CANADA IN THE 1930s
The Great Depression:
just do SOMETHING!
J. MARSHALL, 2008
Outline
1) The reasons for the Crash
2) The beginning was the worst
3) Mackenzie King’s vs. R.B. Bennett’s
response
4) Herbert Hoover’s vs. F.D. Roosevelt’s
response
5) Birth of new political parties in Canada
6) The people take action
1) Reasons for the Crash and other
factors that led to depression
• The stock market was a relatively new thing stocks vs. gold (traders and buyers were
inexperienced)
• Buying on margin - a license to print money
• Panicked selling over almost a week caused
the Wall St. market to collapse on Black
Tuesday, Oct 29, 1929
Other economic problems
• The price of wheat had been falling since
1927: over-production didn’t drop so prices
did - farmers’ mortgages suffered: no cash
means no new tractors
• Manufacturers were over-producing
consumer goods = few consumers = layoffs =
less spending money = fewer consumers
• USA protectionist tariffs = trade barriers for all
• Germany’s inability to pay reparations
affected the Allies’ ability to repay loans to
USA
2) The Beginning was Worst
• Canada’s economy was very closely connected to
the USA - trading/branch plants/investors:
– Wheat (40% of world supply)
– Newsprint (65% of world supply)
• As the economy failed people lost their jobs and
the ability to pay rent: vagrancy meant jail time
• To collect POGEY or the “DOLE” (Relief
vouchers) one had to publicly declare her poverty:
why would so may do without relief?
• Private charity/soup kitchens
Women and
their children
suffered as
men looked
for work, often
“riding the
rods”
Laissez Faire - let it be
Working with data: see page 80 in Counterpoints
Unemployment Rate in Canada: 1928 - 1939
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
Unemployed
10.00%
5.00%
19
28
19
29
19
30
19
31
19
32
19
33
19
34
19
35
19
36
19
37
19
38
19
39
0.00%
Data source: Counterpoints, p. 80
Percent of National Income DSpent on Relief:
Percentage of Canadian
National Income
1930 - 1937
Spent on Relief: 1930 - 1937
9.00%
8.00%
7.00%
6.00%
5.00%
Percent of
National Income
4.00%
3.00%
2.00%
1.00%
37
19
36
19
35
19
34
19
33
19
32
19
31
19
19
30
0.00%
Data source: Counterpoints, p. 80
Canadian W heat P rice P er Bushel
$1.60
$1.40
$1.20
$1.00
$0.80
$0.60
$0.40
$0.20
19
25
19
26
19
27
19
28
19
29
19
30
19
31
19
32
19
33
19
34
19
35
19
36
19
37
$0.00
Price Per Bushel
Dust Bowl: Drought 1928 1936
3) King vs. Bennett
• King thought the Depression would be shortlived. He did little.
• Bennett promised action, but as a millionaire,
he didn’t understand the plight of the people.
• Bennett did answer letters and give charity
but he looked down on government
“handouts.” As a businessman he dismissed
Keynes’ economics as illogical.
Mackenzie King’s
Liberals fall very short
• Federalism: why didn’t King
give money to the
provinces?
See the quotation about Tory governments on pg. 81.
“A nation like an individual, to
find itself must lose itself…to
those of this government, I
would not give them a fivecent piece.”
1930
A nice house
warming gift from
Mackenzie-King to
the incoming PM
Dark Depression Humour
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Bennett barnyard abandoned prairie farm
Bennett blanket newspaper
Bennett buggy engineless car
Bennett coffee roasted wheat
eggs Bennett broiled chestnuts
+
How could Bennett’s wealth be a political handicap in a depression?
4) Herbert Hoover vs.
Roosevelt
• Hoovervilles
• Hoover’s strategy was to lower interest rates the problem was too big!
• FDR’s 100 days in 1933
–
–
–
–
–
Close banks for three days
New Deal = “alphabet agencies”
Every letter to the President will be answered
End Prohibition
create CONFIDENCE and give LEADERSHIP
FDR listened to the
economist
Keynes:
“SPEND YOUR
WAY OUT OF
DEPRESSION.”
John Maynard Keynes
(“Canes”)
5) New Political Parties
• In Canada it was we saw the birth of the
CCF, Social Credit, and Union
Nationale
• In Germany and Spain, fascists came to
power and joined Italy in the creation of
a new world order
The Co-operative
Commonwealth Federation
• Some Progressives
• Regina Manifesto
July, 1933
• J.S. Woodsworth
• Tommy Douglas
J.S. Woodsworth
• Minister in Gibson’s Landing, 1917
• Pacifist/anti-conscription
• 1921 MP: Indep Labour Party of
Cda
• Anti-violence (thus not Comm
Party)
• Sat with Progressives, 1925
(helped enact Old Age Pension,
1927
• Lost favour when he wouldn’t
support Cda going to war in 1939
Tommy Douglas
• Premier of Saskatchewan, 19441961
• Scottish-born Baptist minister
• 1st socialistic gov’t in North America
• INTRODUCED UNIVERSAL
MEDICARE
• Fable of Mouseland
• 1st leader of NDP, 1961-71 (when
CCF joined with Cdn Labour
Congress
• In 2004, voted “Greatest Canadian”
in national CBC poll
Regina Manifesto
• In small groups we shall
now examine the preamble
of Manifesto and its parts.
• First: underline the
main points argued
in the preamble.
“What! The kids and
Missus and I have to
get out…after no
crops and no prices,
where shall we go?”
Which two parties were the “old” parties?
Grab all
Major James
Coldwell MP
Leader of CCF
from 1942 1960
Coldwell and farmer labor assures: we hold title; thank
God, my fear of losing home gone
CCF
Social Credit
Union Nationale
Led by JS
Woodsworth;
supported farmers,
labourers,socialists,
intellectuals,discontented Liberals; its politics
included public
ownership of KEY
industries, social
programs for the needy,
government spending
on public works
Led by “Bible Bill”
Aberhart; it appealed
to many voters in
Alberta, where he was
elected in 1935; its
policies included
citizens receiving a $25
monthly dividend to buy
goods. The additional
money was intended to
simulate the economy.
Led by Maurice
Duplessis; supported
by people in rural areas
and nationalists; its
policies included the
belief that the English
minority controlled
Quebec’s economy
See cartoon activity sheet 4-1
Fascism
Italy, 1922
Mussolini
Germany, 1933
Hitler
Spain, 1939
Franco
Blame 1911 democracy
for problems
Black Shirts March on
Rome (threat of socialists)
1929 Pact with Pope
Brown Shirts
Arian supremacy
Rebuild military = jobs
Challenge Versailles
Test tactics in Spanish
Civil War
Anschluss
Lebensraum/selfdetermination
Falange vs elected
Republic
International Brigades
Proxy war (blitzkrieg) for
Condor Legion and Italian
Air Force - Guernica
Did not fight in WW2
Crush unions -
Corporate State
Abyssinia, 1936
Albania, 1938
secret police, one party state, dictatorship, Militarism
Can you put in order Hitler’s steps to war?
Life in Hitler’s Nazi Germany
Positive Aspects
Negative Aspects
Mega-projects/rearmament =
employment
Direction =
Hope in desperate times
Versailles abandoned =
return of national pride/saved
reparation payments
Annexations =
wealth and power
Self-determination for Germans =
corrects some misplaced
persons from Versailles
Versailles abandoned =
militarization/isolation
Nuremburg Decrees/racism =
loss of human/citizen rights
Loss of democracy =
one party state
Brown Shirts/mob violence =
loss of security
Book burnings =
loss of freedom
Unions outlawed =
loss of freedom
Canada’s Failure of the
St.Louis
Canada accepted fewer than 5000 Jewish refugees
during the Second World War. Brazil accepted 27,000!
Anti-Semitic
advisors (from
the South) to
FDR persuaded
him to block a
USA landing Mackenzie King
who was
visiting
Washington
with the Royal
Family also
gave in.
6) The People Take Action
“On to Ottawa Trek”
• Dissatisfaction with 1932 Relief Camps - designed to keep
potential trouble makers out of the cities - think Winnipeg
1919 - ironically, the camps concentrated large groups of
men who were easily organized.
• 20¢/day = slave labour
• Young men were mobile - concentrated in Vancouver (why
would 1/3 of 150 camps be in BC?): history of unrest Vancouver 1932
On to Ottawa: Kamloops
3 June, 1935
On July 1st a meeting was
called at Market Square
• Only about 300 strikers
attended - but almost 2000
people gathered.
• Most strikers stayed at the
exhibition grounds
• Bennett had ordered the
protest stopped - he didn’t
want trouble in Ottawa.
Strikers at the exhibition grounds
Regina Riot:
1 July, 1935
The RCMP hid in 3 vans and the Regina Police hid
in a garage. At 8 p.m. a whistle blew and they
charged, beginning hours of hand-to-hand fighting.
In the end 1 plain clothes policeman was dead. 120
strikers were arrested.
Outcome:
• The next day the RCMP surrounded the stadium with machine
guns - strikers were cut off from food and water.
• The strikers called the Premier for a meeting - they were
arrested but released to meet
• National newspapers reported the police initiated riot
• Premier Gardner blamed Bennett for the trouble. He ordered
the men be fed and negotiated a disbandment to the strike.
• The men boarded trains an returned west.
• Bennett said, the Trek was "not a mere uprising against law and
order but a definite revolutionary effort on the part of a group of
men to usurp authority and destroy government." - the Tories
were defeated that year in the 1935 federal election.
How are the
police achieving
order?
Bloody Sunday:
Sit down strike,
Vancouver, 1938
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