Fugitive railway labourers choose jail over work camp
Nine job ‘jumpers’ tell harrowing tales of employment conditions
SEPT. 30, 1910
Nine men hired in Winnipeg to help build the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway who left before doing any work appeared at the Mounted Police barracks in Edmonton, charged with jumping (abandoning) their jobs.
The charges were laid after Foley, Welsh and Stewart, employment agents in Winnipeg, alleged the workers violated the contracts they had signed, which had provided them with free transportation to the GTP’s head of steel, west of Edson.
Eight of the nine pleaded guilty to abandoning their jobs, but they also told harrowing tales of life at camp which was so bad, they’d rather be in jail, they told a Journal reporter.
“We don’t know what the sentence will be,” said one, ” and we don’t give a —. We would rather spend six months in jail than one month working on the GTP construction.”
The nine were among 176 men herded into rail cars like cattle at Winnipeg for the 20-hour trip to Edson. There were no lights, no drinking water, and when the train arrived in Edmonton, the cars were locked and the men not allowed to get out on the station platform.
The train stopped at the Edmonton GTP yards overnight, but no food was provided. Driven to desperation, a few who were “dead broke” went to town and stole two loaves of bread and a bottle of tomato sauce from a couple of restaurants.
At Edson the men’s baggage was unloaded in the dark into a ditch where the mud was up to their knees. There were lots of restaurants, but the cost was prohibitive, the men said: 15 cents for a soft drink, 30 cents for a sandwich. Most of the men slept in box cars. There was also a tent with a stove that the men crowded around and listened all night to stories of mountain fever and miles of muskeg.
They’d been told in Winnipeg that board was to be free and they assumed they would be given blankets, but in Edson they found out they would have to work until they had earned $10 to cover the cost of their train trip before they could get any blankets from the company’s stores.
The next morning they found out they would have to walk 48 kilometres through muskeg to reach the camp.
Some of the men who had not come prepared sold their baggage or some belongings to buy food.
When no one from the company had shown up by 10 a.m. to tell them what to do, most of the men grabbed their bags and started walking along the railway track back to Edmonton. Only 20 of the 150 men who arrived in Edson started walking to the work camp.
The men walking to Edmonton were overtaken by a working train and they climbed aboard even though it was only travelling at nine kilometres per hour.
At Entwhistle, they were told by the mounted police to appear at the barracks in Edmonton on charges
We would rather spend six months in jail than one month working on the (Grand Truck Pacific) construction.
of breaking their contract with the company.
Rather than being sentenced, the nine men who pleaded guilty to breach of contract had their charges dismissed by the police magistrate who declared accommodations at the Edson camps were not satisfactory and that the men were entitled to wages and board from the time they signed their contracts in Winnipeg.