The Industrial State Transformed, 1896-1929

1. The Industrial State Transformed, 1896-1929 Outcome: -Students will be able to show how technology was affecting Canada both in a rural and urban setting. -Students will demonstrate an understanding of the manner in which industrialization and urbanization transformed Canada. -Students will demonstrate an understanding of the increasing influence of the various forces that prompted nationalism and continentalism in Canada during the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s.

2. A new industrial age dawned in North America at the close of the nineteen century. In Canada, as in the United States, crucial changes occurred in the economy with the emergence of large-scale corporate business and the reshaping of the industrial state. The Canadian economy entered a phase of: Expansion Industrial consolidation Increased economic concentration -“monopoly capitalism”. P.M. Wilfrid Laurier “…the twentieth century will belong to Canada”

3. Causes of growth in Canada: West – rise of the wheat economy Klondike Interior of B.C Northern Ontario – massive mineral discoveries Infusion of American capital into Canada, two new transcontinental railways, factories expanded behind protective tariffs, new industries started – steel, automobiles, chemicals, pulp and paper, and electrical goods. Three out of every five Canadians still depended on the land for their livelihood, urbanization was increasing in conjunction with industrialization.

5. Canada’s enormous size, small population, and scarcity of entrepreneurs combined to force governments to provide generous subsidies to business venture. In addition, taxation was light or non-existent. Canadian business operated in a protective, supportive, and usually favorable environment and flourished from this hot-house effect. Nowhere was this clearer than in the fields of railway construction and hydro-electric power development. The first wave of railway construction was supported and financed by British entrepreneur. However, this time around the government footed most of the bill.

6. Railway Construction: • Canada experienced a second wave of railway construction in the early 1900s. • Grand Truck • Canadian Northern • Laurier gave these companies over 200 million dollars for start up funds. When these companies failed in the 1915-16 the government again came to their rescue (Borden). However, they eventually merged them into a single, publicly owned company known as Canadian National Railways.

7. Hydro-Electric Power Development: • In the late 1900s a popular Ontario public power movement arose. • Sizable groups of enterprising businessmen played a crucial role in the early establishment. • The people of Canada were very worried that the power companies would be privately owned and that would push up the prices of power because of greedy captains of industry. • However, in 1906, James P. Whitney responded by setting up the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario placing all electrical power under its control.

8. Electricity and gasoline replaced steam as the driving force for industry and gave birth to a new generation of factory machines. • Between the early 1890s and 1914, large industrial and financial corporations all but supplanted small-scale, owner-operated businesses. • A lot of business mergers happened during this time – these mergers gave birth to giants such as: • Dominion Steel • Canada Bread • Dominion Canners • Canada Cement

9. American Expansion: • American capital added to this industrial growth as U.S. – owned multinational enterprises expanded into Canada. • The number of American branch factories in Canada jumped from about 70 in 1900 to 215 in 1909 and reached 450 by 1914. • Companies • Coca-Cola • Westinghouse • Quaker oats • Sherwin-Williams Pints • Gillette Safety Razor • General Motors

10. These American Expansions meant employment, and soon towns in Ontario and the prairie West were competing with each other, offering “bonus” schemes to attract American branch plants. • Incentives: • Free building sites • Tax incentives were offered • Services such as water, sewers, and electrical lines were subsidized.

11. The rise of large-scale corporate enterprise had widespread effects on labor. The assembly-line was first introduced to the U.S. and Canada in the Ford automobile assembly plants. These assembly-lines changed the way people worked in factors and who was hired. Model A introduced by Ford.

12. Gender and Skill in the Workforce: • Industrial engineers replaced artisans and craftspeople. • 1920s • Machine Operators • Clerical Workers • Maintenance Staff • Skilled workers were not so much eliminated as shifted out of production into new jobs as machine operators or low-level administrative staff.

13. Taylorism: • Frederick Winslow Taylor – the father of American “scientific management” or Taylorism. • Scientific management was introduced to promote efficiency and reduce operating costs. • They developed new techniques for more centralized, cost-efficient management control. Employers set high production standards; they sent management staff onto the shop floor armed with stop watches to time the employees and speed them up. Under such circumstances peopled lived in fear of dismissal.

14. Gender and Skill in the Workforce: The corporate industrial transformation fundamentally altered gender relations as well as class and ethnic relations in the workplace. • Rough Work = Rugged Men • Higher-paying jobs = Male Breadwinners • Skilled Crafts = Male Workers • Unskilled and expendable = Women Work

15. Toronto Printing Trades: • With the widespread introduction of machine typesetting in the 1890s, the gender division of labor became a contested terrain. • Employers threatened to employ cheap women laborers which forced the male hand to defend their craft based notions of skill. • Introduction of unions = Toronto Typographical Union which forced women out of the typesetting machines and in doing so excluding women from the trade and better paying jobs.

16. Unions: • Many wage earners reacted by quitting frequently and moving on to other jobs; some immigrants from Europe returned home. • Widespread labor turnover meant that many men and women drifted from one job to another, from mills to construction camps to mines; from the textile industry to clerical work. • The conditions spawned by this new industrial system led many factory workers to turn to unions and radical labor movements.

17. American Reaction to the Modern Corporate Industrial State: • The rise of large-scale corporate business in the U.S. challenged many deeply rooted values and beliefs about individual economic liberty and the ideal of the “self-made” man. • Prevailing beliefs about the gospel of individual economic success collided head on with the realities of a modern industrial state dominated by large corporations.

18. American “Progressives”: • Economic Reforms • Control or “busting” of the giant trust and the regulation of utilities. • Political Reforms • Dismantling of urban political machines and the eradication of civic corruption. • Social Reforms: • Relief for the urban poor, the regulation of child and female factory labor, and the “Americanization” of immigrants.

19. Progressivism in Canada: • A broad wave of Progressivism aimed at controlling the trusts and reforming corporate business never really materialized in Canada. • The Canadian anti-combines tradition from 1889 – 1920 resembled more closely to British industrial policy than American. • Combines = Right for business to jack up prices so they could make a “…small profit”.

20. Canada’s Response to Regulating Big Businesses: • Canada didn’t really try and regulate big businesses. • Complaints about “rings” and “trusts” operating in Canada had been around since the 1870s but nothing was ever investigated. • The wave of Canadian mergers with the U.S. created mounting pressure on Laurier’s government in 1909-10 to take some form of action against the combines.

21. Mackenzie King who was minister of Labor responded with the Combine Investigation Act of 1910. He watched the U.S. problem very closely and even tried to distinguish between good and bad combines. The Anti-Combines Act was so ineffectual that it was used only one before being repealed in 1919.

22. International Workers of the World (IWW) • Labor radicalism in the West reached its height with the introduction of the IWW, nicknamed “the Wobblies.” • The IWW reached all corners of North America in the early 1900s. They organized many strikes a crossed the U.S. and Canada and won many rights of workers of all industries. • Rights Won • Free Speech • Higher Wages • Hiring of all races and genders

23. The Great War And Labor Radicalism: • During the four long years of World War I, Canada was plunged into a period of drastic economic and social change. • The War Years • Voting rights for Women • Income Tax • Beginnings of Prohibition • Enlisting was strong at the beginning of the war because of British patriotism and also because of unemployment. At the beginning of the war Canada was just coming out of a depression, and the war was one of the main reason for the end of the depression.

24. Wartime contracts for supplies, uniforms, and materials pulled the economy out of recession. • In western Canada, which had recently been suffering from drought and depressed wheat prices, wartime wheat demand caused farm commodity prices to rise faster than costs, and wheat cultivation expanded from 4 to 6 million hectares. • By 1916, army recruiters and munitions factories were competing for labor, producing a serious labor shortage that was eventually filled by women entering the workforce.

25. Canadian Manufacturers: When Canada first entered the war their first attempt to supply Britain with materials were so poorly built that Britain gave all their orders to the U.S. They also tried to supply Britain with munitions however, they could not keep up the demand and Britain actually ran out of munitions in 1915. Britain put a stop to all war time manufacturing in Canada until they got their act together.

26. Imperial Munitions Board: • J.W. Flavelle, a self made millionaire, was appointed to be in head of the Imperial Munitions Board. Which was set up by Britain. Flavelle was from Toronto and there for all factories of the IMB were based in Central Canada. • This caused the West to be upset because the West was experience high unemployment. However, Flavelle did not move factories out West because he felt they already had their chance to produce war supplies and failed.

27. The Great War and Labor Radicalism: • Prohibition