The walls of solidarity: The mainstream Canadian labour movement and immigration policy, 1872 to the early 1930s

This thesis explores the approach of Canadian mainstream labour leaders to immigration from the 1870s to the early 1930s. Drawing mainly on records of national labour congresses and the labour press, it shows that with few exceptions, advocating a restrictive and racially discriminatory policy was a top priority for Canadian labour. According to unionists, large-scale immigration increased competition in the labour market and threatened the social, moral and medical vitality of Canadian communities.;A central theme is labour's portrayal of different immigrant groups. Asians, and to a lesser extent southern and eastern Europeans, were presented as spreaders of vice and violence in Canadian cities and inherently “degraded” workers who presented “unfair competition” to Canadian workers. These immigrants were made into embodiments of labour's anxieties about industrial capitalism and represented as “others” in contrast to which labour leaders defined themselves and their movement. Labour also vociferously denounced the migration of British paupers and disadvantaged children. However, unionists consistently professed support for the “right” kind of immigration, which they usually defined as British people who paid their own way to Canada, and sometimes as settlers for Canada's vacant lands.;Labour also devoted much attention to the business of immigration promotion. A primary complaint about immigration was that most of it was artificial, that is, less the result of the “spontaneous movement of peoples” than the manipulations of shady promoters backed by business interests and governments that sought new supplies of exploitable labour. Union leaders insisted that both Canadian workers and the immigrants themselves were victims of these manipulations. Labour regularly expressed sympathy for many suffering immigrants, especially those who came from “preferred” countries only to find few of the opportunities they were promised in the Dominion.;Changes in the philosophy and composition of the mainstream labour movement, and in the economic and social context, were clearly reflected in its approach to immigration policy. Immigration was a crucial part of the producer ideology of the Toronto labour establishment of the 1870s, of the Knights of Labor's challenge to industrial capitalists, and of the land-reform ideology embraced by unionists for most of this period.