Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850-1930 (review)

Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850-1930. By Robert Lewis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Pp. xvii+336. $45.

Montreal was Canada's premier industrial city from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, and Robert Lewis's book is about its spatial evolution of manufacturing. As with many North American cities, Montreal industry quickly outgrew the central districts where it started. This led to the formation of new industrial districts, some of which were contiguous to old ones while others were "greenfield" sites, away from existing development. Lewis ties the development of new industrial districts to the creation of working-class neighborhoods and suburbs where the laborers lived. Using this interrelated approach, he tries to explain Montreal's uneven spatial development.

Rather than census information or city directories, Lewis relies on water tax rolls for Montreal and surrounding communities to determine the number of industrial enterprises and their relative size. Data from 1861, 1890, and 1929 are also used to document the location of industry as well as changes in the composition of manufacturing districts over time. He makes use of a wide variety of company and industrial histories, sociological studies, and newspaper accounts as well. By skillfully marshalling this evidence, Lewis provides a convincing description of Montreal's industrial and suburban growth.

Because Lewis is a geographer, naturally his book is oriented toward historical geography and urban studies. He is critical of current theories of industrial and suburban expansion, arguing that these two developments are interdependent and that more research is needed to discern their linkages. The degree to which Montreal's patterns of development can be applied to other North American cities remains to be explored in detail.

Much of the book concerns technological change as it relates to manufacturing. In particular, Lewis explores the productive strategies of various companies, some of which went for custom production of high-end goods, such as hand-rolled cigarettes, while others went for the mass production of low-end goods. Because of the small Canadian market, Montreal manufacturers were unable to take full advantage of mass-production techniques.

As for industrial location, there are a number of factors that Lewis does not take into consideration, particularly energy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century this meant steam power and its concomitant heaps of coal. Montreal industries that used extremely large amounts of coal would have located along the St. Lawrence River or the Lachine Canal, which cut through the southwestern corner of Montreal Island. Later, as the cost of transporting coal by railway dropped, they would have located along major railway lines. Even though energy requirements would have played a major role in the location of certain industries, this is not considered by Lewis. Nor is the need some manufacturers had for vast amounts of water for heating, cooling, and industrial processing. Besides being a major transportation route, the Lachine Canal functioned as an aqueduct, providing millions of gallons of untreated water for metalworking, chemical, and other industries.

Another factor that Lewis does not discuss is the "National Policy," the tariff wall that Canada erected in 1879 to prevent foreign competition from overwhelming Canadian producers. He does mention the formation of American and British "branch" factories, but fails to relate this development to protectionism.

Many people do not realize that Montreal has been a major manufacturing center for more than a hundred and fifty years. This is true even for many Canadians, who have a tendency to think of themselves as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." Manufacturing Montreal clearly documents that this is far from being the case. It adds substantially to our knowledge of manufacturing in Montreal and also suggests novel theories that will be useful in studying industrial development in other North American cities.