QUâBEC WORKERS AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Fernand Harvey
All developed countries, at some time in their past, have experienced an industrial revolution. The first nation to undergo this profound economic and social upheaval was England in the last third of the eighteenth century.
What exactly was the industrial revolution? The term "industrial revolution" is used by analogy with political revolution; it denotes a period of rapid economic change which transforms the whole social structure of a society. Historians differ as to when the industrial revolution began; 1760, 1780, and a variety of other dates have been given, according to the technological innovation or economic phenomenon singled out by the individual historian. In the case of Great Britain, the industrial revolution began around 1760 and lasted for more than a century. It was characterized by the introduction of new machines and new manufacturing processes in many industries, and was closely linked to the use of the steam engine. Concurrent with these changes in the manufacturing sector, important developments were taking place in transportation and communication with the construction of canals and railways. Industrial development also implied economic growth; capital had to be provided for major investments such as textile mills and ironworks, the construction of which was necessitated by technological innovations. This marriage of technology and capital resulted in an increase in the costs of production and a decrease in the price of finished goods. In fact, the industrial revolution destroyed the old mode of artisanal production and heralded twentieth-century mass production.
The industrial revolution had a profound effect on society; it gave rise to a true urban proletariat. Industrial development on such a scale required a large pool of available manpower. The influx of workers, primarily from rural areas, speeded up urbanization. The cultural impact of the industrial revolution now became apparent; a new way of life relegated to the past the old rural, farming culture.
Although Great Britain was the first country to experience the industrial revolution, other countries followed suit in the nineteenth century notably France, Germany, the United States, Canada, and Japan. In QuÄbec and the rest of Canada, the effects of the industrial revolution began to make themselves felt during the 1880s. We shall see how the industrial revolution developed in QuÄbec, particularly in MontrÄal; specifically, we shall look at the organization of work, working conditions, workers' living conditions, and the reaction of the workers to industrialization.
The Organization of Work
Today, there are many factories where the work is partly or completely automated. In these factories, workers supervise machines instead of acting directly, either manually or by means of machine tools, on what is being produced. Such is the case, for example, in an oil refinery or in an automated factory producing automobile parts. Automation, as developed in several industrial sectors since the middle of the 1950s, constitutes the third stage in the evolution of the technical organization of work. There were two prior stages: artisanal production and mechanization. The industrial revolution was the process of change from the first to the second of these two stages.
Artisanal Production
At the beginning of the nineteenth century in QuÄbec, the labour of the individual craftsman, or artisan, was the dominant mode of production. The economy was relatively undeveloped and people's material needs were limited; thus, business was based on direct demand for a product. A craftsman produced only what was needed to meet demand; he did not build up an inventory of finished products. For example, a customer wishing to buy a pair of shoes had to ask the shoemaker to take a special order for the desired article. Likewise, someone who wanted to have a house built had to make the necessary arrangements with a carpenter.
During this period, when work was organized by type of craft, production was on a limited scale; it was directed by a master craftsman, assisted by one or more apprentices, and occasionally by a journeyman. Usually the master owned his shop. In QuÄbec, this system of organization was closely linked to the family; the craftsman's shop was located close to home, and the apprentice craftsmen were very often members of his family.
Apprentices were young boys ranging in age from twelve to nineteen years, depending on the trade. In certain cases, they might be younger. The apprentice was placed with a master by his parents, following the signing of a contract before a notary. The master agreed to house, feed, and sometimes even clothe the apprentice and to show him all the secrets of his trade so that he could become a journeyman, and later a master craftsman, at the end of his three or four years of apprenticeship. In return, the apprentice agreed to obey his master, to work for him, and not to desert his house.
Between 1790 and 1815 in QuÄbec, the trade associations with the largest membership and the most developed apprenticeship system were the following: bakers, river pilots, shipwrights, shoemakers, tailors, joiners, and blacksmiths. The highest concentration of artisans was to be found in MontrÄal and QuÄbec City. Their production techniques were relatively simple. Each craftsman had his own tools, which were not standardized as would become the case during the industrial revolution. The major energy sources were human muscle power, water power, and animal power. It is, therefore, quite understandable that a strong bond developed between the artisan and his materials. Because he controlled each stage of production, he felt himself master of his work. This enabled him to identify with his work and find meaning in it. It is precisely the close relationships between craftsman and materials and between master and apprentice which were upset and destroyed with the coming of the industrial revolution which imposed a new kind of work organization--one governed by mechanization and mass production.
Artisanal production did not, however, completely disappear; in some trades which were not immediately affected by mechanization, it survived into the twentieth century, particularly in villages and rural areas. For example, there were still blacksmiths and farriers in some QuÄbec villages at the beginning of the 1950s. Elsewhere, even today, some occupations have kept many of the work characteristics of artisanal production. Such is the case in the construction trades, where the worker, in contrast to the factory employee, remains in control of his work.
The Manufactory
The transition from the craftsman's shop to the large industrial factory did not take place overnight. It was the result of a long process of change in the organization of work. Between the craftsman's shop and the mechanized factory, there was an intermediate step: the manufactory.
What was a manufactory? Historically, there was a sharp distinction between the manufactory, as described by Karl Marx, and the mechanized factory. Basically, the manufactory, as it existed in some countries between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, grouped together under one roof several artisans, who were previously employed in small shops, in order to increase production through the introduction of what is called the division of labour.
Let us take the example of the production of horse-drawn carriages. At the time of the small shops, it was the individual artisan who, with the help of one or two apprentices, made all the carriage parts. Then came the manufactory. It was a larger workplace than the shop; in it, several artisans worked together, dividing the different stages of work. One group of workers made only wheels, another only doors, another only metal parts, and so on. In this case, the manufactory grouped together artisans from different crafts, including blacksmiths, joiners, cabinet-makers, and upholsterers. In other cases, such as, for example, a pin manufactory, the craft itself was divided up according to its various operations. Thus, we can see the gradual emergence of those who in the twentieth century came to be known as specialized workers--that is, workers compelled to perform rapid, repetitive, and monotonous tasks under the supervision of authoritarian foremen.
However, the manufactory was not yet a factory. Tools used for production were very similar to the craftsman's traditional tools. There was no central source of power such as steam or electricity, and there were few, if any, machine tools. Machine tools are machines which act directly on a tool to make it work. For example, an electric drill has an electric motor which drives the bit. The electric drill is, therefore, a machine tool, in contrast to a brace and bit, which is a hand drill -- a simple tool operated by the craftsman's muscle power. In the manufactory, human muscle power remained a fundamental necessity. The changes that did take place involved work organization rather than technology. For manufactories to come into existence and develop, master craftsmen had to become retailer-manufacturers; thus, instead of producing merely to fill orders, they began to produce in quantity to accumulate stock, and to advertise in newspapers and elsewhere. Retailer-manufacturers, therefore, ceased to be craftsmen and became capitalists. They employed a number of artisans in the manufactory, thereby reducing production costs and increasing profits; on the other hand, the workers former master craftsmen, journeymen and apprentices, now joined by unskilled labourers became wage earners. Later, as technology advanced, retailer-manufacturers would introduce machine tools to speed up production and ruin competitors.
In QuÄbec, manufactories began to develop during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This type of work organization existed in the largest enterprises such as foundries, furniture factories, carriage works, shoe factories, nail factories, and hat factories. The shoe industry is a particularly interesting case. In this industry, the manufactory stage began to develop after 1825. Then, in 1849, two MontrÄal manufacturers originally from the United States, Champion Brown and William Childs, introduced the first machine tools sewing machines. Between 1849 and 1864, with the introduction of various machine tools and steam power, this industry was able to pass from the manufactory to the factory stage.
The Factory
Factory production marked a new stage of the industrial revolution which began around 1870-1880. This new stage resulted in increased mechanization, specifically through an acceleration of technological development and expansion of the means of production. Technological development can be explained by two factors: the widespread use of steam power as an energy source and the development of machine tools with increasingly fine tolerances. With these improved machine tools, it became possible to produce absolutely identical, and therefore interchangeable, parts. This is what made mass production possible.
In the manufactory, as we have pointed out, the sources of energy were not significantly different from those which existed in the craftsman's shop. The introduction of the steam engine in some industrial sectors, however, radically altered both the organization and the pace of work. Once the steam engine was brought in (or the steam turbine at the end of the nineteenth century), the various operations which workers performed ceased to be autonomous actions. Each worker worked on one machine tool, and all machine tools were joined by driving-belts to the central motor of the factory, the steam engine. Marx has best described the essence of mechanization as it existed in the middle of the nineteenth century:
... In manufacture and in handicrafts, the worker uses a tool; in the factory, he serves a machine. In the former case, the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from the worker; but in the latter, the movements of the worker are subordinate to those of the machine. In manufacture, the workers are part of a living mechanism. In the factory, there exists a lifeless mechanism independent of them.
Thus, the advent of the factory took from the worker his control over the work process. Subject to a continuous and predetermined manufacturing process, he lost the prestige of the autonomous traditional craftsman and became, instead, dependent on machines and large amounts of capital. Such a transformation did not, as we shall see, take place without major social and economic repercussions.
Not all trades were affected at the same time or at the same rate by mechanization. The cotton textile industry is the classic example of intensive mechanization. In QuÄbec, however, textile mills were established only after 1873, by which time the textile industry was already heavily mechanized in more industrialized countries. There was, therefore, no artisanal or manufactory phase in the cotton industry in Canada. However, other trades which were set up just before mechanization, such as cigar-making and shoemaking, underwent radical changes with the introduction of the steam engine and machine tools. The case of the shoemakers is typical in this respect. Appearing in 1888 before the Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour, a witness stated that there were very few shoemakers left who could actually make a pair of shoes:
... today, as a general rule, all the men working in factories,especially the large factories, are able to do only one kind of work, as to set a heel, or sew a sole, or set the uppers, because today perfected machinery has replaced hand work. (Report of the Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour in Canada, 1889. Evidence QuÄbec, Vol. 1, p.364)
The mechanization of production began in the last third of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century. The development of munitions factories during the First World War encouraged further advances in mechanization while, in the textile industry, mechanization proceeded to the point where some workers merely supervised machines.
All through the nineteenth century, however, the widespread use of steam energy posed cost problems for small companies. The use of steam required major investments, which small enterprises could rarely afford. As a general rule, such facilities were limited to large companies in urban areas.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the increasing use of the internal combustion engine and of electricity as alternative power sources made it possible to introduce mechanization into the smaller factories. With the development of the gas engine and the electric motor, the intermittent use of energy, impossible with the steam engine, became feasible. Thus, in the twentieth century, machine tools were gradually fitted with their own electric motor. This eliminated the need for the long driving belts used in the nineteenth century the cause of many industrial accidents; it was not unusual for workers to catch an arm or their hair (in the case of women workers) in these unprotected belts.
Mechanization did not proceed at the same rate in all industries. Some trades such as typesetting, tanning, and stone cutting continued using artisanal techniques for a much longer time.
Working Conditions
In light industry employing cheap labour, trades were devalued by mechanization, and former craftsmen were replaced by unskilled workers, often women and children. Child labour was not new at the end of the nineteenth century; it already existed, as we have seen above, in artisanal production. At that time, the apprentices worked long and difficult hours, and any attempt to run away was severely punished. The apprentice craftsman could, however, at least expect to learn a trade and earn a living afterward.
As industrial production increased, many changes took place; large amounts of capital were needed and an army of workers had to be recruited. The old shops and manufactories were not big enough to employ the new wage earners; therefore, large factories had to be built in the most developed industrial sectors. At the end of the nineteenth century in QuÄbec, these sectors were textiles, tobacco, and shoemaking, all of which employed cheap labour. Heavy industries such as the manufacture of railway rolling stock and steel-making required skilled workers.
The advent of the factories created a new demand for child labour, but this time there was no question of apprenticeship as in the past. Employing children, including some less than twelve years of age, was encouraged by factory owners, since children could replace men on certain machines and their pay was considerably lower than an adult's. For example, in a cigar factory in the 1880s, a man could earn seven dollars per week, whereas a child could earn between only one and three dollars per week. At a time when primary school was not compulsory and a working-class family needed the combined salaries of the father, mother, and children in order to survive, it is not surprising that child labour was a common practice in QuÄbec.
The Federal Census of 1891 reported that about 10,000 children under sixteen years of age were working in QuÄbec factories. There was an equivalent number in Ontario. In MontrÄal and QuÄbec City alone, some 3,000 children, who made up seven per cent of the total labour force, were employed in factories. It should also be noted that, at the same time, twenty-eight per cent of factory employees in these two cities were women. Until 1884, there was no law restricting the hiring of children in Canadian factories. That year, Ontario passed such a law, followed by QuÄbec in 1885; but the QuÄbec law, prohibiting the hiring of children under fourteen years of age, was rudimentary and was subsequently amended several times. The first inspectors to enforce the 1885 law were not appointed until 1888. For a long time afterwards, there were not enough inspectors to cope with the magnitude of the task.
Working conditions were difficult in large factories. In the late nineteenth century, both male and female workers were subject to arbitrary foremen and internal factory rules. Fines often or twenty-five cents were levied on workers for tardiness, for talking to a fellow-worker during work, or for scuffling (in the case of children). The Fortier cigar factory in MontrÄal was an extreme case: unruly children were locked up in "black holes" during the day and were then beaten or taken before the Recorder (municipal court judge) to be tried.
In the nineteenth century, there was no social security such as accident insurance, unemployment insurance, or a universal pension fund. A man who was sick or out of work was quickly reduced to poverty, he and his entire family. The death of the father was an economic tragedy for the rest of the family. Employers were not too concerned with providing safe and healthful working conditions; hence, workers suffered frequent accidents and illness. In short, conditions both inside and outside factories caused industrial disease to develop and spread.
During the hearings held in QuÄbec by the Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour in 1888, several witnesses spoke of the long working hours which were common in most factories. At a time when unionism was relatively weak, except in certain specialized trades, and when labour legislation was almost non-existent, factory owners alone determined the length of the work-day and the work-week. The pursuit of maximum profit and the presence of strong competition led factory owners to demand long working hours from their employees.
In the secondary sector, the work-day averaged ten hours for a weekly total of sixty hours. That meant that Saturday was a working day. It was not unusual for a work-week to total seventy- two hours for bakers and millers, for example, or in certain other trades when the workers were required to put in overtime. In the service sector, the work-week was even longer, at least seventy-two hours! Such was the case for store clerks, streetcar conductors, policemen, firemen, longshoremen at the port of MontrÄal, and others. In addition, workers did not have annual vacations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sunday was the only day off, although, in some cases, workers had to work on that day as well.
The nineteenth century was the golden age of economic liberalism and of unrestricted capitalism. Workers sold their labour to the employer, who bought it as cheaply as possible. In the absence of collective agreements, there were no established wage standards. Each worker represented a special case, and wages, particularly in the industrial sector, were determined by productivity and by the company's economic situation. In other words, wages varied appreciably according to the trade or the particular job within a given trade, and were directly related to the skills, age, and sex of the worker.
A worker was not always assured of earning a constant wage. Besides the wage cuts decreed by the company according to the economic situation and such cuts were frequent in the nineteenth century wages fluctuated according to the season and the method of payment. It was not unusual for a worker to be paid at one time by the piece and at another time by the hour, according to what was in the company's best interest. In QuÄbec, the lowest wages were paid in the shoemaking, textile (cotton), clothing, and cigar industries. In 1888, for example, assuming that nine dollars per week was the minimum wage necessary to guarantee a family a decent standard of living, most wages were below this level. As a result, the other members of the working class family had to work to supplement the father's inadequate income.
Living Conditions
One of the first results of industrialization was an increase in the rate of urbanization. Most new factories were built in existing towns and cities, attracting inhabitants of the rural districts of QuÄbec as well as foreign immigrants to make up the large pool of labour needed for industrialization. New workers settled haphazardly in centres such as MontrÄal and QuÄbec City. At that time, the federal, provincial, and municipal governments had no social or urban planning policies. Urban growth and the development of working-class districts were left in the hands of speculators and property owners, to whom such matters as the quality of the neighbourhood or health conditions in workers' dwellings were of little concern. MontrÄal workers settled around the Lachine Canal, in Griffintown (the Irish section), and in the eastern part of the city in surroundings that were both ugly and unhealthy. Remember that in the years 1880-1890, outside toilets and open sewers were still in existence in the working-class districts of MontrÄal. Working class neighbourhoods were just as bad in the Lower Town of QuÄbec City.
Similarly, the interior of workers' dwellings reflected the extent of working-class poverty, particularly in MontrÄal. Many tenements were poorly lit, badly ventilated, and overcrowded. Furniture was reduced to the bare minimum and sanitary conditions were deplorable. In addition, many families had their water cut off from time to time by the City of MontrÄal because they were unable to pay the water tax.
Daily life for the working class, especially in MontrÄal and QuÄbec City, was restricted to the factory and the home. There was no prospect of school if parents could not afford to do without the money their children earned at work. There was very little leisure time because of long working hours and the non existence of annual vacations. Some companies began to organize annual picnics for their employees, but this was not a widespread practice, and did nothing to relieve the grind of daily life during the rest of the year.
It is, therefore, quite understandable that alcoholism was a serious problem among members of the working class. There were more public houses in the working-class areas of MontrÄal than in any other part of the city. Temperance leagues initiated by philanthropists attempted to limit alcohol consumption, but often took a moralizing attitude to the problem. They tended to denounce alcoholic fathers, blaming them for the poverty of their families, rather than seeing that it was the poverty and exploitation of the workers which produced alcoholism. In 1888, for example, the Society for the Protection of Women and Children in MontrÄal boasted that in the space of six years, it had succeeded in having 438 fathers convicted of drunkenness and brutality!
Nevertheless, at a time when recreational activities were non-existent for the working class, and unionism was still in its infancy, certain inns, like Joe Beef's famous canteen, were important meeting places which fostered worker solidarity.
The Labour Movement
It took a long time before trade unionism was firmly established in QuÄbec. Throughout the nineteenth century, the labour movement was relatively weak; but this does not mean that there were no major strikes during the last century. A recent study revealed that there were more than between 1843 and 1900. Some strikes resulted from spontaneous protest, others from organized trade union action. There were many reasons for going on strike, including wage reductions, poor working conditions, and dismissals. Such strikes were defensive actions and had a high failure rate, especially since there was no arbitration legislation to settle labour disputes in the nineteenth century.
Many trades and occupations were affected by strikes. The most spectacular strikes were in the transportation sector, involving canal construction workers, railway workers, teamsters, and longshoremen. Printers and construction workers also went out on strike. The workers in the shoemaking, cigar, and textile industries rarely went on strike before the end of the nineteenth century, because the unskilled workers in these industries had little bargaining power and could easily be dismissed.
The trade union movement as we know it began to develop during the second third of the nineteenth century, particularly among printers, longshoremen, shipwrights, shoemakers, and joiners. These were isolated unions, basically concerned with defending their own trade interests. Labour unions were not yet grouped together within a central labour body.
The Association of the Knights of Labour began to organize in QuÄbec and other parts of Canada in 1881, and made major changes in union practices. American in origin, the Knights of Labour grew rapidly both in the United States and in Canada during the 1880s, and can be considered primarily responsible for the birth of a truly structured labour movement in QuÄbec. The Knights of Labour encouraged the development of a working-class consciousness, above and beyond the trade consciousness which had prevailed before.
Until that time, trade unions had limited their activities to defending the immediate interests of their members, not only against the employers, but also against an uncontrolled invasion of their trade by unskilled workers. Going beyond trade consciousness, the Knights of Labour worked to develop a broader class consciousness with the goal of uniting all workers, regardless of their trade or qualifications. To reach this objective, the Knights of Labour created local mixed assemblies of skilled and unskilled workers. In this respect, the movement was the forerunner of the industrial unions which developed in the United States and Canada after 1930, organizing workers by industry rather than by trade. The Knights of Labour also helped to found the MontrÄal Central Trades and Labour Council in 1886 and the QuÄbec City Council in 1890.
Despite organic ties with the American Knights of Labour, the QuÄbec Knights of Labour very early developed a sense of autonomy which enabled their organization to survive the movement's decline in the United States and in Ontario during the 1890s, a decline due to the offensive of a new labour movement: the American Federation of Labour (AFL). Founded in 1886 in the United States, the AFL, which advocated a return to a more conservative kind of trade unionism, replaced the Knights of Labour in English Canada; but in QuÄbec, the AFL took longer to organize workers, partly because of the language barrier and the hostility of the Catholic Church to "neutral" international unions. International unions affiliated with the AFL managed, however, to expel the Knights of Labour from the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada during its annual meeting in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario, in 1902. From that time on, the Knights of Labour ceased to be a force for unionization in QuÄbec. Nevertheless, a number of its members helped to found other national unions.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly after 1920, a dualism developed in QuÄbec unionism which characterized the subsequent evolution of the labour movement, composed, on the one hand, of the national and then the Catholic unions, and on the other hand, of the international unions. International trade unions played a dominant role, particularly in MontrÄal, but, until 1956, they had to co-exist with two other groups: the industrial unions (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the Catholic unions. That date marked the founding of the Canadian Labour Congress which grouped together the trade and industrial unions. Only the Canadian and Catholic Confederation of Labour (CCCL) would retain its autonomy.
The process of industrialization begun in Quebec in the last third of the nineteenth century has continued in stages right up to the present. But the period from approximately 1870 to 1914 was critical, because it marked the beginning of a long process of change in Quebec society. Changes took place in technology and work organization as industry gradually evolved from artisanal production through the manufactory stage to a factory economy. The transformation of production also had profound effects on working and living conditions. It is, therefore, not by chance that this period coincides with the emergence of a genuine labour movement; the workers felt the need to marshal their forces to confront the emerging capitalist industrial bourgeoisie.
