These day labourers, often immigrants, earned $1.50 to $1.75 a day in 1912 - when they were working. Then, the average family, it was estimated, needed $18. a week to buy necessities. Like the dock workers, these men were subject to seasonal unemployment. Moreover, labour organizations usually could not help to improve either their wages or their working conditions because there was always some other man, equally unskilled, to take up a job left vacant. Almost 30 per cent of all adult male workers in the city of Montreal were unskilled; that is, they worked at jobs which required no recognized "skills".
Courtesy: Montreal Urban Transportation Commission
