0:00

Hey, everybody. Before we get started today, we

0:02

have a cool announcement to make. We are

0:04

going to be in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

0:06

for a live show on June twenty nine,

0:09

nineteen. That is part of Great Conversations

0:11

at Gettysburg. That is a whole

0:14

day of programming. Our part is at four

0:16

pm when we will be doing Fearless, Feisty

0:18

and Unflagging the Women of Gettysburg.

0:21

You can find out more information about this by

0:23

coming to our website clicking in

0:26

the menu where it says live shows, or

0:28

just go to Missed in History dot com

0:30

slash shows Again. That's June

0:32

twenty nine, nineteen in Gettysburg.

0:37

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class

0:39

the production of I Heart Radios How Stuff

0:42

Works. Hello,

0:48

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy

0:50

Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Holly,

0:53

We've had kind of a run of nineteen

0:55

nineteen episodes recently. You know, we did

0:57

not plan that. It just keeps happening. Yeah,

1:00

we had a collection of of centennials

1:03

slash coincidences. We have one

1:05

more. I think this is the last, at least in terms

1:07

of what I have on my plate, like this is

1:09

the last nine nine thing for a bit,

1:11

I mean no promises, I don't know. I'll

1:14

sign out halfway through a thing that it's related to

1:16

nineteen nineteen and then be like, well, here we go.

1:19

So we said. We've gotten

1:21

several listener requests for the center over the

1:23

last few months as well, including from

1:25

Adrian, Donna and Sheina. And this one

1:27

is the Winnipeg General Strike of nineteen

1:30

nineteen. It has some things in

1:32

common with last month's episode on the Limerick

1:34

Soviet Some of the context is similar.

1:37

Both things involve strikes that basically

1:40

shut down a whole city, But otherwise these two events

1:42

have a lot of differences both and how they progressed

1:45

and then their impact on their respective

1:47

countries. So even though we just talked about a strike,

1:50

they're very different stories. In the wake

1:52

of World War One, Canada was facing

1:54

many of the same issues that have come up in

1:56

our other recent nineteen nineteen episodes.

1:59

During the war, or the cost of living had risen

2:01

dramatically as much as seventy in

2:04

some parts of the country. Wages

2:06

had risen by more like ten to fifteen percent,

2:09

so working people were facing huge

2:11

financial difficulties. Most

2:13

working people weren't making enough money to pay

2:15

for food for their families, let alone

2:17

meeting their other basic needs. On

2:20

top of all that, as the military was demobilized

2:22

after the war, soldiers and sailors were

2:24

returning home just as wartime

2:26

industries were setting down. This was happening in other

2:29

parts of the world too. Unemployment

2:31

was a huge problem, and there wasn't

2:33

a lot of transition support for these returning

2:35

veterans when they were trying to re enter civilian

2:38

life, often without being able to find a

2:40

job. As was happening in the United

2:42

States, Canada was also in the middle

2:45

of a red scare following the nineteen seventeen

2:47

Russian Revolution. It was a climate

2:49

of suspicion and fear of Bolshevism

2:52

and communism. These fears weren't

2:54

just a reaction to the revolution, though, they

2:56

were also a response to changing patterns

2:58

of immigration. These changes

3:00

were happening in much of the country, but since

3:03

today's episode is about events in Winnipeg,

3:05

Manitoba, we are going to focus on

3:07

that part of it before them. At eighteen

3:09

hundreds, most Europeans in Manitoba

3:12

were French. French Canadians became

3:14

a minority in Manitoba in the eighteen

3:16

seventies and eighteen eighties, as large

3:19

numbers of people of British ancestry

3:21

arrived from Britain as well as from other

3:23

parts of Canada, particularly Ontario,

3:26

which is the province next door. But

3:28

in the nineteen hundreds and nineteen teens,

3:31

more and more people started immigrating

3:33

to Canada, and specifically to Manitoba,

3:35

from Russia and Eastern Europe. The

3:37

population of Winnipeg sword to about

3:40

one hundred ninety thousand people, making

3:42

it Canada's third largest city, with

3:44

a significant population of Slavic

3:46

and Jewish immigrants. These

3:48

shifting demographics sparked a deep

3:50

sense of racism and resentment among

3:53

Anglo Canadians, who feared

3:55

these immigrants weren't assimilating into British

3:57

Canadian society, and we're bringing

3:59

Bolshevis them and Communism to Canada

4:01

with them. Slavic and Jewish immigrants

4:04

definitely weren't the only people facing

4:06

discrimination and racism in Winnipeg.

4:08

In nineteen nineteen, the region's

4:10

first nation's population had been forced

4:12

onto reserves under a series of treaties

4:15

and laws, including the Indian Act of eighteen

4:17

seventy six. These were meant

4:19

to eradicate First Nations cultures

4:21

and to force assimilation into European

4:24

Canadian and particularly Anglo

4:26

Canadian society. These laws

4:28

did not apply to the Mate, who were

4:30

people of both European and Indigenous

4:32

ancestry, and Winnipeg had

4:34

a significant Metti population. Many

4:37

lived in the outer edge of southwest Winnipeg

4:40

in a community known as Rooster Town. The

4:42

origins of that particular name are not clear,

4:45

but before nineteen nineteen, many of Winnipeg's

4:47

Metti population worked delivering water

4:50

door to door. But early that

4:52

year, construction was finished on an

4:54

aqueduct that connected Winnipeg to Shoal

4:56

Lake, providing the city with a new supply

4:59

of fresh water. But Shoal Lake

5:01

was in a a Shnabe territory, so

5:03

the completion of this aqueduct

5:05

was delivering water to Winnipeg, but

5:07

it was doing so by taking water from

5:10

the an a Shnabe, specifically

5:12

from the Shoal Lake forty Reserve, who were

5:14

not really consulted or even

5:16

considered during this process, and this

5:18

is something that has never been resolved.

5:21

The aqueducts construction created

5:23

what was basically an artificial island,

5:25

so Shoal Lake forty is literally

5:27

surrounded by Winnipeg's supply of

5:29

fresh water, but has been under a

5:32

boil order for its own water for more

5:34

than twenty years. The aqueducts

5:36

completion also put much of Winnipeg's

5:38

Mayti population out of work, and there

5:40

were few other industries open to them.

5:43

All of this was underpinning the Winnipeg

5:45

General Strike of nineteen nineteen, although

5:48

on its surface, the strike started out as

5:50

a simple labor dispute. During

5:53

the nineteen teens, many of Canada's industries

5:55

were starting to unionize and union membership

5:58

was growing dramatically, but this

6:00

process was really inconsistent from one

6:02

industry to another, and even in

6:04

different parts of the same industry.

6:06

By the end of World War One, workers in some

6:09

industries had formed unions, but those

6:11

unions were not recognized yet. Others

6:13

had formed unions that were recognized

6:15

and had negotiated contracts for their members,

6:18

but hadn't been as successful as they had hoped

6:20

for getting terms that they wanted. The

6:23

nature of the unions themselves had

6:25

also started to shift. Most of

6:27

Canada's first unions were craft

6:29

unions, and they were connected to one specific

6:32

trade. Members of the unions all

6:34

did the same essential job, and the union's

6:36

focus was on workplace issues that were

6:38

very specific to its members and their craft.

6:41

But by the late nineteen teens, a lot of industries

6:44

were shifting over to an industrial union

6:46

model, where, for example, everyone

6:48

who worked for the railroad was part of a

6:50

railroad workers union, regardless

6:53

of exactly what type of work they were doing

6:55

for the railroad. As a general trend,

6:57

industrial unions were more focused on politics

7:00

than craft unions were. Both

7:02

types of unions might vote to strike over

7:04

things like pay or working conditions,

7:07

but industrial unions also tried to get

7:09

members or sympathetic people into the

7:11

government to change the laws that affected

7:13

their workplaces and industries. During

7:16

the First World War, most Canadians

7:18

had considered it unpatriotic for workers

7:21

to go on strike, and then in the later

7:23

part of the war, an order in Council prohibited

7:26

workers from striking. Once

7:28

the war was over, though, and that ordering

7:30

council was nullified, things started

7:32

to change. More unions started

7:34

using strikes as a tool to try to improve

7:37

their pay and working conditions, but even

7:39

so, the victories tended to be really

7:41

small. A successful strike

7:43

might involve a wage increase of just a

7:45

few pennies, and this wasn't unique

7:48

to Canada or to nineteen nineteen.

7:50

It was part of a pattern in many parts of the

7:53

world, both before and after nineteen

7:55

nineteen. In nineteen eighteen,

7:57

for example, a partial general strike in

7:59

Winnipeg secured higher wages for the

8:01

members of four civic unions.

8:04

Winnipeg nine strike started

8:06

with its metal and building workers.

8:08

Both of these industries had lots of

8:10

small unions that had established councils

8:13

to try to represent all of them together.

8:15

These were the Building Trades Council and the

8:18

Metal Trades Council. The

8:20

idea was that the unions had more bargaining

8:22

power than workers did individually.

8:24

But then these councils had more bargaining

8:26

power than the individual unions did

8:29

if they were trying to negotiate separately.

8:31

But the metal and building industries had nearly

8:33

opposite responses to this attempt

8:36

to collectively bargain. The Builders

8:38

Exchange was open to the idea of negotiating

8:40

with the Building Trades Council. Negotiating

8:43

with all the builders unions at once seemed

8:45

like an efficient way to get one contract in

8:48

place that applied to everyone. But

8:50

even though the Builders Exchange was expecting

8:52

a post war housing boom, it didn't

8:55

think it could meet the Building Trades Councils

8:57

demands for better pay. Meanwhile,

8:59

when of PEG's three biggest metal working

9:01

companies were Manitoba Bridge and Iron

9:04

Works, the Vulcan Iron Works, and

9:06

the Dominion Bridge Company, these

9:08

were together known as the Big Three. While

9:11

the Builders Exchange was expecting to

9:13

get more work after the war, a lot

9:15

of the metal production had been tied to wartime

9:17

industries that were being shut down, So the

9:20

Big Three weren't really open to negotiating

9:22

with the entire Metal Trades Council

9:25

at once. They thought they would get better terms

9:27

by working with the nineteen member

9:29

unions individually. They

9:31

also sort of seemed more interested in

9:34

saying that they supported workers

9:36

rights to collectively bargain than in actually

9:39

recognizing in bargaining with the unions.

9:41

People felt like they were getting a lot of lip service

9:44

from them. On May one,

9:46

the Building Trades Council voted to go on

9:48

strike, having been unsuccessful

9:50

in their negotiations for higher wages.

9:53

The next day, the members of the Metal Trades Council

9:56

walked off the job as well, not only

9:58

because they wanted better pay, A forty hour

10:00

work week, but also because they wanted

10:02

the Big Three to recognize the Metal Trades

10:05

Council as their collective bargaining unit.

10:07

These weren't the only workers voting to

10:09

strike. Winnipeg street car workers

10:12

voted to strike at about the same time, although

10:14

their strike didn't start immediately, and

10:16

then in mid May, workers and other

10:19

industries throughout the city joined the

10:21

building and metal workers in a sympathetic

10:23

strike. And we'll talk more about that after

10:25

a sponsor break.

10:33

The Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council,

10:35

or w TLC, is a labor council

10:37

that represents the whole collection of member unions,

10:40

and it still exists today. On

10:42

May six, the w TLC

10:45

pulled its members about whether to join

10:47

the building and Metal unions in a sympathetic

10:49

strike, and the result was an overwhelming

10:52

yes, with more than eleven thousand

10:54

people voting in favor of going on strike

10:56

and fewer than six hundred voting now.

10:59

People voting yes generally wanted to

11:01

support the striking building and metal workers

11:03

and to reinforce the idea of collective

11:06

bargaining in Winnipeg. People

11:08

voting no did so for a number of reasons.

11:11

Some thought that a strike wasn't necessary

11:13

in this case. Others were in lower

11:15

paying industries and didn't think they should

11:17

have to go without income to support people

11:19

who were at the higher end of the pace gale.

11:22

For Winnipeg's unionized workers, the

11:24

general strike began at eleven am

11:27

on May fifteen. That was the official

11:29

start time, although some people were

11:31

striking earlier than that. Some of the first

11:33

workers to walk out were the switchboard

11:35

operators, also known as the Hello Girls.

11:38

They clocked out at the end of their shift at seven

11:40

am, and the next shift didn't come on

11:42

to replace them. Also among

11:45

the first to walk out where the bread and cake

11:47

workers, which was another largely female

11:49

occupation with shifts that ended in the very

11:51

early morning hours. The sympathetic

11:53

strike included both public and private

11:56

employees. Public employees

11:58

included police and firefighters, postal

12:01

workers, utility workers. Private

12:03

employees included people who worked in factories

12:05

and shops and in transportation.

12:08

About thirty thousand workers went on strike,

12:10

and about half of those participating did so

12:13

even though they weren't in a union. This

12:16

brought the entire city to an almost

12:18

immediate stand still. A strike

12:20

committee was also established to manage the

12:22

strike itself and to keep essential services

12:25

running as the strike was going on. It's

12:28

fifty three members were elected

12:30

from each of the w TLC's member unions.

12:33

Two of the committee were women. Meanwhile,

12:36

Winnipeg's business and civic leaders formed

12:38

the Citizens Committee of one thousand

12:40

to both oppose the strike and

12:42

to recruit people to replace the striking

12:45

workers and essential industries. The

12:47

Citizens Committee was extremely secretive,

12:49

and it wasn't always clear who was and wasn't

12:52

a member, and which efforts they were organizing

12:54

and which were being handled by other people. In

12:57

general, though many of its members came from

13:00

Winnipeg Board of Trade, the Winnipeg

13:02

branch of the Canadian Manufacturers Association,

13:05

and the Manitoba Bar Association.

13:07

Shortly after the strike started, the Citizens

13:10

Committee, the Strike Committee, and representatives

13:12

from the Winnipeg government all met to try

13:14

to work out a plan to keep things like the switchboards

13:17

and the water system, and milk and

13:19

bread delivery and firefighting

13:21

operational. The result

13:24

was an agreement that these types of services

13:26

could continue to operate with a permit

13:28

that was issued by the Strike Committee.

13:31

This included things like the milk delivery

13:33

trucks having placards in the front

13:35

that they were quote permitted by authority

13:38

of the Strike Committee, very similar

13:40

to some of the businesses during the Limerick strike

13:42

we talked about exactly. Here's an explanation

13:45

published by William Ivan's in the Western

13:47

Labor News on May seventeen. It

13:49

ran under the headline why some industries

13:52

are running, and it read

13:54

quote theaters and picture shows are running

13:57

under strike permit so that the worker can

13:59

keep off this. Treats, milk and bread

14:01

concerns are running under permits to feed the

14:03

people. Hospitals are given

14:05

permits so that the sick may not suffer. Water

14:09

is kept at low pressure rather than cut off,

14:11

so that the workers shall be able to get it. Light

14:14

is supplied for the same reason. So

14:16

it is with all these industries that work under

14:18

permit of the strike Committee. They are

14:20

supplying the prime necessities of life

14:22

to the workers so that the fight may be carried

14:24

on until it is one. All

14:26

these concerns are organized fully and

14:29

could be stopped at a minute's notice, but

14:31

for the present the Strike Committee believes

14:33

that it is better to let them run, hence

14:36

its order for them to stay on the job under

14:38

permit. The Citizens Committee

14:40

and the Winnipeg government were deeply

14:42

opposed to the idea that essential services

14:45

were being permitted by the strike Committee.

14:47

That seems too much like the strike Committee

14:50

had just decided when and how to

14:52

run the city. So the Citizens

14:54

Committee and the government started focusing their attention

14:56

on breaking the strike and on getting people

14:59

back to work as soon as possible. To

15:01

that end, the Citizens Committee organized

15:03

its own volunteers to replace striking

15:05

workers. This included six

15:07

hundred people to operate the telephone and telegraph

15:10

exchange, a volunteer fire department,

15:13

and a volunteer security team to

15:15

guard the fireboxes so that the fire department

15:17

wasn't driven to exhaustion by false

15:19

alarms. Some of the false

15:21

alarms were pranks, and others were meant to

15:23

intentionally harass the strike breakers.

15:26

The Citizens Committee also brought in volunteers

15:29

to pump gas at the gas stations

15:31

and to run the pumps in the municipal water system.

15:34

The Strike Committee announced all these volunteer

15:36

groups as scabs. But there

15:38

was a whole other layer to all of

15:40

this besides just the striking workers

15:42

on one side and the Citizens Committee

15:45

in the city government on the other side. The

15:47

government and the Citizens Committee also

15:49

became absolutely convinced that this

15:51

was not a simple labor dispute at

15:54

all. Instead, they believed

15:56

that radical communists and Bolshevists

15:58

had infiltrated Winnipeg's labor movement,

16:01

and that this was a coordinated effort

16:03

to violently overthrow the government of Winnipeg

16:05

and replace it with a Communist dictatorship.

16:08

This idea was there right from the beginning

16:10

and was part of the reporting in most, but

16:12

not all, of the newspapers covering the story.

16:15

For example, on May sixteenth, the Vancouver

16:18

World ran a headline that read Soviet

16:20

government is in control in Winnipeg.

16:23

On mayo, in the Winnipeg Citizen

16:25

quote the Red Element which planned

16:27

to bring about anarchy in this country and

16:29

on the ruins build a tyranny

16:31

is made up of a small junta of avowed

16:34

Bolshevists who have succeeded by

16:36

persistent scheming in taking

16:38

the place of the same leaders with an

16:40

almost solid foreign born following.

16:43

Also connected to all of this was the

16:45

idea of one big union which

16:47

would represent all the workers in Western

16:49

Canada. This was a real idea.

16:52

The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada had

16:54

discussed it at the Western Labor Conferences

16:57

on March thirteenth of nineteen nineteen. But

16:59

the One Big Union didn't exist

17:02

yet, and it would not formally form in

17:04

Calgary until June fourth, at which point

17:06

the strike was well under way. Even

17:09

so, there was this widespread perception

17:11

that the One Big Union was behind

17:14

the strike and that all of it was

17:16

an alien plot. They

17:19

came to this conclusion even though that union didn't

17:21

exist yet. It did not help that

17:23

the One Big Union idea was also connected

17:26

to the Industrial Workers of the World ak

17:28

the Wobblies, which were so widely

17:31

reviled and were the targets and producers

17:33

of so much propaganda that it is

17:35

still hard to tell what was real and what

17:37

wasn't. We talked about them in our

17:39

Bisbee deportation episode. Just

17:42

ignore the times that we accidentally called them

17:44

the International Workers of the World. You

17:46

know, that was my fault. Sometimes these things happened.

17:51

To be clear, there were certainly Bolshevists

17:54

and Communists among Winnipeg's labor

17:56

unions and among the striking workers.

17:58

The striking workers were not a modelith.

18:01

Some wanted to strike for better pay

18:03

and working conditions and recognition

18:05

of their labor unions and labor councils.

18:07

Others were certainly a lot more radical

18:10

and thought that capitalism itself needed

18:12

to be replaced with some other, more

18:14

equitable system, and some of

18:16

the language that was used among the strikers

18:19

did praise the Russian Revolution and

18:21

favored a more socialist or communist

18:23

economic system. But there is no

18:25

indication at all that

18:27

this strike was part of a huge conspiracy

18:29

to violently overthrow the Canadian government.

18:32

Even so, the government and the Citizens

18:34

Committee heavily pushed the idea

18:36

that this whole thing was the result

18:38

of Soviet and Communist influences.

18:41

They insisted that aliens were to blame

18:44

and characterized Winnipeg's growing Slavic

18:46

and Jewish immigrant community as having

18:48

taken over Winnipeg's labor. They

18:50

maintained this position in spite of the fact

18:53

that almost all of the prominent organizers

18:55

of the strike itself were people who had immigrated

18:58

to Canada from Britain,

19:01

not from somewhere else in Europe. In fact,

19:03

there were no new immigrants from

19:05

Eastern or Central Europe on the strike

19:07

committee at all. The

19:10

Government and the Citizens Committee also

19:12

maintained this position in spite of the fact that

19:14

As many as eighty five percent

19:16

of Winnipeg's returning veterans

19:19

were in support of the strike, and

19:21

veterans became increasingly visible

19:23

among the strikers As time went on. This

19:25

ultimately became violent, and we're

19:27

going to talk about that. After we first paused

19:29

for a little sponsor break,

19:38

the Winnipeg General Strike managed to unite

19:40

workers all through Winnipeg, largely

19:42

cutting across gender, ethnicity, and economic

19:45

status. Its size and

19:47

its scope were unprecedented in Canadian

19:49

history. But at the same time, the government

19:51

of Manitoba didn't really want to get

19:54

involved in the early days of the strike. It

19:56

left it largely up to the Strike Committee

19:58

and the Citizens Committee of thousands and the city

20:01

government to try to work it out among themselves.

20:03

As we noted earlier, the strike began

20:05

on May fifteen. The Winnipeg

20:08

Tribune joined the strike, returning to work

20:10

on May on, the

20:13

postal workers were ordered to return

20:15

to their posts but refused. On

20:17

May nine, about two thousand veterans

20:20

marched to the capitol to demand that

20:22

employers be required to recognize

20:24

collective bargaining rights. Two

20:26

days later, ten thousand people made

20:28

the same march to hear Premier Tobias Norris's

20:31

response, but he told them that

20:33

was not within his control. On

20:36

June fourth, a different group of veterans,

20:38

ones who opposed the strike, marched

20:40

to the capitol to offer their assistance to

20:42

restore order. On June

20:45

five, there were two different veterans

20:47

parades, one opposing the strike

20:49

and one supporting it, and that same

20:51

day the province banned parades.

20:54

There are a lot of parades. It

20:56

was a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of march.

20:58

I mean, the same things that you see and other strikes were all

21:00

happening here. There was a lot of marching, a lot of demonstrating,

21:03

all of that going on through all of this, and although

21:05

the government of Manitoba was reluctant

21:08

to get involved, the federal government

21:10

was concerned that the strike might spread

21:12

to other cities. So in early

21:15

June, Gideon Robertson, who was Minister

21:17

of Labor, and Arthur Meighen, who was

21:19

Minister of the Interior and acting Minister

21:21

of Justice, came to Winnipeg to

21:23

assess this situation. But they

21:26

only met with the Citizens Committee of

21:28

one thousand. They did not meet with the Strike

21:31

Committee or any of the strikers. Through

21:33

all of this there were lectures, demonstrations,

21:35

educational events in a coordinated

21:38

outreach program largely staffed by

21:40

women to distribute food and supplies

21:43

to the striking workers. As we noted

21:45

earlier, most of the leaders of the strike

21:47

were immigrants to Canada from

21:49

Britain, and on June six, Canada

21:52

changed the terms of the Immigration Act

21:54

to allow British born immigrants to

21:56

Canada and naturalized

21:58

Canadian citizens to be deported

22:01

if they were charged with sedition. Parliament

22:03

also expanded the definition

22:05

of sedition in the Criminal Code to also

22:08

make the definition more abroad, as well

22:10

as include guilt by association. On

22:13

June nine, Winnipeg's police force was

22:15

ordered to return to work, denounced

22:17

the strike, and signed loyalty oaths.

22:20

They refused, and the city fired

22:22

them all, replacing them with a force

22:24

of eighteen hundred special constables

22:26

known as Specials, most of whom were

22:28

affiliated with the Citizens Committee of a

22:30

thousand. They were armed with

22:32

clubs and received a salary that was higher

22:35

than the police officers they were replacing.

22:37

A day later, a riot broke out after

22:40

Specials on horseback armed

22:42

with clubs, charged into a demonstration.

22:45

On June twelve, a mass gathering

22:47

in Victoria Park was nicknamed Ladies

22:49

Day for its focus on working women. By

22:52

that point, workers and other parts of Canada

22:54

were starting to strike in support of the workers

22:56

in Winnipeg as well. On June

22:58

fourteenth, the Vancouver Son scheduled

23:01

an editorial titled No Revolution

23:03

in Vancouver that prompted

23:05

that papers workers to walk off the job for

23:08

four days. Canada's railroad

23:10

unions hadn't participated in the strike,

23:12

and in early June they had offered to act

23:15

as mediators. Railroad

23:17

workers union structure was very similar

23:19

to what the building workers had and what the

23:21

metal workers wanted. Individual

23:24

unions rolled up into the Federated trades,

23:26

and then the federated trades rolled

23:29

up to an organization called Division four.

23:31

Division four appointed the Negotiating

23:34

Committee, which negotiated for all the

23:36

member unions. On June sixteenth,

23:38

after ongoing negotiations through

23:40

the railroad unions, the Big three

23:43

metal companies agreed to negotiate

23:45

with the separate metal working unions, but

23:47

they made no mention of the Metal Trades Council.

23:50

They made this agreement under huge pressure

23:53

from getting In Robertson, the Minister of Labor,

23:55

who was worried that if this strike went a lot

23:57

longer, the railroad workers who

23:59

had been acting as mediators might ultimately

24:01

join it as well. Apart from

24:04

the huge impact this would have by

24:06

shutting down the railroad, if

24:08

the railroad workers joined the strike, that was

24:10

probably going to cause the strike to just spread

24:12

through the entire country, rather than having a few

24:15

isolated communities that were supporting

24:17

the strike with their own strike. The leaders of the

24:19

railroad unions who had acted as negotiators

24:21

released a statement that this was the same type

24:24

of collective bargaining that the railroad

24:26

workers enjoyed, but it really wasn't.

24:28

The reason for this about face is not entirely

24:31

clear. That the railroad unions were also

24:33

under a lot of pressure from the Minister of Labor

24:36

to get things resolved, and they feared

24:38

they might lose their own unions recognition

24:40

if they didn't bring things to a close. The

24:43

General Strike Committee was really not

24:45

satisfied with this outcome, especially

24:47

because they had not even seen the last

24:49

round of proposals during the negotiations

24:52

before this announcement came about an agreement

24:54

being reached. There was also just

24:56

a lack of clarity about exactly

24:58

how to define collective bargaining.

25:01

That was yet another layer of complexity

25:03

in this whole situation. The Big Three

25:05

was insisting that workers had collective

25:07

bargaining powers because they had agreed to

25:09

recognize the individual unions,

25:12

but the workers, or at least the

25:14

more elite among the workers, insisted

25:17

that they did not have collective bargaining

25:19

because the Big Three would not recognize the

25:21

Metal Trades Council. The strike

25:23

committee refused to call off the strike, so

25:25

in June seventeenth, the Northwest Mounted

25:28

Police, aided by specials, rated

25:30

the homes of several strike leaders and arrested

25:32

ten of the most prominent, as well as

25:34

two members of the One Big Union, which

25:37

by this point existed. Groups

25:39

of Eastern European immigrants were arrested

25:41

as well, and after the strike was over, Canada

25:44

deported waves of immigrants who were suspected

25:46

of Bolshevism or Communism.

25:49

The arrested strike committee members

25:51

were taken to Stony Mountain Penitentiary,

25:53

and they included union and labor

25:55

leaders John Queen A. Heaps,

25:57

Robert Lloyd Russell, and George arms Wrong.

26:00

Armstrong's wife, Helen, was the head

26:02

of the Women's Labor League and was one of the strike's

26:05

most visible women. She refused

26:07

to let the authorities take her husband until

26:09

she had confirmation that they actually had a warrant.

26:12

William Ivan's of the Western Labor News

26:15

was also arrested, as was Roger

26:17

E Bray, who was a former private in

26:19

the Canadian Army who had been trying to rally

26:21

support for the strike among military veterans.

26:24

Initially, the plan was to immediately

26:26

deport the British born strike leadership,

26:28

but it became clear that even people who were

26:30

opposed to the strike thought this was extreme,

26:33

so authorities charged them with seditious

26:35

conspiracy and planned to bring them

26:37

to trial. Four days after these

26:40

arrests, on June one, striking

26:42

workers held a silent parade. That

26:45

day, the city's street cars had started

26:47

running again, and the demonstrators stopped

26:49

one of the street cars and tipped it over. This

26:52

prompted the Northwest Mounted Police and the

26:54

Specials to charge into the strikers,

26:57

killing two people and injuring at least

26:59

thirty. Nearly a hundred people

27:01

were arrested. This incident was

27:04

nicknamed Bloody Saturday, and afterward

27:06

federal troops occupied the city of Winnipeg.

27:09

At this point, the strike's most vocal

27:11

and radical leadership had been arrested,

27:13

leaving more moderate people in charge,

27:16

and people began to fear that there would be more

27:18

violence and more deaths if the strike continued.

27:21

So on June,

27:23

the strike ended and the workers who had

27:25

not been fired for striking returned

27:27

to their jobs. In the end, this

27:29

strike achieved almost none of its goals.

27:32

The metal workers hours were reduced

27:34

by five per week, which was less than

27:36

the reduction they had asked for, but that was

27:38

really it. Civic employees

27:41

were also required to sign documents

27:43

attesting that they would not strike again in the future

27:45

before they were allowed to return to their jobs.

27:48

Afterward, there was a hugely bitter

27:50

divide between labor and capital. The

27:52

Citizens Committee of one thousand continued

27:55

to try to undermine labor organization long

27:57

after the strike was over. The strike

28:00

and the committee's continued work had an overall

28:02

chilling effect on labor activism immediately

28:05

afterward. In July of nineteen

28:07

nineteen, a commission was convened to investigate

28:10

what had happened during the strike. Justice

28:12

R. A. Robeson led the inquiry and

28:14

rejected the idea that it was a revolution

28:17

meant to overthrow the government. His

28:19

reports supported the idea that this was a dispute

28:22

over the issue of collective bargaining and

28:24

that the strike was not seditious in its

28:26

character. In spite of that, several

28:28

of the strikes leaders were tried for seditious

28:31

conspiracy in November of nineteen

28:33

nineteen and in the early months of nineteen

28:35

twenty, in prosecutions that were

28:37

funded by the Department of Justice under

28:39

the War Appropriation Act. Robert

28:42

Boyd Russell was convicted in December nineteen

28:44

nineteen. On March seven,

28:47

ninety six, other leaders were convicted

28:49

of seditious conspiracy. Roger

28:51

Ebray was also convicted of being

28:53

a common nuisance. That immediate

28:56

chilling effect on Canada's labor

28:58

movement started to lift as these

29:01

trials were happening. Labor leaders

29:03

were elected in both municipal and provincial

29:05

elections in nineteen nineteen and nineteen

29:07

twenty. Some of those leaders were

29:09

still incarcerated for the role in

29:12

the strike that they had played when they were elected.

29:15

The Conservative Party was defeated

29:17

in the ninety one federal election,

29:19

and the newly elected government promised labor

29:21

reforms. Provinces also

29:23

started enacting collective bargaining

29:26

legislation in the nineteen forties, with the

29:28

federal government enacting a collective Bargaining

29:30

statute in nineteen forty eight. After

29:32

being released, many of the strikes leaders

29:34

went on to be active in the labor movement and

29:37

in the government. John Queen and William

29:39

Ivans both served in the Manitoba Legislature,

29:42

and John Queen served as the Mayor of Winnipeg

29:44

for seven non consecutive terms. Abraham

29:47

Heaps was elected as a member of parliament. J.

29:50

S. Woodsworth had been charged in connection to the

29:52

strike, but those charges were later dropped.

29:55

He became a member of parliament as well. He

29:58

also helped found the Cooperative Coman Wealth

30:00

Federation, which later became the New Democratic

30:03

Party. Since this here's the hundredth

30:05

anniversary of the strike happening, there's been a lot

30:07

going on related to it in the last

30:09

few years. A monument to

30:11

the strike was unveiled at Lily Street

30:13

at Market Avenue. In that

30:16

monument is made of metal to honor

30:18

the striking metal workers. A

30:21

Bloody Saturday monument was scheduled

30:23

to be unveiled on June nineteen,

30:26

that is after we are recording this podcast.

30:28

But before the podcast is coming out, there's

30:31

also been a lot of hundredth anniversary

30:33

stuff happening in Winnipeg, including

30:35

a huge labor conference to sort

30:38

of commemorated and function

30:41

as a labor conference. Do you have

30:43

a listener mail? I do have listener

30:45

mail. I'm not sure the name of the listener who has

30:47

sent this. They didn't sign the email, but it

30:50

says I was wondering if you could provide

30:52

more context regarding

30:54

the Quakers and others that would

30:56

not have the bell rung for them that

30:58

were referenced. That was an the Samuel Peeps

31:01

episode, mainly why would

31:03

Quakers not want the bell rung and

31:05

why even we're we're ringing the bell

31:07

in the first place. I listened on the regular

31:09

and appreciate the stimulating thoughts you conjure

31:12

up the rest of the day after listening to this pod.

31:14

So thank you for this email.

31:16

So that was in the Samuel Peeps

31:18

episode and Samuel Peep's diary about

31:20

how many people had died of the plague.

31:23

He made a comment about how the number might actually

31:25

be a lot higher because of Quakers

31:28

and others who would not have the bell rung for them.

31:31

So there were bells being

31:33

rung for lots of different

31:35

reasons at this point in

31:37

London and then specifically during the plague

31:39

for multiple reasons. UM bells

31:42

would be rung at churches when deaths

31:44

were reported, and bells would also

31:46

be rung at burials. Part

31:49

of this was required by law. The idea

31:51

was that if there were these bells ringing every

31:53

time somebody died, then maybe people would

31:55

remember to take precautions

31:57

about the plague. UM. But all

32:00

of this bell ringing was happening

32:02

when people had a church

32:05

that they were part of, and we're being buried

32:07

in the churchyard, UM.

32:09

And Quakers and other people who were part

32:11

of like non conforming denominations

32:14

were generally being buried in their own graveyard

32:16

that wasn't part of a church and did not have

32:18

that church bell connected to it. So

32:21

UM, I think that's what he's referring to

32:23

in terms of the bell not being wrung usually

32:27

UM when Quakers and others were buried, that just

32:29

wasn't part of the the funeral

32:32

or the death notification. So

32:34

that has led to some um

32:37

lack of clarity in terms of the death records

32:39

from the plague because a lot of the record

32:41

keeping was being kept

32:43

through formal church channels, so

32:46

if you were part of a nonconforming

32:48

religion that did not have those church channels,

32:51

your death might not ever be formally recorded.

32:53

So thank you for that

32:55

question. If you would like to write to us

32:57

about this or anither podcast where

32:59

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33:02

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33:04

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33:09

of that. You can come to our website

33:11

which is missing history dot com and find a searchable

33:14

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33:16

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33:18

I have done together. And you can

33:21

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