Individual Workers In The Early 1900's example essay topic

In the early 1900's, the sudden growth of cities and industries, due to immigration, brought great changes to Canadian life. Although many people gained, a lot more lived in misery. Many families in the growing cities were no longer able to solve their own problems. Canadians then formed various organizations to build up 4 different types of reforms (labour unions, female suffrage, temperance and social reform) for rights to help impoverished immigrants.

Individual workers in the early 1900's could not do much about their poor working conditions and low pay. Even if they threatened to quit, it would not have helped them because the employers could easily find replacements among the new immigrants who were desperate for work. Low wages were better to most oppose to not getting paid at all, since there was no welfare or unemployment insurance back then. Unskilled workers got some support from the Industrial Workers of the World, a union that came from the United States. The members of the union, knows as the "Wobblies", built social centers in cities and medical clinics for the workers passing through. The union movement grew in the early years of the twentieth century and gave workers some sense of hope.

Unions succeeded in forming a joint organization, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), to persuade governments to pass laws that would improve life working people. In 1907, the Lord's Day Act gave workers a weekly day of rest and Ontario set the minimum working age at 14, which other provinces later followed. Many reformers in the early 1900's believed that alcohol was the root of social evil since going to a bar or tavern was usually the only recreation that workers had. The little money workers earned that were supposed to be used for household needs were often spent on alcohol. Middle-class women formed an organization called the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), using public demonstrations, meetings and concerts to try to convince people to take a pledge to neither touch nor taste alcohol. When pledges did not stop enough people from drinking, the WCTU began petitioning governments to bring in a ban on alcohol - prohibition.

Until 1917, Canadian law stated that "No woman, idiot, lunatic, or criminal shall vote". Women couldn't defeat the politicians who did not support Prohibition or other reforms. A lot of women then began to argue for female suffrage - the right of women to vote. Many suffragists campaigned also for other rights that women did not have.

It was definitely not easy for suffragists to convince men and even other women. Canadian suffragists relied on petitions, pamphlets and parades. Finally, in 1918, all Canadian women won the right to vote in federal elections in recognition of the patriotic work during the war. Many of the old agreements about women being too delicate to become involved in politics had been disproved.

Reformers are definitely to thank for the privileges that are given to us now, whether in women being able to vote or in the workplace. Although it took long years of hard work in trying to pursue the government for such rights, they " re the ones who should be thanked for fighting for the privileges we take for granted even as of today.