Write a 3-2-1 report

2

ECON321 SPRING 2020 – INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 6

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Name (First, Family)

Last 3 digits of SID

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Honor Code: I guarantee that all the answers in this assignment are my own work. I have cited any outside sources that I used to create these answers in correct APA style.

Marking scheme –
Make sure you answer all the questions before handing this in
!

Question

Marks

1

a

12

2

a

4

Total

16

QUESTIONS

1. Read the following paper:

Thompson, J. H. (1978). Bringing in the Sheaves: The Harvest Excursionists, 1890-1929. Canadian Historical Review, 59(4), pp. 467-489. Retrieved from

https://utpjournals-press.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/10.3138/CHR-059-04-04

(That link should also work off-campus – just log in to UVic when prompted. The slight deviation from APA format is for ease of use by students, given the long URL.)

a. (12 marks) Write a 3-2-1 report on the article using the form provided on Coursespaces.

2. (4 marks) [True/False and Why] In order to hedge against falling prices, a farmer should buy wheat futures at harvest-time, and sell them a few months later, at the same time the actual, physical wheat is sold.

True, False or Both? ________

Why?

PURPOSEFUL READING (3-2-1) REPORT Version 2.0

Lightly Adapted from a template by Geraldine Van Gyn.

Question 1:
In your own words
, what are the 3 most important concepts, ideas or issues in the reading? Briefly explain why you chose them.

Concept 1 (In your own words) (2 marks)

Concept 2 (In your own words) (2 marks)

Concept 3 (In your own words) (2 marks)

Question 2: What are 2 concepts, ideas or issues in the article that you had difficulty understanding, or that are missing but should have been included?
In your own words
, briefly explain what you did to correct the situation (e.g. looked up an unfamiliar word or a missing fact), and the result. Cite any sites or sources used in APA format.

Issue 1 (In your own words) (1 mark)

Citation 1 (in APA format) (1 mark)

Issue 2 (In your own words) (1 mark)

Citation 2 (in APA format) (1 mark)

Question 3: What is the main economic story of the reading? (Economics studies the allocation of scarce resources.)

Story (In your own words) (2 marks)

JOHN

HERD THOMPSON

Bringing in the Sheaves:
The Harvest Excursionists,
ß 89o 929

THE RAPID EXPANSION of prairie agriculture and the development of a
highly specialized regional economy based on wheat production have
provided an important theme for historians of twentieth-century
Canada. The economic dimension of the thirty-year ‘wheat boom’ has
been described by Britnell, Fowke, and Murchie, • the political response
of the farmer to his economic situation by Sharp, Morton, Macpherson,
and Lipset, 2 and the ‘social side of the settlement process’ by Dawson
and Burner/These authors proceed from one common assumption-
that the basic element of prairie agricultural society was the indepen-
dent farm operator who owned and worked the land which provided
his family’s living. But although independent operators and family
workers made up the larger part of the agricultural work force, a
substantial minority of that work force – 30 per cent at the peak harvest
period – was made up of wage labourers. These farm workers have
been left in an historiographical ‘no man’s land,’ for labour historians
of Western Canada have naturally concentrated on the activities of
organized workers in the transportation, manufacturing, and the ex-
tractive industries. 4 Farm workers have left few traces of their existence

George E. Britnell, The Wheat Economy (Toronto •939); V.C. Fowke, The National
Policy and the Wheat Economy (Toronto • 957); R.W. Murchie, Agricultural Progress on
the Prairie Frontier (Toronto • 936)
Paul F. Sharp, The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada (St Paul, Minnesota •947); W.L.
Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada (Toronto • 95o); C.B. Macpherson, Democracy
inAlberta (Toronto •953); S.M. Lipset, Agrarian Socialism (New York •968)
E.A. Dawson and Eva R. Younge, Pioneering in the Prairie Provinces: the Social Side of the
Settlement Process (Toronto •94o); Jean Burnet, Next Year Count•y (Toronto • 95 •)
See, for example, David J. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg (Montreal • 974), and
A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian

Canadian Historical Review, LIX, 4, • 978
oOO8-3775/78/• 2oo-o467 $O•.25 •)¸University of Toronto Press

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468 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

fbr historians to work with because they were ahnost impossible to
unionize, changed jobs frequently, and often left agriculture alto-
gether if given an opportunity. Without these workers, however, the
incredible increase in grain production which took place on the prairies
between • 890 and •929 could not have occurred.

The provision of an adequate labour supply was a continuous prob-
lem for the western farmer, and commentators on the early agricul-
tural progress of Manitoba and the northwest all noted that ‘labour is
both scarce and dear? Farmers who wanted hands had to compete
with the railways and the construction industry, where work was ‘gen-
erally more continuous and more remunerative? One reason for the
adoption of extensive grain growing was that it concentrated the need
for hired labour into two peak periods, seeding and harvesting, par-
ticularly the latter. More than 5 ø per cent of the labour required
annually on a grain farm was needed in August, September, and
October. ?

The necessary workers were drawn from several sources. The first
was that group of men regularly employed in agriculture but which
owned no land, the so-called ‘hired men? These men occasionally
worked year-round as farm help, but more often took a job with a
farmer for six or seven months and spent the winter unemployed or in
a lumber camp in the bush. The second important source of labour was
the ‘homesteader of the poorer class’ who was forced to ‘work out’ to
survive? A man who had taken advantage of the Dominion Lands Act

Radical Movement • 899-• 9 •9 (Toronto 1977)-The best – and the only – serious
article on farm labourers in the prairie provinces is David McGinnis, ‘Farm Labour in
Transition: Occupational Structure and Economic Dependency in Alberta,
•9•-1951 ,’ in Howard Palmer, ed., The Settlement of the West (Calgary 1977).

5 Robert Miller Christy, Manitoba Described (London 1885), 7o; Manitoba Departxnent
of Agriculture and hnmigration, Report 1883, 17o;J.P. Pennefather, Thirteen Years on
the Prairies (London • 89•), • •6

6 Labour Gazette, April 19 ø 1,4 • 1. See Also David J. Bercuson ‘Labour Radicalism and
the Western Industrial Frontier: • 897- • 919,’ Canadian Historical Review, June 1977,
17o.

7 R.W. Murchie and F.J. Dixon estimated in • 9•7 that a wheat crop of 16o acres
required u 785 man hours of labour, • 43 ø of which were required in August, Sep-
tember, and October. Murchie and Dixon, Seasonal Unemployment in Manitoba (Win-
nipeg 19•8), 34-5

8 For a description of the work cycle of a seven-month agricultural labourer see the
Labour Gazette, April 19o3, 754. This group increased from 13 per cent of the
agricultural labour force in 1891 to 19 per cent in 1931. Cen•sus of Canada 1891 and
•931

9 The quotation is from the Labour Gazette, Sept. 19o7, •47. The homestead system,
which removed a source of permanent labourers, returned that same group as
part-time workers. See also McGinnis, ‘Farm Labour in Transition …’

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 469

TABLE I

Numbers of excursionists, • 89o- •929

1890 292 1900 2175 1910 14,387 1920 28,228
1891 3000 1901 18,375 1911 33,115 1921 32,426
1892 2000 1902 13,000 1912 26,500 1922 39,740
1893 1489 1903 18,000 1913 18,120 1923 50,451
1894 1555 1904 14,000 1914 11,501 1924 26,483
1895 5000 1905 16,858 1915 29,253 1925 54,850
1896 2350 1906 23,657 1916 35,334 1926 34,202
1897 6000 1907 21,000 1917 42,690* 1927 32,250
1898 4520 1908 27,500 1918 9384 1928 52,225
1899 11,004 1909 23,000 1919 6452 1929 3592

*In •9 • 7 women and children were granted excursion rates in an attempt to
cope with the wartime labour shortage. The attempt was unsuccessful as a
much smaller number than the total indicated actually worked as harvesters.

SOtrRCES: Labour Gazette, • 9oo-2o; Manitoba Department of Agriculture, An-
nual Report, • 89o- •93o; Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, Annual
Report, • 9o6-3o; Canada Department of Labour, Annual Report, • 92 •-4.
Figures for •89•, •892 , •895 , •897 , •9o2, •9o3, and •9o9 are estimates made
by Provincial Departments of Agriculture. Those for the other years are
based on railway figures as to the number of tickets sold.

to claim •6o acres of unbroken prairie or parkland could not turn it
into a commercial farm in one year, and those who had homesteaded
with limited capital had to sell their labour to keep themselves alive
until their farms were viable. These two sources of labour met the

needs of the seeding period, but more than twice as many workers were
required for the harvest. A certain amount of casual labour was usualloy
available within the West, but the final factor in the farm labour
equation of the wheat economy, and the subject of this article, was the
migrant harvester, brought into the West in August and returned in
October or November at a reduced railway fare, on the condition that
he accept work in the harvest fields.

The ‘Harvest Excursions,’ as the annual westward movement of farm

workers came to be known, were described by the Manitoba Depart-
‘ment of Agriculture as ‘the greatest movement of labouring men ever
witnessed in the Dominion. ‘•ø Table I contains statistics on the total

Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Immigration, Report • 9 ø •, 8- 9. Three
journalistic ‘nostalgia pieces’ have been written about the excursions: Frank Croft,
‘Remember Those Harvest Excursions,’ Maclean’s Magazine, • Sept. • 954; ‘Harvest
Special,’ CurrentAccount, Sept. 196o; Maggie Grant, ‘The Harvest Excursions,’ Cana-
dian Magazine, 3 ø April • 966. The only scholarly treatment, written from an
economist’s point of view, is G.V. Haythorne, ‘Harvest Labour in Western Canada:

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470 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

number of excursionists who were brought in each year between 189o
and 1929. After modest beginnings in the 189OS , the excursions grew
in size until 55,ooo harvesters were brought to Manitoba, Saskatche-
wan, and Alberta in 1925 . The system of excursions began as an
extension of the Canadian Pacific’s practice of offering low cost
‘Homeseeker Excursion’ tickets to those who professed an interest in
purchasing railway-owned lands. In response to requests from the
government of Manitoba in 189o, the CPR made empty seats on these
excursion trains available to farmworkers. TM By 1896 the railway was
advertising excursions to be made up entirely of harvesters, and the
system was copied by the Soo Line, the Canadian Northern, the Grand
Trunk Pacific, and eventually by the Canadian National. The motiva-
tion of the railway companies is not difficult to understand. ‘The
generosity of the company,’ explains J.B. Hedges in Building the Cana-
dian West, ‘was enlightened self-interest. It enjoyed the freight of the
grain that would have perished without the harvester. ‘•2

Rates for excursion tickets varied during the forty years in which the
excursions operated, and were usually less than half the regular fare.
The principle was always the same: in mid-August a low priced ticket
was sold to a harvester which provided him with a seat on an excursion
train going west. The fare charged increased from $ lO in the 189os to
$15 in the •92os. Until 1912 this fare carried a man to a specific cut-off
point – Moose Jaw, for example – west of which little hired help was
required. In 1912 the original ticket was made valid only until Win-
nipeg, where the harvester purchased a second ticket at «• a mile to his
ultimate destination. To purchase a ticket home at a fare equal to that
he had paid coming out, an excursionist had to produce the stub of his
ticket, signed by a farmer to attest that the holder had worked at least
thirty days in his employ. Excursionists were usually required to return
by 3 ø November, although the deadline would sometimes be extended
if weather conditions delayed harvesting operations. Until the 192os
organization of the excursions was largely left in the hands of the

An Episode in Economic Planning,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug. •933, which
describes the period from •92o to •93 o.
Provincial Archives of Manitoba [P^s•], Thomas Greenway Papers, Lucius Tuttle to
A.J. McMillan, •o May •888. During the •89o harvest season only 292 of • 287
‘homeseeker excursionists’ were actually harvesters, but by • 896 over 2000 of 235 ø
migrants sought harvest work. Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Immigra-
tion, Report • 89 •, 34-5; ibid. • 896, 29 •. During the • 89os and again during wartime,
women were granted special rates to work as cooks and domestics during the harvest
season.

J.B. Hedges, Building the Canadian West (New York •939), •ø9 h
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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 471

railway companies, with only a limited degree of government partici-
pation at the distribution stage once the workers had arrived in the
West. Working with a global estimate of the manpower required,
provided by the provincial Departments of Agriculture, the railways
circulated posters and newspaper advertisements in Central Canada
and the Maritimes promising two months work at wages which were
very high by local standards. Departure times for the special trains
were displayed prominently, and station agents steeled themselves for
the rush for tickets which usually came.•a

Almost all of the harvest workers recruited for Western Canada

came from the Maritimes, Qu(•bec, or Ontario. The most important
inducement to these workers was the wage differential between the
longer-settled parts of Canada and the Prairie grain fields. As harvest-
ers in the West they would receive at least twice as much as they would
be paid for agricultural work nearer to their homes, and one-third
more than unskilled construction labourers in Halifax, Montreal, or
Toronto. TM One Ontario lad, begged by his widowed mother to return
from Manitoba to bring in her crop, told her to hire someone else since
‘I will make more than you pay a man. ‘• A young farm worker who
made $25 a month on an Eastern Townships farm in Qu(•bec made
more than that in three days in Alberta. •6 In addition to wages, how-
ever, there was the dream of independence and a farm of one’s own,
particularly powerful in the years before •9•4 when easily accessible
homesteads were still available. The dream of independence was nur-
tured by conditions at home, where, as one harvest excursionist recalls,
farmers’ sons ‘were little more than slaves or chattels’ receiving nothing
more for their toil than the promise of an eventual inheritance. To such
boys ‘going West was a chance for freedom … and the cost was incredi-
bly small. ‘•7 Newly-arrived immigrants who had settled in Central
Canada could use the excursions as a way to try their luck in the West.
Few excursionists actually became farm owners, particularly in the

• 3 My account of the fare structures is based on the Annual Reports of the Departments
of Agriculture of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Fares were slightly higher to
and from the Maritime provinces.

•4 See, for example, Labour Gazette, Oct. :9o8, 349. My comparison to construction
workers is based on data in M.C. Urquhart and K.A.H. Buckley, Historical Statistics of
Canada (Toronto • 97 •), 86-8.

• 5 Archives of the Glenbow Alberta Institute [Glenbow], Thomas Bushel Collection,
Bushel to Rosanna Bushel, 25 Aug. •9ox

• 6 Interview with Mr Percy Kezar, Waterville Quebec, • 8 May • 977
• 7 Glenbow, Robert Trussler Collection, ‘Account of Trip West as Excursioner in x 925?

See also ‘Why Boys and Girls Leave the Farm,’ in Canadian Thresherman and Farmer,
Aug. •9o8, 38-9 . h

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472 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

TABLE II

Excursionists from origins other than Eastern Canada

Britain United States British Columbia

1906 1500

1923 11,833
1928 8330

1908 1500 1915 2716 1924 5351
1911 5000 1916 2250 1925 9471
1917 957 1921 4397 1926 7336
1918 224 1922 4170 1927 7703
1926 2204 1923 4019 1928 9737

SOURCES: Labour Gazette, • 9oo-2; Manitoba Department of Agriculture, An-
nual Report, • 89o- • 92o; Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, Annual
Report, • 9o6-3o; Canada Department of Labour, Annual Report, • 92 •-4

later years, but the myth of success had the power to overcome the
realities of life as a migrant harvester.

When Central and Maritime Canada were considered unable to

provide the pecessary labour pool, harvest excursions were organized
from British Columbia, the United States, and even Great Britain.
Table n contains statistics of excursionists from these points of origin.
Railway companies were reluctant to sponsor eastward excursions
from Bc which could take labour from the fruit growers and the
extractive industries, and so it was not until the wartime emergency of
• 9 x 5 that rates of • a mile to points on the Prairies were provided to Bc
workers. Between •92x and •928 the Employment Service of the
Dominion Department of Labour organized excursions from Van-
couver to Saskatchewan at a fare of $•o. •8 Frequent attempts were
made to seek American harvesters, generally without much success.
Workers from the New England states sometimes came west on excur-
sions from Eastern Canada, but in the Western United States wages
were generally higher than in Canada and workers would come north
only in the event of crop failure in Minnesota or the Dakotas. American
farmers were not anxious to see their labour supply moved north at
cheap fares, and the United States government placed obstacles in the
way of Canadian attempts to recruit farm workers. •9 Except in x9x7
and •9•8, when the two countries were allies in the Great War, 2ø the

Archives of Saskatchewan [as], Walter Scott Papers, Scott to Sir Richard McBride, 4
Sept. • 9 • 5, 46o93-4; Glenbow, Canadian Pacific Railway Collection [c•,R], James
Colley to Francis Barnes, 3oJuly •928, file •484; Canada, Department of Labour
Report •922, Sessional Paper 26, •923, 69
Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, Annual Report • 9 • •, • 96; ibid. • 9 • 6,
•67-9
•,^s•, T.C. Norris Papers, E. Blake Robertson to Norris, 9 March •9•7, 75•-2

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 473

only significant numbers of Americans to arrive on excursion trains
were in 1911 and 1926. British workers were imported into the harvest
fields on excursions on three occasions: in 19o5, •923, and again in
1928. These excursions satisfied neither harvesters nor farmer-
employers, since most of the workers were men without farm experi-
ence, and most British excursionists, unprepared to accept the prairie
conditions or the hardships of harvesters, either found work outside
agriculture or returned to Britain.

No one knew how many harvesters would be available in any par-
ticular year until the would-be excursionists showed up at the station.
Wages paid in the West the previous year and employment conditions
generally determined the number of men who presented themselves to
buy tickets. On a few occasions the railway companies had to obtain
statements from well-known Westerners like W.R. Motherwell, urging
workers to come West as a patriotic duty, in order to attempt to fill their
quotas, but in most years the departure scene in an Eastern depot was
chaotic. 2• An estimated lO,OOO men showed up to fight for 1500 places
on the first excursion train to leave Toronto in 1926, almost destroying
Union Station in their scramble to get aboard? When the excursion
rates were first introduced in 1890 , harvesters were simply provided
with regular coach seats or a coachload would be attached to a regularly
scheduled train. As the numbers grew special trains were made up of
the infamous colonist cars in which most immigrants to Canada had
suffered their way west. These coaches held 56 men, seated facing each
other in groups of four, on hard, poorly-upholstered seats. The seats
could be made into a hard bed for two at night, while the other two
shared the narrow berth above. Many harvesters mention the cars in
their reminiscences, all unfavourably. In addition to the uncomfort-
able seats and sleeping quarters, the inadequate suspension of the
coaches made the ride particularly gruelling. Harvester specials had
low priority – ‘God but those trains were slow’ – and could spend hours
on sidings in Northern Ontario, taking a week to reach Winnipeg from
the Maritimes. It was difficult to buy food en route, as the trains rarely
stopped in settled areas, and lunch counters were not provided until
the mid-192os. All colonist cars had stoves, but since few harvesters
carried cooking equipment most survived on a supply of stale
sandwiches.

Because this meagre fare was often supplemented by liberal supplies
of liquor, 1500 men cooped up in a train created a potentially violent

as, Scott Papers, A.F. Mantle to T.S. Acheson, 5 Aug. •9•2, •369 •
R.L. Yates, When I Was a Harvester (New York •9•o), 5 h

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474 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

situation. Every year at least one incident was reported, incidents which
ranged from fist fights and broken windows to full-scale riots. In
August • 909 the Edmonton Bulletin noted sarcastically that ‘the harvest-
er excursions are running. It is the time for the people of Northern
Ontario to take to the woods. ‘za There were two main sources of

trouble. The first was attempts by harvesters to obtain food and liquor
from stations at which the train stopped. The problem here ranged
from shoplifting and petty thievery to the occasion when harvesters
ransacked the depot at Cochrane and nailed the station agent into a
packing crate. z4 The second source of trouble, more illustrative of
Canadian society of the period, occurred when harvesters on trains
stopped for coal and water encountered the track gang navvies of the
railway companies. Most harvesters were English or French Cana-
dians; the trackmen were usually ‘foreigners.’ During one •9o8 excur-
sion ‘an almost continuous battle … between the harvesters and the

foreigners … in the section gangs’ was reported by the Manitoba Free
Press. The navvies fought by ‘hurling rocks through the train windows’
while the harvesters ‘retaliated by throwing stones,’ although ‘some of
the excursionists had revolvers and these were being continuously
discharged along the route.’ At one fuel stop a ‘pitched battle’ took
place in which one harvester was killed and others seriously injured. 25

Such violent incidents were purposeless and unorganized, and were
handled by railway police, who would make necessary arrests and hand
their prisoners over to civil authorities at Winnipeg or Fort William.
After the Winnipeg Strike and the ‘Red Scare’ of •9 •9-2o the danger
of’wandering I.W.W.S’ or One Big Union organizers on harvest specials
prompted the dominion government to assume control of security.
Beginning in •92o a group of RCM policemen were assigned to each
train. To the ordinary harvester their presence was most welcome,
since the constables inhibited the activities of the ‘card sharps’ and
pickpockets who rode the excursion trains looking for a ‘harvest’ of
their own?

Once harvesters arrived in the West, the system of placing them with
farmers was surprisingly haphazard. When one considers the impor-
% Edmonton Bulletin, •’7 Aug. •9o9 . Some towns actually closed down their shops and

locked their houses when an excursion train was expected.
•’4 Brandon Weekly Sun, •, Sept. •9•5, cited in E.B. Ingles, ‘Some Aspects of Dryland

Agriculture in the Canadian Prairies to •925′ (unpublished M^ thesis, University of
Calgary, •973), •ø6-7

•’5 Manitoba Free Press, • 7 Aug. •9o8
•,6 RCMV, Report, •9 •, •, Sessional Paper •,8, •9•,2, • 7- 29. The Mountie claim that the

escorts were appreciated by the excursionists was supported in an interview with Mr
Ron Reid, North Hatley, Quebec, • 8 May •977, and in the Kezar interview.

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 475

tance of casual harvest labour to the economy it seems remarkable that
the farm labour market remained largely unco-ordinated throughout
the excursion period and that no serious attempt at government regu-
lation was made until World War •.27 Before •9oo most harvesters
found work in Manitoba, but as the wheat economy expanded west-
ward more workers were required in the newly-created provinces of
Saskatchewan and Alberta. Until • 9 ̧ • workers simply left the train at a
station on the main line of the Canadian Pacific and looked for a job. In
that year the process of’reticketing’ at Winnipeg for a specific destina-
tion was introduced. Then a harvester had to decide where he wanted

to go after Winnipeg, and as soon as he left the train he was confronted
by a row of temporary wooden ticket booths ‘like a long row of
parimutuel windows. ’28 Old hands could choose or avoid towns on the
basis of previous experience, but a newcomer had to make up his mind
on hearsay or succumb to the sales pitch of one of the agents who met
the excursion to compete for his services. Each province had an agent,
an employee of its Department of Agriculture, to see that it got its share
of the transients. But there was also competition among various dis-
tricts, which hired representatives to convince excursionists to reticket
for Kindersley instead of Moose Jaw or Cereal instead of Lethbridge?
Provincial agents generally told the truth about conditions, refusing to
give in to the demands of ‘big farmers’ who wanted to ‘flood the cities
and towns with men’ to keep the cost of labour down. aø Local agents
had no such scruples and arranged themselves under signs and ban-
ners like carnival barkers, stretching the truth about wages and jobs
available to make certain that their district would not go short.

When the second stage of his journey was completed an excursionist
found himself, still unemployed, on a station platform in a prairie city
or town. In late August the town would be filled with men looking for
work – excursionists, the occasional hobo, workers let go from a farm
job after seeding or who had quit a job at a monthly wage to seek higher
harvest wages. What happened next depended on the condition of the
grain crop and upon the weather. Sunshine and a bumper crop could
produce fierce competition for harvesters, rain or a thin stand of grain
27 This was accomplished by the Federal-Provincial Farm Labour Program, created in

• 943, which sponsored, among other things, movements of workers from Ontario,
Quebec, and the Maritimes to the West. See George V. Haythorne, Labour in Cana-
dian Agriculture (Cambridge •96o), 7o-8.

28 The quotation is from Croft, ‘Remember,’ 46
29 For evidence as to the indispensibility of an agent, see ̂ s, Motherwell Papers,

Motherwell to John Moir, •5 Dec. •9•o, 5963 .
3 ø ^s. C.A. Dunning Papers, I.B. Cushing to Dunning, • o Aug. • 92 •, and reply, • 6 Aug.

•92•, •4373-6 h
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476 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

produced a crowd of unemployed from whom the farmer could choose
at his leisure. It was the weather, as always for agriculture, that was the
most unpredictable factor. Rain made harvesting impossible, and
farmers would not hire men to see them stand idle. Yet as James Colley
of the CPR’S Calgary office pointed out to his superiors during the wet
August of • 926, ‘every day lost by rain increases the [total] number of
men that will be required’ since the same amount of work had to be
crowded into a shorter time period. al As a further complication condi-
tions could vary in different parts of the West and could change
overnight in any locality. Farmers at Keeler, Saskatchewan could com-
plain that they were one hundred men short while a week later after a
rainstorm the mayor of nearby Moose Jaw feared that harvesters
without work might riot unless given tickets to return home. a2 Until
farmers began to hire, a harvest excursionist sat in a hotel or a boarding
house, spending his tiny ‘stake’ to support himself. Once this stake was
gone he joined others seeking shelter in the railway station and begged
for his meals. Excursionists stranded in Regina in 1908 were reported
to have ‘sold their trousers to buy bread to keep actual suffering
away. ‘aa When the grain grower came to look for men the excursionist
was ready to go out on any job which came along, and rushed to join the
‘men lined up on both sides of the dusty street, waiting for farmers to
come along and pick them. ‘a4

If crop and weather conditions were good and the supply of harvest-
ers limited, however, this unregulated farm labour market operated in
favour of the worker and allowed him to hold out for higher wages or
pick his situation carefully, trying one or two jobs before settling on an
employer. In a few exceptional years a shortage of harvesters coincided
with a bumper crop and high wheat prices to produce a demand for
labour so strong that farmers were reported to have literally begged
men to work for them. Such a situation was satirized in 1918 by Turner’s
Weekly in a playlet called ‘The Ferocious Farmer.’ Four harvesters
refuse to take a job harvesting for ‘Reaper,’ even though he increases
his offer until the last is promised ‘ten bones [dollars], six meals, my
3 • Glenbow, CPR, James Colley to C.A. Van Scoy, 3 • Aug. • 9e6, file 68e. Demand was

also affected by the distribution of the grain acreage amongwheat, oats, and barley. A
more even distribution between the three grains, which ripened at different times,
would spread the demand over a period of weeks. If a high percentage of land was
devoted to wheat, as during the 1915 to 19eo period, it would all ripen at once, thus
concentrating the demand for labour into a few days.

3e ^s, Dunning papers, Keller Grain Growers to Dunning, 31 Aug. 192 l, 1438o; ibid.,
R.H. Smith to Dunning, 9 Sept. 19el, 14381

33 Manitoba Free Press, e6 Aug. 19o8
34 Yates, When I Was a Harvester, • • h

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 477

guest chamber, the use of my Ford every night, half my land and a
quarter interest in my crop’ for ‘three hours work a day. ‘aS Excur-
sionists’ demands never reached this level, but farmers who were
desperate enough paid as much as $7.5 ø a day during the •92o season
for harvest help to save their crops. Workers had to be careful about
refusing to hire out, however. During the • 927 harvest when the grain
was ripe and workers in short supply police in some prairie cities and
towns gave harvesters a choice of working for the wages offered or
going to jail for vagrancy? Most accepted the jobs.

Governments attempted to bring some order to the hiring of farm
labour through the establishment of employment services, which could
at least supervise these labour transactions and move the unemployed
to areas of higher demand. Saskatchewan created a Bureau of Labour
in • 9 • •, followed by Manitoba in • 9 • 5 and Alberta in • 9 x 9. In addition
the Dominion Government Employment Service, established in • 9 • 8,
had twenty offices in the Prairie provinces. Private employment agen-
cies, accused of many abuses, were carefully kept out of the excursion
system? Most harvesters, however, got their jobs on their own. Before
these agencies were created, and in the towns where they did not exist,
hiring was carried out on an informal, individual basis. as

Once hired, harvesters were put to work immediately. No farmer
was prepared to see his men with time on their hands, and if help had
been hired before the grain was ready to be cut they would be put to
work ‘choring,’ picking stones or cutting brush until the real work of
the harvest was ready to begin. Because of the danger from frost to a
standing crop, grain in Western Canada was cut before it had fully
ripened and allowed to reach maturity in the sheaf. The grain was cut
by a horse drawn self-binding reaper, universally called a ‘binder.’ The

35 Turner’s Weekly, • • Oct. • 9 • 8. I must thank Professor Ted Regehr for bringing ‘The
Ferocious Farmer’ to my attention.

36 Glenbow, cPR, O.T. Lathrop to James Colley, x8 Oct. and 6 Nov. •9•7; Lethbridge
Herald, •4 Oct. x9•7.

37 See as, Scott Papers, Scott to C. Stemshorn, 5 Aug. •9 x6. The Saskatchewan
Employment Service accused the private agencies of’sending men to fictitious jobs,
inducing men to change from one farmer to another because of the fee payable to the
agent and the sending of men out at a higher rate of wages than that actually offered
by the farmer.’ as, Dunning Papers, ‘Farm Wages,’ March •9•, x456•-8

38 There are no statistics available on the percentage of Canadian excursionists placed
through these services, but in a •9•4 study conducted in the American wheat belt,
where similar state and federal agencies existed, only • 7 per cent of farmers inter-
viewed used these services to obtain their harvesters. Don D. Lescohier, ‘Conditions

Affecting the Demand for Harvest Labor in the Wheat Belt,’ t•s•)A Bulletin x•3 o,
April x 9•4 h

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478 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

binder would be driven by the farmer himself, by one of his sons, or by
a permanent hired man. The harvest excursionist was assigned the
back breaking, mind numbing task of’stooking,’ gathering eight or ten
sheaves dropped by the reaper into a ‘stook,’ a pile designed to protect
the grain from weather damage until it became ripe enough to thresh.
Even old timers who romanticize pre-combine harvesting find it impos-
sible to make stooking into anything but ‘drudgery of the worst sort. ‘a9
Starting at dawn the harvesters raced to keep pace with the binder –
bending, lifting and piling two sheaves at a time until it was dark. ‘The
hardest thing about it,’ comments one excursionist, ‘was the hands’.
Stookers wore horsehide gloves which became soaked by the dew of the
early morning and dried and cracked when the scorching Prairie sun
rose higher in the sky, exposing the flesh of palms and fingers to create
‘blisters as big as quarters. ‘4ø Feet and ankles got the same treatment. In
the morning the dew ‘gets into your shoes to mix with the dust … to
make walking a trial by ordeal. ’41 It was impossible to roll up sleeves,
whatever the temperature, or forearms would be rubbed raw from the
rough straw. It was work that could break even men used to hard
physical labour. Most of the British excursionists of 2928 were un-
employed coal miners who had stood up to nine and ten hour days in
the pits, but hundreds walked off the job in admission of defeat after a
day in the harvest fields of the Canadian West.

Once the crop was cut and stooked the work of threshing would
begin in a district? ‘Threshing at home was a social event,’ wrote an
Ontarian observing his first prairie harvest, but threshing in the West
was ‘a serious business’ conducted by ‘paid mercenaries,’ a business
about which there was ‘no romance, no sparking or skylarking … no
shinnaniging while you work. ‘4a Custom threshers with large outfits
handled much of the crop in the West, and it was difficult for a harvest
excursionist to find a job on a threshing crew. A smaller total labour
force was needed for threshing than tbr the earlier stage of the harvest.
The important members of a threshing crew – the engineer and the

39 Yates, When I Was a Harvester, 47
4 o Kezar interview
4 • Walter Wiggins, ‘Hired man in Saskatchewan,’ Marxist Quarterly, winter • 964, 8=- 4
4 •Some farmers stacked their grain before they threshed it to provide it with more

protection from the elements. Ifa threshing machine was available, however, most
Prairie grain growers threshed directly from the stook. By • 9o7 this technique had
become almost universal and by • 9 • 5 a farmer who stacked was something of a
curiosity. See ‘Threshing from Stook vs. Stacking,’ Canadian Thresherman, Aug. • 9o7,
= 8-33; Farmer’s Advocate, 9 Sept. • 9 • 5; Edward West, Homesteading: Two Prairie
Seasons (London •9 • 8), • •9-3 o.

43 Toronto Star, 1 Nov. 19o 5 h
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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 479

separator man – would stay with a crew from year to year and prefer-
ence was usually given to farmers’ sons or homesteaders when it came
time to hire the teamsters and ‘pitchers’ who made up the rest of the
crew. 44 Sometimes a transient could catch on, if he had some skill with
horses, driving a bundle team loaded with sheaves to the separator or a
loaded grain wagon to the farm’s granary or the elevator. Men without
experience looked for work as ‘field pitchers,’ helping drivers fork
sheaves from stooks to bundle wagons. As small gas-powered threshing
rigs became available during the teens and twenties, and average farm
size increased, more farmers did their own threshing. This made it
easier for an excursionist to keep working, since he could stay on with
the boss who had originally hired him and fork the sheaves he had so
laboriously stooked.

Threshing was a less onerous task than stooking, which prompted a
harvester joke to the effect that ‘after the stooking “Bringing in the
Sheaves” is a picnic. No wonder there’s a hymn about that.’ Threshing
also tended to pay slightly higher wages. These two advantages were
offset by two factors. The threshing day was generally longer, some-
times sixteen hours, since the machine could work by moonlight or
lamplight if it had to be rushed to another farm. A stooker could
collapse into his bed at the end of the day, but a thresher who handled a
team had an hour added to both ends of his day by the necessity to
hitch, unhitch, feed, and water his horses. If steam were the power
source, threshing was also dangerous work. Each September and Oc-
tober newspapers reported deaths from boiler explosions and dis-
memberments from arms and clothing becoming tangled in grain
separators. A careless or exhausted thresher could also meet death or
injury by falling beneath wagons used to transport sheaves and grain.
Medical care for a migrant harvester depended on the goodwill of his
boss, and in most cases ‘when a man meets with an injury his employer
tries to get him off his hands as soon as possible,’ reported James
Colley. 45 At the request of farm organizations Workmens Compensa-
tion Acts in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta were drafted to
exclude farm workers from coverage. George Edwards of the United
Farmers of Canada, Saskatchewan Section, admitted that this was ‘a
heartless way to look at it,’ but like most farmers defended his organi-
zation’s position on the grounds that farmers could not afford the

44 Let go after stooking, excursionist G.C. Russell was turned down by three custom
threshers before he caught on with a crew. ‘The Threshers: An Impression,’ Cana-
dian Thresherman, Sept. 19o8, 14-15. See also F.M. CantIon, ‘The Threshing Crews,’
Alberta Historical Review, autumn 1968.

45 Glenbow, ½PR, James Colley to C.A. Van Scoy, 7 Feb. 1927, file 711
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480 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

deductions to create a compensation fund. 46 If a harvester were seri-
ously injured on the job his only recourse was a civil suit for damages; if
he were killed his family might not even learn the circumstances of his
death.

Like virtually all farm labourers, migrant harvesters were provided
with board and lodging at their employer’s expense, the quality of
which could vary greatly from farm to farm. Men engaged in such
heavy physical labour as stooking required a large caloric intake if they
were to work effectively, and the meals provided to harvesters have
become part of prairie folklore. In her autobiography Nellie McClung
claims that a woman who did not set a magnificent table in the harvest
season was ‘almost as low in the social scale as the woman who has not a

yard of flannel in the house when baby comes. ’47 The reminiscences of
a threshing crew cook lovingly recount the pies, bread, and cakes she
baked and the joints of meat she roasted. 4s Harvesters expected to be
fed five times a day- three official meals and ‘lunches’ at midmorning
and midafternoon – and one former excursionist swears that he gained
ten pounds during an Alberta harvest. 49 Others, however, talk of tough
beef from ‘thin old cows,’ ‘quarter inch deep pies,’ pancakes nicknamed
‘sweatpads,’ and water ‘so bad the only way you could drink it was hold
your nose’ as the only beverage provided? A bitter British excursionist
complained that he had been expected to stook all day with a midday
meal of a salmon sandwich and a bun, washed down with cold tea? 1
The food provided most excursionists fell somewhere between these
extremes.

Accommodation for harvest excursionists ranged from substandard
to subhuman. Permanent hired hands sometimes slept in their
employers’ houses or had proper quarters designated for them. Har-
vesters slept in whatever shelter was available as a bunkhouse: a gra-
nary too full of holes to store wheat, an unused chicken coop, or what
remained of a shack abandoned years ago by the farmer and his

46 as, United Farmers of Canada, Saskatchewan Section Papers, ‘Workmans Compen-
sation,’ George F. Edwards to Mrs A.L. Hollis, 5July •928

47 Nellie McClung, Clearing in the West (Toronto • 935), • o9
48 Mrs Henry Penner, quoted in George Shepherd, ‘When Steam Was King,’ Saskatoon

Star Phoenix, • • June •958
49 Kezar interview
5 ø Tommy Primrose, ‘Hired Man Passes from Farm Picture,’ Calgary Herald Magazine,

= 3 June • 957; interview with Mr Leon Echenberg, St Lambert, Quebec, 28 March
•976

5 • A British Miner-Harvester, ‘A Tale of the Golden West,’ Glasgow Forward, 29 Sept.
• 928, in as, United Farmers of Canada Saskatchewan Section Papers, •x file • 46(2)

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 481

family? Sanitary facilities usually consisted of an outhouse and a
bucket. Whatever his standards of personal cleanliness, a harvester had
to share these makeshift lodgings with his fellow workers, some of
whom ‘smelled like gorgonzola cheese? $ One harvester tells of living
in a derelict boxcar which presented its occupants with a dilemma as to
‘which was worse, cold or stench.’ With its stove lit the car had ‘the worst
odour imaginable,’ while with the fire extinguished there was a danger
of frostbite during the sub-zero autumn nights? 4 Everpresent in the
bunkhouse was the louse, which grew in the harvester’s imagination
until it was ‘as big as a fly,’ and some excursionists ‘slept in haylofts and
in feed passages rather than run the risk of being infested? • Given the
length of most work days, however, sleep came easily in the most
primitive conditions, regardless of lice or bedbugs.

Nor did transient harvesters have to worry about how they spent
their leisure time. Unless rains made it impossible to work, only Sunday
was not used as a working day. This was not so much for sabbath
observance as because ‘six days in the week is all the time that horses
and men can stand it. ‘a6 On Saturday night, particularly on farms
employing larger numbers of men, it was customary to unhitch
promptly at six o’clock, after which the harvester could ‘go into the
nearest small town’ – if one were near, and ‘cheer himself in the beer
parlour’ – if it was not closed by prohibition or local option? When a
Montreal friend asked a ½PR executive about farm work in the West to

dry out an alcoholic son, he was quickly warned that such a job ‘would
be the last thing on earth to accomplish what was desired? 8 Eastern
farm boys with temperance principles who were unwilling to be led into
temptation by their colleagues sat in the Chinese caf6 or walked the
main street? Sunday morning was set aside for sleeping in and/or
sleeping off the festivities of the previous night. If a crew were large
enough the afternoon might see team sports, usually baseball, or horse-
shoes if it were not. Monday’s dawn brought work again and the cycle
continued for however long the harvester’s job lasted.
52 In fairness it should be pointed out that some farmers’ homes were little better, and

that accommodations in the bunk houses of mining and logging camps were equally
abysmal. See E. Bradwin, The Bunkhouse Man (Toronto 1972).

53 P.W. Luce, ‘Memoirs of a Harvest Excursionist,’ Family Herald, 25 Aug. •96o, 22
54 Yates, When I Was a Harvester, 34
55 Echenberg interview; J. M.T., ‘The Caboose Question,’ Farmer’s Advocate, 9 Aug. 1915
56 PAM, Norris Papers, Norris to w.J. Roche, 19 March 1916, 765
57 Glenbow, CPR, James Colley to Ashley Edwards, 28 Sept. 1928, file 715
58 Ibid
59 Reid and Kezar interviews

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TABLE III

Estimated wages of harvesters, •9 o •-‘a9

Daily* Total** Daily Total
wage earned wage earned

1901 $1.88 $ 78.96 1916 $2.75 $111.50
1902 2.75 115.50 1917 4.00 168.00
1903 2.00 84.00 1918 4.55 191.10

1904 2.00 84.00 19197 4.69 196.98
1905 2.25 94.50 19207 5.73 240.66
1906 2.57 107.94 1921 3.88 162.96
1907 2.00 84.00 1922 3.55 149.10
1908 2.05 86.10 1923 3.75 157.50
1909 2.00 84.00 1924 3.38 141.96
1910 3.13 131.46 1925 4.10 172.20
1911 2.88 120.96 1926 3.40 142.80
1912 3.13 131.46 1927 4.50 189.00
1913 3.13 131.46 1928 3.90 163.80
1914 2.55 107.10 1929 3.48 146.16
1915 2.60 109.20

*The daily wage is a weighted average of wages reported in the three provinces.
**This is based on a work month of 2 • days and a harvest season of two months,
giving a harvester 42 days of work.
?Unusually wide fluctuations were reported in these years.

SOVRCES: Labour Gazette, • 9oo – • 2; Manitoba Department of Agriculture, Re-
port on Crops, • 918-3o; Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, Annual
Report, • 9o6-3o; Alberta Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, • 9o6-2o.
Many other sources listed in the notes contain fragmented information on
wage rates.

Because the pay of a harvester was greatly effected by local supply
and demand, and could vary between two districts or in the same
district from week to week during the season, it is impossible to estab-
lish precisely what an ‘average’ worker was paid at any particular time.
After a study of farm wages in 1922 the Saskatchewan Employment
Service concluded that ‘the rate of wages agreed upon … is generally
decided by the superior bargaining ability, stubbornness or bluff of
either party. ‘6ø Farmers talked of a ‘going wage,’ usually based on the
rate they had paid in the previous year, and varied their offers to
individual workers according to the ease with which help could be
obtained and their estimate of a man’s likely ability. Table III contains
an estimated average wage for 19ol to 1929, based on a multitude of

6o AS, Dunning Papers, ‘Farm Wages,’ March 1922, 14562-8 h
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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 483

sources. The figure given is a weighted average of the lowest daily rate
at which men could be obtained and the highest reported paid. Some
further comments are necessary. Wages were usually somewhat lower
in Manitoba than in Saskatchewan and highest in Alberta? They were
also higher in the prairie area than in the parkbelt, the more northerly
part of the three provinces where fewer workers were required. Rates
paid for threshing were higher than those paid for the unskilled job of
stooking. Harvesters worked for a daily wage and were paid only for
days which they actually worked. Allowing for rain delays and Sundays
off, the Manitoba Department of Agriculture concluded that twenty-
one days made up an ‘average’ working month? Since the harvest
season lasted for about two months, Table iii includes an estimate of a
harvester’s total income, based on forty-two days of work. This figure
varies between a low of $78.96 in •9o• and a high of $24o.66 in •92o.

Whatever daily wage was paid to harvesters, most farmers thought it
was too high. Farm wages bore no direct relationship to the price
farmers received for their wheat, and when wages began an abrupt
upward movement in •9•o, complaints that ‘farm labour is getting
dearer every year’ appeared on the editorial pages of Western farm
journals, particularly as harvest time approached? a C.M. Hamilton,
who succeeded W.R. Motherwell as Saskatchewan’s minister of ag-
riculture, knew he could draw a warm response from a group of
farmers by denouncing ‘the price we have to pay for harvest labour-
ers. ‘•4 It was not just the fact that workers ‘demand impossible wages,’
added the Farmers’s Advocate, but that they gave ‘a minimum return for
the same. ‘•5 ‘Farm labour these days is nothing more than common
labour,’ commented the Farm and Ranch Review? The Cl•R’s farm
labour placement agent agreed. Eastern harvesters, he told his
superior, ‘are not of the highest class? 7

Farmers tried to use their own organizations and the power of
governments to hold down the cost of harvest help. Since the problem

6 • Manitoba had the largest urban population and thus the urban unemployed would
compete with excursionists for jobs, keeping wages at a lower level. Since workers
travelled farther to get to Saskatchewan and Alberta, wages had to compensate for
additional costs to attract them.

62 Manitoba Department of Agriculture, ‘Crop Bulletion 94,’ •9 • 7
63 Professor Thomas Shaw, ‘The Labour Question and the Harvest,’ Farmer’s Advocate,

23 July •9•3
64 ^s, Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association Papers, ‘Saskatchewan Economic

Board,’ Minutes of •9 Aug. •924, ii file 32
65 Farmer’s Advocate, 23July 19• 3
66 Farm and Ranch Review, June • 9 • 3
67 Glenbow, cPR, James Colley to O.T. Lathrop, •4July •927, file •oo8 h

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484 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

of expensive labour was usually caused by the farmer himself in his
readiness to pay more than the ‘going wage’ to save a good crop, the
answer was for farmers to collude to control wages. In •9o2, with the
largest crop in the West’s history standing in the fields, ‘delegates from
all parts of Manitoba representing about one-third of the farmers in
that province’ met in Winnipeg and agreed ‘that not more than $4 ø per
month or $1.75 a day should be paid to harvesters. ’68 In 1920, when help
was short and workers in Alberta demanded $1o a day, ‘the V.F.A.
[United Farmers of Alberta] throughout the province took it up and set
the price at $6.oo a day. ’69 None of these attempts to control wages were
particularly successful, for some farmer would break ranks and a
bidding war would begin. When wages were high, particularly during
World War i, farmers bombarded governments with petitions to de-
mand a fixed wage for harvest work? The employment services
created by the provincial governments and the Dominion Govern-
ment’s Employment Service of Canada were seen as a means to control
wages in addition to their function as labour exchanges. TM During the
192os farm representatives met with the senior staff of these agencies
to ‘suggest’ a wage, which would then be posted as the standard wage
for all parts of the Prairies. This too had limited success. Farmers
complained that ‘the men in charge of this Bureau of Labour … are
working a lot harder to get employees placed at high wages. ‘•2 Officials
of employment services angrily dismissed this criticism, pointing out
that ‘the anxiety of the farmer to secure men’ produced a labour
market in which agreed-upon rates could not be maintained?
Throughout the 192os wages continued to be based on simple supply
and demand.

Some farmers developed their own solution to the high cost of labour
– they simply refused to pay their workers or paid them less than the
promised wage. No harvester had a written contract, and it was stan-
dard practice to withhold wages until the end of an engagement,
advancing small sums if necessary for tobacco, clothing, or visits to
town. In his manual on Farm Management the minister of agriculture of
Alberta advised all farmers to follow this practice, and, to help farmers
68 Labour Gazette, Sept. 19o2, 123
69 Glenbow, Roy Benson Collection, Verna Benson to Fred Benson, 27 Aug.
7 ø Petitions like these can be found in the papers of any Western politician and in those

of most national political figures. For some examples see AS, Scott Papers, Balcarres
Grain Growers to Scott, Dec. 1916, 461o9, and PAM, Norris Papers, R.J. Morgan to
Norris, 8 Aug. •9•7, 93o-•.

71 AS, C.M. Hamilton Papers, T.M. Molloy toJ.G. Gardiner (copy), 22 Jan. 1923
72 As, Dunning Papers, G.R. Glenn to Dunning, 22 March •92o, 14285
73 Ibid., T.M. Molloy to Dunning, 13 April 192o, •4287 h

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 485

whose workers did not speak English, the cPR published small dic-
tionaries that taught farmers how to stall demands for money in eight
languages. TM ‘I am sorry I have no ready money now,’ was the suggested
line, ‘but you can be sure you will get all your wages after the harvest.’
Once his crops had been sold, however, the farmer had other obliga-
tions. He also had a tendency to want ‘all the money he receives from
the elevator to be velvet [profit]. ’75 Every autumn some workers were
turned out with a note and a promise that their wages would be
forwarded to them, or with only part of the payment they expected for
their services. Each of the prairie provinces introduced legislation
giving the employees of custom threshers first claim for their wages if
their boss went bankrupt? This applied only to threshers, however,
not to individual farmers, no matter how large their operation. When a
harvester was unpaid or short-changed he had to bring his employer
before a magistrate under the provisions of provincial Masters and
Servants Acts. Even if successful, these acts set a maximum figure of
$1oo on the amount a magistrate could award a harvester, or any other
farm worker for that matter. Any further settlement required a civil
suit. One harvester who signed on for $4 a day for stooking and $6 for
threshing received only $1o 4 after more than two months of work.
When he wrote to Saskatchewan Premier C.A. Dunning to protest he
was told that ‘the courts of Saskatchewan are open to you for any
claim. ‘== This was empty advice, for the farmer was always a permanent
resident of the distrinct and often a client of the local solicitor, while the
worker was a transient of limited means and in most cases had to return

East to avoid forfeiting his excursion fare.
Despite the many difficulties harvest excursionists faced – horrible

working conditions, uncertain wages, miserable living conditions- they
made few attempts to organize to improve their lot. Although instances
can be found in which harvesters in a particular town held out for an
extra dollar a day, these movements were more likely to be led by men
who made a full-time living as farm hands rather than excursionists,
and there is no evidence of any sustained, widespread collective action.
Agricultural workers have proved difficult to unionize, but in the
adjoining wheat growing areas of the United States ‘local 4oo ‘ of the

74 Duncan Marshall, Farm Management (Toronto • 93 •), 69; the cPR dictionaries may be
found in the pamphlet collection at the Library of the Glenbow Alberta Institute.

75 Calgary Eye-Opener, 2 • Sept. • 9 • 8, cited in Hugh Dempsey, The Best of Bob Edwards
(Edmonton •975), 22o

76 ^s, Scott Papers, A.H. Foulds to Scott, 24 Nov. •9o8, 23368- 9
77 ^s, Dunning Papers, Gerald Watson to Dunning, 4 Nov. •923, • 5o36-4 •, and reply,

9Nøv. •923, •5o42 h
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486 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

Industrial Workers of the World, the Agricultural Workers Organiza-
tion, claimed a membership of • 8,000 by •916, most of whom were
migratory harvesters. The ^wo organized local strikes against farmers
who refused to pay ‘going wages,’ warned men away from difficult
employers, and established order in the hobo camps in which Ameri-
can harvesters lived as they moved north from the July harvest in
Kansas and Oklahoma to the September harvest in the Dakotas. In
North Dakota farmers organizations actually negotiated with the ̂ wo
to establish wage rates and minimum standards for food and shelter. ?s
Although some transient labourers in Western Canada belonged to the
IWW – A.R. McCormack estimates that 4 ø per cent of railway construc-
tion workers were members in 19 • 4 – harvest excursionists were usu-
ally immune to organization and to politicization. TM

There were several reasons for this. The only time at which a large
group of excursionists was assembled to listen to an organizer or a
‘radical agitator’ was during the train journey. Railway police and RCMP
constables made sure that any such agitation was carried on at low
volume. Gathered in a prairie town without work harvesters were
temporarily accessible, but once employed they were scattered on
individual farms. Since the excursionists knew their jobs were only
temporary, difficult working and living conditions could be tolerated
for a few weeks. If conditions were intolerable a worker set off across

the prairie to town,’ to look for a better job. Farms which employed
large numbers of men, which might seem susceptible to organization,
were generally the farms on which pay and living standards were
highest, and on which workers were the best satisfied. sø

An exception to the usual docility of most Canadian excursionists
were the unemployed British miners brought in to handle the •928
crop after a shortage of help in 1927. The 8500 miners were promised
$5 a day, but as often happened, government and railway estimates of
the number of workers needed overcompensated for the previous
year’s shortage and resulted in a glut which pushed wages down,

78 Infbrmation about the ̂ wo is from Phillip Taft, ‘The I.W.W. in the Grain Belt,’ Labor
History, winter •96o, 53-67. See also C.J. Haug, ‘The I.W.W. in North Dakota,
• 9 • 3- • 9 • 7,’ North Dakota Quarterly, winter • 97 •, 85- • o% and ‘The I.W.W. in North
Dakota, •9•8-•9,•5,’ ibid, summer •973, 4-•9.

79 See McCormack, Reformers, chapt. 6: ‘The Industrial Workers of the World and
Militant Industrial Unionism.’

8o A good example of this is the •5,ooo acre operation of C.S. Noble at Nobleford,
Alberta. Noble paid slightly more than the ‘going wage,’ gave bonuses for good work,
and provided bunkhouses and food far above the usual standard. See Glenbow, C.S.
Noble Collection, especially Bob Gratz to O.S. Longman, 9 Sept. • 957, file 4. h

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 487

sometimes to half that. The inexperienced miners were the last to be
hired – if hired at all – and were paid the lowest wages by the most
cantankerous bosses. Many found no work, some walked off the job,
and large groups congregated in Prairie cities where ‘they spent most
of the days listening to communist orators,’ who recognized them as a
more receptive audience than the usual run of excursionists. 8• The
response of the King government and the railway companies was
immediate. The miners were returned to Britain at government ex-
pense, in locked and guarded trains lest they contaminate the Cana-
dian countryside as they passed through.*” Individual farmers adopted
similarly abrupt tactics when confronted by a worker who talked of
unions or of radical politics, which to many farmers were undiffer-
entiated. Roy Benson of Munson, Alberta, knew how to handle Dick, a
harvester who ‘turned out to be an o.B.u. agitator or something of that
kind.’ As his wife Verna explained in a letter, ‘Roy got tired of hearing
shorter hours and higher wages and fired him.’ A second worker who
‘had been listening to Dick’s wonderful story’ was similarly dis-
charged?

But few farmers had such problems, even during the years in which
the iww and the One Big Union were active in Western Canada. Most
excursionists probably shared the notion that in Canada any farm
labouter had a chance to begin farming and eventually become an
employer of labour himself. 84 One of the enduring myths about the
harvest excursions is that they provided a medium through which an
Easterner could come west, earn a stake, and establish himself as a
successful farmer. ‘Many a Horatio Alger-type story had a beginning
on a Harvest Excursion,’ gushes journalist Maggie Grant, ‘and many a
successful Prairie citizen of today still treasures the return coupon he
never used. ’85 Men who became even moderately wealthy, however,
usually worked outside agriculture, and simply used the harvest excur-
sion rates to obtain a low one-way fare. In •9o•, for example, the
Labour Gazette reported that the excursion rates were exploited by ‘all
classes of tradesmen’ and ‘clerks of all kinds’ who had no intention of

8• Glenbow, cPR, A.B. O’Riordan to James Colley, • • Sept. •9•,8, file 753; ibid., Colley to
C.A. Van Scoy, •4 Sept. •9•,8, file 754; as, b’vcss Papers, George Edwards to W.M.
Thrasher, •3 Sept. •9•,8, •x file •46(=)

8= British Miner-Harvester, ‘A Tale of the Golden West’; •CMP Report, • 9=8, Annual
Departmental Reports, • 9= 7-8, vol. n•, 3 •-=

83 Glenbow, Benson Collection, Roy Benson to Fred Benson, • 8July •9•,o, and Verna
Benson to Fred Benson, =7 Aug. •9•,o

84 For an examination of this idea see Bercuson, ‘Labour Radicalism and the Western
Industrial Frontier.’

85 Grant, ‘Harvest Excursions,’ 5 h
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488 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

setting foot in a harvest field? The Manitoba Department of Agricul-
ture estimated that •o per cent of the excursion group of •896 fell into
this category. st Most harvesters without additional savings, whatever
their dreams on departure, had their coupons signed and returned to
Eastern Canada with whatever savings they had been able to accumu-
late. One of the complaints frequently voiced about the excursions by
Westerners was that ‘the majority of these men put their money in their
pockets and go back to the East to spend it. ’88

In the period before • 9 •4 homesteads were available for an excur-
sionist to file on, but if he arrived without an additional source of capital
above what he hoped to earn in the harvest, he faced long odds. Even
with •6o acres available for a fee of $•o a labouter needed cash – a
minimum of $600 – to turn a homestead into a commercial farm? A
glance at Table nI indicates that one year’s work as an excursionist
would not provide this, and that an excursionist would have to work as
an agricultural labouter or in some other occupation for a considerable
period of time to save enough money to become independent. An
excursionist was further handicapped in that he arrived at the wrong
time of the year. Once the prairie winter set in, it was impossible to
survive on an unimproved homestead. Winter jobs were difficult to
obtain, and the best a latecoiner might be able to do was to find a farmer
who would let him work for his keep. If he found no job, he would have
to deplete his small savings providing for himself in town. Thus the
road from excursionist to successful farmer was an arduous one in-

volving several years of hard work, thrift, and considerable luck. An
Imperial Oil handbook on farming, published in •93 •, tried to inspire
its readers by recounting the stories of fourteen ‘successful Western
farmers.’ None of the fourteen had been an excursionist, and only two
had started as farm labourers. The remaining dozen arrived with
capital enough to begin operations immediately?

Although wages of harvesters rose between •9•o and •927, the
increased wages did not mean that it was easier for an excursionist to set
himself up on a farm of his own. In fact it was much more likely that he
would be able to do so in the earlier period, and the possibility of a
labouter acquiring a farin diminished as the years passed. There were
two reasons for this. The number and quality of the free homesteads
86 Labour Gazette, Sept. •9o•, •46
87 Manitoba, Department of Agriculture and Immigration, Report 1896
88 ‘The Farmer and the Harvest Hand,’ Canadian Thresherman, July • 9o7
89 This figure, perhaps low, is from ̂ s, Scott Papers, W.H. Coard to Scott, 7 March

• 9o6. Other writers at roughly the same time claimed that ‘a practical farmer’ needed
as much as $158o to get a real start. SeeJ. Lumsden, Through Canada atHarvest Time:
A Study of Life and Labour in the Golden West (London 1903), 163.

9 ø Duncan Marshall, Farm Management, • 57-75

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THE HARVEST EXCURSIONISTS 489

available declined drastically after 19•4, until by the mid •92os ‘the
only districts where homesteads can be secured are in the extreme
northern parts … 4 ø or 5 ø miles from railways. ’91 Land prices in settled
areas increased until they were beyond the reach of a farm labourer,
and increased mechanization made it more expensive for a beginner to
acquire the necessary equipment. By • 92 8 anyone who understood the
agricultural situation in the Prairie pro¾inces would have considered
the notion that an excursionist could become an independent farmer
somewhat far-fetched. As George Edwards told a conference discus-
sing the failure of the •928 excursion [¾om Britain, there was ‘no hope’
that these rnen ‘would be able to take up farms for themselves, as they
could not save enough from their earnings to keep themselves in
clothing. ’92 Because of the near-impossibility of becoming established
as Western farmers, virtually all of the British miners eventually re-
turned home, and throughout the •92os about 8o per cent of those
who came to the Prairie provinces from Eastern Canada used their
return coupons to go home at the conclusion of the harvest? a

The harvest excursions, a Canadian institution for four decades,
ended suddenly. The excursion of 1928 – the second largest ever
organized – was followed in •929 by the smallest excursion since •9oo.
The immediate reason for reducing the number of harvesters to fewer
than 4ooo in •929 was a partial crop failure. No excursions were
scheduled in • 93 o, and continued crop failures and a massive pool of
unemployed Westerners made it unnecessary to resume them during
the •93osfi 4 By the time the Second World War revived the wheat
economy, the swather and the combine were beginning to do the work
that had once caused ‘the greatest movement of labouring men ever
witnessed in the Dominion. ‘”

91 AS, Hamilton Papers, E. Oliver to H. Green, 22Jan. •925
92 ^s, u•scc Papers, Edwards to W.M. Thrasher, •3 Sept. •928, ix file •46(2)
93 Department of Labour, Report • 922, Sessional Paper 26, •923, 69
94 The Dominion Provincial Farm Labour agreement of 1943 resulted in a much

smaller movement of agricultural workers – not necessarily as harvesters – in the
• 94os and • 95os. See Haythorne, Labour in Canadian Agriculture, 70-8.

95 The decline of the harvest excursions is sometimes attributed to the introduction of
the combine harvester, but while there can be no doubt that this is why excursions
were not resumed on any large scale in the •94os and •95os, the combine was not a
significant cause of the decision to stop the trains in • 93 o. Although horse- and
tractor-drawn combines had appeared on larger farms in the later • 92os, combine
use was not general enough to reduce an army of 52,ooo to a platoon of 3500 in a
single year and to eliminate it a year later. Fewer than 9000 of the West’s • 80,000
farms reported combines in the census of • 93 •, and during • 928-9 more of the ‘old
fashioned’ threshing outfits were sold in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta than
the ‘new fangled’ combines. See as, Agricultural Machinery Administration, Ag • 2 h

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