Two very different groups of unskilled labour are pictured here. On top are labourers employed by the City of Toronto to work on the Bathurst Street streetcar line. These men were usually hired on a short term basis and often as a result of patronage. Brewery labourers from Eugene O'Keefe's Victoria Street brewery are posed in the lower photograph. Brewery labourers were less plagued by seasonality than their day labourer brothers, although some of them would have been laid off in the winter when beer production declined. Neither of these groups of workers were unionized in this period.
Courtesy: City of Toronto Archives, Metropolitan Toronto Central Library
