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Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour in the 1880's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Bernard Ostry
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Extract

In the 1870's, party attitudes to Canada's nascent labour movement were clearly reflected in the federal legislation of successive Conservative and Liberal administrations. Especially was this true of the Trade Unions Act of 1872 and the Breaches of Contract Act of 1877. The bill concerning trade unions was guided through the House a few weeks before a federal general election by Sir John A. Macdonald, conscious of the special contribution it would make to the success of his National Policy. It was passed in response to organized labour's outspoken demands and in the face of George Brown's determined efforts to destroy trade unionism. The Breaches of Contract bill was driven through the Commons for no clear electoral purpose by Edward Blake and Alexander Mackenzie, conscious of the special contribution they could make to the success of the Grand Trunk Railway Company. It was passed in spite of labour fears and in the face of stiff opposition from Macdonald, Irving and other leading Conservative and Independent politicians. Whereas the famous Trade Unions Act asserted the right of all workers to organize and to strike, the less well-known Breaches of Contract Act denied the right to strike to all employees of public utilities. Thus the seventies, while witnessing some major federal legislation directly affecting Canada's young trade-union movement, also saw labour inevitably moving within the orbit of Macdonald's Conservative party.

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Articles
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Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , May 1961 , pp. 141 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1961

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References

1 Ostry, Bernard, “Conservatives, Liberals and Labour in the 1870's,” Canadian Historical Review, XLI, 06, 1960, 93–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Logan, H. A., Trade Unions in Canada (Toronto, 1948), 33–8, 48–50, 54–9Google Scholar; Wismer, Leslie E., Workers Way to A Fair Share (Montreal, 1951)Google Scholar; Kennedy, Douglas R., The Knights of Labor in Canada (London, 1956)Google Scholar, passim; Wallace, Elisabeth, “The Origin of the Social Welfare State in Canada,” this Journal, XVI, no. 3, 08, 1950, 383–93.Google Scholar Cf. Innis, H. A. and Lower, A. R. M., eds., Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1783–1885 (Toronto, 1933), 625–8Google Scholar, who conclude that labour “offered little resistance to the evils of the new industrialism.”

3 Logan, , Trade Unions, 62ff.Google Scholar; also minutes of meetings of the Toronto Trades and Labor Council and of the older Trades Assembly (hereafter referred to as Council Minutes and Assembly Minutes). Original minute books are in the library of the Canadian Labour Congress, but a microfilm copy on reels M-304 and M-305 is in the Public Archives of Canada.

From the early eighties on, the proceedings of the annual meetings of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada are the best guide to the social policy of the organized industrial worker. The proceedings, hereafter cited as Proceedings, were later printed as pamphlets, the only complete collection known to the author being Proceedings of the Canadian Labour Congress, 1883(?)–97 Google Scholar, in the Canadian Labour Congress library. Cf. Sessional Papers, vol. 42 (1882)Google Scholar; vol. 54a (1885).

4 Public Archives of Canada, Macdonald Papers, vols. 65, 66, 158.

5 Ward, Norman, The Canadian House of Commons Representation (Toronto, 1950), 216–22Google Scholar; Creighton, Donald, John A. Macdonald, II, The Old Chieftain (Toronto, 1955), 421, 426, 427, 433 Google Scholar; Macdonald Papers, data pertaining to 1885 Franchise Act and 1887 election in vols. 64, 66, 158, 323. See vol. 319 for working men's resolutions forwarded to Macdonald in 1884–5. Cf. Josiah Blackburn to Macdonald, Jan. 28, 1886, in vol. 422. On Chinese immigration see vol. 321. Cf. Canada, Report of the Select Committee to whom was referred Bill No. 8 to Prohibit … Aliens (Ottawa, 1890).Google Scholar

6 Globe, Feb., March, 1884.

7 Ontario, Statutes (1884), 146–60Google Scholar; Globe, March 19, 1884; PAC, Catalogue of Pamphlets, II, 1535 Google Scholar: “The Record of the Mowat Government … 1872–1890” (Toronto, 1890), 23–4.Google Scholar

8 House of Commons Debates (1879), II, 1616 Google Scholar; (1880 ) 79; (1880–1) 129, 1099; Globe, March 12, 1884.

9 Sessional Papers (1882), 42, 83.Google Scholar

10 Senate Debates (1882), 299, 352–5, 358–72.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. (1882), 360. Senators Almon, Kaulbach and Baillargeon supported the views of Campbell, Aikins and Haythorne.

12 Ibid. (1882), 354–5, 367–72, 391–6, 688. See Forsey, Eugene, “A Note on the Dominion Factory Bills of the Eighteen-Eighties,” this Journal, XIII, no. 4, 11, 1947, 580.Google Scholar

13 H. of C. Debates (1883), 827–8, 1386 Google Scholar; (1884) 524, 1627. At this time there was some discussion as to “pressure” causing the delay. See Forsey, , “A Note,” 582, n. 14.Google Scholar

14 H. of C. Debates (1885), I, 29, 362.Google Scholar

15 Ibid. (1885), II, 873–81.

16 Ibid., 881–3, 886.

17 Ibid., 940–8. The House chose instead to discuss an amendment to the Canada Temperance Act.

18 Ibid. (1886), II, 946.

19 Creighton, , Macdonald, II, 340–1 ff., 377–9, 389 ff., 408, 465–6.Google Scholar

20 Macdonald Papers, vol. 273, Thompson to Macdonald, July 3, 1886 (copy in vol. 274); Thompson to Macdonald (private), Sept. 2, 1886; Creighton, , Macdonald, II, 457.Google Scholar

21 Report of the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital in Canada (Ottawa, 1889), 7–15, 78–85 Google Scholar; Creighton, , Macdonald, II, 462–8Google Scholar; SirPope, Joseph, ed., Selections from the Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald (Garden City, N.Y., 1921), 382.Google Scholar

22 Globe, Oct. 6, 7. There was rarely a week that the Globe did not carry news or editorials of assistance to the labour movement, and in 1886 alone Mowat had placed nearly half a dozen bills of immediate importance to labour upon the provincial statute books. See the Globe, particularly after 1884, and PAC, Pamphlets, II, 8, 90, 141, 557, 884, 1535.Google Scholar

23 Macdonald Papers, vol. 158, “Speech of Sir John Macdonald to the Workingmen's Liberal Conservative Association of Ottawa and Le Cercle Lafontaine, delivered in Ottawa on the 8th of October, 1886,” 21–2.

24 Globe, Oct. 16 and 22, Nov. 1, 1886; Council Minutes, 157–8, PAC reel M-304. Macdonald's speech helped to jog Liberal memories a little too. Incensed by Sir John A.'s use of the 1872 affair fifteen years after the event, the Globe produced a letter on its editorial page which made it clear that two Liberals, O'Donoghue and Robertson, representing the trade union case to Macdonald in 1872, had convinced him of the expediency of passing the Trade Unions Act. And Blake, in a few of the many speeches he delivered to working men's groups in 1886–7, pointed out that it was Mowat as Attorney General of Ontario, and not Macdonald, who had had the prosecution's case against the printers dropped. Globe, Oct. 12, 1886; PAC Pamphlets, II, 995 Google Scholar: “Dominion Election, Hon. Edward Blake's Speeches” (Toronto, 1886), no. 12 (First Series), 374–5.Google Scholar

25 Creighton, , Macdonald, II, 464–6, 470.Google Scholar

26 Logan, , Trade Unions, 67 Google Scholar; Globe, Oct. 16 and 20; Nov. 11, 1886; Sept. 6, 1888; Sept. 4, 5, 9, 1890; Aug. 22, Sept. 5, 1891, etc.; Proceedings.

27 H. of C. Debates (1887), I, 20, 191–3, 361 Google Scholar; II, 862–72, 884, 890; Statutes (1887), c. 10; Canada, Guide to Canadian Ministries since Confederation (Ottawa, 1957), 19.Google Scholar

28 Labour publicly condemned the Commission on the eve of the Ontario election. See Macdonald Papers, vol. 28, which contains the Prime Minister's correspondence on appointments to the Commission; also vol. 331, A. T. Freed to Macdonald, May 20, 1889; John Armstrong to Macdonald, May 13, 1889; and extract from the Labor Reformer, Oct. 9, 1886; Globe, Dec. 10 and 18, 1886; Labor Reformer, 02 25, 1888, in Macdonald Papers, vol. 331.Google Scholar

29 H. of C. Debates (1889), I, 6–8, 12–13, II, 1422, 1614 Google Scholar; (1890), 4590, 4835–46; Macdonald Papers, vol. 331, note from George Johnson, undated, 1889; Ostry, Bernard, “The Politics of Industrial Peace,” unpublished paper delivered at Canadian Historical Association's annual meeting, 1957.Google Scholar The trade union movement itself was split on the question of supporting the measure as passed: the Dominion Trades and Labor Congress—dominated by Conservatives—was in favour of it, while the Toronto Trades Council wanted the bill held over to the next session.

30 H. of C. Debates (1889), I, 19, 382 Google Scholar; II, 1111–17, 1368, 1437–47, 1468, 1689–91; Statutes (1889), c. 41.

31 H. of C. Debates (1889), I, 524 Google Scholar; (1890), I, 504, 1857; II, 3703–4; Macdonald Papers, vol. 332, R. R. Elliot to Macdonald, March 11, 1889. For an examination of the effectiveness of the 1872 Act and its amendments see: Canada, Dept. of Labour, Trade Union Law in Canada (Ottawa, 1935), 13–24 Google Scholar; Grauer, A. E., Labour Legislation: A Study Prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1939), 88, 92 Google Scholar; Cameron, J. C. and Young, F. J. L., The Status of Trade Unions in Canada (Kingston, 1960), 24–8, 31–4, 74, 114.Google Scholar None of these studies seems to be aware of the 1889 legislation affecting labour.

32 Creighton, , Macdonald, II, 553–60.Google Scholar PAC Pamphlets, II, 1648, nos. 33, 40, 48.Google Scholar

33 Logan, , Trade Unions, 58 Google Scholar; Watt, F. W., “The National Policy, the Workingman, and Proletarian Ideas in Victorian Canada” in Canadian Historical Review, XL, 03, 1959, 13–15.Google Scholar

34 Assembly Minutes, I, PAC, M-304.

35 Council Minutes, II–V, PAC, M-304.

36 Charles March, President of the Trades and Labor Congress of the Dominion in 1887, criticized the weakness of the movement's legislative machinery and recommended means of strengthening it (see, Proceedings). It was at the same Congress that a resolution was passed to try to obtain a Dominion factory act in spite of the provincial ones already in existence. Cf. PAC Pamphlets, II, 1246 Google Scholar, “Report of the Canadian Legislative Committee, Order of the Knights of Labor” (Ottawa, 1888).Google Scholar Heakes, who was to be a member of the Royal Commission on Capital and Labor, reported to the TTLC that the labour platform drafted for the Council's approval “had been culled from papers and documents procured from the United States with a view to get at the real feeling of the working classes.” Council Minutes, PAC, M-305; Trades and Labor Congress Journal, XXIII, 06, 1944, 11–12.Google Scholar He probably did not realize that the labour platform of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (the forerunner of the AFL) formed in 1881 was copied directly from the Parliamentary Committee's platform drawn up for the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain. Mackintosh, Margaret, An Outline of Trade Union History in Great Britain, the United States and Canada (Canada, Dept. of Labour, 1938, 1946), 13.Google Scholar Commons, John R. et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1936), II, 324.Google Scholar For differences in labour editorials compare the Trades Journal with the Labor Union and Palladium of Labor.

37 Proceedings (1889), 8, 15–16.Google Scholar Viner, Jacob, Canadian Balance of International Indebtedness, 1900–1913 (Cambridge, 1924), 37 Google Scholar, cited in Firestone, O. J., Canadian Economic Development, 1867–1953 (London, 1958), 228.Google Scholar Cf. Firestone's data on growth of real output per person over the same period. See also: Currie, A. W., The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada (Toronto, 1957), 344–5Google Scholar; Masters, D. C., The Rise of Toronto, 1850–1890 (Toronto, 1947), 174–8Google Scholar; Logan, , Trade Unions, 57 ff.Google Scholar; Grauer, , Labour Legislation, 9 Google Scholar; PAC, M-304–5.

38 Cf. Watt “National Policy.” Not only are the newspapers collected by the Department of Labour not necessarily a good guide to trade union thinking in the eighties but the collection itself does not include such important union papers as the Labor Reformer and the Canadian Workman.