An enormous amount of traffic moved through Maritime ports, both before and after the coming of railroads. In smaller communities dock work tended to be casual, often undertaken by sailors, or fishermen working off indebtedness to local merchants. Halifax and Saint John dock yards, on the other hand, employed a core of skilled workers, supplemented at busy times by large gangs of casual labourers. Here barrels of dried cod are being loaded for the West Indies.
As in so many occupations, stevedoring was arranged by a complicated series of subcontracts, with gangs of workers operating under bosses responsible for loading, off-loading or ware-housing cargoes, usually within a specified time period. The contractor's interest was to complete the work as quickly and cheaply as possible, employing the smallest number of men. With each merchant controlling his own dock and crews competing for the available work, efforts at organization were sporadic and relegated to peak seasons. By the latter third of the century though, stevedores were successfully negotiating the terms of work on the waterfront in Halifax and Saint John. Their unions arranged common hiring halls as a means of equalizing employment opportunities and setting universal rates across the entire waterfront.
Courtesy: Maritime Museum of the Atlantic (N-9121)
