Reference no: EM132376170
Assignment: Knights of Labor Case Study
Answer this question
What possible strategies for improving worker's lives and working conditions did the Knights overlook because of their racism? What did their "Us vs. Them" logic make them unable to see?
Between 1000-1400
Assignment Guidelines
analyze the following case study.Follow these steps:
• stereotypes and racism
• the effects on workers in this case
• the union's strategies
• the decisions of the union leaders and members
Some Things You Need to Know:
Spread of the Knights of Labour to the West
• The Knights spread west from Ontariowith migrant workers, who set up Assemblies to defend their rights on jobs across the prairies.
• In British Columbia the industrial frontier was the most brutal in the railway camps and mining towns. The Knights of Labor found their most receptive Western Canadian audience in these camps and towns.
Who Were the Mine Workers in BC?
• When mines were being opened up in British Columbia, they attracted miners from Scotland and northern England. There was a long tradition of skilled miners in the United Kingdom, and along with their skills, they brought the tradition of unionism with them.
• Chinese workers were also employed in the mines. Chinese miners from California had followed the gold rush north in the 1850s. They were paid ½ to 1/3 of white wages, did the most dangerous and unpleasant work and faced blatant racism. Most of these men had left their families in poverty in China, lived bachelor lives and sent most of their earnings home to others. Facing near-constant white hostility, they formed their own communities, helped each other out with their own benevolent societies and even formed their own worker's organizations.
Forms of Racism in Canada in the Late 1800's
• Canada's immigration policies at the time were designed to provide cheap and easily available workers for growing industries. This disadvantaged workers by flooding labour markets with desperate, newly-arrived workers who had to accept low wages. When the newly-arrived accepted lower wages, this kept all the wage-rates generally low.
• Labour leaders called the Canadian immigration policy "pauper immigration." They played to racist and anti-immigrant sentiment among already-settled workers to win their support.
• Note that many workers who we might consider "white" today - those from Eastern Europe, Italy, Greece, etc. -- were not considered white at that point in history because of prevailing discriminatory ideas. Throughout the past 500 years of history, race has been a fluid, shifting concept that has been used to isolate and marginalize some groups. In the 1800s in Canada, "white" generally meant people descended from British (and Scottish, but not always Irish) or central European (German, French, Dutch, etc.) stock.
• In much of the British Empire then, Asians (then called "Orientals") were commonly understood to be inferior, to be impossible to assimilate, and as expendable. Race was used to justify treating these workers poorly.
• "Class conflict in the Vancouver Island mines was always confused by the issue of race and the consciously constructed notions of `white work` versus `Oriental labour.' Chinese workers had, since the 1860s, been employed in the mines, where they were relegated to the lowliest labouring job, hauling coal, often on the surface. White* workers (see note above), in contrast, worked the [coal] seams underground and cultivated a sense of themselves as skilled and privileged miners." (Palmer, 1992, pg. 123)
• "In 1872, the right to vote in provincial and municipal elections was taken away from Chinese Canadians in British Columbia (Japanese Canadians, and South Asian Canadians were also disenfranchised in 1895 and 1907 respectively)" (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2005, para 10).
Background
• Throughout the 1870's, the decade before the Knights arrived on Vancouver Island, miners had battled Robert Dunsmuir`s coal empire for decent working conditions. Dunsmuir was a stern Scot who despised unions and would not tolerate unions challenging his arrogant and uncompromising rule in the mines. With his fortune and position giving him a huge amount of control over provincial politics, Dunsmuir drove his workers to organize secretly.
• You can find out more about Dunsmuir on the excellent Simon Fraser University Labour History site, Who Killed Joseph Mairs, Jr?
• The miners created the Miners Mutual Protective Association, and through this organization, attempted to improve working conditions with little success between 1877-83.
• But, "[w]hen the Chinese tried to better their lot through collective action and even early strike activity, they received little support from their white co-workers" (Palmer, 1992, pg. 124).
• To complicate things even further, "[a]s mine managers concentrated on increasing production, some white miners were convinced to allow the Chinese underground with them, where they could be used to do the rough work required if white miners were to up their output. The result was something of a class bargain between white labour and white capital, in which the Chinese were virtually used as beasts of burden while the miners increased their pay packet, being paid by the ton mined, and the owners saw productivity soar. `White` and `yellow` work was thus rigidly separated, the working class irrevocably divided." (Palmer, 1992, pg. 124)
• When white miners went on strike in the late 1870s, the Chinese, now working underground, long excluded from the miner's union, and having watched their white counterparts for years, were a ready force of strikebreakers.
• "Popular white working-class mythology held that [the Chinese] had been brought into the mines as blacklegs. The truth is somewhat different, but no less destructive of working-class solidarity: white capital and white labour had, in alliance, forced the Chinese workers into the context in which their only recourse was to scab on those who had scabbed on them." (Palmer, 1992, pg. 124)
Note:blackleg =British slang for replacement worker (also called a "scab").
• "As Dunsmuir exploited white racism and Chinese need, bringing in more and more Orientals in the face of work stoppages [strikes], miners and other white workers formed the Workingman's Protective Association in 1878 to combat `the great influx of Chinese`" (Palmer, 1992, pg. 124).
• Not coincidentally, in the same year the BC government passed laws prohibiting the employment of Asian workers in government jobs and imposing a special tax on all Chinese (Avery, 1995).
The Knights Arrive in BC
• The Knights of Labor hit British Columbia in 1883 and set up 6 local assemblies in Vancouver, 2 in Wellington, and one each in Nanaimo, New Westminister, Victoria, Yale, Kamloops, and Rossland.
• The Knights' local assemblies gained prominence in the mid-1880s.
• In 1885 the Chinese workers had just been thrown out of work after they had, in situations of dire exploitation and danger, constructed the Canadian Pacific Railway. So, they were looking for new jobs in large numbers.
• The Knights rallied the west coast`s white working class in opposition to the Chinese.
• The history of the Knights of Labor in BC can't be separated from the racist working-class attack on Asian workers. The Knights constructed an image of the Chinese worker as `the Other, ` that which was the very opposite of the `manly` worker that most of their members saw themselves as. The Knight's rhetoric then channeled the perfectly-understandable anger of white workers - who struggled constantly to survive while watching the wealth, waste and excess of their bosses - toward Chinese labourers.
• The Knights used the wedge argument: - if "Oriental Labour" became an established fixture of the North American labour market, white workers would soon be subject to the same degradation and exploitation that Chinese workers endured as railway gangs and mineworkers.
Was this anti-Asian tide only in BC?
• The Knights' anti-Asian sentiment was not confined to their BC chapters. On October 1, 1884, more than a thousand people, including 10 assemblies of the Knights of Labor, marched against Asian workers in Hamilton, Ontario. Marchers threw mud at Chinese laundries and gathered to hear speeches condemning the use of Chinese labour on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. (Kealey and Palmer, 1987, pg. 151)
The Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration
• Also in1884, in response to rising concern about worker's protests and conflicts with bosses in BC, the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration was convened by the federal government.
• What did the Knights say to this Royal Commission? They denounced Chinese workers as "low, degraded, and servile," and went on to say that "Being `without family ties,` this subspecies of workers was not only able to work for wages far below those commanded by white Labour but to `grow rich` on this inferior pay. Products of `humble submission to most oppressive system of government' the Chinese were, in the eyes of the Knights of Labor,`willing tools whereby grasping and tyrannical employers grind down all labour to the lowest living point`" (Palmer, 1992, pg. 124).
• At that moment in the history of the British Empire, Asians were commonly understood to belong to an inferior race, and those who believed this "Us vs. Them" logic could only see these workers as unfair competition in a desperate labour market. The Knight's proposed solution was to exclude Asian workers from Canada.
• The Royal Commission resulted in federal laws to restrict Chinese immigration - the imposition of a racially-specific head tax. "The 1885 Chinese Immigration Act imposed a $50 "head tax" on all Chinese persons entering Canada. In 1903, this amount was raised to $500, a prohibitive amount of money." (OHRC, 2005, para 10).
• These laws signaled state support for anti-Chinese racism and Chinese communities across the country saw a rise in hateful incidents in this period.
• In the hardship of the depression/recession of the late 1880s, anti-Chinese feelings grew and the Vancouver assemblies of the Knights continued to call for the exclusion of all Chinese.
The Riot
• After much of Vancouver burned down in 1886, the city had leased 60 hectares of forested land to about 100 Chinese.
• In early 1887, Anti-Chinese Leagues were formed and meetings held throughout British Columbia. Many Knights attended these meetings where the Chinese were blamed for white unemployment and poor working conditions, among other social woes.
• On February 23, 1887, an Anti-Chinese meeting was held in Vancouver because there were rumours that at least a hundred new Chinese immigrants had landed in Vancouver.
• Apparently, at the end of the meeting, someone called for "Those in favour of running out the Chinese tonight," and the riot began.
• About 300 rioters marched through the snow to where the Chinese were camped on the leased land near Coal Harbour.
• They destroyed the shanty-town there and roughed up the Chinese in it. Some of the Chinese jumped into the freezing waters to get away and the rest were chased on to the CPR right-of-way.
• "Two policemen invoking the name of 'Queen Victoria ' stood their ground in between the mob and the Chinese labourers. The mob soon retreated but set fire to buildings" (CCNC, 2007, para 4).
• "While the riot ended without any death or serious injury, it did send a clear message to the Chinese that they were not welcome and they left Vancouver for New Westminster, and some moved east to Alberta and Ontario. The Chinese did eventually return to Vancouver" (CCNC, 2007, para 4).
• Despite their exploitation of the anti-Asian racism of BC workers, and calls to end Chinese immigration, the Knights in BC also pushed for shorter working hours, controls on the power of monopolies, and an end to political corruption. They continued to organize workers and continued their fight for better working conditions.
• Some labour historians think that, "[w]hile the virulent racism feeding on this anti-Chinese sentiment would later pose serious problems for labour unity, the immediate effect of the movement for Chinese exclusion ironically contributed toward working class solidarity and autonomy" (Kealey and Palmer, 1987, pg.151).
Attachment:- Knights of Labor Case Study.rar