Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. The world depression that began in the United States at the end of 1929 quickly reached Canada. Between 1929 and 1939, gross domestic product fell 40% (compared to 37% in the US). Estimates show that unemployment reached up to 27% at depths of the Depression in 1933. Many companies were closed, because the company's profit of $ 398 million in 1929 turned into a loss of $ 98 million as prices fell. Farmers in the Prairies were hit hard by the fall in the price of wheat. Despite the emergence of many radical parties, the government is run by major parties. The depression ended in 1939 when World War II began.
Video Great Depression in Canada
Economic results
In 1930, 30% of the workforce did not work, and a fifth of the population became dependent on government assistance. Wages fall, as does prices. Gross national expenditure has declined by 42% from 1929 levels. In some areas, the decline is much worse. In rural areas of the meadows, two-thirds of the residents are relieved.
Further damage is a reduction of investment: neither large companies nor individuals are willing and unable to invest in new ventures.
In 1932, industrial production was only 58% of the level of 1929, the second lowest level in the world after the United States, and far behind countries like Britain, which only saw it fall to 83% from the level of 1929. Total national income fell to 55 % of the 1929 level, again worse than any other country other than the US.
Impact
The Canadian economy was just beginning to shift from primary industries (agriculture, fishery, mining and logging) to manufacturing. Raw material exports fall, and jobs, prices and profits fall in every sector. Canada is the hardest hit because of its economic position. This is increasingly affected as its main trading partners are the UK and the US, both of which are deeply affected by depression worldwide.
One area that is not affected is the flying bush, which, thanks to the explosion of mining and exploration, continues to grow during this period. Even so, most of the bush airlines lost money, influenced by the cancellation of government air contracts in 1931-2.
Unemployment
National urban unemployment is 19%; The Toronto rate is 17%, according to the 1931 census. Farmers who live in their fields are not considered unemployed. In 1933, 30% of the workforce did not work, and a fifth of the population became dependent on government assistance. Wages fall as well as prices. In some areas, such as mining and logging areas, the decline is much worse.
Prairie Province
The Prairie Provinces and Western Canada were the hardest hit. In rural areas of the meadows, two-thirds of the residents are relieved. The region was fully restored after 1939. The fall in wheat prices prompted many farmers to cities and towns, such as Calgary, Alberta; Regina, Saskatchewan; and Brandon, Manitoba. The population in the grassland province falls below the natural replacement rate. There is also a migration from the southern grasslands affected by Dust Bowl conditions such as the Palliser Triangle to the aspen park in the north.
During the depression, there was an increase in the working class militancy organized by the Communist Party. Trade unions are massively retreating in response to the damage caused by depression at the same time when significant parts of the working class, including the unemployed, are shouting for collective action.
Many strikes and protests were led by the Communists, many of which culminated in clashes with police. Some of the most notable include the coal miners' strike which resulted in Estevan Riot in Estevan, Saskatchewan which caused three strikers killed by RCMP bullets in 1931, a seafront attack in Vancouver that culminated with the "Battle of Ballantyne Pier" in 1935, and many demonstration unemployment up to and included an in-Ottawa Trek that caused one police officer Regina and a protester dead in "Regina Riot." Although the actual number of Communist Party militants remains small, the impact is far less than their numbers, largely due to the government's anticommunist reaction, especially Prime Minister RB Bennett's policy of vowing to destroy communism in Canada with the "iron heel of cruelty."
This conflict was reduced after 1935, when the Communist Party shifted strategy and Conservative Bennett was defeated. Agitation and unrest continued throughout the depression, marked by periodic clashes, like a sit-down strike in Vancouver that ended in "Bloody Sunday." This development has far-reaching consequences in shaping the postwar environment, including the domestic cold war climate, the rise of the welfare state, and the implementation of institutional frameworks for industrial relations.
Female
The main role of women is as housewives; without a steady stream of family income, their work becomes more difficult in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. The number of births drops everywhere, as children are delayed until families can financially support them. The average birth rate for 14 major countries fell 12% from 19.3 births per thousand in 1930, to 17.0 in 1935. In Canada, half of Roman Catholic women oppose Church teaching and use contraception to delay birth.
Among some women in the workforce, layoffs are less common in white-collar jobs and they are usually found in light manufacturing jobs. However, there is widespread demand to limit families to a paid job, so wives may lose their jobs if their husbands are employed.
An updated housewife strategy their mothers used when they grew up in poor families. Cheap food is used, such as soup, beans, and noodles. They buy the cheapest cuts of meat - sometimes even horse meat - and recycle Sunday roast into sandwiches and soups. They sew and patch clothes, trade with their neighbors for very large items, and are made with colder homes. New furniture and equipment are postponed to better days. These strategies show that female domestic workers - cooking, cleaning, budgeting, shopping, caring for children - are vital to the maintenance of the family economy and offering space for the economy. Many women also work outdoors, or take dorms, wash clothes for trade or money, and sew for neighbors in return for something they can offer. Extended families use mutual assistance - supplementary meals, backup rooms, repair jobs, cash loans - to help cousins ​​and in-laws.
Women hold 25-30% of jobs in cities. Some women are employed in heavy industry, rail or construction. Many of them are domestic workers or employed in family-owned restaurants and shops. Women factory workers usually handle clothing and food. Educated women have a variety of narrow jobs, such as work and clerical teaching. It is hoped that a woman gives a good job when she gets married. Srigley emphasized various background factors and family circumstances, arguing that "gender" itself is less important than race, ethnicity, or class.
Teacher
School budgets are cut across the country, although enrollment rises and rises because dropouts can not find work. To save money, districts consolidated nearby schools, reduced staff numbers, postponed new construction, and increased class size. Well-educated middle class teachers are squeezed out of the financial crisis their employers face. In Ontario, new teachers are not employed so that the average age and experience increases. However, their salaries are down and men who would otherwise take on higher business status jobs are increasingly competing against women. Married women are not employed on the grounds that it is unfair for a family to have two of the rare jobs that the breadwinner needs. Female teachers, who have made huge gains in the 1910-20 era, see themselves as being discriminated against. Teachers' associations are practically powerless in crises, even in Ontario where they are most powerful. After prosperity returned in the 1940s, however, money was available again, there was a shortage of teachers, and unions proved to be more effective. For example, in Quebec, the Company GÃÆ' Â © num des Institut et des Institutrices Catholics (CIC) was founded in 1946 (becoming the Centrale de l'Enseignement du QuÃÆ' Â © bec (CEQ) in 1967). It seeks pensions and higher salaries and better working conditions, while insisting the teachers are full professionals. In remote areas, professionalization is rare; local school boards are strictly in control of a one-room school, typically employing local women with a secondary school education or a year at the university as teachers, so their small salaries will remain in the community.
Labor policy
Case studies from four Canadian textile companies - two cotton and two socks and knits - show the range of business responses to the economic crisis. Each faces a variety of different conditions, and each devises an appropriate restructuring strategy. Large companies respond by investing in more expensive machinery and automation, hiring less skilled workers to maintain automated equipment, and customizing their product lines to change consumer tastes. However, smaller socks and knitting companies lack the capital to invest or research that is needed to monitor consumer tastes. They use scientific management "Taylorized" that has stood the test of time or make changes little by little. Power shifts upward to management, because strikes are too risky in the early 1930s and the chances of finding a better job have narrowed drastically. However, in 1935, the influence of United States militant unions flooded the Canadian borders and unions became stronger and more harmonious. This activity was most prominent in the Ontario car factories, beginning in Windsor in late 1936, where American Car Workers (UAW) chartered the first Canadian locals in the Kelsey-Hayes factory.
Maps Great Depression in Canada
World trade
The New York Stock Market crash keeps people hoarding their money; when consumption falls, the US economy continues to contract, 1929-32. Given the close economic ties between the two countries, the collapse rapidly affected Canada. Coupled with the grasslands woes are people from Ontario and Quebec, whose manufacturing industry is now a victim of overproduction. Massive layoffs happen and other companies fall into bankruptcy. The collapse is not as sharp as in the United States, but it is the second sharpest collapse in the world.
Canada does have some advantages over other countries, especially its highly volatile banking system that did not fail during the entire depression, compared with more than 9,000 small banks that collapsed in the United States.
Canada is severely injured because of its dependence on basic commodities, whose prices fall by more than 50%, and because of the importance of international trade. In 1920 about 25% of Canada's Gross National Product came from exports. The first US reaction was to raise tariffs through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was passed into law 17 June 1930. It harmed the Canadian economy more than most other countries in the world, and Canada retaliated by raising its own tariffs over American exports and by switching business to the Empire.
In an angry response to Smoot-Hawley, Canada welcomes the introduction of British trade protectionism and the Commonwealth preference system during the winter of 1931-32. It helps Canada avoid external defaults on their public debt during the Great Depression. Canada has a high level of exposure to the international economy, which makes Canada vulnerable to the international economic crisis. The onset of depression creates a balance of critical payout deficits, and it is an extension of imperial protection by the British that gives Canada the opportunity to increase their exports to the UK market. In 1938, the UK imported more than twice the volume of 1929 products from Australia, while the value of products sent from Canada increased more than doubled, despite a dramatic drop in prices. Thus, the UK market plays an important role in helping Canada and Australia stabilize their balance of payments in extremely difficult economic conditions in the 1930s.
Government reactions
During the Depression, the provincial and municipal governments were owed after the expansion of infrastructure and education during the 1920s. Thus falling into the federal government to try to improve the economy. When the Depression began Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister. He believes that the crisis will pass, refuse to provide federal assistance to the province, and only introduce moderate relief efforts. The government's reaction to The Great Depression is the focus of the 2013 documentary Catch The Westbound Train of the Prairie Coast Film.
New Offer
The Bennett government, which defeated King Mackenzie in the 1930 election, initially refused to offer large-scale aid or assistance to the provinces, much to the resentment of the provincial prime minister, but eventually surrendered and started the Canadian "New Testament" from relief in 1935. in 1937, the worst of the Depression has passed, but left a trail on the country's economic landscape. The Canadian Atlantic is very hard hit. Newfoundland (an independent power at the time) broke economically and politically and handed over a responsible government by re-directing British control.
World War I veterans build a history of postwar political activism to play an important role in the extension of the state-sponsored social welfare in Canada. On the grounds that their wartime sacrifices were not properly rewarded, veterans claimed that they were entitled to state protection from poverty and unemployment in front of the house. The rhetoric of patriotism, courage, sacrifice, and duty creates strong demands for adequate employment, assistance and retirement that, according to veterans, is given as a right of social citizenship and not a form of charity. At the local, provincial and national level, veterans are struggling to get compensation and recognition for their war services, and making their demands for employment and social security a central part of emerging social policies.
The Liberal Party lost the 1930 election to the Conservative Party, led by R.B. Bennett. Bennett, a successful western businessman, campaigned for high tariffs and massive expenses. Work programs begin, and other welfare and assistance programs become much larger. This caused a large federal deficit. Bennett became wary of the budget shortage in 1932, and greatly reduced federal spending. It only deepens the depression because government employees are excluded from work and public works projects are canceled.
One of the biggest burdens in government is the Canadian National Railway (CNR). The federal government has taken over a number of dead and bankrupt railroad tracks during World War I and the 1920s. The government-borne debt was over $ 2 billion, a huge amount at the time, but during the boom years it seemed to be paid. Depression transforms this debt into a devastating burden. Due to the decline in trade, the CNR also began to lose large sums of money during the Depression, and had to be rescued further by the government.
With declining support and worsening depression, Bennett sought to introduce policies based on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States. Bennett thus requested minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and other such programs. This effort is largely unsuccessful; the province challenged the federal government's right to administer these programs. Several successful federal efforts: The Creditor's Regulatory Act and Farmers Creditor Regulatory Act , which provides an alternative to bankruptcy for a troubled business, is considered constitutional by Invite - Re Farmers Referral Credit Settings .
The legal and political failings of the Bennett New Deal legislation shifted the struggle to recast capitalism to the provincial and city levels. Efforts to address the disablement of the Great Depression in Ontario focused on the "sweatshop crisis" that dominated social and political discourse after 1934. 1935 The Ontario Industrial Standards Act (ISA) is designed to bring workers and employers together under the auspices of the state to set minimum wages and work standards. The establishment of the New Deal-style industry code is based on organized capital mobilization and organized labor to combat unfair competition, stop the spread of subsidized labor, and stop the sweatshop capitalism. Although the ISA does not carry broad economic regulations, it is very interested in the possibility of government intervention. Workers in a wide variety of occupations, from asbestos workers to servants, try to regulate the possibility of ISAs. The importance of ISA lies in what is expressed about the nature of welfare, labor wage, union movement, competitive capitalism, business attitudes toward industrial regulation, and the role of the state in managing the collective affairs of capitalism. The history of the ISA also shows that "regulatory unionism", as described by Colin Gordon in his work on the New American Agreement, may have animated key developments in Canadian social, economic, and labor history.
Failure to help the economy led to the defeat of the Federal Conservatives in the 1935 election when the Liberals, still led by King Mackenzie, returned to power.
The general public lost faith in both the Canadian Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Canada. This led to the emergence of a third party: the Commonwealth Federation of Cooperatives (a socialist party that achieved some success before joining the Canadian Labor Congress in 1961, becoming the New Democratic Party).
As the Depression worsened, the government implemented several aid programs such as the National Housing Act and the National Employment Commission, and established Trans-Canada Airlines (1937, the predecessor of Air Canada). However, it took until 1939 and the outbreak of war for the Canadian economy to return to 1929 levels.
Liberal back
After 1936, the prime minister lost patience as the westerners preferred radical alternatives such as the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and Social Credit for its mid-term liberalism. Indeed, he almost wrote the area with his comment that the prairie dust bowl was "part of the desert region of the US I doubt if that would be any good any more." Instead, he paid more attention to the industrial estate and the needs of Ontario and Quebec on the St. Lawrence Seaway is proposed with the United States. As for unemployment, it is hostile to federal aid and reluctant to accept a Keynesian solution that involves spending federal deficits, tax cuts and subsidies to the housing market.
Mackenzie King returned as prime minister, serving until his retirement in 1948. For the past two years, he has also been the secretary of state for external affairs, taking personal responsibility for foreign policy.
Social Credits
Social Credit (often called SoCred ) is the most powerful populist political movement in Alberta and neighboring British Columbia, 1930s 1970s. Social Credit is based on the economic theory of an Englishman, C. H. Douglas. His theories became very popular throughout the nation in the early 1930s. The main proposal is the dividend-free division (or social credit), called "funny money" by the opposition.
During the Great Depression in Canada the demand for radical action peaked around 1934, after the worst period ended and the economy began to recover. Mortgage liabilities are significant because farmers can not meet their interest payments. The inconvenience of farmers, whose debts are increasing and which have no legal protection against foreclosures, is a powerful factor in creating an atmosphere of political despair. The radical peasant party, the UFA is confused with depression and Albertans demands new leadership.
Grassland farmers always believe they are being exploited by Toronto and Montreal. What they lack is a prophet who will lead them to the promised land. The Social Credit Movement began in Alberta in 1932; it became a political movement in 1935 and suddenly burned like a prairie fire. The new Prophet and prime minister was radio evangelist William Aberhart (1878-1943). The message is Biblical prophecy. Aberhart was a fundamentalist, preaching the revealed word of God and quoting the Bible to find a solution to the evils of the modern and materialistic world: the evils of sophisticated academics and their biblical criticism, the cold formality of the middle-class congregation, the evil. dancing and movies and drinking. The "Bill of the Bible" proclaims that the capitalist economy decays because of its immorality; especially producing goods and services but not providing people with sufficient purchasing power to enjoy them. This can be fixed by giving money in the form of "social credit", or $ 25 per month for every man and woman. This priming pump is guaranteed to restore prosperity, he prophesied for the 1600 Social Credit club he formed in the province.
Alberta businessmen, professionals, newspaper editors, and traditional middle-class leaders vigorously protested at Aberhart's chatty ideas, but they did not solve any problems and did not talk about the promise of the land ahead. Aberhart's new party in 1935 voted 56 members to the Alberta Assembly, compared to 7 for all other parties.
Alberta's Social Credit Party remained in power for 36 years until 1971. It was re-elected by popular vote no less than 9 times, achieving success by moving from left to right.
Social Credits in the office
Once in power in Alberta Aberhart gives a high priority to balancing the provincial budget. He reduces expenses and increases sales tax and income taxes. The poor and the unemployed get nothing. The $ 25 monthly social payday never came, because Aberhart decided there was nothing to be done until the provincial financial system was changed, and in 1936 Alberta failed to pay its bonds. He passed the Debt Adjustment Act which canceled all interest on mortgages since 1932 and restricted all interest rates on mortgages by 5%, in line with similar laws passed by other provinces. In 1937, backbenchers passed a radical banking law banned by the national government (banking is the federal responsibility). Attempts to control the press are also prohibited. The party is authoritarian and seeks to exercise detailed control over its holders; the rebellious people are cleaned out or removed from office by new recall selection devices. Although Aberhart is hostile to banks and newspapers, he basically supports capitalism and does not support socialist policies like the Commonwealth Federation of Cooperatives (CCF) in Saskatchewan.
In 1938, the government of Social Credit abandoned its idea of ​​a $ 25 payment, but its inability to violate UFA policies caused severe disappointment and defection from the party. The Aberhart government was re-elected in the 1940 election, bringing 43% of the vote. The prosperity of the Second World War dispelled the economic fears and resentments that had fueled the unrest of peasants. Aberhart died in 1943, and was replaced as a Premier by his disciples at the Bible Institute of the Prophet and close disciple for life, Ernest C. Manning (1908-1996).
The Social Credit Party, now firmly on the right, set Alberta up to 1968 under Manning.
Recovery
Canada's recovery from the Great Depression is slow. Economists Pedro Amaral and James MacGee found that the Canadian recovery had important differences with the United States. In US productivity recovers quickly while the labor force remains depressed throughout the decade. In Canada, jobs recover quickly but productivity remains below trend. Amaral and MacGee suggest that this decline was due to a continuing decline in international trade during the 1930s.
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Crown Council seeks to uplift the people, and creates two national companies: the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), and the Bank of Canada. The first, founded in 1932, is seen as a means of keeping the country united and lifted in this harsh economic times. Many poor people find the radio as an escape and use it to restore their own confidence in a brighter future. Broadcasting coast to coast mainly in English, with some French, especially in Quebec, CRBC plays an important role in maintaining morale for Canada everywhere. The latter is used to manage horribly managed currencies and credits among Canadians in previous years. It was also set up to serve as a private banker bank and to assist and advise the Canadian government on its own debt and financial problems. Banks play an important role to help steer government spending in the right direction. The bank's efforts took place through the difficult years of depression and toward prosperity that followed into and after the Second World War.
Both companies are seen as a positive step by the Canadian government to help the economy get back on track. 1937 was an important year in the recovery of the Great Depression. Bank of Canada was nationalized that year, and the Canadian Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the same year. Both companies are a successful tool in restoring Canadian economic and financial culture during the Great Depression.
World War II rupture needed to pull Canada out of the depression. From 1939, increased demand in Europe for materials, and increased spending by the Canadian government created a strong impetus for the economy. Unemployed men registered in the military. In 1939, Canada was in the first period of prosperity in the business cycle in a decade. This coincides with the recovery of the American economy, which creates better markets for exports and a new stream of much needed capital.
See also
- Canada in World War and Interwar Year
- Cities in the Great Depression # Canada
- List of civil unrest and riots in Calgary
References
Further reading
External links
- Main Economic Events
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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