by Gordon Moyles
English Department, University of Alberta
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The Salvation Army, during its one hundred and fifty years of public service, has been many things to many people. First and foremost, it has been, to more than a million worldwide, an evangelical church. To millions more it has been a ‘food pantry,’ a used ‘clothes dispensary,’ a rehabilitation or ‘recovery’ centre, a Grace Hospital, a ‘missing-persons’ bureau, a ‘farm colony’ and, perhaps most conspicuous, a chaplaincy and official auxiliary service during the Second World War.
Of those various avenues of Christian outreach most people know—either from personal experience or having read about them. What many Canadians do not now know (though they certainly did in the early part of the last century) was that The Salvation Army was also one of Canada’s leading immigration agencies, accredited and financially-sponsored by the Canadian government. So immense were its immigration services that, between 1905 and 1907, the organization chartered fourteen ocean liners, with a thousand immigrants each, on an alcohol-free trip across the Atlantic. In addition, hundreds of ‘conducted parties’ of between 30 to 300 brought the total by 1914 (before the outbreak of the First World War curtailed immigration) to approximately 50,700 settlers. That number represented fourteen percent of the total who came to Canada in that ten-year period, the Army’s contribution being seven times greater than that of the next most-active agency, the British Dominions Emigration Society. After the War, the Army transported another 65,000 ‘settlers,’ so that by 1932, when its status as an official immigration agency ended, it had helped more than 112,000 British people to make Canada their home.
The Salvation Army was a preferred emigration agency for several reasons, not the least of them being that it was a religious organization with tee-total values. Each emigrant was therefore assured (though not all wanted to be) of a publicly prayed-for send-off, with brass band accompaniment, and with spiritual counselling and religious services on board ship. In a more practical way (and perhaps a greater incentive) the Army could, in addition to the bonuses paid by the Canadian government, draw on public financial support and its own reserves to assist those who could not afford passage (which amounted to more than a third of those who chose its services). But most reassuring, as many observers pointed out, was the Army’s vast network of officers and workers throughout the world ready to welcome and look after every single settler.
In Great Britain that ‘vast network’ could offer emigration advice in most small towns, but were aided in making the benefits of Canada known by a large number of Canadian Salvationists sent over to publicize the service, some of whom, like the well-known Brandon Mayor and provincial politician, George Dinsdale, had once been emigrants themselves. When they had concluded their tours they became the conductors of ‘parties’ assigned to them, looking after the emigrants’ personal needs aboard ship, giving advice regarding life in Canada, and sometimes even travelling with them to their final destinations. And, finally, not only were they met by the Army’s immigration officials at Quebec or Halifax, and then escorted as far as Toronto, but, positions already having been secured for most of them, they were often seen to their final destinations. Thereafter, in addition to the required visits of a government inspector, an appointed Army officer would also make semi-annual visits and recommend changes if necessary. And even though the system did not always work as efficiently as the preceding description seems to suggest, it was nonetheless one, which recommended itself to both potential emigrants and Canada immigration officials. This is how one happy emigrant described it:
I am perfectly amazed. How quickly and quietly you do things. What an organization! Carriages ‘Reserved for the Salvation Army Party Bound for Canada.’ Your own conductor at Liverpool. Breakfast waiting there. Someone crossing the ocean with you, and then to be met on arrival and sent to work. God bless the General!’
Prior to 1910, almost ninety percent of The Salvation Army emigrants were part of what the Army termed its “mass migration effort.” That is, apart from a few hundred young men trained at the Army’s Hadleigh Farm Colony in Essex, no single group had been singled out for special service. They were simply shiploads (or parties) of families, and single men and women, most of whom expressed a desire to farm (thus qualifying the Army for a bonus), but many of whom were simply labourers, tradesmen or ‘mechanics’ (skilled workers). Of these, it was mainly only those with sufficient funds to ‘homestead’ who made it as far as Manitoba, the majority getting no farther than Ontario where most, after a stint at farming, eventually swelled the working ranks in eastern cities, sometimes incurring the anger of local trades unions.
A party of female domestics bound for Canada.
Source: Salvation Army Archives, Toronto
After 1910, however, and especially after the First World War, the Army began to pay special attention to, and conduct as distinct parties, two identifiable groups: young men destined as ‘farm-help’ and single females anxious to become ‘domestics.’ The former consisted mainly of ‘poor law’ juveniles, some of whom had spent most of their youth in institutions, and ‘blind-alley’ boys, with no assured future professions in Great Britain. The latter were part of that ‘vast surplus’ of women (almost twice as many as men) for whom jobs (even of the poorer kind which tolerated women) were very scarce and the possibility of marriage very slim. Emigration, most humanitarians agreed, gave promise of a better future, away from the city slums and in a land rich with possibility.
Though Ontario was, and would remain, the preferred destination for most Army-sponsored immigrants, it was inevitable, given the government’s propaganda aimed at filling up the ‘Golden West,’ that Manitoba, too, would be the choice of many. Not only did the Army recognize this preference by stationing an immigration officer in Winnipeg, but also by establishing a receiving centre familiarly known as the Balmoral Lodge. The Manitoba government responded by offering the Army several annual grants specifically aimed at recruiting to the province both juvenile farm hands and female domestics. Applications from both farmers and housewives began to pour into the Winnipeg headquarters, almost a thousand in 1908 alone, and in subsequent years, particularly after the Empire Settlement Act came into effect (in 1923) as many as two thousand young Britishers, brought over by the Army, found jobs (some of them eventually making careers for themselves) in Manitoba, then the gateway to the ‘Last Best West.’
Just as the Salvation Army immigration bureau paid special attention to the transportation of juvenile farm helpers and young female domestics, mainly because the Canadian government wished that to be its priority, so in Canadian newspapers, including those of Manitoba, they were the immigrants most closely scrutinized, often celebrated and sometimes criticized.
The young men were especially favoured. The fact that many of them had been given a six-week training course in ‘husbandry’ at the Army’s Farm Colony at Hadleigh before emigrating made them (at least seemingly so) more promising as farmers. This is how Commissioner Lamb, in charge of the Army’s Emigration Bureau, described the training:
The boys receive instruction in hygiene, personal cleanliness and sanitation; they also attend short lectures on thrift, character building, care of the health, on the difficulties and temptations of new lands, on kindness to animals, on personal behaviour and courtesy. The following subjects are included in the training course, but are varied according to the individual need: cooking, laundry, boot and shoe repairing, rough carpentry, horse feeding, harnessing and driving, market gardening, milking and dairy work, the care of livestock, trench digging, drainage, etc. Simple surveying and engineering, the measuring of rainfall, reservoir and cesspool construction, the care of implements and repairs, seasonal outdoor work, such as ploughing, sowing, pruning, harvesting, etc., all form part of the instruction given.
The importance of adapting themselves to the new conditions overseas as quickly as they can is strongly pressed upon them. They are to be ready to take advice but not so ready to give it; not to say how much better things are done in England, but to realize that the methods, tools, etc., used in the Dominion are those which, by time and experience, have proved to be the most suitable to the conditions there prevailing. The boys are told that a great deal depends on themselves; that a little tact goes a long way towards smoothing over any little difficulties or misunderstandings that may arise at the beginning; that, other things being equal, a Canadian or an Australian much prefers a British immigrant to those of other nationalities [“Juvenile Migration and Settlement,” Edinburgh Review, 240 (July 1924).]
It was, one expects a rather idealistic description but, nevertheless, one, which encouraged many Manitoba farmers to seek the services of such ‘trained’ young men, and at a very reasonable cost. “The boys receive from the farmers,” added Commissioner Lamb, “two dollars per week with their board and lodging, and the balance of their wages are paid to the Salvation Army in repayment of the original loan. It is calculated that at the end of two years the boys will have repaid the bulk of their obligation to the Army.”
When the young men, in parties accompanied by an Army officer, arrived in Winnipeg—“eagerness for the life on which they were entering written all over their faces”—they were nearly always welcomed in style. A typical one being that accorded the eighty-six who arrived on 12 June 1923, lavishly described by the Winnipeg Tribune: “The boys arrived from Montreal where they landed Sunday from the White-Star-Dominion liner Megantic, and travelled to Winnipeg on a Canadian National special train. They were accompanied all the way from England by Lieut.-Col. Onslow Edwin. They were a healthy, vigorous-looking bunch of youngsters, carrying all their worldly possessions, with which to start life in a new land, in brown suitcases supplied by the Salvation Army.”
On arrival, a special streetcar took them to Roseland Hall where “a substantial meal was set, to which the lads, after singing a hearty grace, did complete justice. A glance over the tables at the boys convinced one that here were lads of the right breed who would, under right conditions, make good in the West.” After being treated to a musical performance by the Citadel Band, the boys were welcomed to Canada by the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Evans, who, after declaring that he also had come to Canada under similar circumstances some seventeen years before, “gave the boys a hearty welcome to Western Canada”: “here you have health and liberty, and don’t mistake that liberty,” he declared. “We all expect you to play the game. Manitoba has something for you and you will have done your part if you make this place just a little bit better than you found it.”
Following the reception, the young men paraded to the Logan Avenue hostel where they were put up for the night. “In charge of the reception in Winnipeg was Adjutant William Dray. He stated that by this evening practically all the boys will be placed in their future homes throughout the province. More than 1,000 applications for the boys have been received from farmers, and after careful investigation the lads are being placed in the best surroundings possible. The Salvation Army will keep in touch with them from three to five years.” The age at which each boy would be free from obligation, and able to make his own way, was eighteen.
The whole affair, and such like it, may have been tinged with a degree of false expectation (both for the Army and the boys) for not all of them would “make good,” and not all farmers would treat them well. Some skipped out, leaving no trace; others left to take jobs in the city; while others returned to the ‘old country’ (a very few having been deported). Some would be lucky enough to work for just one farmer, while others were known to have worked for as many as six or eight in just two or three years. But, having said all that, the juvenile report cards completed by government inspectors (now available online) show that a majority of the young men and their employers were satisfied with each other.
McG, Andrew 17 years old; sailed on the S.S. Ausonia, June 1924; 5 weeks with C. W. Bollman, Moline; 5 weeks with M. D. Cannon, Brandon; 2 weeks with E. C. Graham, Holland; 3 weeks with A. Hargreaves, Brandon; 2 months with W. Honey, Binscarth; one year with H. Harp at $175 per year. Comment: “Boy evidently a wanderer, but will make good if he stays in one place for any length of time; makes his own arrangements and can make his own way.”
F. Edward 15 years old; sailed on the S.S. Megantic June 1923; three employers: William McMullen, Cartwright; James Moffat, Fairfax; S. Tiddler, Brandon at $200 per year. Comment: “Boy likes farming and is well pleased with his place; his employer is well satisfied with his work; no complaints.”
When we turn to look at the public commentary, which greeted, and subsequently discussed the Army’s flow of ‘female domestics,’ we find one obvious similarity but two remarkable differences in the tone of the discussions.
In the matter of importance, the Army’s female domestics were as eagerly sought after and as ardently welcomed as their male counterparts. However, whereas the men were, so it seemed, to be mere workers, the ladies were expected to refine Canadian households and implant (or at least re-enforce) British values in them. It was, in fact, their imperial duty to do so. “I consider it an imperial work,” wrote Ella Sykes in 1912,” to help girls of a high stamp to seek their fortunes beyond the seas—women who will care for the glorious flag and what it signifies, who will stand for higher ideals than the worship of the ‘almighty dollar,’ and who will do their part in the land that their brothers are developing so splendidly” [A Home-Help in Canada, p. 297].
Though William Booth did not use such flowery language, he was nevertheless as ardent an imperialist as Ella Sykes. Emigration was not only to be a means of ameliorating the awful unemployment of Great Britain, and of rectifying the imbalance of male versus female population (the latter far exceeding the former), but it was also to be the means of ensuring that the colonies remained essentially British. The idea of a ‘Greater Britain’ across the oceans would be strengthened. The colonies, Booth wrote, “are simply pieces of Britain distributed about the world, enabling the Britisher to have access to the richest parts of the earth” [In Darkest England, p. 144]. And who better to provide the “leaven in the lump” than young British women, who would, perhaps as governesses (though most were rarely that), and certainly as wives and mothers, instill and preserve the British values for which William Booth and The Salvation Army firmly stood.
The second, and perhaps most noticeable difference, was in the expectation that most of those young women would, as an extension of their imperial duty, marry Manitoba’s eligible bachelors. The fact that most of the young men would eventually marry, either other female immigrants or Canadian girls, was a matter taken very much for granted, and hardly ever suggested as a reason for emigrating in the first place. As for the female domestics, however, it was quite another matter. They were, it was commonly assumed, not being sent to Canada merely to decrease the surplus of young females in Great Britain, and not merely to relieve the burden of the Manitoban housewife but to become Canadian housewives themselves. This is how the matter was rather crudely put in several British newspapers:
One and a quarter million women in the British Isles are expected to leave the homeland to go to the British Dominions. The Salvation Army is aiding the movement. There is a great excess of women over men in Britain. ... Spinsterhood or emigration is the choice these women have. A great many of them are choosing emigration. They are not going—like the women in the early days of colonization—to be put up at auction as brides for the settlers. They are not going—like the Japanese picture brides of today—to meet men already their husbands. Not many of them are going for the conscious reason that they want husbands. But that is the real underlying reason. It is the fundamental urge for mating that will take these women overseas. And the Salvation Army is proud of its job. “We offer no apology for active propaganda designed to procure a better distribution of the sexes,” says the commissioner of the Army engaged in this work. One of the biggest tasks assigned the Salvation Army in Britain is to stimulate emigration of women and direct them to those colonies in the British Empire where there are more men than women.” For the exceptional woman, a career may take the place of wifehood and motherhood; for the great majority of women, thanks to the primal urge of evolutionary tendencies, to want and seek a mate is as necessary to her own nature as it is to the welfare of the race.
That they would be married (most of them at least) also seemed a certainty: even Manitoba’s Premier, Rodmond Roblin, thought so. When, in 1910, he attended a formal welcome for forty “comely maidens” (otherwise referred to as “Old Country Girls”) who had just been brought over by the Army, he suggested that not only were they “the hope of Manitoba housewives,” but “the prospective brides of as many of Manitoba’s tillers of the soil” [Manitoba Free Press, 31 May].
Nor did Salvation Army officials try to disabuse Premier Roblin of that view. In fact, when Commissioner Coombs was asked if he had heard about the reports in British newspapers to the effect that the Army had launched a matrimonial bureau and was bringing over young women with the intention of finding husbands for them “at lawn parties,” he laughingly replied that indeed he had heard such reports and that, though that was not the Army’s intention, he felt his organization would, in such cases, “be glad to lend its good offices, to make suitable enquiries, and give advice where that advice is asked for.”
An example of Salvation Army propaganda used to entice settlersto the west.
Source: Salvation Army Archives, Toronto
Amusing as that might be, in some instances the discussion became quite laughable, as it certainly does in Ella Sykes’ A Home Help in Canada (1912). A well-educated young woman, seeking a good story, Sykes came to Canada, and disguising her true intentions, sought positions as a governess (or, in reality, a domestic) so she could describe them for folks back home, which she eventually did. When in Winnipeg, staying at a women’s hostel, she talked to several of the ‘girls’ about their immigrant experiences and subsequently related the following story:
One of the inmates of the Home interested me by giving me details of the way in which many of the British girls hurl themselves, as it were, into marriage. They were in the habit of frequenting a matrimonial agency in the town, and some had actually gone all the way to Vancouver to marry men whom they had never seen; while others told her, without any appearance of shame, that they had left unsatisfactory husbands behind them in England, and intended to take fresh ones out here. One girl had great difficulty in her hunt for a husband. Her advertisements met with no success, but finally the agency provided a man, and the couple were to meet for the first time at the church where the marriage ceremony would take place. ‘Molly,’ said my informant, ‘had no roof to her mouth, had a figure like a bolster tied in half and a limp. When the couple saw one another at the church door, the girl stepped forward and said, ‘Molly Smith is my name.’ ‘Mine is Walker,’ replied he, and off he walked in a great hurry, without another word, and she isn’t married yet.”
One must, of course, take that story with a grain of salt, as one must for many other experiences described by Ella Sykes. But it does serve to re-enforce the fact that marriage, intended or not, was obviously one of the desired benefits of female immigration. It has been estimated that almost eighty percent of those who emigrated and were engaged as domestics (mostly between the ages of 16 and 19) eventually found husbands, though often after they had left for better jobs in factories, shops and other mercantile establishments. And their report cards, in a large number of instances, conclude with the words “now married,” sometimes qualified as “very happy.”
Helen McF---; b. 13.6.08; sailed Aug. 9, 1925 on the S.S. Athenia; Stayed at Salvation Army Balmoral Lodge until employed by Dr. B at $60 a month; then worked at the Children’s Home; and finally for Mrs. M. Married Aug. 29, 1926. “Her husband is a truck driver employed by a brewery.”
That conclusion, for most Manitobans, seemed to denote a quite reasonable, and very natural, course of events; and not a voice was raised in protest.
It was quite otherwise, however, when during the First World War, The Salvation Army instituted what it called ‘The War Widow’s Settlement Scheme,’ whose purpose was to offer British war widows financial support and emigration assistance so that they might make new lives for themselves and their children in the colonies. In the summer of 1915, the Army sent out approximately 120 widows to “test the waters” and reported that “the great majority of them were making admirable progress; that they were happy in their new surroundings, and that their families were also prospering.” Few Canadians, however—particularly politicians and women’s groups—believed that to be true; and many of them opposed the scheme, arguing that “men worth marrying can get wives here [in Canada], and those who cannot are certainly not worth providing wives for.” As the Manitoba Free Press stated: “Unless there is some plan by which these widows may earn a livelihood for themselves and children in this country, then it is little less than cruelty to bring them out.” Widowhood, the writer continued, was already the third cause of destitution in the Dominion and it was sheer folly to add to that problem.
Strangely enough, given the overwhelming support for young domestics and juvenile farm help, the strongest opposition to the Army’s ‘Widow Settlement Scheme’ originated in Manitoba. One of the reasons for that was the omnipresent voice of the Rev. J. S. Woodsworth in their midst. A foremost proponent of the Social Gospel (and later founder of the CCF party), Woodsworth was also one of Canada’s leading immigration-restrictionists, advocating a stricter control of immigration with regard to the quality of the immigrants themselves, based partly on nationality but also, within national groups, on general fitness for life in Canada. His views were expounded in a rather controversial book called Strangers Within Our Gates (1909) and subsequently reiterated in dozens of public speeches in Winnipeg and elsewhere. One of his views which gained considerable acceptance was stated this way: “We need more of our own blood to assist us to maintain in Canada our British traditions and to mould the incoming armies of foreigners into loyal British subjects” [p. 50]. The problem, he felt (and this was not as widely accepted) was that, even within the so-called ‘British’ complement of immigrants there were some more desirable than others. “Generally speaking,” he wrote, “the Scotch, Irish and Welsh have done well. The greater number of failures have been among the English.” It was partly a problem of adaptability—the English being, he suggested, the least readily-assimilated of the English-speaking nationalities—and partly a problem of choice—too many from urban areas and not enough from the rural. Most English immigrants were “really townspeople, and [when in Canada] drift back to the cities where they form a serious problem.” That last comment, though not specifically aimed at The Salvation Army, was one, which its immigration officers had constantly to contend with: Canada was not, the Army’s critics averred, a ‘dumping ground’ for all the misfits of Britain, a segment of the population, which the Army was trying to offload onto Canadian soil. The criticism was, of course, strenuously denied by both the Army and its political supporters.
In 1909, however, when Woodsworth wrote his book, The Salvation Army was not one of his targets. But when the War ended, and the Army’s proposal to send out Britain’s ‘war widows’ and their children was hotly debated, his was the opinion sought and heeded. At the annual meeting of Winnipeg’s Local Council of Women, in April 1916, Woodsworth advised the delegates—all influential people—to take a strong stand against the Army’s proposals. “We are entering a period when we must stand carefully on guard at our gates,” he cautioned. “We have not yet developed efficiency in caring for our own people. ... To assume the responsibility for a large number of British war widows presupposes an efficient scheme for doing so. ... The public is looking to the women to make a clear pronouncement on this question. Much responsibility rests with the Local Council of Women” [Winnipeg Daily Tribune, 19 April]. The members voted unanimously to oppose the Army’s scheme.
One of the ways they put their vote into action was to confront the Prime Minister of Canada himself. When Robert Borden visited Winnipeg in December 1916, he was not only button-holed by Nellie McClung, seeking his support for the federal franchise for Canadian women, but by a delegation of the women protesting against the Army’s War Widow’s Scheme. “We know the government has not actively encouraged the Scheme,” stated Mrs. A. A. Perry, “but we want it to take active steps to disapprove of it.” And apparently it did. Mr. W. D. Scott, Superintendent of Immigration, soon let Army officials know that his department would neither approve of the Scheme nor contribute money towards it. “Neither the Government nor the Salvation Army,” he wrote, “can very well undertake to run a successful matrimonial bureau.”
As a result the War Widow’s Scheme was not a successful venture. Though, between September 1916 and March 1923, the Army did transport 1,769 widows with 1,019 children to the various colonies, only 600 came to Canada and only a small fraction of these settled in Manitoba. Perhaps J. S. Woodsworth, Nellie McClung and the Local Council of Women were satisfied that their voices were heard, though all admitted they had no criticism of The Salvation Army itself, only its unwarranted intrusion into the matrimonial business.
By 1932, with the awful intrusion of The Great Depression and the demise of the Overseas Settlement Act, the Salvation Army’s ‘assisted-emigration’ program—its tenure as a government sponsored immigration agency—came to an end. For almost thirty years the organization had played a prominent role in helping the excess population of Great Britain become new Canadians, both to their and Canada’s benefit. One final example: in 1909 the well-known writer, Agnes C. Laut, visited a prairie homestead, owned by three young men brought out by The Salvation Army. “Four years ago,” she wrote, “these lads had only $150 between them and pauperism. Today they are secure against want. Four years ago they belonged to the class that whines around you in the streets of the old country cities with pusillanimous pleas for dole. ... Today they presented us with vegetables from their garden, for which they refused to take pay. The change represents more than a transition. It is a new birth to manhood and freedom and independence and security” [“The Salvation Army and England’s Unemployed,” American Review of Reviews, 39 (1909): 76]. We could not argue that that experience was typical of all. There were mistakes made by the Army; there were unhappy immigrant stories. But, judging as best we can at this late remove from the actual moment, we are confident that, all things considered, The Salvation Army’s immigration effort was a highly successful one—from which the province of Manitoba benefitted significantly.
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 17 November 2020
