Winnipeg General Strike, 1919
At the turn of the 20th century, Canadian capitalʼs progressive attack on the sovereignty of the individual crossed boundaries of age, gender, ethnicity and occupation. Lacking the means to combat a covert propaganda war or the munitions to resist federal police, working-class opposition was generally ineffectual. Nonetheless, ideologues championed attempts to alleviate the suffering of poor and the oppression of wage workers. Battles were fought – often in vain – in attempts to secure a living wage, unemployment support and access to employment opportunities, but well-meaning social critics often unintentionally served the interests of capital. Traditional forms of racism, classism and chauvinism began to be scrutinized, but persistent infighting among working-class organizations weakened their impact and mitigated their ability to mount sufficient opposition to the ruling socio-economic paradigm. Lacking a cohesive voice, the cacophony of working-class grievances typically failed to seriously threaten capitalist dogma. Divisions in character and agenda polarized civic groups and unions, which further limited their ability to compel recognition in the public sphere. Squabbling among themselves, political progressives were unable to comprehend the scale of the oppression they faced. Like slaves bound in Platoʼs cave, hopeful reformers were unable to overcome myopias, and capitalists would prove efficient in exploiting these weaknesses to their benefit.
Canadaʼs second industrial period began in the 1880s, and ushered in the rise of monopoly capitalism.1 Consolidation of wealth would characterize a ʻGilded Ageʼ of ʻRobber Baronsʼ for the whole of North America. Deflation and ruthless pursuit of profits coincided with rampant wage reductions2 and the introduction of ʻscientific managementʼ methods.3 In response, working-class participation in the ʻmovement cultureʼ via oppositional labour organizations further expanded, and was exemplified with the regionalized popularity of the Knights of Labour and the Salvation Army.4
Utilizing religious rhetoric, the K of L and Salvation Army attempted to transcend traditional segregations based on race, gender and class by framing their social critiques with Christian metaphor and allying themselves with ʻrespectableʼ society, which they hoped would give greater weight to their ideas.5 Many ʻfreethinkersʼ had come to see the Christian church as tacitly endorsing capitalist interests, having been corrupted by its dependence on donations.6 Whereas the church might suggest workers concede authority to management, the K of L saw it as sinful to not support labour, and the Army saw it as amoral to ignore the poor.7 Both groups had their greatest successes in industrial centers, but were also among the first to make inroads in smaller Canadian towns.8 Operational and organizational methods were divergent, but both groups were hierarchical9 and egalitarian.10 The K of L hoped to organize men, women, skilled and unskilled labourers into an umbrella union capable of bridging differences and demanding attention.11 The Armyʼs ʻsoldiersʼ consisted of men, women, blacks, immigrants, skilled, unskilled and the unemployed.12 Women were welcome in both groups, but were routinely given roles of authority within the Salvation Army, while contemporary Victorian chauvinisms were more pronounced in the K of L.13 Through education14 and the application of producerist ideology, Knights hoped to stabilize wages15 and preserve the Sabbath.16 At social gatherings and strikes K of L intellectuals made appeals to rationalism,17 but the Salvation Army relied upon emotionalist revivalism and drew heavily from working-class popular culture to win ʻspiritualʼ converts.18 In pursuit of social salvation, the K of L successfully organized municipal and provincial political candidates, but was less effective in federal elections, where it was repeatedly defeated.19 The Army, content with personal salvation, never became political.20 Both groups mobilized significant class forces larger than themselves, but by the 1890s persistent economic difficulties, concerted capitalist aggression and paradoxical divisions in composition, agenda, and expression devastated both groups, leaving them pale shadows of their former selves.21
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) attempted to organize those who had previously been unorganized.22 With successive economic depressions, immigration and the completion of rail projects, unemployment was especially high23; but in 1905 the One Big Union arrived and membership was open to all, regardless of race, class, gender or profession. What further set the IWW apart from other radical labour organizations was its strong multiculturalism, militant insistence on a new social paradigm and acceptance of industrial terrorism.24 In Edmonton and Calgary during the depression years between 1913-1915, the IWW recruited unemployed, unskilled, unorganized, migrant and immigrant workers.25 These labourers were traditionally marginalized from Canadian society, lacked citizenship and were too transitory to engage the parliamentary process.26 Immigrants were habitually denied access to state-run support centers, and the unemployed were left to the churchʼs forced labour/indoctrination camps.27 The IWW organized these ʻmiscreantsʼ and provided life-sustaining social services in the hope that the organized threat of disorder could force concessions and relieve destitution.28 Similar to the K of L, Salvation Army and Charles McKiernan, the IWW strove to preserve the integrity of the individual with work and dignity instead of dependency and handouts.29 The IWW appealed to Christian morality, but was decidedly more secular than the Salvation Army and K of L.30 In IWW ideology, the capitalist drive for profits created unemployment and necessitated aggressive, class-conscious opposition.31 Strikes,32 marches33 and novel forms of protest34 were led by the IWW in attempts to draw sympathetic public support, but few were successful in providing long-term relief. A collaboration with the Socialist Party was attempted, but a lack of official recognition or progress probably contributed to fatal internal bickering.35 The IWW was occasionally efficient in mobilizing and transporting non-local protesters to regional conflicts, but local municipalities ignored the ʻinterlopersʼ and police might arrest IWW-mobilized protesters upon arrival.36 In response to the organization of the unemployed, capitalists enacted demeaning policies which created perpetual economic dependence. Capital-friendly authorities legislated retroactive deductions from the wages of homeless labourers housed in IWW shelters.37 A sister organization, the Unemployed League, was legislated into having to ask permission before holding meetings in public parks.38 Directly attacking the premise of the IWW, municipalities refused to recognize the unemployed as a group and would only address them individually.39 Neutered by constant defeats, confronting poor agricultural harvests40 and the politicization of World War I, the IWW and other humanitarian agencies were blocked from obtaining meaningful concessions and were reduced to begging for scraps.
North America experienced a massive immigration boom in the years between 1840-1920, and uneven distribution of immigrant workers contributed to regional economic turmoil.41 For many Canadians with entrenched racial prejudices, immigrants – who tended to segregate in ethno-centric communities – were second- class citizens.42 Complex psychological and economic factors contributed to the institutionalization of racist social policies.43 Gripped in a global financial crisis, Canadians hoped to secure jobs for citizens before immigrants by using nationalistic rhetoric to push for discriminatory employment practices.44 European immigrants were more easily incorporated into the Euro-centric Canadian milieu than Asians, who were permanently marginalized as foreigners and denied political rights.45 Immigration was especially contentious in British Columbia, where profit-mad capitalists imported tens of thousands of Chinese labourers to work at reduced wages. Aggravating delicate labour relations, contractors hired-out bountiful, cheap Asian labourers.46 Many unions saw immigration as a direct threat and attempted to restrict patronage to establishments that employed or served Asians.47 The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council periodically organized collective opposition to Asian immigration by pushing tax breaks for employers who adopted all-white hiring policies and demanding a substantial increase in the Chinese head tax, before calling for a ban on Chinese immigration in 1890.48 Racist bigotry dominated the social identity of many Canadians, but some reform-minded labour organizations recognized Asian immigrants as a commodity capable of being wielded in pursuit of economic concessions.49 The Communist Party of Canada was instrumental in organizing Asian workers under the Workerʼs Unity League50; however, Asians also chartered their own unions51 to organize opposition52 or provide unemployment support for Asians, who were ignored by provincial relief programs.53 Although recognition of the Asian labourersʼ concerns would take time,54 the growth of radical politics and poor economic conditions combined with increased Asian militancy to gradually improve inter-racial solidarity.55 Unfortunately, inter-ethnic cooperation was generally temporary and most labour organizations excluded Asians.56 This allowed capitalists and unsympathetic Asian employers to manipulate starving, impoverished Asian labourers into acting as strikebreakers,57 which undermined working-class opposition and depressed wages.
Capitalists also benefitted from the availability of exploitable female labourers.58 The impact of females within the wage economy was examined by an 1880s Royal Commission investigation into labour and capital. Politically necessitated by growing class conflict, the roving commission heard depositions across Canada, but gender issues were not recognized as a priority.59 Within the limited attention given to gender issues, testimony came from female labourers employed in textiles, shoe factories, matchmaking, tobacco and printing, but domestic servants and those employed outside factories were ignored.60 Fearing recrimination, women who testified before the commission presented conflicting views of the workplace. Women were more inclined to voice dissatisfaction with reduced salaries, unhealthy factories and victimization under employer embezzlement schemes if they testified anonymously.61 Framed by the prevailing culture, the commissionersʼ inquiries reflect paternal, moralistic chauvinisms. Assuming that sexual predation was prolific in factories, they ignored the economic exploitation of women. Among the staid commissioners, protecting women labourers from profanity was viewed as a more pressing concern than whether or not female labourers had a living wage.62 Also providing relevant testimony were smugly self-interested employers, who saw women as morally-impressionable, exploitable commodities63 dependent on men for guidance, security and identity.
The profit-driven feminization of the workplace accelerated between 1900-1930, and corresponded with an uneven application of ʻscientific managementʼ practices.64 Although regional in diffusion, urban office work attracted women from across the country. Female clerical work depressed wages for male clerical workers,65 but women typically lacked superior employment opportunities.66 Fundamentally unrewarding and formulaic,67 mechanized clerical work created a heterogeneous under-class of menial jobs.68 Women office workers were devalued through repetitive, standardized tasks, specialized division of labour,69 and a rigidly impersonal chain of command. Contrasted with male office workers, vertical mobility was rarely possible for women,70 but clear hierarchies separated office positions.71 An inter-industry comparative analysis illustrates stratification among and within companies,72 which seems to indicate additional competitive hierarchies unrelated to gender. The office thick with competition, insecurity and anxiety dominated their lives. With a living wage out of reach, female clerks faced constant attack from employers who rationalized reduced wages based on misogynist stereotypes. With their criticisms muffled by exclusion from many traditional craft unions, female labourers began flocking to radical organizations and progressive labour politics.
Following unrewarding consolidation under Laurierʼs continentalist liberalism during the 1880s,73 moderately reform-minded skilled and working-class labourers, francophones, farmers, Catholics and capitalists organized various labour parties to give political voice to skilled craft workers.74 Widespread public cynicism in the establishmentʼs integrity had reduced parliamentary participation.75 Ideologically committed to “libertarian and egalitarian democracy”,76 independent labour parties attempted to orchestrate a working-class renaissance through the voting booth.77 Thoroughly grass-roots, generally decentralized78 and lacking a codified dogma,79 labourism organized through community-based local precincts80 that grew into federalized campaigns to restrict the work week, extend franchise, install proportional representation81 and provide limited social welfare programs.82 Dominating working- class politics in Eastern Canada until the 1920s,83 labourism placed supreme value on ʻhonest toilʼ,84 advocated a biased view of ʻnatural justiceʼ,85 equated respectability with independence86 and was primarily secular.87 Far from radical, they had grandiose dreams of a gradualist social revolution88 induced through collective bargaining.89 Labourists believed “aggressive but not dominant action”90 could create a meritocratic society 91 and maintain their limited power over production. After rare provincial victories, labourists were corralled into liberal caucus92 and were unsuccessful in mitigating federal apathy.93
During WWI public discontent with high costs of living, institutionalized greed and legislative malfeasance combined with secure war-time employment and war-inspired democratic rhetoric to historically empower labourism with collaboration from Canadian Marxists and ethical socialists: “provid[ing] the ideological dimension of the unprecedented post-war upsurge of the … working class.”94 Labour became increasingly self-confident and aggressive in its pursuit of reform, but regional political attitudes towards industrial capitalism varied.95 Socialists had previously condemned labour parties as puppets96 – little men who surrender their own power in return for vicariously enjoying the stateʼs or partyʼs exertion of will.97 However, precedent led labourists to view small-scale industrialists as co-producers.98 The coziness was especially pronounced in Ontario, where escalating economic competition and tariffs galvanized alliances between labour and small-scale industrialists.99 Following the return of Canadian soldiers at the end of the war, employment security declined and capitalʼs consolidation resumed.100 Large corporations lacking incentive to concede power increasingly controlled the means of production, and craft workers were progressively marginalized. Labourʼs antipathy towards industrial unionism contributed to electoral defeats and fatal internal schism.101 There seems little doubt that capitalists watched with glee as labourʼs confidence in electoral reform dwindled and demoralization spread.
In 1917 working-class labourers all over the world were emboldened by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution.102 There was growing recognition that the global economy was corrupt, obsolete and in need of revision.103 Political parties and radical labour organizations attempted to capitalize on the growing revolutionary zeal, and the general strike came to be seen as the key to labourʼs emancipation from unchecked capitalist tyranny. With labour backed into a corner by capital-friendly legislation, the stage was set for an explosive confrontation that would shock the world and define Canadian labour relations for generations.
Winnipegʼs six-week general strike of 1919 grew out of trade workerʼs pursuit of collective bargaining and the right to a living wage;104 embodying the collective struggle against capitalist hegemony. The strike was organized by the Trades and Labour Union105 and the One Big Union, but Helen Armstrong and women labourers played instrumental roles. The city came to a stop after Helen persuaded female telephone workers to strike, which convinced many other labourers to join.106 Reduced wages and limited welfare options put female workers at substantial disadvantage, but Helen encouraged women to be extremely antagonistic towards strikebreakers.107 In response to the drain on profits, Winnipegʼs elite organized the Citizensʼ Committee of One Thousand to consolidate capitalʼs opposition.108 Following the dismissal of the police force, ʻspecial constablesʼ were hired and used in the violent suppression of strikers.109 For the first time in Canadian history, women were essential, proactive participants in labour resistance. The 1919 general strikes in Winnipeg and
Vancouver110 illustrated the power of labour solidarity and the ruthlessness of Canadaʼs oligarchy.
As labour struggled against the overt machinations of capitalism, covert offensives also eroded individual autonomy and dignity. In the years preceding and following WWI, global economic turbulence contributed to sporadic Canadian regional support for enforced public schooling. For many, schooling was seen as facilitating social and economic mobility.111 Working-class families dutifully assumed students might achieve economic autonomy and independence through education, but children were actually being thoroughly indoctrinated with mediocrity “with military precision” in “huge, mechanical, educational machines” that mimicked mills, railroads and prisons.112 By targeting the emotional development of children, capital played a long-term game that labour could not hope to understand, let alone compete with. Capital interests sought cross-generational hegemony113 and used sundry methods to achieve this goal.
The potential for Canadian labour solidarity accelerated from the beginnings of the ʻmovement cultureʼ through Winnipegʼs historic general strike. Women began to make inroads within multiple sectors of the wage economy, with suffrage looming. Classic ethnic barriers maintained racist and classist segregations of appropriate work, but immigrants, migrants, the unemployed and all previously unorganized found vehicles of voicing dissent. Canadian class-consciousness was obviously on the ascent. But this bias ignores the inescapable fact that labour faced an ʻimpossibilistʼ task: capital was increasingly successful in its quest to manufacture society, and repeatedly able to exploit signature weaknesses in labour organizations. The map for success was drawn; regrettably, the opponent was clever and far too mighty.
End Notes:
1 Palmer, Bryan. Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992. p. 117.
2 Ibid. p. 120.
3 Ibid. p. 160.
4 Marks, Lynne. “The Knights of Labor and the Salvation Army: Religion and Working-Class Culture in Ontario, 1882-1890.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 156.
5 Ibid. p. 166.
6 Ibid. p. 168, 171.
7 Ibid. p. 171.
8 Ibid. p. 159.
9 Ibid. p. 158.
10 Palmer. p. 122.
11 Ibid. p. 120, 131.
12 Marks. p. 161.
13 Ibid. p. 174-5.
14 Ibid. p. 158.
15 Ibid. p. 175.
16 Ibid. p. 167.
17 Palmer. p. 132-3.
18 Marks. p. 156, 171, 172.
19 Palmer. p. 139-40.
20 Marks. p. 171.
21 Marks. p. 177.
22 Schulze, David. “The Industrial Workers of the World and the Unemployed in Edmonton and Calgary in the Depression of 1913-1915.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 265.
23 Ibid. p. 269.
24 Ibid. p. 265-6.
25 Ibid. p. 266-7.
26 Ibid. p. 266.
27 Ibid. p. 272-3.
28 Ibid. p. 267.
29 Ibid. p. 270.
30 Ibid. p. 273.
31 Ibid. p. 268.
32 Ibid. p. 268.
33 Ibid. p. 270, 273.
34 Ibid. p. 266.
35 Ibid. p. 274.
36 Ibid. p. 280.
37 Ibid. p. 275.
38 Ibid. p. 274.
39 Ibid. p. 278.
40 Ibid. p. 285.
41 Palmer. p. 162.
42 Ibid. p. 162.
43 Creese, Gillian. “Exclusion or Solidarity? Vancouver Workers Confront the ʻOriental Problemʼ.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 293-4.
44 Ibid. p. 298-9.
45 Ibid. p. 294-6, 300. See also: Palmer. p. 186.
46 Ibid. p. 295.
47 Ibid. p. 298.
48 Ibid. p. 296.
49 Ibid. p. 299.
50 Ibid. p. 309.
51 Ibid. p. 302.
52 Ibid. p. 303.
53 Ibid. p. 306.
54 Ibid. p. 306.
55 Ibid. p. 295.
56 Ibid. p. 295.
57 Palmer. p. 124.
58 Lowe, Graham. “Class, Job and Gender in the Canadian Office.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 384.
59 Trofimenkoff, Susan. “One Hundred and Two Muffled Voices: Canadaʼs Industrial Women in the 1880ʼs.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 144.
60 Ibid. p. 145-6.
61 Ibid. p. 147-8.
62 Ibid. p. 149-152.
63 Ibid. p. 153.
64 Lowe. p. 382-3.
65 Ibid. p. 381, 388.
66 Ibid. p. 393, 400.
67 Ibid. p. 381.
68 Ibid. p. 393.
69 Ibid. p. 384.
70 Ibid. p. 389.
71 Ibid. p. 391.
72 Ibid. p. 392.
73 Heron, Craig. “Labourism and the Canadian Working Class.” Canadian Working Class History. Eds. Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth. Toronto: Canadian Scholarsʼ Press, 2000. p. 319.
74 Ibid. p. 319.
75 Ibid. p. 316.
76 Ibid. p. 320.
77 Ibid. p. 316, 319.
78 Ibid. p. 316.
79 Ibid. p. 318.
80 Ibid. p. 317.
81 Heron, Craig. The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1996. p. 44.
82 Heron, Craig. “Labourism and the Canadian Working Class.” p. 325.
83 Ibid. p. 315.
84 Ibid. p. 325, 334.
85 Ibid. p. 324-5.
86 Ibid. p. 325-6.
87 Ibid. p. 327.
88 Ibid. p. 323.
89 Ibid. p. 321.
90 Ibid. p. 321.
91 Ibid. p. 324.
92 Ibid. p. 316.
93 Ibid. p. 322.
94 Ibid. p. 329.
95 Ibid. p. 329.
96 Ibid. p. 320.
97 Reich, Wilhelm. Listen, Little Man! Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974.
98 Heron. p. 323-4.
99 Ibid. p. 329-330.
100 Ibid. p. 331.
101 Ibid. p. 331.
102 Palmer. p. 189.
103 Heron. p. 320. See also: Building a Nation: The Notorious Mrs. Armstrong. Dir. Paula Kelly. 2001.
Videocassette.
104 Palmer. p. 201. See also: Building a Nation.
105 Palmer. p. 202. 106 Building a Nation.
107 Building a Nation.
108 Palmer. p. 203. See also: Building a Nation.
109 Palmer. p. 204. See also: Building a Nation.
110 Creese. p. 302.
111 Heron. p. 324.
112 Blount, Jackie. Destined to Rule the Schools: Females and the Superintendency, 1873-1995. Albany: State University of NY Press, 1998. p. 39.
113 The ʻphilanthropyʼ of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller Sr., Henry Ford, et al institutionalized a systemic attack on individual potentiality: “In our dream … people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [cerebral and character- driven] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one … we will organize our children … and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.” (Gates, Fredrick. “Occasional Letter No. 1.” US General Education Board, 1906.)
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