The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929–39 by Eric Strikwerda (review)

This book examines the development and implementation of relief policy in Canada during the Great Depression from the perspective of the nation’s cities (rather than the provinces or the federal government). It was the cities, after all, which assumed the primary responsibility for providing relief to the growing numbers of unemployed in their midst in the early Depression years.

Eric Strikwerda examines the experiences of Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton, and justifies his choice on the grounds that regional peculiarities made the Depression experience on the prairies different from elsewhere in Canada. Western cities were more dependent upon agriculture, and had smaller and less robust industrial bases (certainly compared to many of their counterparts in central Canada). The Depression also lasted longer on the prairies. While it began to abate in central Canada in 1933, recovery only began in the West after 1937.

The concept of “local responsibility” (the centuries-old convention that held local authorities accountable for providing relief to the poor) imposed an onerous burden on prairie cities after 1929. But Strikwerda argues that it also gave municipal officials considerable latitude, enabling them to pursue relief polices designed to lessen what they believed were the Depression’s most dangerous effects, as well as to cope with the economic crisis more broadly. At the same time, though, this latitude was constrained by these cities’ relationships with the provincial and federal governments, local businesses and community organizations, and the unemployed themselves. These both helped and hindered municipal relief administrators’ efforts to carry out their responsibilities to the unemployed while at the same time safeguarding their middle-class conceptions of social order and how and to whom relief ought to be provided.

In 1929 there was a six-month residence requirement in each of these prairie cities; Winnipeg and Edmonton would soon increase theirs to a year. For those who did meet the residence requirement, married men (with or without children) stood a far better chance of obtaining relief than single men. In the eyes of relief administrators, “the unemployed married man represented stability, maturity and responsibility.” The unemployed single man, in contrast, “represented shiftlessness, youthfulness and potential danger; he was restless – riding the rods, living in makeshift jungles, or begging on back doorsteps.” (58)

It was also highly desirable that men on relief be put to work. This “kept men busy, reinforced the work ethic and limited the probability of welfare dependence.” (100) However, work relief was more expensive than simply providing food, clothing, and shelter. At the outset of the Depression, these cities were hard-pressed to cover the cost of cash wages and equipment, and so the work projects that were undertaken were typically modest ones: laying sewer and water lines and grading roads.

More ambitious (and expensive) projects became possible when Prime Minister R.B. Bennett launched a nationwide job creation scheme in 1930. It was financed by all three levels of government, but was administered entirely by the cities. The projects that were undertaken over the next two years not only provided the unemployed with meaningful work, “they provided cities with lasting and useful infrastructure at a fraction of what they would have cost without federal and provincial financial involvement.” (94) Local manufacturing firms and construction companies also benefitted. The projects that were undertaken in each of these cities reflected local priorities. In Edmonton most involved laying sewer lines and gravelling or paving roads; in Saskatoon the biggest projects were a traffic bridge and a railway under-pass; in Winnipeg two traffic bridges and a civic auditorium were built.

Then, in 1933, the federal government began to assume a larger role in the development, oversight, and administration of relief policy. First it assumed responsibility for single unemployed men; then it refused to continue to fund public works projects that would give real jobs to those who were on relief. The second decision was to have profound consequences for these prairie cities...