The I.W.W. and the Navvies Strike of 1912
The author posed in attire typical of Edwardian-era working men. Of note is the plaid Mackinaw coat, a then relatively new item which would become a working-class mainstay for decades, and eight-panel flat-cap. The sign carried is a reproduction of an I.W.W. original.
Edmonton’s sewermen and linesmen walked off the job on September 23rd, 1912. Equal pay was their primary concern.
Earlier that year, the labour-sympathetic alderman, Joseph A. Clarke, had urged City Council to adopt a minimum wage scale for various trades — the did on March 26th, 1912. The new clause stipulated that all labourers working on City-led jobs, or those contracted by the City, would work only eight hours per day, with the option for nine at time-and-a-half at set wages.
The condition was a great one in theory and predated the provincial adoption of a minimum wage and eight-hour day by five years.[1] Enforcement, or lack thereof, proved a consistent issue, however. Those workers contracted under the City’s Street Maintenance Department, for instance, were paid according to the standard eight-hour day and the fair wage clause, while those hired by the Street Railway and Telephone Departments were said to be ignoring those provisions.
Edmonton’s teamsters went on strike to protest the issue, but were eventually subdued by promises of stricter wage-enforcement and a pay raise. Linesmen, road-workers, and sewermen were less easily swayed. They made half of what the teamsters did, and still suffered exploitation at the hands of negligent departments or malicious contractors. Further, the settlement City Council reached with teamsters — “in the face of considerable antipathy, many heated remarks, and much bantering” from Alderman Clarke — essentially overturned Edmonton’s eight-hour clause. Workers “ought to be pleased to be able to work more than eight hours a day in view of the fact that the building season is a short one,” the Mayor declared.
They weren’t. Speaking to the papers, one road-worker representative said “that as their job is only a temporary one at best, they say that it may come to an end in November, leaving them without work, what they are asking for is only a living wage, and they are fully agreed to not return to their tasks until their demands have been granted by the city.”
One-hundred-fifty men walked off the job on the morning of September 23rd. By day’s end some two-hundred-fifty were on strike marching under banners barring the rallying cry, “Come Out of the Ditch.” Ostensibly, these workers were in a good position. With winter just around the corner, their strike may have had “serious results should it assume any large proportions,” the Journal worried. Compared to their teamster brothers, however, these labourers lacked union representation and were out on their own. Almost immediately, difficulties arose surrounding organization, leadership, and creating a unified list of demands. When a strike committee finally did form on September 24th and presented its ultimatum to City Council, some aldermen practically laughed them out of their chambers. The City wouldn’t budge on the nine-hour day nor change the old pay-rate, they were told — instead they offered to pay the last hour out at forty-five cents.
The proposal was declared absolutely unsatisfactory. Gustave Larson, secretary for the local branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W. or “Wobblies”), was particularly irate:
“What do you fellows want to go [to City Council] for? Them guys sit in there an’ draw a big pay and don’t give a hoot about you fellows. You want to organize. If the city don’t want to pay you for what you want, form a big strong union. Give us a chance and we’ll tie up all the work in the whole city. Then see what they’ll do. Make those slave drivers in there come to their knees!”
The I.W.W. was new to Edmonton. Formed in 1905 as an odd-marriage between socialists, anarchists, unionists, and regular working men, it hoped to tackle the conservatism of traditional labour structures head-on. Historically, most unions were “Craft Unions,” organizations developed to protect specific craftspeople. As industrialization intensified during the mid-18th Century, fields of specialization, such as shoemaking, converted to factory production. There, wage-workers — with technical knowledge relating only to their place on the assembly-line — began supplanting trained journeymen. Craft unions thus formed to protect that field’s traditional process of production, the knowledge of certain craft skills, and maintain collective control over a specific craft within the guild system.
Because of their reactionary nature, however, craft unions proved inherently circumspect, and were more content to tinker within existing frameworks to preserve their place than undertake any radical action. They also firmly resisted the development of, and their amalgamation into, broader “Industrial Unions” which sought to organize all workers within a specific industry, regardless of that individual’s particular skills, for greater bargaining power. As Craig Heron and Steven Penfold wrote, these new all-encompassing unions stood in direct contrast to “the dignity of the respectable workingman, the wage-earning craftsman” and represented, in the craft unions’ eyes, a “new form of cheap labour that degraded their crafts.”
The Wobblies, an industrial organization, took a stand against all of that. As stated in their preamble, the union’s goal was the earth and fulness thereof, and until workers controlled everything, they wouldn’t rest. Down with the old crafts; all workers deserve a voice. Down with the boss and useless managers; let the worker dictate their own labour. Down with the eight-hour day; four-hours or nothing. Down with the old mantra “A Fair Day’s Pay For A Fair Day’s Work;” abolish the wage system altogether.
Their ideas, a synthesis of all contemporary socialist, anarchist, and syndicalist thought, were too byzantine to manifest from nothing, and the I.W.W. knew it. Reforming the status quo wouldn’t work — Capital wouldn’t allow it — so how would they achieve their paradise? The “One Big Union,” the Wobblies said. “If all workers were organized, regardless of skill or wage differentials,” Desmond Morton wrote, “then workers could control society. Otherwise, by withdrawing their services, they could bring the whole creaking edifice of [Capital] to a halt.”
Whether a workers’ nirvana could be achieved through One Big Union remains a matter of debate, but the Wobblies’ message resonated, particularly with non-English minorities. A key plank of the I.W.W.’s strategy was unionizing those left behind by traditional labour organs, such as “navvies,” the ‘unskilled’ labourers typically involved in excavation and road construction. Known as “blanket stiffs,” these men often travelled job-to-job, bedrolls slung over their shoulder and were almost exclusively non-Anglo in origin — a 1920 survey of Canadian navvies indicated that some fifty-five percent were either Slavs, Scandinavians, or Italians. Shunned by traditional craft unions, their predominantly ethnic make-up made them a frequent target for abuse and exploitation by broader English-Canadian society. Jim Selby explained:
The lack of a permanent community left most migrant workers without the mechanisms so essential for the survival of the working class during this period. Single men on the move had no families to provide the critical waged and non-waged contributions by women and children that helped workers make ends meet. For them, taking on the employer in IWW-organized job actions with other immigrant workers, regardless of ethnic background or language, was the only way forward.
The tenacity of the American union attracted many Canadians, if not for political reasons then practical ones. A reputation for “getting the goods” — particularly wage increases, shorter hours, and better working conditions — preceded the I.W.W., which, when coupled with lower-than-average dues, made it an attractive option for lower-class workers.
The I.W.W.’s first steps into Canada were in British Columbia. There, in 1906, they chartered five locals to represent lumbermen, miners and railwaymen. Their numbers swelled and by 1907 they had ten locals across the province. Building off a series of successful free speech demonstrations and a well-publicized walkout of Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern Railway workers, the Wobblies looked eastward. Although Albertan miners and agricultural labourers had begun flocking to the I.W.W., the union hoped to make inroads in that province’s two largest cities. They did just that on August 27th, 1912, forming “Edmonton Industrial Union No.82.” Gustave Larson, a svelte, well-manicured British Columbian transient, served as its temporary secretary until a professional organizer from the union’s Chicago headquarters could be called in. Until then, he would lead the I.W.W. into its baptism of fire on Edmonton streets that September.
A crew in Edmonton, about 1912, digging ditches for sewers.
Recognizing the Wobblies’ organizational capabilities, Edmonton’s discontent sewer and linesmen, on strike-leader Henry Rosenburg’s urging, allowed the I.W.W. to take the reins. After signing hundreds into their ranks, the union arranged its first big action on September 26th, 1912. That Monday morning, posters and placards raised, flat caps and jackets donned, some one-hundred-ten new Wobblies set-out to agitate at their old job sites. Singing songs all the while, their parade marched west down Jasper Avenue, where the group split into two; fifty men turned north to a sewer-dig at Seventeenth Street and Athabasca Avenue (117th Street and 102nd Avenue), while the others continued west until heading to a site at Twenty-Third and Athabasca (123rd Street and 102nd Avenue). Others still demonstrated in Edmonton’s eastend, along road-work sites on Kirkness Street (95th Street).
Almost immediately the I.W.W. met with difficulty. As they mingled with the Seventeenth Street workers, Inspector Wright of the Edmonton Police Department (E.P.D.) arrived with a cavalcade of baton-wielding constables. A moment passed until, billy-clubs swinging, they rushed the crowd. While some Wobblies and workmen dispersed, others fought, and chaos ensued. Quickly, the E.P.D. retreated when their “inability to find out which were city labourers and which I.W.W.’s” became apparent. Only one man was arrested; Gustave Larson himself. On his person was about $100 and a “large number of applications.”
Purportedly, the reason for the police’s arrival was “worker intimidation.” An unnamed foreman at the Seventeenth Street site later told the Journal that the Wobblies had barged in and explained to fourteen Ukrainians working there that “if they did not quit work immediately the agitators would watch them leading the job and beat them into submission.” It’s certainly possible, as Edmonton’s Wobblies were new and may not yet have had the discipline associated with the highly organized union. Further, the odd acts of violence conducted by the strikers were well-documented. A foreman by the name of Charles Thompson, for instance, accused a worker, Edward C. Blair, of assault after Blair demanded the removal of scab workers. Thompson refused and an argument, ending in blows, broke out between the two men — Blair pleaded guilty to the charge.
But it is hard to strike when you’re in jail, and Edmonton’s leadership recognized that. For their demonstrations, the I.W.W. stressed that its members should only “campaign against those workmen who are remaining at their jobs… in such a way as to give police no cause for interference.” Instead of threats, the Wobblies turned to education, their tried-and-true form of agitation. As Aaron Chubb wrote, “Since its inception, the IWW strategy has been to provide a movement in which workers could, as its emblem states, ‘organize, educate and emancipate’ themselves.” As Warren Caragata detailed, this generally manifested through “the Wobblies organiz[ing] marching bands that walked from one work site to another. A halt would be made and speeches delivered.” The Bulletin transcribed one address given to those still on City sites:
“We have organized the rabble, the shovel brigade, and the manual workers, all over the continent. These are the most numerous class of workmen in the world today and they do all the hard work. You may think we’re not very strong, but that is a mistake, all our work is done in secret. We have members in the labour unions themselves. We are organizing strikes all the time…”
“All the time?”
“Yes, that is our motto — to strike all the time. We will keep on striking… in the west until we get what we want.”
For the next two days, Wobblies continued their efforts around Edmonton’s job-sites, delivering speeches to old co-workers, and trying their best to convert men to the cause. By all accounts they did as they were ordered, and Chief City Engineer Loternel later admitted that no City contractors were ever “submitted to any threats or intimidation from their striking brethren or bands of the I.W.W.”
Nevertheless, as the union marched, Chief Constable A.C. Lancey, Mayor George Armstrong, and legal advisors met with affected contractors to discuss their next course of action — there and then, they decided to crush the labour rebellion. Said the Chief to reporters afterwards, “If there is one organization that we [the City] will not countenance is the Industrial Workers of the World. If any attempt is made to either parade the streets or hold meetings on the street the offenders will be promptly arrested.” The Mayor went further, declaring that “any attempt on the part of the strikers to induce workers to join them would result in somebody going to jail.” The constabulary promptly adjusted beats to better circulate their men throughout Edmonton’s core neighbourhoods and “long night sticks that have not been used in years were taken out of the vaults in [the] police station this afternoon, polished and distributed among the various policemen.”
At first, the I.W.W. wasn’t dissuaded. A “seething, excited crowd” of four hundred men met on September 27th to sing Marseillaise and discuss the arrest of Secretary Larson. “They think that putting the I.W.W. leaders in jail will break up the organization,” said one, “but I can tell you that the jails are not large enough to hold all our leaders, for every member is a leader.” Russian, German, French, and English-speakers delivered speeches for hours and by night’s end another one-hundred men had enlisted into the I.W.W.
But the overwhelming presence of the E.P.D. quickly took its toll on the strike. Detectives tailed known Wobblies everywhere, planned and impromptu demonstrations across Edmonton floundered as policemen inevitably arrived and forced strikers to disperse, and worksites became unprotestable as constables guarded their remaining labourers — in one instance “two police officers exhibited their revolvers, evidently for the purpose of making an impression,” when Wobblies arrived to agitate. The militia was also put on standby.
The last major demonstration attempted by the I.W.W. took place on September 28th, and is indicative of the troubles the union faced from the law. The Journal described:
“Singing and shouting, the gang of 80 went on Syndicate Avenue to the Norwood Boulevard, [95th Street and 111th Avenue] to Pine and Saunders [112th Avenue and 86th Street], and held a meeting at the rear of a store building that is being constructed on the rear of a lot. The police stood guard at the outside door of the building and at the conclusion of the meeting the I.W.W.’s were permitted to file out of the building in double-file. They went down a lane in the rear of Saunders Street to Alberta Avenue and Fox Street [118th Avenue and 89th Street], and thence along Fox to Spruce [114th Avenue] and back to Alberta Avenue, closely followed by the squad of policemen.
Upon the return of the members of the organization to Alberta Avenue, an attempt was made to hold a meeting on the street, but the police broke this up, and urged the men on at a fast walk. Several times during the march attempts were made to stop and hold meetings, but the police refused to allow them to stop. At Alberta Avenue the meeting was finally broken up and the I.W.W.’s scattered, and indicated their intentions of going to South Edmonton [Strathcona] this afternoon.”
By September 29th the movement lost its vitality. The next day fifty men returned to work at their old wages, looking none the better for their troubles, with another 350 following the next day. “The near approach of winter and the time when they will very likely be unable to depend upon regular employment,” the Journal hypothesized, “has apparently caused the labourers to realize that they need something in hand for that season.”
The Wobblies weren’t wholly dissuaded. As Alvin Finkle noted, the I.W.W. refused to produce a “war chest,” and purposefully kept their strikes short. “If there was no immediate victory, they simply returned to work and announced that they were ‘taking the strike to the job’ by harrying employers through slowdowns and delays at the worksite.” Edmonton’s Wobblies kept up the pressure on the streets, and in November the police were once again called out to disperse parades and raid the local’s headquarters. Nevertheless, the capital’s Industrial Workers persisted, and by the new year represented over 400 unskilled Edmontonians. Secretary Larson was, by then, released by the E.P.D.
A recession took hold later in 1913. Thousands became jobless and the I.W.W. took it upon themselves to advocate for the unemployed. They called for good-paying jobs, adequate shelter, food-tickets, and dignity. At first, Council scoffed at their demands, but the Wobblies ramped up pressure forming the Edmonton Unemployment League. The new organization represented over a thousand men, and staged parades down Jasper Avenue and sit-ins at churches and restaurants. Sleep wherever and eat wherever, the I.W.W. argued — when anyone tries to charge you, “bill the mayor.” Council eventually gave in to every one of their requests.
The action marked a high-point of Wobbly agitation in Edmonton. Not long after, the local and its Unemployment League suffered a serious blow with the arrest of its leader on a fraudulent murder charge, and Canada entered the Great War. An Order in Council later declared the Industrial Workers of the World a “subversive organization” and it effectively ceased to exist north of the 49th parallel until the 1920s.
The Wobblies would return to Edmonton in time, and establish another local in 1972, which, after various starts, stops, and reformations, remains to this day.
Cited Notes:
A provincial minimum wage was only introduced under the Factories Act, 1917. The Alberta Department of Labour subsequently described the bill as “perhaps the most comprehensive piece of labour legislation in the period up to 1917 as it affected the working conditions of more people than any other statute of its day.”
Sources:
“Re Minimum Wage Scale,” Meeting No.14, Edmonton City Council Meeting Minutes, March 26, 1912, p.4, City of Edmonton Archives,
“Preamble of the I.W.W.,” Industrial Worker: Organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, Vol.4, No.23, August 29, 1912, p.2.,
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n23-w179-aug-29-1912-IW.pdf
“Industrial Peace,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 5, 1912, p.6.
“New Locals,” Industrial Worker: Organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, Vol.4, No.25, September 12, 1912, p.3.,
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n25-w181-sep-12-1912-IW.pdf
“Local Teamsters Will Strike Monday Noon,” Edmonton Journal, September 14, 1912, p.1.
“Practically All of Local Improvement Work Tied Up by Teamsters’ Strike,” Edmonton Journal, September 16, 1912, p.1.
“Four Hundred And Thirty Teamsters Strike Today,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 16, 1912, p.2.
“All Union Teamsters Go On Strike,” Edmonton Journal, September 16, 1912, p.3.
“Teamsters Propose Agreement; Strike May Become More General,” Edmonton Journal, September 17, 1912, p.1.
“Teamsters On City Work Have Not Quit; Others On Strike,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 17, 1912, p.8.
“Teamsters’ Strike Is Called Off,” Edmonton Journal, September 18, 1912, p.1.
“Council Turns Down Teamsters,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 18, 1912, p.1.
“Teamsters Union re Minimum Wage Scale and Eight Hour Day,” Meeting No.55, Edmonton City Council Meeting Minutes, September 19, 1912, p.1, City of Edmonton Archives,
“City Is Faced With Two More Labor Strikes,” Edmonton Journal, September 23, 1912, p.1.
“Demands of City Labourers Up Before Council Tonight,” Edmonton Journal, September 24, 1912, p.1.
“200 City Labourers Lay Down Picks And Shovels And Quit,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 24, 1912, p.8.
“Edmonton Wants Aid,” Industrial Worker: Organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, Vol.4, No.27, September 26, 1912, p.3.,
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n27-w183-sep-26-1912-IW.pdf
“Police Prepare For Clash With I.W.W. Agitators,” Edmonton Journal, September 27, 1912, p.1.
“I.W.W. Takes Hand In Strike Of Laborers,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 27, 1912, p.5.
“Marseillaise Sung By I.W.W.,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 28, 1912, p.1.
“Police Prevent I.W.W. Meddling With City Men,” Edmonton Journal, September 28, 1912, p.1.
“‘Marseillaise’ Sung By I.W.W.; Talk Of Fight,” Edmonton Journal, September 28, 1812, p.12.
“Police Order The I.W.W. Men Keep Moving,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 30, 1912, p.4.
“Many Labourers Back on City Work Today,” Edmonton Journal, October 1, 1912, p.1.
“Council Meeting is Scene of Aldermanic Squabbles; ‘What Will People Think?’ — Mayor Armstrong,” Edmonton Journal, November 13, 1912, p.2.
“Breaks Up I.W.W. Crowd,” Edmonton Journal, November 21, 1912, p.17.
“What Council Did — Actions Last Night,” Edmonton Journal, January 29, 1913, p.5
“Charter Amendment To Ask For Re-Survey of the City,” Edmonton Bulletin, February 20, 1913, p.10.
Elmer Roper, “Labor’s Long, Bitter Fight to be Free,” Edmonton Journal, November 24, 1967, p.41.
G. Jewell, “The IWW in Canada,” IWW General, 1975,
Norman Penner, The Canadian Left: A Critical Analysis (Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall of Canada Ltd., 1977), p.24.
David J. Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big Union (McGraw-Hill Ryerson; Whitby, Ontario, 1978), p.40.
Warren Caragata, Alberta Labour (James Lorimer & Company Publishers: Toronto, ON, 1979), pp.46, 47, 48, 51, 53.
Robert Collins, “Blood flows, fists and rocks fly, as the miners strike in Drumheller” in Alberta in the 20th Century: The Boom and the Bust, 1910-1914, ed. Ted Byfield (United Western Communications Ltd.; Edmonton, 1998), pp.266, 268, 272.
Craig Heron and Steven Penfold, The Workers’ Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2005), p. 79.
Aaron D. Chubb, A Critical Ethnography of Education in the Edmonton Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (MEd diss, University of Alberta, 2012), pp.31, 53.
Heinrich Heine, “The Fraser River Strike: The IWW Bard In Canada,” in Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture, ed. Franklin (PM Press; Oakland, CA, 2015), pp.89, 90.
Alvin Finkle, Working People In Alberta: A History (Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2012), p.48, 71,
Brett McKay, “Organizing the unemployed in Alberta: Lessons from past depressions,” Canadian Dimension, April 20, 2020,
