The Blanketstiffs: Itinerant Railway Construction Workers, 1896-1914.
A. Ross McCormack
Traditionally studies of Canadian railway history have focused on the great men whose imagination and financial wizardry accomplished the impossible. Men such as Samuel Zimmerman, the entrepreneur of the 1850's; Cornelius Van Horne, the indomitable CPR construction engineer of the 1880's; or in later years, Charles Hays; William Mackenzie and Donald Mann. These men, some of them almost larger than life, have overshadowed the thousands of workers who built up the grade and laid the track and who called themselves blanketstiffs. In the peak years of later construction from 1911 to 1913 when Canada was engaged in building two transcontinentals, the blanketstiffs numbered 50,000, a significant component of Canada's labour force. The story of these men is closely linked to Canada's social and economic history. It reveals something of the relationship between cultural patterns and responses to job situation; how low-status workers were regarded in a rapidly expanding economy; and simply how ordinary people lived.
The Men
During the nineteenth century Canadian railways had been built first by Irish navvies and then by Chinese coolies, and an immigration policy had been designed to ensure a constant flow of this cheap labour. But the cessation of Irish migration and a political climate which precluded the importation of large numbers of Chinese interrupted these sources of supply during the third period of construction. Canadian and British workers were employed on the CPR's Crow's Nest Pass line when construction began in 1897, but their vociferous and violent reaction to conditions alarmed railway executives and contractors. Consequently, company officials became sceptical about the suitability of such workers for the rougher jobs on the grade. Because the Laurier government, like the rest of Canadian society, was committed to the rapid expansion of the economy, it developed a new immigration policy to supply the railways with unskilled, inexpensive, and potentially exploitable labour. Central Europe became the one most important source of construction hands. Peasants from the provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were attractive to the companies because experience with these workers since the turn of the century, had convinced railway executives and contractors that the Slavs were "obedient and industrious" and therefore excellent for the difficult work on the grade. After 1905, as construction began on the National Transcontinental (NTC) in northern Ontario and Quebec and on the Canadian Northern (CN) and the Grand Trunk Pacific (GTP) in the West, thousands of unskilled central and southern Europeans entered the country. The work on these national projects was to be done mainly by unassimilated immigrants.
In addition to being "foreign", the other important characteristic of the railway construction labour force was its mobility. Indeed, the term "blanketstiff" was derived from their mobility; itinerant workers "jumped" from job to job packing their blanket-beds. To maintain a work force of 2,800 on a section of the NTC, the company had to engage as many as 5,100 men in the period of one month. In part, this mobility was a function of the fact that many jobs were available in the unskilled labour market. ltinerants also sawed trees in British Columbia and harvested wheat in the prairies. Farmers, anxious to harvest their crops in early autumn, bid up the price of unskilled labour, and many stiffs left the grade to secure higher wages in the fields. At the end of the harvest season the itinerants could work in the woods for the winter and return to the construction camps when operations resumed in the spring. Cultural and economic factors also contributed to this mobility. Slavic workers would leave jobs to rest among their families and countrymen in immigrant quarters like Winnipeg's north end thereby retaining something of the seasonality of an agricultural economy. Italians who were often supporting families in their homeland periodically returned to their villages, some making the Atlantic crossing a number of times. English-speaking hoboes, after having made a stake, drifted south to find winter work in California or Louisiana. In their travels from job to job, itinerants tramped along the tracks they had laid or rode in "side-door Pullmans". A store-keeper living on the CPR line in British Columbia complained, "each summer I am pestered by tramps or hobos who walk along the railway track, coming to my house begging for meals." Clearly a distinct rhythm developed in the life of the blanketstiffs; a job, a spree, another job, another spree.
The Jobs.
After the spree the trip back to the grade began when itinerants hooked-up for work at employment agencies which were ubiquitous in the tar-paper towns near the end of steel or on the urban skid rows to which the workers regularly returned. Often located in flophouses or cheap bars, these agencies charged a commission, usually one dollar, for placing stiffs in jobs. When Iabour contractors had assembled a gang of men they were conducted to the job by a scout or man-catcher whose responsibility it was to prevent jumping; sometimes the men were doped with liquor or manacled or kept under armed guards. The process of buying jobs from employment sharks was a source of bitter and persistent complaint from workers who claimed they were always swindled by the misrepresentation and fraudulent practices of agencies. A common charge was that there was collusion between sharks and foremen who quickly fired members of their gangs and replaced them with other men who had bought the same jobs. Government officials, police officers, churchmen and journalists agreed that employment agencies did, in fact, regularly defraud itinerant workers. Yet it was not until 1913, the very end of the period of railway construction, that the federal government took steps to end this abuse.
Probably the most marked social characteristic of railway grades was ethnic diversity. A student minister working in the GTP camps of British Columbia discovered that 80% of his congregation were "foreigners": Russians, Swedes, Ukranians, Bohemians, Poles, Finns, Norwegians, Italians and a few Turks. The only systematic estimates of the ethnic composition of this labour force are those made by Edmund Bradwin, a sociologist who worked on the NTC. His data indicated that 32% of the stiffs were Slavic; 25% Scandinavian; 20% British, American or English Canadian; 11 % French Canadian; 7% Italian, and a sprinkling were other nationalities. The diversity produced two general ethnic categories in the camps: "White-men", composed of Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and French Canadians and "Foreigners" or "Bohunks" composed of central and southern Europeans. There was a clear correlation between ethnicity and occupations; "foreigners" invariably filled low-status jobs.
The work was gruelling, distasteful and often dangerous. Stiffs laboured ten, often twelve, hours per day for six, often seven, days per week at back-breaking, tedious jobs mucking clay, drilling rock, spiking ties. All along the line they were ravaged by mosquitoes and black flies. They were frequently rained out in the coast range, baked by the prairie sun and chilled by temperatures of -35 C. on the Hudson's Bay Railway in 1911. They also faced real physical dangers. Any heavy construction project will produce accidents, but rock work on the railways in British Columbia and Ontario caused remarkable carnage. In one seven-month period forty men were killed and ten injured in accidents associated with blasting on the NTC. Not surprisingly, such hazardous conditions drove men off the jobs; a stiff who had worked a number of years on the NTC wrote, "I have lately seen so many blown to pieces that I got afraid and quit railroad work for good."
If the terrain through which the railways were being built meant that the stiffs toiled under arduous and dangerous conditions, the means whereby construction tenders were let promoted the development of an authoritarian and exploitative work environment. The many-tiered system in which both contractors and sub-contractors were determined to make large profits dictated a rigid schedule which drove men hard. There was cultural clash between the itinerant stiffs and their bosses. It was a basic paradox of Canadian immigration policy that it did not provide the best type of labourer for railway construction. Central and southern European immigrants had lived in a peasant economy and were accustomed to a different job discipline. Because they were isolated on frontier projects, the process of acculturation to Northern American values which could have imparted steady work habits was retarded. Constant job jumping disrupted construction operations. The companies offered various bonuses to encourage men to engage for a full season, but the stiffs seldom collected these. When suasion failed, contractors were quite prepared to use other means to discipline their workers. The foreman known as a driver was not uncommon; one boasted; "I kept them in their place with my bare fists and not a man among them ever raised a shovel agin me." From time to time frontier newspapers carried accounts of incidents in which formen had seriously injured, or even killed, workers. The virtually exclusive power of contractors on the grade, except in Alberta and Saskatchewan where the Royal North West Mounted Police had jurisdiction, permitted such practises to develop and persist. A contemporary journalist observed that the Grand Trunk Pacific was being built under "a system that is close to peonage".
With the beginning of large-scale railway construction after 1905, wages for unskilled day-labourers increased by approximately 60% and in the years before 1914 ranged between $2.50 and $3.00. But this trend does not appear to have resulted in an increase in real wages for the stiffs. Their financial exploitation was aggravated by the system whereby itinerants started a job indebted to the company for the costs of transportation to the site. This indebtedness increased as a result of charges for board, various fees, and the extortionate price of goods in "pluck-me" company stores. It was only after some weeks that a stiff actually began to earn money. Bradwin cites the extreme case of a man returning to Cochrane, Ontario after working six weeks on the NTC with earnings of only 65ó. It seems clear that few itinerants ever made a large stake, and so they regularly complained that they were working for only "grub and tobacco". Even the method of payment was, at best, callous. When they quit, men were given time checks redeemable at company offices at the end of steel or sometimes in larger centres. But frequently stiffs were penniless when they left a job, and were forced to cash the checks at substantial discounts in roadhouses or starve until they could reach the company office.
Day-labourers were not the only stiffs exploited on the grade; station-men, the final link in the chain of letting contracts, also frequently had little to show for long periods of back-breaking work. Stations were one hundred-foot sections of right-of-way. Groups of itinerants, working as partnerships of petty entrepreneurs, contracted to grade several stations and prepare them for steel. The work taken by station-men usually required no heavy equipment. Grading through muskeg in Ontario. for example, required only a strong back and simple tools such as shovels, grub-hooks, and wheel-barrows. Like other low-status jobs on railway construction, station-work was largely filled by "foreigners"; Slavs on the NTC and Italians on the CN and GTP. Under favourable conditions it was sometimes possible to make good returns at this type of work, and as a result many stiffs were encouraged to work long and hard at their own little projects. The advantages of this perceived incentive were not lost on contractors; one observed, "now I can hire men to work for me. But can I make them work? Yes, I can. But can I kill them? I cannot. I can try, but they won't let me. The only man a man will let kill him is himself;...ten station men will take out more rock in a month than twenty men, yes, sometimes more than thirty men, working for wages." But most of the charges and fees that plagued day-labourers also applied to stationmen and prevented them from earning good wages. One stiff complained that the chances of becoming rich on station-work "are just as good as prospecting for gold in a pile of sawdust."
The Camps.
The camps in which stiffs were housed represented another dimension of their exploitation. Camps were impermanent places built only to meet limited needs during the short life of the contract; consequently companies gave little attention to building and maintenance. Housing from 50 to 200 men, the camps might be composed of large tents or bunk-cars, old freight cars crudely converted, or the classic camp building, the bunkhouse. Traditionally bunkhouses were all alike and built to accommodate 50 or 60 men. Logs chinked with moss and clay formed the walls of the structure which measured approximately 30 feet by 60 feet. The roof was of poles covered with tarpaper or tarpaulins, which offered little protection against rain and snow when they tore. The floors were rough-sawn planks or poles upon which dirt quickly collected. Double bunks lined the sides and end of the building and sometimes the stiffs were forced to pay for the hay which served as a mattress. The dark, dungeon-like bunkhouses had only two small windows in the gables and so there was always a brisk trade in candles at the company store. The poor ventilation became evident in the evenings when the stiffs hung out overalls and underwear to dry. One veteran of the grade observed, "I can assure you that the stench that protrudes from those places between 11 o'clock at night and 4 am. is enough to knock a man down." After extended use bunk-houses invariably became infested with vermin, called the "B.C. grayback" in the camps of Yellowhead Pass. Because two men slept together in each bunk, lice were easily transmitted, and it was virtually impossible to guard against becoming lousy. Frequently sanitation was primitive and unsafe. About a camp on the CN line, a BC health inspector reported, "the sanitary arrangements are nil. Previous to my visit the Iatrine was closed because of its wrong location and want of proper construction. As a result the ground was filthy." Under such conditions water supplies became contaminated, and consequently typhoid fever was epidemic in the camps.
As in other aspects of railway construction, there was a correlation between ethnicity and the standard of treatment. Government inspectors in British Columbia discovered that "foreigners" were regularly housed in the most crowded and unsanitary accommodations. Regulations were enacted to establish minimum standards in camps, but like other labour legislation these were seldom adequately enforced. Government intervention did little to improve the itinerants' living conditions.
The Spree
Unpleasant conditions were another reason that stiffs would flee their jobs and have a spree. For their a spree they escaped to skid-rows, like Vancouver's water front, or they stopped in tar-paper towns. Throughout the year, but especially in the autumn when railway construction began to wind down, workers crowded into these centres; on one November day in 1911, six hundred itinerants arrived in Edmonton from the camps. Laundries, steambaths, restaurants, pool-rooms, cheap clothing stores and flophouses did a brisk and profitable trade. But two commodities were in greatest demand, liquor and sex.
The sale of liquor was prohibited on the grade, and although it was available in "blind pigs," the pursuit of the bootleggers by various police forces made "booze" almost prohibitively expensive. Consequently when stiffs returned to civilization they spent a good deal of their time and money in bars where they doped themselves to forget the brutality of their lives. Excessive drinking often caused disorderly and violent conduct and frightened and offended the "respectable" citizens of the towns frequented by these rough men. A local newspaper in Ashcroft, British Columbia reported such an incident: "one husky fellow used strong language and upon being told to make himself scarce, picked up a cuspidor and whirled it at the boys behind the counter...it was then up to the hotel boys to turn the fellow and his friends out which they proceeded to do, and a rough-house began...".
As much as bars, brothels were a part of the spree, and these were found on all skid-rows and in all tar-paper towns. The stiffs, isolated from families on frontier works for extended periods, clearly constituted an important segment of the brothel clientele. Indeed, some prostitutes appear to have migrated to areas where itinerant workers were concentrated. Because the trade in sex was profitable, some madams became rich and powerful in tar-paper towns. A Black woman ran Tete Jaune Cache, "and she possessed all the qualities of a publicity commissioner; one of her week-end dances was warranted to drive ennui from the bohunk for a week", reported one observer. When the stake ran out, the spree ended, and the stiffs returned to the employment agencies to renew the cycle.
The Missionaries.
Not only contractors, barmen and prostitutes had an interest in the railway construction workers; several religious and philanthropic organizations showed an active concern for their welfare. On skid-row the Salvation Army ministered to the needs of itinerants, especially when they were "busted" and had to sleep off a spree. On the grade in Ontario and Quebec the Roman Catholic Church went among its French and Italian sons; the Church Camp Mission, an Anglican organization which had considerable experience with navvies in the United Kingdom, established reading rooms; and the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches sent missionaries into the camps. But the Reading Camp Association, later known as Frontier College, was the uniquely Canadian organization which did the most extensive and important work among itinerants. Although it was not a specifically religious organization, the Association was inspired by the same Christian idealism that caused young men and women to help the immigrant poor in urban ghettos during these years. Reading Camp Association volunteers were university undergraduates who held full-time jobs on frontier works during the day and taught the men at night. The "reading tent" where workers could browse through newspapers and magazines or listen to music did much to relieve the tedium of camp life. But the education of the stiffs was the primary concern of the Association, and volunteerers conducted classes that ranged from elementary English to physiology. Alfred Fitzpatrick, the founder of the organization, aimed to Canadianize the ."foreigners" through education. When the central and southern European immigrants were Canadianized, when they accepted "our standards", they would become better workman, Fitzpatrick claimed. Railway companies and contractors demonstrated their agreement with this principle by supporting the Association's work generously.
Other missionaries, Marxist rather than Christian, also went to the grade to help the stiffs. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the notorious Wobblies, organized and agitated among the itinerants from the time construction began, especially in British Columbia and Alberta. On street corners and in camps, Wobbly soap-boxers preached a vague syndicalism based on the proposition that capitalism could be destroyed through the organization of the wretched of the world into great industrial unions. But in addition to a future revolution the lWW promised immediate improvements which the itinerants could easily appreciate. The Wobbly newspaper The Industrial Worker promised, "The lWW will take the blankets off your back, Mr. Blanketstiff. It will make the boss furnish the blankets. And further, not only the blankets but springs and mattresses; yes and as we grow stronger sheets and pillows. Just imagine yourself snoozing away, tucked up between nice clean sheets, with your head resting on a pillow and a good mattress and springs under you." Wobbly halls provided real services; stiffs could get a flop or a bowl of "mulligan" or job information and, in Vancouver, even medical attention. Because it was one of the few sources of hope for the stiffs', the lWW gained real strength in the BC camps. Even the "docile foreigners" flocked to the WobbIies' red banner. This perception of central and southern Europeans, based on Anglo-Saxon xenophobia, was quite unfounded: indeed, they demonstrated a marked capacity for spontaneous rebellion. Some of those who came from societies which had traditions of peasant violence were especially attracted to the lWW because it advocated direct action and cultivated an heroic image. The contractors and railroad companies ruthlessly and successfully opposed the Wobblies, beating and kidnapping organizers and planting spies in the union. Unfortunately for the stiff, the history of the only union that tried to improve their lot was one of heroic failures.
Conclusion.
The exploitation of the blanketstiffs during Canada's third period of railway construction is plain. They were poorly paid and mercilessly driven by contractors; virtually ignored by the governments that encouraged many of them to emigrate; preyed upon by the lower orders of society and despised and feared by "respectable citizens." The stiffs place - or lack of it - in Canadian society was demonstrated dramatically when railway construction began to reach its completion in 1913. When jobs were gone, they were simply cut adrift. Some lived at soup-kitchens and hostels until the war-time economy began to pick up in 1915. Some fled to the United States. Some were jailed as vagrants. Some joined the army to avoid starvation. And some were interned as enemy aliens because they had emigrated from Austro-Hungary which was at war with the British Empire. Not even the railways that the stiffs built remained as a monument to them. The National Transcontinental, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern were colossal failures which had to be nationalized, and some of the track the Blanketstiffs laid was torn up within a few years.
