Canadian Railway Workers and World War I Military Service

Abstract

HISTORIANS have generally used recruiting records to study the composition of Canadian armed forces during World War I. This note uses another type of information, a sample of firm-level employee records, to compare the characteristics of blue-collar workers who served in the armed forces to those who did not. An understanding of systematic differences in enlistment rates across ethnic and occupational groups is important for explanations of changes in economic welfare during and possibly after the war, as benefits from working in the tight labour markets of the later war years may have carried over into the 1920s. During the war, governments had to leam, and learn quickly, how to allocate manpower between the armed forces and war industries, and also how to deploy men with appropriate civilian skills within the armed forces. Looking at the kinds of workers who served in the armed forces, the types of units they served in, and the kinds of workers who remained in civilian life gives an indication of how well labour was allocated. British research on recruitment patterns has concentrated on the social class and occupational or industrial background of men in the armed forces, while in Canada and Australia attention has focused mainly on the ethnic and immigrant status of recruits and their rural/urban distribution. ' The accuracy and completeness of data collected by the military are always questionable. Some recruits lied about their age and occupation, and officials had little incentive to check the information they were given. During World War I, many immigrants joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), but others returned to their home country to enlist, and reservists were called back for service. Unfortunately, we do not know how many followed these routes, as CEF records cannot