and benefit societies. These organizations provided mutual assistance to their members. The most important forms of such aid were unemployment benefits, sickness and accident benefits, and a primitive system of life insurance the club or society paid for the burial of members and sometimes provided limited aid to dependents. The benefit societies provided the basis for later union growth, and the benefit functions of unions have never been absent. Such organizations, however, were not trade unions in the modern sense as they were not bargaining agents. Such clubs focused their attentions primarily upon education and self-help. To improve the social and cultural life of workers the clubs sponsored reading rooms, discussion groups and lectures. In many cases they saw education and self-help as vehicles for upward mobility rather than class action, and it was common to find organizations such as the Mechanic's Institutes inviting middle-class participation if not actual middle-class control. Trade unions in the modern sense of bargaining agents were organized as early as the 1820s. It was not until 1844, however, that the first union with a continuous existence to the present was formed, the Toronto Typographical Union which quickly became Local 91 of the International Typographical Union headquartered in the United States. Other unions followed, and always they immediately confronted employer resistance. Within a year of the organization of Local 91 the union was on strike at the offices of Peter Brown who attempted to drive union printers from his shop. This 1845 strike with Peter Brown was but a prelude to a much larger and more important confrontation in 1872 between the Typographers and Peter Brown's son, George Brown, owner of the Globe and a leading figure in the Liberal party. New unions continued to be organized; in the 1850s came the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other British unions. But it was not until the 1860s that the trade union movement entered its first decade of sustained growth; a decade marked by the founding of the Railway Brotherhoods, which throughout the period remained among the largest and most powerful unions, and the growth of American international unions. It was also in the 1860s that middle class Canadians began to worry about the growing "class feeling" which characterized their society. When examining the labour movement in the early 1870s, three points must be noted: 1) International unions predominated. At mid-century there were both British and American international unions, but the British unions would eventually decline and disappear as American unions became increasingly more common. The resources and services provided by the larger American international unions such as trade union newspapers, trained organizers and strike funds were more extensive than could have been provided by small local unions. In addition in an environment where workers frequently crossed the border in search of employment, these American-based unions were familiar and useful institutions for Canadians. 2) Unions organized skilled workers, carpenters, coopers, engineers, moulders, printers, shoemakers, tailors, and others. The power of these craft unions of skilled workers was based upon their monopoly over specific skills and the solidarity of the membership. After 1870 some attempts were made, primarily by the Knights of Labour, to organize the unskilled workers in "industrial unions" but generally the craft unions remained dominant well into the twentieth century. And 3) most unions were small, local organizations which had only limited contact with each other. There were no larger organizations capable of directing the activities of the labour movement at either the municipal, provincial, or national level. To some extent the major problem facing the labour movement in the 1870s and 1880s was the formation of a national organization. In addition, the unions existed in an ambiguous legal position. Unions were not incorporated bodies and thus had no corporate existence in law. At the same time their actions might still be considered illegal under common law which forbade conspiracies in restraint of trade; collective bargaining, which by definition aimed at collective action to alter market conditions, was frequently seen as a violation of common law. The Nine-Hour Movement and the Trades and Labour Congress The first attempt at national organization came in the early 1870s with the emergence of the nine-hour movement. In 1871 the Nine-Hour League was formed in Hamilton, and later in the same year the Toronto Trades Council was founded. The League and the Council were federations of local unions designed to coordinate certain activities within the labour movement. They were the first city-wide organizations which attempted to link different unions into a single organization, and they became models for later organizations. Little progress was made in the nine-hour campaign until March 1872 when the typographers in Toronto went on strike demanding a fifty-four-hour work week. With George Brown, and thus the Liberal party. clearly identified with the employers, the strike presented John A. Macdonald with a golden opportunity to woo the labour vote in the upcoming federal election. Macdonald passed the Trades Union Act which, like the British legislation passed the previous year, freed the unions from the operation of conspiracy clauses of the criminal code. With this sudden and unexpected legal victory the union went on to best George Brown and the Master Printers. By June, Brown finally gave in and agreed to pay his printers the going rate of ten dollars for a fifty-four-hour week This victory stimulated efforts in other cities, and unionists in Montréal and Ottawa soon organized their own trade councils. But in 1873 the depression intervened, and high unemployment decimated the ranks of organized labour. Membership declined, and many unions collapsed. The recently founded municipal councils in Hamilton, Ottawa, Montréal, and Toronto disappeared. The employment situation did not improve significantly until the early 1880s when the depression eased somewhat. With slightly improved economic conditions a new drive for national organization was launched. In 1881 the old Toronto Trades Council was reorganized as the Toronto Trades and Labour Council. Other cities followed suit, and within two decades twenty-four such municipal councils existed in Canada. The Toronto Council, meanwhile, had begun a campaign for an even broader organization. In 1883 a convention was called which recommended the formation of a national organization. At a second convention in 1886 the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC) was placed on a permanent footing. At first the membership was confined to Ontario, but within a very few years the TLC was able to bring in most of the trade unions throughout the country. By the 1890s the TLC had become the major labour organization in the nation. Although the TLC included Knights of Labour Assemblies during the nineteenth century, the majority of the membership came from the international craft unions affiliated in the United States with the American Federation of Labour (AFL). The TLC was not a trade union as it was not a collective bargaining agency. Rather, it was a political body, it would promote the interests of all unions through research and education on matters of common interest and would lobby the government in an effort to win legislation to protect workers. Its functions were more limited than those of the AFL since the TLC did not hire organizers, did not charter local unions, and did not make final jurisdictional decisions. These activities were left to the individual international unions and the AFL. By the turn of the century the TLC began expanding its activities in the organizational field and demanded increased autonomy and authority, demands which the AFL usually resisted. But in the end the TLC gradually won the right to charter local unions, to hire its own organizers, and to exert more influence in jurisdictional decisions within Canada. Collective bargaining, however, remained the preserve of the individual union. Social and Cultural Role of Local Unions Trade unions, although small and scattered, offered workers a variety of services during the nineteenth century. The unions provided camaraderie and the company of like-minded friends. They frequently functioned as social clubs within the community; annual Labour Day picnics and celebrations were major events in the labour calender. This social function was reinforced with the rituals and language of brotherhood, indeed, unionists still address each other as Brother and Sister. Somewhat more importantly, the union offered the worker a primitive system of social security in a period before the development of the welfare state. If a member was unemployed, he might receive some financial assistance. If he was sick, he might be eligible for benefits paid by the union. And if he died, his family would receive financial help for his burial. The worker could also count on his Brothers and Sisters, although the accomplishments in organizing women lagged far behind the official rhetoric of the TLC which called for equal pay and equal rights for men and women, to help his dependents as much as possible in case of death. And perhaps most importantly, he could count on assistance when looking for work. In Britain the tradition of "tramping" had been one of the primary services provided by nascent workingmen's organizations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With the impact of industrialization, employment became at best tenuous; workers were continually obliged to seek work in another city or region. An unemployed worker would travel, or "tramp", to different cities in search of work, and with his union card in hand he could introduce himself to the local union at his point of destination. That union would provide shelter and food as well as help in trying to secure employment. If this effort failed the worker would move on to the next town where again he would receive help from the local organization. When British workers immigrated to North America they brought their union cards with them. These immigrants found in North America a labour market even more fluid than that in Britain. To some extent this helps explain the advantage enjoyed by American unions as compared to British -- a union card from an American international provided the worker with much greater mobility in his search for employment. All of these social and benefit aspects of unions were important and positive attractions to the worker who joined. But the primary function of any union was to protect the worker on the job. The individual worker was at an extreme disadvantage when dealing with employers. If the union was strong enough to survive the employer's attacks it provided collective strength in the bargaining process. The power of the nineteenth-century craft union depended upon two things: the control over specific skills which were vital to certain industrial processes and the solidarity of the membership. Traditional concepts of artisanal/craft pride and respectability, in turn, reinforced these strengths. The most common articulation of this pride was the assertion that the skills brought to the job were the property of the workers and entitled them to a say in the decision making process in the factory, a say in wage rates, in the speed at which the work was done, in the organization of the work in the shop, and in the hiring process, particularly in the control over apprenticeship. Although the unions exerted considerable control over the work-place, this control did not go unchallenged. The employer attempted to exert his own authority over the shop, and most of the strikes which broke out during the late nineteenth century involved the employers' attempt to alter the 'customs and usages' in the shop over which the union claimed control. Dilution of Skills and the Condition of Labour for the Unskilled All craft unions experienced a dilution of skill but at widely differing periods in their history, depending upon the nature and level of technology in their industry. The coopers, for example, were destroyed in the 1870s following technical improvements in the production of barrels. The Knights of St. Crispan, skilled boot and shoemakers, suffered a similar fate following the introduction of the sewing machine in their trade. The Boot and Shoe Workers were able to continue exerting some influence into the twentieth century. But always the key issue was the monopoly over skill, if technology diluted the skills required, employers would replace craft unionists with unskilled or semi-skilled non-unionists. Yet the craft unions were slow in their response to changing industrial conditions; they proved reluctant to bring the semi-skilled and unskilled into the union. As a consequence, technological advances in industry made the craft unions with their restrictive membership increasingly ineffective. Skilled craft workers were always a minority within the work force, and were constantly threatened by mechanization. Advanced technology would force these workers down the occupational ladder into the ranks of the semi-skilled and unskilled who made up the majority of workers. Many attempts were made to organize unskilled workers, but few enjoyed any success prior to the first decades of the twentieth century. The semi-skilled and the unskilled had no power over the conditions of labour, and as a result the common denominators among such workers were long hours and low wages. The TLC tried constantly to draw attention to this situation and demanded ameliorative legislative action to help such workers. This campaign appeared to bear fruit in 1886 when the federal government appointed a Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital. What the commission found in its three-year study , summarized in its report submitted in 1889, was massive evidence on the extent of child labour, excessively long hours, wages which most people agreed were too low to maintain families even at a conservative estimate of the poverty line, filthy factories, dirty mines and shops, health hazards by the dozens, workers forced to toil in shops filled with dangerous gases and industrial by-products, dangerous and unguarded machinery, and an excessively high incidence of industrial accidents which annually maimed hundreds of workers who could receive no compensation for the loss of hands, arms, legs, or eyes. For the majority of workers their labour offered little more than mere survival. It would be a long uphill struggle against seemingly hopeless odds before life would improve for the working men, women, and children of Canada. Indeed, things would get worse before they would get better. Working Conditions: Inspection and Regulation The federal government had investigated industrial conditions, but the commissioners could not agree on how to remedy some of the more glaring abuses. A more important inhibiting factor was the Canadian federal system which divided powers between the central and provincial governments; labour and social welfare legislation fell within the provincial jurisdiction. The federal government, then, could not act on the basis of the evidence uncovered by its Royal Commission. The provinces, meanwhile, were prepared to attempt some legislative reforms. Ontario, in 1886, passed the Factories Act designed to regulate the conditions of labour. The act set limited objectives; it was to deal with two specific problems, the regulation of labour for women and children and the imposition of minimum standards of cleanliness and safety in factories. One must not, however overstate the importance of this act which proved to be little more than an ineffective gesture in the direction of state regulation. The Ontario Factories Act forbade the employment of children under ten years of age. It also forbade the employment in any factory, defined as a manufacturing establishment employing five or more workers, of girls under fourteen and boys under twelve (later raised to fourteen). Women and children could not be required to work longer than ten hours per day or sixty hours per week. In addition, the act required all factories to be kept clean, to provide sanitary facilities proper ventilation to be installed in all workrooms, workrooms not to be overcrowded, and guards to be placed on dangerous machinery. From a statutory point of view this was a significant departure from previous government policy, but in reality the act did little to improve working conditions. The ineffectiveness of the act resulted from the vagueness of many of its clauses which made the act unenforceable. Moreover there is no reason to assume that the government intended to enforce the legislation rigorously. For example, the government appointed only three inspectors to cover the entire province. The lack of manpower proved a major stumbling block to proper enforcement. Later, in 1907 and again in 1909, the number of factory inspectors increased to seven and then to ten but this action did not solve the manpower problem. The Factories Inspection Branch always suffered from inadequate staff and inadequate budget. These inspectors did what they could so far as inspection was concerned, and year after year they reported continued abuse of the factory regulations. Because the law lacked specificity it is not accurate to argue that the regulations were violated during the nineteenth century. What did it mean to have a factory kept in a cleanly state? The law did not set minimum standards, and the inspectors were not given the authority to define what was meant by cleanliness. Similarly, the law required that sanitary facilities be provided, but again no standards were specified. A clause stating that factories were not to be overcrowded was meaningless so long as no standard of space per worker was provided. In 1904 the government finally amended the Factories Act to provide such standards, yet it remained a moot point if the act would be any more effective. Indeed, between 1904 and 1915 there were only occasional prosecutions, usually against parents of underage children, despite annual reports of continued abuses filed each year by the inspectors. The case of thirteen-year-old Wellington Lawrence provides but one example of the almost total failure to prosecute employers. In April 1902 Lawrence, without his parents' knowledge, applied for work at a Toronto factory. He claimed to be fourteen and was given a blank age certificate to be filled out by his parents. In violation of the law Lawrence immediately began working. A few hours later young Lawrence died after his head was crushed in an elevator accident. The factory inspector investigated the accident, discovered that the law had been broken, and then decided not to prosecute. Instead he merely warned the employer against future violations. The Factories Act, then, offered little or no protection for the industrial worker. This act, and its periodic amendments, were important gestures, but in the context of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they were only that, inadequate and ineffective gestures. Virtually the only really effective piece of reform legislation passed prior to the war was the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1914. It provided the worker with a government-administrated programme which ensured compensation even in cases where negligence was not involved. The business community also supported the act as it helped reduce their costs. The political significance of this act lay in the fact that both business and labour supported its passage. There were, meanwhile, increasing pressures for reform in Ontario society after the turn of the century. These came from three sources: 1) the trade unions; 2) the Social Gospel which considered the amelioration of social conditions to be part of a religious mission, and 3) welfare capitalism in which businessmen themselves introduced reforms in an effort to increase productivity. Although these various reform currents did produce some important improvements, their overall impact was minimal prior to the Great War. The significance of these various currents of reform lay less in what they actually achieved than in their anticipation of the eventual emergence of the welfare state. Real reform would have to wait several more decades. Conclusion As the working class grew in numbers and social significance during the half-century following Confederation there were few improvements in their living and working conditions. Large numbers of unskilled workers, usually immigrants, continued to labour in the railway, mining and timber camps of the northern interior. Neither conditions of labour nor real incomes had changed since the days of canal construction. In the manufacturing centres of the south growth ensured the increasing relative importance of the industrial sector, but this growth was concentrated in the major cities. The working class, and the problems of poverty, were similarly concentrated. Meanwhile, more sophisticated technological improvements helped eliminate many skilled jobs, thus weakening the social and economic position of craft workers whose trade unions became increasingly ineffective when dealing with employers. And few unions existed to protect the growing numbers of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Wages were as a consequence very low; most families required two wage earners in order to rise above the poverty line. A general labour surplus in the capitalist labour market increased the workers' vulnerability and insecurity. This and the seasonal nature of the Canadian economy only aggravated further the critical problem of unemployment. Not until the 1940s did the economic benefits of the substantial increase in the productive capacity of the economy made possible by industrialization filter down to the working class in the form of improved real incomes and living standards. In the fifty years after Confederation the basic characteristics of working-class life, in spite of the efforts of working men and working women, remained grinding and unrelenting poverty.