The tightening of credit, high tariffs, and high taxes imposed to service a governmental debt “swollen profiteering” convinced Canadian farmers that the existing Canadian political system was both “corrupt and undemocratic” (McNaught, 1976, p. 223). Canadian farmers were highly influenced by the populism of the rural United States, not by subversive Communists. A Royal Commission appointed by the Borden government concluded that the ostentatious display of wealth by the privileged classes was a leading cause of social unrest in Canada (McNaught, 1976). Nevertheless, the Borden government, along with its allies, the major employers, investors, and the chartered banks, sought to crush the social unrest, rather than attempt to take any constructive action.

After the strike had lasted for almost six weeks, the federal government authorized the arrest and deportation of the strike leaders. This provoked the one action in which violence was connected with the General Strike, a peaceful worker’s march in the face of a city ban on parades. The march was broken up by Mounted Police and reserve soldiers, which had been activated at the beginning of the strike. In “the melee one spectator was killed and thirty wounded” (McNaught, 1976, p. 226). With the strike leaders in jail on charges of seditious conspiracy, and the city patrolled by the military, the strike leaders called off the Winnipeg General Strike on the understanding that a Royal Commission would be appointed by the government to investigate the causes of labor’s unrest and conduct during the strike.

On the emergence if the Canadian social democracy, and the eclipse of the Conservative Party, the Canadian Forum of Toronto observed that:

The Methodist Church in Canada assumed a major role in the drive for social justice. The church sought to end “the lure of private gain” in Canada, and to unite labor and capital in a “call to service” (McNaught, 1976, p. 224). Within a year after the drafting of the Methodist report Canada was swept by a wave of strikes and labor agitation.

The General Strike represented, for both its opponents and proponents, a clash of absolutes. The difference in the views lay in the definition of the absolutes. For the societal elite in Canada, the Winnipeg General strike represented the clash between anarchy one hand with order and decency on the other. Opposing the view, working class Canadians, social activists, and the Methodist Church viewed Winnipeg as a clash between greed and oppression on one hand and the rights of men on the other. Over the years since the Winnipeg General Strike the absolutes of 1919 have softened, and a widespread general consensus has developed in which it is recognized that the principles for which the strike were waged were just, the demands of labor were reasonable, and the reactions of the political-social-economic elite to labor’s demands and the strike were the source of most of the trouble that occurred. That this consensus view as generally correct is supported by the facts that first the most important demands of labor and social activists made during the strike have been recognized and passed into law by the government, and second the political successor, the New Democratic Party, to the forces behind the Winnipeg General Strike has emerged as a political force in Canada.

The Winnipeg General Strike began with strike actions in the building and metal trades, when employers refused to accept the rights of workers to bargain collectively, or to increase wages. In addition to collective bargaining the building and metal workers were demanding a 44 hour workweek and a hourly wage of $0.85. The 19 metal trade unions attempted to bargain with employers as a unit; however, the employer’s group refused to recognize the Central Metal Trades Council. It soon became apparent that the building and metal employers were not going to bargain with labor and that they had the s

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