The group pictured here laid track for Nova Scotia's South Shore railroad just before the turn of the century. Though one of the last major lines to be built in the region, it still relied on the labour of men and horses for construction. Each of the several thousand kilometres of track laid between 1855 and 1900 took hundreds of hours of manual labour, mostly by casually employed day labourers. The work was often undertaken by newly arrived immigrants, local farmers and their grown sons. In many communities sections of the line were contracted out to politically connected local merchants.
Railroad construction conditioned new workers to the basic inequalities of capitalism, for it was difficult, dangerous and low paid. Accidents were commonplace as track preparation often meant dynamiting rock or working in some of the worst swamp or wastelands in the region. While spontaneous and sometimes violent outbursts by workers against poor living conditions or some failure to meet the terms of employment contracts erupted from time to time, no permanent organizations emerged among the navvies, whose only real protest was to tramp on to another site farther up the line.
Courtesy: Public Archives of Nova Scotia (1981-453-N987)
