The members of the prairie commercial elite were especially aware that transportation was the key to the development of their respective communities and, before the First World War, this meant railways. If a town was connected to several branch lines or if it could boast certain railway facilities it meant that other businesses could be attracted.
The railway companies sometimes went to great lengths to make everyone aware of their considerable importance. This drawing appeared in a 1909 public relations pamphlet entitled Welfare Work: Canadian Pacific Railway which tried to show the benefits of the company to Canadian society. In the foreground to the right are the conductors dressed in neat uniforms and behind them farther right are the engineers and firemen. On the left are the workmen, the repair crews, maintenance-of-way employees, express employees, etc., dressed in coveralls and carrying lunch pails, and behind them are the brakemen. All seventy-thousand of the CPR's employees appear to march in step here, the way the company wished its employees to behave.
What the drawing fails to show is that almost the entire railway work force was organized into a variety of unions and that this had an impact on communities that the commercial elite did not relish. As railway workers were among the first to be unionized in prairie towns or cities, they often provided a basis for subsequent union organization and an institutional base for the local working class. Being so organized, railway employees were often better paid than others in similar lines of work with the result that their pay scales set standards that employers often argued were too high. Moreover, when one or more of the railway unions struck, the effect on the community in the form of diminished economic activity was felt by almost every citizen.
