A Square Deal For All And No Railroading Historical Essays on Labour in Brandon Errol Black and Tom Mitchell A SQUARE DEAL FOR ALL: HISTORICAL ESSAYS ON LABOUR IN BRANDON A SQUARE DEAL FOR ALL: HISTORICAL ESSAYS ON LABOUR IN BRANDON ERROL BLACK AND TOM MITCHELL Copyright © 2000 Canadian Committee on Labour History All rights reserved Canadian Committee on Labour History Memorial University of Newfoundland, FM2005 St. John's, NFA1C5S7 ISBN 1-894000-03-X Manuscript was prepared for printing by the staff of the Canadian Committee on Labour History Cover design Bob Cooney and Barbara Harpe, and prepared by Helen Houston, St. John's, NF The cover photograph of the street railway construction on Tenth Street between Rosser and Princess Avenue ca. 1912 was provided courtesy of the Daly House Museum. Printed and bound in Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Black, Errol. A square deal for all Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-894000-03-X 1. Labor movement — Manitoba — Brandon — History. I. Mitchell, Tom, 1949- II. Canadian Committee on Labour History. III. Title. HD8110.B722B52 2000 331.8'0971273 C00-950226-2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 Dedication 9 Introduction 11 Part I Labour and Politics 1. Labour in Brandon Civic Politics: A Long View Errol Black and Tom Black 27 2. "A Square Deal for All and No Railroading": Labour and Politics in Brandon 1900-1920 Tom Mitchell 61 3. From the Social Gospel to "the Plain Bread of Leninism": A.E. Smith's Journey to the Left in the Epoch of Reaction After World War I Tom Mitchell 85 4. Brandon's "Revolutionary Forkins" Errol Black 114 Part II Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations 5. 1919: Labour and Industrial Relations in the Wheat City in the Year of the General Strike Tom Mitchell 145 6. "We Must Stand Fast for the Sake of Our Profession": Teachers, Collective bargaining, and the Brandon Schools Controversy of 1922 Tom Mitchell 164 7. 25 Cents an Hour; 48 Hours a Week; More Toilets; Less Cats — The Labour Struggles of the "Girls" at the A.E. Mckenzie Company in Brandon Errol Black 188 Part III Shaping a Working-Class Culture 8. "To Rouse the Workers from Apathy and Indifferance": The Educational Dimension of Unionist and Political Practices in Brandon 1900-1920 Tom Mitchell and Rosa del C. Bruno-Jofr<§ 221 9. The Making of the East End Community Club Errol Black and Tom Black 247 Bibliography 267 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE GENESIS OF THIS BOOK dates from 1997 when the Manitoba Labour Education Centre, the education wing of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, expressed an interest in publishing this collection of papers. The elimination of funding opportunities under a government averse to popular access to the history of working people in Manitoba derailed the project. The publication of these papers by the Canadian Committee on Labour History (CCLH) was made possible only with the support of Gregory Kealey, James Naylor, and the CCLH. The authors are deeply appreciative. The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of a number of individuals and organizations to the production of this book. Joan Thiessen, Annelie Baerg, Maxine Sobkow, and Janice Mahoney of the Faculty of Arts Secretarial Office and Anita Allan and Colette Janzen in Student Services at Brandon University provided vital clerical support in assembling the various papers contained in the collection. Randa Stewart assisted in preparing the manuscript for publication. The contribution of the Brandon University Research Fund to the preparation of a number of these papers is gratefully acknowledged. Similarly, the authors express particular thanks to Terry Kennedy, Execu• tive Director, and the Board members of the Manitoba Labour Education Centre for their support, and to Doug Smith for his unobtrusive yet important contribution to this publication. Tom Mitchell gratefully acknow• ledges the permission of Dr. Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Jofre of the University of Manitoba to include in the collection a paperjoindy written with her on workers' education in Brandon. Those who undertake the solitary work of writing depend on the support and indulgence of their spouses and children. We gratefully acknowledge these contributions. In a similar spirit, acknowledgments of information, ideas, and critical perspectives provided by colleagues appear throughout the collection. Of course we assume sole responsibility for the deficiencies of the papers that follow. Nearly all of the chapters of this book have been published previously and are reprinted here with the permission of the journals in which they originally appeared. "Labour in Brandon Civic Politics: A Long View by Errol Black and Tom Black" and Tom Mitchell's "1919: Labour and Industrial Relations in the Wheat City in the Year of the General Strike" appeared initially in Manitoba History in Number 23, Spring 1992 and Number 17, Spring 1989 respectively and are published here with the permission of Manitoba History. "25 Cents an Hour; 48 Hours a Week; More Toilets; Less Cats — The Labour Struggles of the 'Girls' at the A.E. Mckenzie Company in Brandon," and "Brandon's 'Revolutionary Fork- ins'," both written by Errol Black, appeared in Prairie Forum in 1992 and 1995 respectively. '"A Square Deal for All and No Railroading': Labour and Politics in Brandon 1900-1920," written by Tom Mitchell is reproduced courtesy of the Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina. Tom Mitchell's '"From the Social Gospel to the Plain Bread of Leninism': A.E. Smith's Journey to the Left in the Epoch of Reaction After World War I," and Errol and Tom Black's "The Making of the East End Community Club," which first appeared in Labour/Le Travail in the spring of 1994 and the fall 1984 respectively are reprinted with the permission of the Canadian Committee on Labour History. Similarly, '"We Must Stand Fast for the Sake of Our Profession': Teachers, Collective Bargaining, and the Brandon Schools Controversy of 1922" which first appeared in theJournal of Canadian Studies and is published with the permission of the Journal. Finally, '"To Rouse the Workers from Apathy and Indifference': The Educational Di• mension of Unionist and Political Practices in Brandon 1900-1920" written by Tom Mitchell and Rosa del C. Bruno-Jofre first appeared in Rosa del C. Bruno-Jofre, ed., Issues In the History of Education in Manitoba — From the Construction ofthe Common School to the Politics of Voices published by the Edwin Mellen Press (1993) and is published with the permission of the Edwin Mellen Press. This book is dedicated to our parents, Tom and Roberta Black and Tom and Ina Mitchell, and to the working people of Brandon past, present, and future Introduction Errol Black and Tom Mitchell "What can an innovatory class oppose to this formidable complex of trenches and fortifications of the dominant class?" Antonio Gramsci ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON in late June 1994, a few hundred men and women paraded behind a large labour banner hoisted aloft as the proces• sion traveled from McTavish Avenue and Sixth Street in the center of Brandon along Victoria Avenue to Rideau Park in the city's East end. At the park, speeches given in 1919 — and recorded for posterity by agents of the Northwest Mounted Police — were delivered once again to enthusiastic applause. Hot dogs and coffee followed. The occasion was a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1919 labour revolt and the associated sympa• thetic strike in Brandon. Such celebrations are a rare thing in Brandon. Conflict, social division, struggle, and domination are not conveyed or probed readily in the vocabulary and inflection of the boosterism that dominates much of the public discourse of the city. Not surprisingly, the principal academic history of Brandon portrays the city as a centre of political conservatism and social tranquillity occupied by a largely undiffer• entiated populace loyal through good times and bad to a benevolent business and professional elite.2 This is a history that, perhaps uncon• sciously, naturalizes Brandon's social order while disclosing litde interest in scrutinizing "the particularity and fragility of its seemingly neutral and timeless social forms."3 Brandon was, of course, a product of the historic expansion of Europe's legacy of possessive individualism and market relations across the Canadian 1 Derek Boothman, ed., Antonio Gramsci - Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Minneapolis 1995), 157. See for example W. Leland Clark, Brandon Politics and Politician ( Brandon 1982). 3 Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford 1991), 3. 12 A Square Deal For All West after 1870. While this was a place of new opportunity for those with capital, it was no equalitarian frontier. Deference to authority, respect for hierarchy, and acceptance of subordination were fundamental assumptions of the new order. While such relations may have been conveyed originally in a vocabulary of paternalism, obligation, and loyalty, the existence of class and class relations was taken for granted. Class, as E.P. Thompson has argued, is not a structure but a continuing and evolving relationship: in Thompson's words "class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs."5 Of course, the experi• ence of class is not confined to the subjectivity of men — class is an experience and event that shapes — albeit variously — the subjectivities of men, women, and children. The papers in this collection are unabashedly about reconstructing and disclosing aspects of the history of class and class relations in Brandon. In particular, they examine the history of working- class labour and political organizations in the city.