Abstract

“Drunk, Sick or Lazy”: A Case-Study of Workers’ Control and Managerial Revolution in Early Twentieth Century Canada

In the spring of 1903, the hardware manufacturer Montreal Rolling Mills Co. made the acquisition of its largest and most tenacious rival, Pillow, Hersey & Co. The former’s managing director, William McMaster, immediately sent his son Ross to investigate the state of the acquired works. Between June and September 1903, Ross McMaster kept a detailed journal of what he saw as he walked the factory floor. He wrote of machines regularly sitting idle, work inefficiently organized, and workers frequently absent. On 5 August he complained bitterly that the company’s employees were “Drunk, sick or lazy.” When it purchased Pillow, Hersey & Co., Montreal Rolling Mills Co. had already swallowed up most of its competitors and would soon merge with what remained to form The Steel of Company of Canada, a response to the creation of U.S. Steel. The acquisition also came at a time when the expanding company was experiencing a managerial revolution. Using an extraordinary collection of documents recently acquired by Library and Archives Canada, this paper offers an inside look at a company that was rapidly reinventing itself as a modern, multi-unit firm. It demonstrates the persistence of workers’ control of production into the twentieth century, but also challenges the narrative that industrial firms in Montreal, one of the first cities in North America to experience industrialization, were falling behind newer operations in Southern Ontario and the United States. Instead, this case-study will show that a new generation of industrialists like the McMasters were actively imposing modern management technologies to break worker control of production and improve the efficiency of the works.