Irish workers in Victorian Toronto.

Part 2: Joining the unions

In our April edition Dr. Nicolson described the social life of the predominantly Irish community of Catholic Toronto, a not-so-small minority within the Anglo-Protestant city. The author resumes the story of how industrialization forced workers to get organized during the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

Having equipped the Irish Catholics in Toronto with social institutions, the Church was left with the dilemma of how to help its working class population in the industrial city. The bishops recognized that workers needed the protection of some formal organization to guarantee their right to earn a decent living. But in the 1850's and 1860's, most labour associations were secret, oath-bound societies based upon Masonic principles.

For a number of reasons, Masonry had been condemned by every pope from Clement X in 1770 onwards. It was a religion in which the Christian faith was just an incidental and, being oath-bound, beyond the confessional. In some European countries it was extremely anti-clerical, indeed sought the destruction of the Church. Catholics who joined the Masonic Order itself were excommunicated; those who joined the Odd Fellows or the Knights of Pythias were denied the sacraments.

In 1855 Bishop Armand de Charbonnel denied Irish Catholics who belonged to the Odd Fellows their request to obtain permission to attend, as a body, religious services and funerals. In his Lenten Pastoral of 1859 he defined his position clearly:

"That all the members of any society protecting its secrecy by an oath contrary to the prohibition of the church must be compelled under the penalty of the refusal of the sacraments, to retract that oath and give up the society, whatever may be laudable and of moderate and lawful defence."

Charbonnel's successor, Bishop John Joseph Lynch (1860-1888), recognized that this stand placed Irish Catholic workers at a disadvantage. In 1872, he pointed out that they "are excluded from the Church if they join secret Societies, and if they do not belong to the Free Masons, Odd Fellows or Orangemen they can scarcely receive a situation. The railroad companies are generally Masonic, the municipalities Orange, and the Government Employees are for the most part of both groups."

From his earliest years as a priest, Lynch had been interested in the working man and his problems and now, with a bishop's authority, he began to conceive of ways which would permit laymen to organize.

Lynch must have been aware of the work of Bishop Von Ketteler of Mainz, Germany, who had called upon Catholics there to endow productive corporations for the workers and stressed the value of craft organizations. When, in 1849, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels gave the world the Communist Manifesto, Bishop Von Ketteler was preaching on the rights of men and calling for state intervention on their behalf.

In his Christianity and the Labour Question (first published in English in 1864), Ketteler expressed the opinion that

"It would be a great folly on our part if we kept aloof from this movement merely because it happens at the present time to be promoted chiefly by men who are hostile to Christianity. The air remains God's air though it be breathed by an atheist, and the bread we eat is no less the nourishment provided by God though kneaded by an unbeliever. It is the same with unionism: it is an idea which rests on the divine order of things, though the men who favour it do not recognize the finger of God in it, and often turn it to a wicked use."

At first, Lynch had attempted to limit the flow of unskilled Irish labourers to Toronto. Concerned with the poor living standard of his labouring flock, he sent a circular to the bishops of Ireland in 1864 on "The Evils of Wholesale and Improvident Emigration From Ireland." Contrary to his instructions, the circular was widely published, and he was criticized by Irish and American Church officials for what they saw as a callous attitude. However, it is possible that his stand did not go unnoticed by various labour organizations. No doubt they could perceive that the bishop was primarily interested in the social conditions of the working man and not necessarily in increasing the number of Catholics in the city. Meanwhile, in 1870, Bishop Lynch became Archbishop, heading the new ecclesiastical province of Ontario bishops, separated from the Church province of Quebec for the first time.

Union organization

Throughout the 1870s and 80s, labour unrest was common and Toronto was penetrated by a number of union organizations which claimed to be non-sectarian, without the requirement of secret oaths. Some, hoping to gain Church sanction so that Irish Catholics would be able to join, sent their proposals to Bishop Lynch for his approval or amendment. A particular request from the Iron Moulders International in 1873 asked Lynch to keep all correspondence confidential because the union did not want the public to know it was seeking church sanction. In the same year, a group of locomotive engineers asked Lynch to support a petition to the Legislature. With the understanding that the society was neither secret nor illegal, Lynch agreed to sign it:

But most unions and societies at that time did not represent the large element of unskilled Irish Catholic workers. However, the increased activity of Daniel O'Donoghue, a prominent Catholic labour figure, changed the picture. He had been a member of the Typographical Union and, in 1874, was elected to the Ontario Legislature as the first Labour candidate in Canada. With the revival of the American Knights of Labor in the 1880s, O'Donoghue became one of the leaders of this order in Toronto. This was an international, non-sectarian organization which enrolled skilled and unskilled workers, both men and women, and therefore appealed to the Irish Catholic working class. [1] And it was O'Donoghue and the Knights who swayed Lynch to the side of the worker against the growing antagonism of Cardinal Taschereau of Quebec City.

"...to suppress, as far as possible, Sunday Traffic on Rail Roads, there appears to be no excuse for running freight trains, though there might be for running one passenger train, on Sundays: for instance to carry mails, or to assist persons to attend the death bed of a friend or the like. In our modem civilization, no class of men is more deserving of our sympathy and respect than the Locomotive Engineers, and none deserve to be better renumerated for their service, for on their genius, sobriety, and care depend thousands of lives. Hence, in their well-being, we find safety for our own lives and property."

Knights condemned

In 1883 Cardinal Emile Taschereau sent to the Holy See a copy of the constitutions of the Knights of Labor, which was gaining support among French-Canadian workers. The Holy Office ruled that those who took part in the activities of the Order committed grave sin. As a result, the Cardinal condemned the Knights in his own diocese in 1884 and, as Primate of Canada, expected Lynch and the other bishops of Ontario to follow suit.

An Appeal was supposed to have been invoked against the decision and, on that basis, Lynch and other bishops allowed Catholic workers to enroll or remain in the society. Because of the Holy See's subsequent silence, Taschereau suspected that the appeal had not been sent and that Catholic workers had been deceived regarding the pronouncement of the Holy Office. Having received no direct communication from Rome, Lynch was not convinced. In March 1886, he confided to Rev. D. Funcken in Berlin, Ontario, that the Knights of Labor and similar organizations had a well-known purpose, namely to get better terms from employers for inadequately paid working men; that they had no oath of secrecy; and that their object was not to overthrow either the Church or the State.

"If we were to prevent our people from joining these working men societies", he said, "they should not get work, even in the United States, so that to prevent them from joining working men societies we must have certain proof of their being condemned by the Church, and each Bishop is not the Church."

In July 1886, after advising the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda of the difference of opinions expressed in Canadian and American newspapers concerning the Knights of Labor and the contention that the effect of Rome's sentence against it remained suspended by an appeal, Taschereau charged Lynch

"to proceed against that society according to the manner prescribed in the instruction of the 10th May, 1884. I do not see that at present there can be any doubt concerning the rule to be followed by Catholics of the whole world, over whom the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation extends."

Knights of Labor

Toronto industrialists were alarmed by the growing strength of the Knights of Labor. Among them was an Irish Catholic immigrant, Senator Frank Smith, who had amassed a fortune in wholesaling, banking, railways, and shipping, in addition to ownership of the Toronto Street Railway. Although he employed mostly Irish Catholics, they, like the other workers in the Toronto Street Railway, worked fourteen hours or longer, six days a week, for a weekly salary of $8.00 to $9.00.

One condition for employment included a pledge never to join any kind of labour organization. Each employee's conduct was governed by a strict set of rules, backed by fines or dismissal. When, in 1886, Smith dismissed three men for breach of this agreement, he only invigorated the need for organized labour in the view of his workers. Under the influence of Daniel O'Donoghue, Smith's Irish Catholic employees joined the Knights of Labor and became embroiled in a bitter strike. Although the strike failed, it had gained much support among workers who were generally dissatisfied with the service of the Street Railway System. Mocking Smith's complaint that his investments were damaged by the strike, a poem entitled "Senator Smith" was printed in The Labour Reformer of May 10, 1886:

"Behold the strangest sight e'er seen in all the lapse of years,

A member of the Government, a Senator in tears.

He says strikes are destroying him and scattering his wealth;

And, worse than that, anxiety is breaking down his health.

Oh, Smith, oh aged Senator, we hear your plaintive cry,

But still the strike must on, old hoss, altho' you fret and die,

And when you reach the place, old chap, where bob-tailed cars don't roll,

We pray the Lord have mercy on your bob-tailed little soul."

Frank Smith had gained political preferment by utilizing the threat of an Irish Catholic bloc vote. Now, he repaid his mentor, Archbishop Lynch, by defying him on separate school issues, thereby alienating himself from him.

Knowing the influence the Archbishop had with Irish workers, Mrs. Smith appealed to him against labour during the strike. In a letter of July 1886, she called the Knights of Labor Masonic, secret, communist, anarchist, and socialist; she vilified its major promoter in Toronto, O'Donoghue, as a liar under the direction of an Orangeman, the Grand Master in Canada. The Knights, she said, were boycotting businesses to destroy them, thereby creating unemployment; and in their attempts to disrupt the Toronto Street Railway, they were resorting to violent action, including the use of dynamite. She called Cardinal Gibbons of the United States a sophist for supporting the Knights, and urged the Archbishop to uphold Cardinal Taschereau's condemnation of them. The workers, she said, have forgotten that their employer is also a labourer who works harder than some of his men and can understand more than they can-"one good head is worth a hundred pairs of hands at least."

Lynch stands fast

For the opinions and problems of such "Lace Curtain" Irish, Archbishop Lynch had little sympathy. He was convinced that it would be wrong to support Taschereau's stand; to do so would deny the legitimate rights and demands of the Irish workers under his jurisdiction. And he remained firm in this position. A meeting of the Synod of Priests in Toronto on 16 September 1886, led to a cryptic memo to the clergy which read:

"Discussion was first opened informally regarding the Knights of Labor, especially on the effect of the alleged condemnation by Cardinal Taschereau. His Grace, Bishop O' Mahoney (Vicar General) and Archdeacon Cassidy participated-His Grace ended the discussion by declaring the order nor condemned in this diocese."

Meanwhile, a general condemnation against the Knights of Labor was being prepared in Rome, on the request of Cardinal Taschereau. Although the biographers, J. T. Ellis of Cardinal Giibbons of the United States, and J. Fitzsimmons of Cardinal Manning of Great Britain, credit these two cardinals as champions of the cause for the Knights of Labor, no doubt Archbishop Lynch's direction to the bishops of Ontario to defy the first Canadian Cardinal helped to bring the issue to a head. This was not accomplished without some feeling of trepidation on the part of Ontario's bishops, for it could be construed as ecclesiastical insubordination. They relied on Archbishop Lynch's sacred honour not to expose their opinions to Taschereau. Bishop J. Cleary of Kingston believed Taschereau had made a "curious mistake": no disciplinary decision, he said, binds us, or the Ordinaries of any Province, unless it has been officially communicated to us by the Holy See. Rome has not thought fit to promulgate a decision concerning the Knights to us, and "we are not bound to notice its delivery to Quebec."

The English Cardinal Manning, who was to become famous for his support of the workers in the London dock strike of 1889, was convinced of the important role bishops played in their interaction with the laity. He advised the Holy Office that,, Up to the present the world has been governed by dynasties: henceforward the Holy See must treat with the people, and with bishops who are in close daily and personal relations with the people."

Holding the same view on the Knights of Labor as Arch-bishop Lynch, Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, after consultation with Manning, decided to go to Rome as a spokesman for the American bishops. Lynch was kept well informed of the planning stages by his friend Henry O'Brien, who travelled extensively in the United States and had the ear of many prominent members of the Curia. On 19 September 1886, O'Brien advised Lynch from Baltimore that the American bishops were of the opinion that no harsh measures would be adopted because "the organization is so powerful that it must be guided or the Church will lose its backbone." And from Rome on January 22, 1887, he expressed the opinion that, when Gibbons arrived, "the question of the Knights of Labor will be settled-certainly favourably." Concerning another issue, he stated that it, "like the decree against the Knights of Labor,.. will be a dead letter."

Cardinal James Gibbons

On 20 February 1887, Cardinal Gibbons presented a strong case on behalf of the Knights of Labor to Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, the context of which was reprinted in Toronto in The Catholic Weekly Review, March 10, 1887. In his argument, Gibbons affirmed that the organization was neither Masonic nor hostile to the Church, and was essential because monopolies controlled legislation. He stated that workers-men, women and children-had a right to protect themselves, and that failure to recognize this in a democratic country was a dangerous step. Condemnation of that group would only open the doors to other groups. As well, if the Knights were censured, the Holy See would lose Peter's Pence, and the support of the Universal Church would be undermined, as would the authority of the bishop.

Concurrently, Lynch wrote Cardinal Gibbons with satisfaction and "expectations of self-esteem" because he "had already taken" His Eminence's "views on the same question." In this letter, Lynch described how and why he had arrived at the conclusion which compelled him to defy his ecclesiastical superior. He had "had interviews with the chief officers in Canada of the Knights of Labor who were good conscientious Catholics." Having examined their constitutions, their private bills and by-laws, he found nothing contrary to the Church or to the well-being of society. Instead, he believed the Knights were constituted to prevent a revolution similar to what occurred in France-"the poor against the monopoly and oppressions of the rich." He saw that Ontario was under the power of a "combination of capitalistic corporations"-in mines, railroads, manufacturing-wherein the working men "who gained immense riches for those companies were kept on starving wages, not enough in the majority of cases to supply the natural wan ts of their families." Because "capital was organized for its own purposes in wealth," Lynch believed "working men must then organize in self-defence, that they would gain by the sweat of their brow enough to enable them to work and to support their families." That arrangement, in Lynch's mind, would benefit both groups; it would secure the position of the labourer and allow the capitalists to accumulate money for future use (Archdiocesan Archives, Lynch papers).

Lynch also expressed deep concern about the growing secularization in Toronto. In the rapidly expanding urban population, where needs had to be quickly met, "religion is kept in the background,.. .very little spoken of amongst working men." However, it seems he was confident in the private faith

of his own flock, for he observed that "the majority of the Knights of Labor are Irish men well grounded in their faith by persecution, obedient to the Church in a most remarkable degree." Knowing that his Irish Catholics had "to join some union," he was pleased that, "in preference to others," the Knights of Labor was "free from objectionable features." However, he correctly surmised the "society was not of a permanent nature," believing that it arose "for a certain lawful purpose to remedy an evil," which Lynch mistakenly thought would be "shortly cured" when capitalism realized "the necessity of work as the advantage of fair dealing with the working men.

Regarding his defiance of Taschereau, Lynch expressed sadness for the workers in the Province of Quebec, deprived of the sacraments of the Church because their "spiritual guides are misinformed or all too apprehensive of an imaginary evil that the rules of the Knights of Labor may bring on." If he had supported Taschereau's stand, Lynch believed he would have placed a barrier between the Church and the working class.

Bishop John Walsh of London--like Lynch born in Ireland--who was soon to succeed Lynch as Archbishop of Toronto, commended the latter for the manner in which he had dealt with the labour question. He believed Lynch's approach was "simple, clear and convincing" and if "widely circulated it could not fail to do a great deal of good." When the Holy Office ultimately ruled in favour of the Knights of Labor, Lynch wrote Taschereau, explaining that he upheld the Knights of Labor to assure continued religious practice in the Irish working class.

Rerum novarum 

It was the preliminary work of these bishops and others in Europe which prompted the Church to define the rights and responsibilities of the labourer. On 15 May 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the papal encyclical, Rerum novarum, On the conditions of labour.

In it, the Pope elevated the position of the common working man, saying, "God himself chose to seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter--nay, did not disdain to spend a great deal of His life as a carpenter Himself."

Archbishop Walsh released translations of the document, and commentaries on it were printed in the Catholic Weekly Review. These stated clearly that the labourer's skill was the capital he invested and that therefore he should share in the profit. In addition to the right to receive an adequate return for his labour, the worker also had responsibilities to keep the law--for it safeguarded his own freedom--to strike only as a drastic measure against injustice, and to promote arbitration between capital and labour.

Other issues

Regardless of unions, workers remained divided over other issues. The Sunday Streetcar issue of 1893 was an example. Catholics wanted streetcars to run on Sunday to accommodate recreation. Archbishop Walsh was of the opinion that, after attending Mass, workers in their free time should have some means to get to the outskirts of the city for some fresh air. However, Protestant churches, the Orange Order, and the Sons of Ireland Protestant Association, afraid of the implications of an open Sunday in the European style, were averse to the operation of streetcars on the Sabbath. So the Knights of Labor joined the 22,000 Irish Catholics who favoured the proposal, while Daniel O'Donoghue and other union leaders placed themselves in the Sabbatarian camp because they feared that operation of Sunday streetcars could be utilized to extend the work week. Quite clearly, as late as 1893, religion and ethnicity played conflicting roles in the working man's world.

The Church never came to terms with socialism because of the revolutionary and anti-religious attitude of its proponents. However, through its newspaper, The Catholic Register, it pressed for the rights of working men, and when they were unemployed attacked the city of Toronto for its callousness as in March 1898.

Women

Although advocating the role of women as wives and mothers, the Church also recognized that women were entering the working world in ever-increasing numbers. Their rights, too, needed to be protected. Hence, Archbishop Walsh endorsed the Women's Protective Association. Father F. Ryan was appointed Walsh's spokesman to that group and, in addressing it, he made it clear that

I am here representing the Catholic Church, the Church of the people, and that Church will assist in every way to ameliorate the suffering of and protect the working women, and that to this movement the Church as well as I add its blessing.

Conclusion

The Catholic Church in Victorian Toronto, being Irish in head and members, found it natural to assist the Irish Catholic working-class. Recognizing the injustice of industrial capitalism, the Church supported unions once they were cleared from secret oaths to a hostile ideology.

Murray Nicolson, a retired lecturer in Canadian history, writes from Newmarket, Ontario.

(1.) Source: J. G. O'Donoghue, "Daniel John O'Donoghue, Father of the Canadian Labour Movement' Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report, 1942-1943, pp. 87-96.