Unit 3: 1885-1914: Industrialization & Social Reform

Question 1

When do Industrialization and Urbanization begin in Canada? Which regions are impacted most?

Answer 1

Canada is becoming more of an urban county…

• Urbanization is not a post-1945 phenomenon, though we talk about it like that
• Canada has become urban over time since the beginning
• Major Industrial Growth in Canada’s major cities: Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg
• Toronto was transformed between the 1870s and 1920s
• Change happens fast: revolutions in communications and transformations
• These modernizations make the world smaller…

Question 2

How do the modernizations from 1885-1914 make the world smaller?

Answer 2

Communications:

• For the first time, everyone is reading the same newspapers and listening to the same news channels
• This creates national communities, because people are receiving and responding to the same information

Space & Time

• Space and time are being molded by these revolutions
• e.g. Standard time across the country

Question 3

How is the Great War transformative of Industrialization and Urbanization

Answer 3

The Great War is a transformative event because it fits into this all; it is caught up in a transformation…

It brings major changes in weapons, fashion, sexuality, etc. and these changes make the war an “epoc” or “watershed” event.

Question 4

What resources become most important in Canada in the 1920s?

Answer 4

1. Minerals: a new resource is developed in the 1920s; mining the Canadian Shield becomes important
2. Hydroelectric Power
   - 3.Timber: supplying pulp and paper for a growing newspaper industry in the US

Question 5

What do we see from the rise in Class Conflict and the Labour Movement?

Answer 5

Rise of the State: the state is trying to regulate the relationship between capital and labour

Question 6

Class Conflict and the Labour Movement

Answer 6

Rise of the State: trying to regulate the relationship between capital and labour

• As we move into this new reality of classes and class-conflict, there is an increasing desire for labours
• And so begins, the rise of unions

Question 7

1880s: The Knights of Labour

Answer 7

Canada’s earliest union movement

• Highlights the importance of social organizations/groups and voluntary associations
• Highlights the Christian Impulse: to show Christian charity to the poor
• “Knights”: brotherhood, chivalry, protection
• We see unions take their form…
• It is a “craft” union; the early unions are “craft” unions
• Craft Union: your union is based around certain specialized crafts where you take pride in what your craft is (e.g. blacksmiths form a union)
• This is in contrast to a trade union
• However, as time moves on and technology replaces the crafter, trade unions replace craft unions

Question 8

Why are craft unions being replaced by trade unions?

Answer 8

By the 1890s, craft unions are disappearing because skilled craft workers are being replaced by machines and people are working in trades

• The battle is against Industrial Capitalism
• Workers must recognize that they have more in common with fellow workers, rather than their employers and capitals who only care about profit, and thus must join together and organize themselves
• As soon as we move away from craft unions to larger trade unions, they become more affiliated with American unions

Question 9

The Trades and Labour Congress (TLC):

Answer 9

Becomes the major labour movement in Canada (it is an American union)

1900: the state establishes a Department of Labour under the Laurier government
- This shows that the state fears that this is a movement towards communism
- Stikes are becoming a serious work stoppage and dangerous threat for the growing cities at this time
The state steps in and tries to negotiate

Question 10

What leads to the creation of the Department of Health?

Answer 10

Urban Poverty

Question 11

Urban Poverty

Answer 11

Industrialization creates massive strain on society, and it is seen most in the cities because they are not equipped for the immigration, many of whom are poor

• Montreal remained the most unhealthy city to live, especially for children
• Cities lack housing, sanitization, etc. so poverty and disease become associated with immigration and with urbanization
• Canadians are looking at society and becoming afraid
• Kids are growing up in cities, and not out in the fields playing
• Influenza epidemic
• People are returning injured and dying from the war
• The poor are living in small, dark houses with no windows
• The only city in the world that exceeded the infant mortality rate in Montreal was Calcutta, India
• There is a major emphasis on health by the end of the Great War

Question 12

Department of Health

Answer 12

• Health issues become one of the central concerns of social reformers
• Health is a provincial responsibility, not a federal responsibility, so this is huge because it shows how concerned the country is with increasing the population

Question 13

Urban Vices:

Answer 13

Social Vices are raised that are associated with Urbanization

Poverty, Poor Health, Disease, Prostitution (this tells us, too, thats exuality will change), Gambling, Alcoholism

Question 14

How did urban poverty affect women?

Answer 14

• Families did not have sick benefits or hospital life insurance, and so women were expected to provide health care in the home
• Women began trying to limit their family sizes, using birth control methods
• But the state and the Church merged together, calling’s the limitation of family size “race suicide”
• The state wanted to increase its population, and the Church prohibits birth control
• Attempts to control the fertility of women forced the practices underground
• Many women underwent self-induced birth control, and some doctors performed them illegally

Question 15

What does Urban Poverty lead to?

Answer 15

The Social Reform Movement: “The Social Gospel Movement”

Question 16

The Social Reform Movement: “The Social Gospel Movement”

Answer 16

• Social Reform Movements emerged across Canada around the turn of the century to deal with disruptions brought by industrialization and rapid urbanization
• Social reformers believed that the Church not only had to be concerned with the individual and salvation/afterlife, but also with improving social conditions in life
• Example: The Salvation Army
• Churches, particularly Protestant, play a major role in the Social Reform Movement
• Christianity serves the poor with charity

Question 17

What does the Social Reform Movement Highlight?

Answer 17

• Social reformers, labeled purity activists, concerned themselves with morality vs. vice (gambling, alcoholism, promiscuity, prostitution)
• The Churches became involved in the social panic and called for social control, and addressed sexual ethics
• Social gospellers are turning to government for help because they do not believe religion or Christian charity is enough to save Canada from these urban vices
• We see the power of the state is increasingly playing an active role in citizens lives is increasingly.

Question 18

Social Reform in English Canada

Answer 18

• In English Canada, the Methodist and Presbyterian churches established social reform agencies under the Moral and Social Reform Council of Canada (Social Service Council of Canada)
• The regulation of sexuality was a major concern, and it was implemented in schools by visiting social gospel reformers who prohibited things like coffee, tea, and dancing
• Key Terms: Women’s (Gender,) Christian (Religion), Temperance (Male Problem that affects Women) Union (Labour Movement)

Question 19

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Answer 19

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

• We are also seeing a place for women; here we see the first women’s movement
• Maternal Feminism: women are taking their natural maternal instincts from the household and applying them in the public sphere, because this is seen as acceptable by men and patriarchal society
• Their primary goal is to bring prohibition

Question 20

Social Reform in Quebec

Answer 20

• In Quebec, the origins of social reform lay in the Roman Catholic Church
• English Canadian Reformers viewed Quebec as a backward, priest-ridden society, believing that Protestantism was Progressive while Catholicism was Conservative
• However, the path to social reform of Quebec was very similar as in English Canada, as Quebec was impacted by industrialization and urbanization in many of the same ways
• Emphasized personal humanity, social justice and Christian charity
• Catholic reformers believed that the Church was the remedy and Christian social order rested on the household and French Canadian nation
• Catholic values and French Canadian nationalism became intertwined

Question 21

?

Answer 21

• William Lyon Mackenzie King: labour mediator and later Liberal Leader (grandchild of the William Lyon Mackenzie who led the Rebellion of 1863)
• J.S. Woodsworth: influential social reformer and social gospeller
  Converted from Anglican to ?
  Independent labour MP and founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation which becomes the NDP)

Question 22

Women and the Social Reform in the Victorian Era

Answer 22

The Victorian Era is one of the most repressive time periods for women; it is the era of the Private-Public Sphere relations

• Women are no longer allowed in taverns
• Sexual norms are becoming more restrictive
• Society has become more restrictive as a whole

But we begin to see women push at some of these boundaries….

Question 23

How do women push boundaries in the late nineteenth century?

Answer 23

The late nineteenth century became the era of the “New Woman”

• Women use sport to push gender boundaries
• Sport becomes more important through industrialization because people are becoming unhealthy (e.g. Phys. Ed. is added to the curriculum)
• This is also because we are about to enter into war and we need young, healthy men to fight in war
• “Rise of the Expert”: rise of the medical doctor and medical profession undergoes major technological innovation, and male doctors are starting to learn more about the female body
• So actual medical professionals who are clinically trained are talking about women’s bodies, not just uneducated men
• Fear of “revenge of the cradle”: as we move from the farms into the cities, people are having less babies
• Childbirth is becoming increasingly dangerous in this period, it was not falling even though science was rising (e.g. Montreal in 1900s: 25% chance a baby will die before age of 1)
• As we move towards gender equality, men fear that women will stop having babies and the immigrants will keep having babies and take over
• Expansion of the old, traditional curriculum in education (e.g. phys. ed. and home ec)
• People are beginning to think about the household, and worrying about how women are running their homes
• So there was an aim to train women in economics so that they would be clean and raise their kids well
• Men want women to become more productive and efficient
• New disciplines are rising, such as sociology and social work
• Social workers begin dealing with problems emerging from home
• The big issue for Women, becomes voting

Question 24

Two Issues of The Women’s Suffrage Movement (First Wave Feminism)

Answer 24

2 Issues of the 1st Wave of Feminism:
(1) Temperance (Prohibition; banning booze)
(2) Voting (given women the right to vote)
Note: both these issues are political

Emily Stowe and Nellie McClung (suffragists): giving women the right to vote will let women step out from the private sphere and help men deal with issues that they have problems with dealing themselves (e.g. war, alcoholism)

Question 25

The Women’s Suffrage Movement (First Wave Feminism)

Answer 25

• The movement lead by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is highly influential as we move into the war
• Women will gain the right to vote during war, prohibition will come to Canada during the war
• The emergency conditions of the war allows for these political breakthroughs and gains
• The question becomes: What happens to the drive and momentum of these movements when the war ends? How meaningful will they be towards gender relations?
• Only the radicals are talking about gender equality and maternal feminism
• The issues - prohibition and voting - are political
• This is different from the other waves of feminism because gender equality is taken on by more in the future and the issues of the future are about the body and sexuality

Question 26

Nellie McClung

Answer 26

Born in Ontario in 1873, educated and lived in Manitoba

• Writer of poems, sketches, editorials and novels
• Author of In Times Like These; a commentary on women’s suffrage

Question 27

Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU)

Answer 27

Formed in Ontario in 1874, but became a national organization in 1914

Identified alcoholism as the greatest cause of domestic violence and divorce, braking down the family unit.