51. THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN CANADA. In Canada, as elsewhere, the labor movement has been shaped by political and economic environment. The presence of the French in Quebec has been an important factor. The existence of free land and the large part played by transportation and construction trades in a country of great distances and under rapid development are others.
The history of organized labor in Canada is in the main that of a series of outposts of the larger movements of Great Britain and the United States. The legislative aims of Cana dian labor have been derived largely from the United Kingdom, but the working mechanism of trade unionism has come almost entirely, and especially in recent years, from the United States. Few data on the subject prior to Con federation (1867) exist. The newness of the country and the lack of industrial population were against organization. There were °labor circles,' so-called, in the province of Quebec as as 1825. In 1827 a printers' organiza tion in the city of Quebec took cognizance of wages and cared for its sick. A similar union among the printers of York was recorded when that municipality became the of Toronto in 1834. The larger seaports, being the locali ties in closest touch with Great Britain, were the first to develop trade unionism. Prior to 1850, however, the movement was negligible. The railway and land °boom* of 1850-54 brought important changes, especially in Ontario, and there were strikes of printers, shoemakers and molders at Toronto in the latter year. The Typographical Union of the United States crossed into Canada in the sixties. But it was not until 1872, and the winning of a celebrated conspiracy trial arising out of a strike of printers at Toronto, and the passing by the Dominion government of °An Act re specting Unions," which repealed the harsh measures previously in effect against as sociations of employees (an echo of the repeal of the Combination Laws of England), that the labor movement had its real birth in Canada. In that year, which was the apex of a period of great industrial and commercial prosperity, the first general assembly of Canadian labor met at Toronto. It was attended by the representa
tives of 31 unions, though there were 70 unions in existence by that time in Ontario alone. The organization with some initial successes to its credit in securing legislation in the province of Ontario waned with the depression which fol lowed the panic of 1873, and disappeared en tirely three years later. In 1883. under more direct encouragement and support from the unions of the United States, the attempt to found a central labor body in Canada was re peated, this time with permanent success, and after 1886 °The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada' secured a firm place among Cana dian institutions, holding annual meetings and consistently increasing in strength and influence ever since. Since 1900 alone the increase in the membership of the Congress and its adhering bodies has been tenfold.
The constitution and general position within the Canadian labor movement of the Trades and Labor Congress as it exists to-day is of considerable significance and interest. From the outset, as already remarked, the typi cal local trade union in Canada has been a branch of a large °craft° organization having its headquarters in the United States. Even where the parent body is British, the immediate affiliation has usually been from a continental head office situated in the United States. Canadian trade unionism, accordingly, has reflected rather accurately the conflicts and gen eral fortunes of the unions of the neighboring republic. The Congress is in effect an organi zation on the federal principle of the Canadian members of the general international labor movement, for the purpose primarily of direct ing public opinion and influencing legislation in the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of the several provinces, a function which obviously a foreign organization could not ade quately perform. The Congress accordingly has always been closely allied with the federated bodies of the United States, deriving its revenues not only from its own members but by grant from the federal head bodies whose work it carries out in Canadian territory.