Industry and the Rural System in Quebec

Abstract

This paper will describe the functional relationship of the growth of industry to the traditional system of rural life prevailing in Quebec. The general course of this growth is familiar enough. Quebec has always had industries which exploited the native resources of forest, sea, and lately, of the mines. In the present phase new major industries, which make little use of native materials except water and man-power, have invaded the province. Industries of this type are generally not on the frontiers of settlement, but in the very heart of the province. In the course of the last two decades, Quebec has become more urban than rural. It is now only slightly less industrial than Ontario.Modern capitalistic industry grew up in a few centres, coincident with an enormous expansion of sources of raw materials and markets. Its spread has taken two forms: the first, still proceeding at a slackening rate, is the extension of its far-flung frontiers; the second is an inner expansion in which industry moves from its most intensely developed older centres to nearby less industrialized regions, where it finds a population accustomed to the main features of Western capitalistic civilization but not sophisticated with respect to its more extreme manifestations. Quebec and the southern United States are among the outstanding regions in which this inner expansion or “mopping up” is taking place.