Changes in Canada from 1890-1905 (Industrial age)

INTRO

The most common jobs in Canada before industrialization were related to farming. Farmers depended on the help and cooperation of all family members, as well as help from neighbours. With industrialization now booming, many people were moving away from farms to find work in cities.

WORKING IN FACTORIES

Many of the jobs available in the cities were in factories. Most people who worked in the factories were either from the working class or were new immigrants.

Many working-class families and new immigrants lived close to the factories in crowded neighbourhoods.

SAFETY CONCERNS/WORKING CONDITIONS

In factory work, men, women, and children
worked long hours for low pay, and the
conditions were often dirty and dangerous.
Accidents and fires were common.

By the 1880s, provinces began to pass laws to
govern safety conditions in the workplace to
protect employees. However, the regulations
were often ignored or violated by employers.

fire of toronto, 1904

Sometimes inspectors showed up at factories to check
on the conditions in the workplace.

Factory workers lived under the rule of their employers.
Their pay was low and they were often forced to work
overtime for no pay. It was very hard to improve their
quality of life.

WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

In the 1700s and early 1800s, most women worked in the home raising children, preparing food, making clothes, and caring for farm animals.

They did not receive a wage for this work, although everything they did supported their family’s quality of life. Caring for one’s family was expected by society.

In the late 1800s, an increasing number of women began working outside of the home. Life in the city presented new job opportunities for women and a chance to earn money for the work that they did.

In Canada, 40 percent of women who worked outside the home took jobs as domestic servants.

MORE JOBS FOR WOMEN

Some women worked in stores and offices. As new machines such as
typewriters and telephones were adopted, women were hired as telephone
operators and secretaries.

Women were often employed in the clothing industry, mainly because women had profession in sewing or making clothes

Women also worked on assembly lines in factories.
In 1891, women made up 34 percent of the manufacturing
workforce in Ontario.

Women worked long hours, often in difficult conditions. Like children, women were paid less than men for doing the same job.

The management was dissatisfied with the quality of work that the male operators were doing.

It was observed that men had lacked patience and manners on the phone,
and they were often caught wrestling and fooling around on the job. The
company decided to try employing women instead.

However, female operators were paid $8 per month for working long days, sometimes 12 to 16 hours. The management at Bell developed strong opinions on the differences between male and female workers at the time.

The majority of telephone operators across Canada were female workers.

CHILDREN IN THE WORKPLACE

Industrialization brought machines to make work life easier, but the
machines required people to operate them. During this period, unskilled workers were the cheapest worker options to employ for the companies, due to their lack of knowledge and experience.

children were the cheapest to hire, with a salary of only $3 weekly,
compared to the men's $8 and the women's $4.50

This act was under investigation by the royal commissions of mill in 1892

POWERING THE NEW INDUSTRIES

The growing cities needed power to run the new factories, light the streets,
and improve living conditions. Before 1880, the main sources of power in
Canada were steam engines fuelled by gas, coal, and wood.

However, gas and coal was costly, and had an affect on Canada's budget.
Wood was increasing in price as it was becoming a more scarce resource.

As electricity technology developed over the course of the 1880s, Canadian cities replaced their gas street lights with electric lights. Stores and hotels also installed electric lights. Electric streetcars replaced horse-drawn streetcars in the 1890s in Toronto, Montréal, and Ottawa.

To meet the new demand, companies like the Toronto Electric Company
began generating and selling electricity. There was not a lot of competition
in the power industry at the time, so the price of power was high.

Businesses wanted more power at lower rates to run the growing factories and offices and to keep their profits high. As industries switched to electric power,
factories and the people who worked in them became dependent on the
availability of electricity.

Some areas, such as the Niagara region depended on hydroelectricity for energy.In the late 1800s, wealthy investors across Canada began building hydroelectric stations to generate electricity.

Cities across Ontario began to buy electricity from private companies. People were concerned that big cities like Toronto would buy up all of the power.

INTRO:

DEMANDING WORKERS’ RIGHTS

The growing economic gap between workers and business owners was a source of conflict in the workplace. Workers demanded change, but owners wanted to continue making large profits.

Workers advanced themselves from this situation and formed alliances with other workers called Unions. However, if individual workers refused to work overtime hours for no
pay, the employer could fire them. If union members went on strike, both production and profit making would be disputed due to pressure.

In 1872, the federal government passed the Trade Union Act, which made unions legal in Canada.

Trade unions were organizations that working-class men in the same trade (such as cotton mills, breweries, or steel manufacturers) could join to support each other.

However, in practice, only skilled workers could challenge employers through strike action. Unskilled workers, many of them women and children, were excluded from most early unions.

A different approach to unionization
was taken by the Knights of Labor in the
early 1880s. The organization was open
to all workers regardless of their skills.

The purpose was to bring together all workers
in one big union, rather than have them
join separate unions according to their
trade.

Like the trade unions, the Knights of
Labor wanted to raise wages and improve
working conditions. It also wanted laws to
protect workers’ rights and major reforms
to the economic system, including income
taxes and an eight-hour workday.

The Knights of Labor were one of the only unions in this time period to include women. In 1884, Kate McVicar organized the first all-female local assembly of the Knights of Labor in Canada.

By the early 1900s, the trade union approach of separate unions for separate trades prevailed in Canada. The Trades and Labour Congress, a Canadian organization of trade unions, eventually banned the Knights of Labor from its membership in 1902.

As the most powerful political force in Canadian labour, the Trades and Labour Congress pushed for better working conditions.

It did not, however, push for the kind of sweeping changes to the economic system that the Knights of Labor had demanded.

In 1899, streetcar workers in London, Ontario, walked off the job. The 79 strikers refused to work until their American employer, Henry Everett, raised their wages and shortened their hours.

Everett refused to be pressured by the unionized workers. Instead, he locked all of the employees out. He replaced them with new, non-unionized employees known as strikebreakers.

The conflict in London escalated in the summer of 1899 as Londoners stood behind the unionized workers in support of their goals. Thousands of people showed up at rallies and protests.

They also supported the unionized workers by refusing to use the streetcar service.

When the boycotts proved unsuccessful in getting Everett to negotiate, people turned to violent action. Large crowds gathered and riots broke out. Men and women threw rocks at streetcars driven by strikebreakers, and abandoned streetcars were ransacked and burned.

However, Everett still refused to exceed expectations of the workers

The London streetcar workers were ultimately unsuccessful in forcing Everett to meet their demands. Eventually, Londoners began taking the streetcars again.

The majority of the strikers were replaced with non-unionized workers and others found new jobs

FURTHER STRIKES ACROSS CANADA

Streetcar workers in other Canadian cities also fought for better working conditions. Several cities tried to control these strikes by using the militia, including Toronto in 1902, and Winnipeg and Hamilton in 1906.

As the number of strikes across the country grew, business owners increased their pressure on governments. The business owners wanted to stop unionization and strikes.

However, when a provincial government sent troops to end a strike, situations often got worse. For example, in 1900, the government of Québec sent in the militia to stop 200 cotton mill workers in Valleyfield, Québec, from striking.

As a result, another 2500 workers walked off the job to protest the government’s interference in the conflict.

DEMANDING RIGHTS OUTSIDE OF THE WORKPLACE

Improving wages and conditions for industrial workers was
not the only issue that caused people to take action during
this period.

Sometimes issues overlapped with each other and different organizations cooperated to change Canadian society.

By the 1890s, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) and other organizations had been campaigning for
women’s right to vote for more than a decade.

The Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association (DWEA) petitioned Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat to ask him to introduce legislation to extend voting rights to women. He responded that he would personally be in favour of the idea, but that there was not enough public support for it to succeed.

The WCTU and the DWEA organized a mock parliament
in Toronto in 1896. This event was meant to imitate and
ridicule the workings of the Canadian government. The
evening featured various discussions by women about men’s
rights.

John Joseph Kelso was a reporter for a Toronto newspaper and an advocate for children’s rights. In 1887, he wrote a series of articles about neglected children in the city.

He anticipated children who'd been abandoned or who dealt with poverty would often participate, or start crimes

Kelso helped to found the Toronto Children’s Aid Society in 1891. The organization’s original motto was, “It is less expensive to save children than to punish criminals.”

Due in part to Kelso’s efforts, the Ontario provincial government passed a new children’s protection act in 1893. It was known as the Children’s Charter. It protected children from abandonment, mistreatment, and neglect.

The government appointed Kelso to the new post of superintendent of neglected and dependent children.

In this position, he established 56 children’s aid societies in communities throughout Ontario over the next 15 years. He also helped provincial governments in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia to set up child protection laws and programs.

Factories found it useful to use these machines. The machines, however, also gave them economical benefit, since less workers were needed during this time.

automobile production were now made by machine

the years 1890-1905 was significant during the years of industrialization for Canada. Since new technology had been introduced to Canada, people found manual labor easier due to the mechanical advantage from the new inventions.

Impact on the agriculture of Canada

Owners of more land had money to afford these machines. However, owners of smaller portions of the land couldn't afford these luxuries, so they couldn't compete and struggled financially.

the less fortunate often moved to cities, as it was a trend to move away from the countryside.

Montreal was the most populated city in 1901, with a population of around 267,730. Toronto was the 2nd most populated, having a population of 208,040. After 10 years, Montreal's population increased to nearly 400,000. Ottawa's population increased by 47% over the decade.

Immigration

While many of these urban workers hoped to make enough money in the cities to buy farmland, others wanted either to find ways of making a good living in the city or to return to their home country with their savings.

In this period, the majority of immigrants came to Canada from Britain, the United States, and some countries in Europe.

Europe was overcrowded, and there was neither enough farmland nor industrial jobs available for everyone.

Immigration from Europe for a better life

In some countries, minorities were mistreated, and they hoped to move to a country where they could live in peace and security. For most of the 1800s, European immigrants hoping to improve their lives moved to the United States. After 1890, most of the available farmland there had already been taken up by settlers.

in order to promote immigration to Canada, the Government tried to advertise relatively cheap land for agricultural purposes.

However, the industrial cities offered wage-paying jobs and
lumber and mining industries hired laborers. approximately 2.3 million immigrants came to Canada during the industrialization period (1891-1911)

ECONOMIC IMPACTS

Industrialization caused important changes in the economic status (the income or financial well-being) of different groups in society. Factories and machinery lowered the cost of manufacturing goods, so profits rose. However, building the factories and buying the machines required a lot
of money before any profits could be made.

It gave the higher class to harness the new technologies In addition, there were no laws about a minimum amount employees had to be paid. Business owners became wealthier as a result, while the economic situation of their employees often did not improve, or got worse.

Wealthy people lived mainly in cities where their businesses were located. They had large homes and hosted elaborate parties. Many wealthy people had a second residence where they would spend their holidays.

People in the working class were less pleasant than their employers. At the time, laborers had only earned and average wage of $35 monthly. However, the living rate for a family of 5 was $48.

CHANGES IN TRANSPORTATION

In factory areas such as Griffintown in Montreal and the Distillery District in Toronto, workers lived in crowded housing near the factory buildings.

There was not enough housing close to factories for all of the workers, so working-class districts expanded. Workers living farther away from the factories needed transportation to get to work.

Gas-powered automobiles like the LeRoy were available for purchase by the early 1900s, but very few people could afford to buy one.

The price of the Canadian-made Leroy in 1903 was $650. The average Canadian yearly income of male and female production workers in 1905 was $375, meaning not many workers had money to buy automobiles

ELECTRIC STREETCARS/BICYCLES

Improved transportation systems meant that people could get around more easily and live farther from where they worked. This caused the cities to spread out.

Bicycles were an important method of transportation in the 1890s, and they grew in popularity as bicycle technology improved.

A bicycle craze broke out in Canadian cities, particularly among women. They were able to travel with greater ease and independence.

Cycling also influenced how women dressed, with the introduction of shorter skirts and split skirts.

CHANGING CHILDHOOD

Between 1890 and 1905, there was great variation in the
daily lives of children in Canada. Some children attended
school, while others worked on their family farms or in
factories, and still others did a combination of all three.

A child’s life was largely determined by the economic status
of his or her family.

In working-class families, they had to begin helping to support
the family early in life. By the age of 10, most boys and girls in urban areas had left school to work, some of them in factories and others as servants in people’s homes.

Some children worked on the city streets delivering newspapers, shining shoes, or running errands.

Child laws

By the end of the 1800s, common attitudes about children were changing. Many people in the middle class began to see childhood as a time for education and play, and they no longer saw children as young adults.

Laws were passed that prevented children from participating in activities now considered to be part of the adult world. Child labor was discouraged. Children were banned from entering saloons, pool rooms, and dance halls. They were no longer allowed to beg or perform on the street.

in 1892, the parliament passed a law that courts are allowed to be made for kids who commit crimes up to the age 16.

Problems associated with immigration, industrialization, and urbanization were becoming more apparent. There was a growing sense that schools were needed to educate all children to meet the challenges of adulthood. Like today, in the late 1800s provincial governments controlled education.

In 1871, it was compulsory for children for every child to attend school for at least a few months a year. by 1900, elementary schools were mandatory in every province, except for Quebec.

However, children from wealthy families attended school for a longer amount of time. In 1911, 40 percent of Canadian
children aged 5 to 9, and 50 percent of children aged 10 to 19, were attending school. Children in rural areas would attend school seasonally, outside of busy planting and harvest times.

Class sizes were quite large compared to today’s standards.
In Ontario, the average class size was 70 students for every
teacher.

Many Canadian cities had schools similar in size to
modern-day schools. This was because the cities had larger
populations with sufficient numbers of students to attend.

By contrast, rural communities had much smaller schools. Many rural schoolhouses had one room, with students from all grades taught by one teacher. Some one-room schoolhouses
could accommodate large numbers of students from the surrounding countryside.