If businessmen like Adam Beck acted out of mixed motives in advocating reform measures—“philanthropy plus five per cent,” as Herbert Ames, a Montreal businessman-reformer candidly called it—there were others in the amorphous reform movement whose motivation was no less complicated. These were men and women, lay and clerical, whose reformist rhetoric was founded upon the conviction that society should be judged by the standards of Christian morality. Since the late nineteenth century, church leaders in Canada had been troubled by two particular developments. On the one hand, changes in scientific, philosophical, and historical attitudes—especially Darwinism and historical criticism of the Bible—had placed the churches on the defensive. At the same time, the social injustices accompanying industrialization seemed to demand that the church preach a more relevant social message if it wanted to retain its congregation, especially its working-class following. Faced with these challenges, many church leaders, especially Protestants, began to refashion Christian teaching into a “social gospel” which, in its most radical form, reduced Christianity to a formula designed to build the Kingdom of God on earth. In its more moderate versions it emphasized the primary need to regenerate society through social reforms. From these general concerns arose demands for industrial-safety and public-health legislation, prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, suppression of child labour and prostitution, “Canadianization” of immigrants, votes for women, and a myriad of other reform measures. Henry Harvey Stuart in New Brunswick, James Simpson in Toronto, the members of the Manitoba Political Equality League, and reformers in virtually every part of Protestant Canada were inspired by the ideals of social Christianity. Women like the suffragist Nellie McClung contended that once women could vote a whole new battalion would he enlisted in the army of righteousness. “The church has been dominated by men and religion has been given a masculine interpretation,” McClung wrote, “and I believe the Protestant religion lost much when it lost the idea of the motherhood of God.”
The spirit of Christian reformism sparked the women’s movement from its beginnings in such late-nineteenth-century organizations as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Young Women’s Christian Association, and the National Council of Women of Canada. Women like Dr. Emily Stowe, who had to study in the United States in order to become Canada’s first woman doctor, and her daughter. Dr. Augusta Stowe-Gullen, had begun demanding votes for women and equal educational opportunities before the turn of the century. Flora MacDonald Denison, Toronto journalist and militant feminist; Cora Hind, western Canada’s leading agricultural reporter; Lillian B. Thomas and her sister Francis Beynon, both Manitoba journalists; and the Alberta writer Emily Murphy, who in 1916 became the first woman police magistrate in the British Empire—all these believed that women had a special contribution to make towards uplifting Canadian society. While their reform program was capacious, the first goal was equal suffrage. That was achieved during the Great War, not least of all due to the number of women who entered the labour force to aid the war effort. Manitoba was the first province to grant women the vote, in 1916, and all the others, except Quebec, followed suit. Some women were enfranchised for the federal election of 1917, and that was broadened to include all women in the new electoral law of 1918.
The women’s movement in French Canada was also inspired by Christianity, in this case social Catholicism, but the path it followed was somewhat different. Since the leadership of the Catholic church was stubbornly opposed to the suffragist movement (and French-Canadian nationalists condemned the movement as “Anglo-Saxon”), women like Marie Lacoste Gerin-Lajoie concentrated on improving the legal status and broadening the educational chances of women. In Quebec, where the church offered alternatives to women who preferred careers to marriage, nuns often worked in co-operation with their secular sisters in efforts to improve the condition of women’s lives. It was not until the 1930s that French-Canadian women, under the leadership of Therese Casgrain, began a concentrated effort to gain the vote at the provincial level—a goal that was achieved in 1940—though they had been able to vote federally since 1917.
The Roman Catholic social conscience was aroused by many issues in addition to The problems faced by women. Since the 1890s the church had been struggling to develop a doctrine suitable to the needs of the emerging industrial order. In Quebec, and also among English-speaking Catholics after the turn of the century, the proclamations of Leo XIII, the “workers’ Pope,” had a growing impact. The ideals of Henri Bourassa’s nationalist movement were rooted in those teachings, as were the efforts of parish priests in various industrial towns to encourage the formation of Catholic trade unions and credit unions. Christian reformism, the social gospel, and social Catholicism combined a genuine sympathy for the downtrodden with a concern to protect established institutions and beliefs. In the long run, business leaders were more successful than church leaders. But in the short run, the underprivileged benefited more from reforms advocated by Christian-inspired reformers than from those advanced by the economic Hite.
Working-class Canadians were not willing to leave their fate solely in the hands of others. The principal means of self-protection was the trade union. While unions
Three early leaders of the women’s movement. Far left, Marie Gerin-Lajoie—co-founder and president of the Federation nationale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which brought together women from different milieux—led French-Canadian women in their demand for more higher education, a fairer legal status, and laws to protect women and children. Middle; Nellie McClung lived in Manitoba, and later on the west coast, but made extensive speaking tours, using her sharp wit, strong will, and prolific pen to advance women’s rights. Prohibition, and urban reform. Right: Toronto businesswoman Flora MacDonald Denison—journalist, spiritualist, and devoted follower of American poet Walt Whitman—was among the most outspoken and flamboyant advocates of women’s rights before the First World War.
Had existed in Canada since the early nineteenth century, it was not until the arrival of the Knights of Labour, in the 1880s and the American Federation of Labor unions in the 1890s that the movement began to develop on a national scale. By the turn of the century some 20,000 workers belonged to unions, more than 60 per cent with afl affiliations. By 1902, when the afl affiliates took over control of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, independent Canadian unions and the nascent Catholic unions in Quebec controlled only a small minority of workers. The dominance of afl unions was the result of several factors: the return to Canada of men who had belonged to unions in the United States, the influx of U. S. capital and businesses into Canada, and the desire of Canadian workers to achieve conditions of equality with their counterparts south of the border. But the struggle to unionize Canadian workers— even skilled workers—was long and arduous, with the majority remaining non-unionized. Nevertheless, strikes were numerous and often bitter, touching nearly every industry: cotton workers in Valleyfield, Quebec, coal miners on Cape Breton and Vancouver islands, railway men on the Grand Trunk, and switchboard operators at Bell Telephone. Excuses were often found to use the militia to force workers back to work, and strike-breakers were common.
Government response was slow. In 1900 a Department of Labour was established, chiefly to collect information. The major piece of legislation came in 1907, after a strike in the Alberta coal fields had resulted in a serious fuel shortage the previous winter. The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, devised by William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Deputy Minister of Labour, provided for a cooling-off period and conciliation proceedings as the best methods of encouraging industrial peace. Given the weakness of the union movement, the legislation probably helped some unions to win recognition. At the same time, however, by limiting the use of the strike, it may have hindered workers in their quest for wage increases and improved working conditions. The Combines Investigation Act of 1910 was designed to prevent the growing merger movement in business, but proved ineffective. The Laurier government only haltingly recognized the need for government to play an increased role in directing the social and economic transformation that was under way.
Thus, while the labour force grew rapidly during the first decade of the century, the unionized segment remained relatively small. Most working people lived on wages determined by employers alone and in conditions over which they had little control. Given the seasonal nature of many jobs and the lack of any safety net of unemployment insurance or Medicare, life was often lived on the margin. In 1913, a Reasonably careful calculation was made of the budget required for a family of five. It totalled slightly more than $1,200 per year, a figure considerably higher than that earned by a year-round unskilled worker. That explains the large number of women and children who found it necessary to take up employment, working for wages even lower than those paid to men. Yet the availability of this “cheap” labour helped to keep men’s wages down. It also meant that children left school early in order to supplement family income. That lack of education would condemn them to a lifetime of low-paying jobs.
Despite, or perhaps because of, these harsh conditions, working people were rarely susceptible to radical proposals for social change. Various forms of socialism, from revolutionary Marxist to gradualist Christian, found adherents in most Canadian cities. But these were small, sectarian groups often fighting as bitterly with one another as with the capitalist enemy. So, too, the more radical union groups— the Industrial Workers of the World and Western Federation of Miners, for example—made some impact on workers in the harshest circumstances, such as British Columbia miners. But, for the most part, working people improvised and endured. The Trades and Labor Congress frequently debated political questions but stopped short of direct political action. Instead, it took an annual list of demands to the federal government, was listened to politely, and retired to await another meeting. Dominated as it was by the representatives of the better-paid skilled trades, the TLC grew increasingly out of touch with the less-favoured majority of workers. But it was not until the end of the Great War that the slowly building frustrations of working people burst forth in radical action. And it was not until the 1930s that organization of the unskilled began seriously.
World History
