The imperial race and the immigration sieve: The Canadian debate on assisted British migration and empire settlement, 1900–30

Abstract

During the 1920s assisted migration from Britain sparked a complex and often bitter debate in Canada. It had long been held that migrants who required assistance were highly unlikely to make desirable new citizens. While the great majority of Anglo-Canadians wished to see increased British immigration in order to strengthen imperial ties and maintain the cultural character of their nation, they feared an influx of ‘unfit’, unemployed urban workers. In some quarters, these negative attitudes intensified as a result of Empire settlement schemes. Complaints about assisted migrants have been interpreted by some historians as evidence of growing nationalist, anti-imperial feeling in Canada. However, a broader overview of the debate indicates that many observers blamed the problems of Empire settlement on Canadian economic and social conditions, calling for reforms that would help British newcomers to succeed. At the end of the 1920s, even the strongest critics of assisted migration were still eager to encourage British settlement, provided that the immigrants could be drawn from rural areas rather than the cities.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marilyn Barber and Greg Donaghy for their comments on earlier versions of this article, and gratefully to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by Carleton University.

Notes

1. For the purposes of this article, all writers who appear to identify themselves in their own minds as Canadians are considered as such, whatever their place of birth. In the 1920s many Canadians were British-born, and many critics of assisted immigrants had themselves arrived in the country during the pre-war immigration boom. Warnings against migration written by British-born Canadians were fairly common in the British press, and many expressed a strong sense of Canadian superiority. For example, W. Caldwell, a former immigrant living in Montreal, wrote in a letter to The Times that ‘[t]he average Englishman often seems, we are all sorry to say, at present somewhat inferior…Canada is a land for a superior and a conquering type, the picked, strong, diamond-edged kind of man….Any Britisher who thinks of going out there should be able to measure up.’ Anyone who had been ‘a negligible unit or a failure here’ was unlikely to ‘hit it off in Canada’ and ‘had better stay away’. ‘Empire Settlement: The Canadian Point of View: English Immigrants’ Unsuitability'.

2. Percy Jackson, Suitable for the Wilds, 176.

3. Twentieth-century British immigrants have received far less attention from Canadian historians than immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, the Ukraine and the Far East. However, see Parr, Labouring Children; Barber, ‘The Women Ontario Welcomed’, 148–71; Roberts, ‘“A Work of Empire”’, 185–201; McCormack, ‘Cloth Caps and Jobs’, 38–57, and ‘Networks among British Immigrants’, 357–74. British migration to Canada has also been studied in the wider imperial and global contexts by a number of non-Canadian historians. See especially Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen; Harper, Emigration from Scotland between the Wars; Sherington and Jeffery, Fairbridge; Richards, Britannia's Children; Langfield, ‘Voluntarism, Salvation and Rescue’, 86–114.

4. Avery, Reluctant Host, 24, 29; McLaren, Our Own Master Race, 50, 57, 59; Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water, 112, 119–20, 123. These historians briefly note the existence of prejudice against working-class British immigrants, without exploring its implications.

5. On the Canadian preoccupation with this theme, see Buckner, ‘Whatever Happened to the British Empire?’, 3–32.

6. Glynn, ‘Exporting Outcast London’, 209, 233, 227, 236.

7. John Schultz, ‘“Leaven for the Lump”’, 150, 167. For a similar nationalistic Canadian view of British immigration, see Moyles and Owram, Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities, esp. 134–38 and ‘Epilogue: The End of an Imperial Era’. A much earlier article by Schultz emphasises the element of Canadian initiative: ‘Canadian Attitudes’, 237–51.

8. Drystek, ‘“The Simplest and Cheapest Method of Dealing with Them”’, 407, 431. See also Roberts, ‘Shovelling Out the “Mutinous”’, 77–110.

9. de Brisay, ‘A New Immigration Policy’, 395.

10. Andrew Macphail, ‘The Immigrant’, 141–42.

11. See ‘British Immigration into Canada: The Present Outlook’, 71–2; Whitton, ‘The Immigration Problem for Canada’, 407; Ritchie, ‘With the Prairie Farmer in Canada’, 508; England, ‘British Immigration’, 131–44; Carrothers, ‘The Immigration Problem in Canada’, 528–29; ‘Immigration’, 619–20; Winter, ‘Empire Settlement’, 83; Reynolds, The British Immigrant, 287–88. Not all of these authors were in favour of social reform, but they all showed an awareness of the conditions which made success on the land especially difficult during the 1920s, and they were sympathetic towards assisted immigrants rather than critical of them.

12. Canadian Forum, founded in 1920, was a strongly nationalist journal. Many of the contributors were moderately left-wing academics; several, for example F. R. Scott, Graham Spry, Frank Underhill and Eugene Forsey, had been educated at Oxford or Cambridge, and were influenced by British socialist thinkers, particularly R. H. Tawney. Saturday Night, published since 1887, was more of a mainstream publication, with a less strongly marked but still definite nationalist slant. Queen's Quarterly, which began publication in 1893, was among the most influential university periodicals, and printed articles on a wide range of social and political topics. See Sutherland, The Monthly Epic, esp. 124–29. In 1930 B. K. Sandwell, who later became the editor of Saturday Night, published an article in Queen's Quarterly which summed up the impatience of more urbane Canadians with their compatriots' ‘boosterism’ and tendency to criticise others freely while strongly resenting any criticism directed at themselves. See ‘The Sensitiveness of Canadians’, 279–91. The debate on British immigration is referred to on 282–3 and 290–91.

13. Woodsworth, Strangers at Our Gates, 46, 54. Kenneth McNaught, A Prophet in Politics: A Biography of J.S. Woodsworth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959. Allen Mills, Fool for Christ: The Political Thought of J.S. Woodsworth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

14. This measure was not intended to put a complete stop to assisted migration, but rather to give the Canadian government greater control over the process. Immigrants who were being aided by charitable organisations could still gain entry if they had been investigated and approved by Canadian officials in London. See Drystek, ‘Deportation’, 417, and Glynn, ‘Assisted Emigration’, 225.

15. On agriculture as the economic and moral foundation of Canada, see Morton, ‘Victorian Canada’, 312, Berger, 177–78, 191–94, and Owram, Promise of Eden, 135–38.

16. Denison, ‘The Weaknesses of England’, 44.

17. See Berger, The Sense of Power, chs 5 and 7.

18. Rosebery, II, 250–51.

19. Milner, 354.

20. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform, 28. See also Himmelfarb, ‘Varieties of Social Darwinism’.

21. Huxley, ‘Evolution and Ethics’, 82.

22. Woodsworth, Strangers, 54. On Woodsworth and eugenic theories, see Chapman, ‘Early Eugenics Movement in Western Canada’, 9–17.

23. See Hall, ‘Clifford Sifton’, 60–85.

24. Canada, Department of the Interior, Annual Report 1908, 110. Quoted in Smith, A Study in Canadian Immigration, 78–79.

25. Canada, Department of the Interior, Annual Report 1903–04, 169. Quoted in Drystek, ‘Deportation’, 411.

26. ‘Racial and National Dilution’, 660.

27. ‘Hand-Picked Emigrants’.

28. Fox, ‘A Way Out of Our Troubles’, 564.

29. Clarke, ‘Foreword’, 12.

30. Clarke, ‘Immigration’, 442, 443. See also Dowbiggin, ‘“Keeping This Young Country Sane”’, 598–627.

31. Clarke, ‘Foreword’, 14.

32. Clarke, ‘Immigration’, 444, 443.

33. Sifton, ‘The Immigrants Canada Wants’, 16.

34. Ibid., 16, 32.

35. Stevenson, ‘Is Canada an Immigration Sieve?’, 20–21. The census figures are taken from this article.

36. Thompson and Seager, 3.

37. See Williams, ‘A Way Out of Our Troubles’.

38. See Amery's speech in the House of Commons, 26 April 1922, reprinted in Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919–1939, 40–42, and Amery, ‘Empire Settlement and Empire Development’, esp. 185–86, 326, 332 and 478–79. Female domestics and teenage boys were also given assisted passages under the Empire settlement scheme; however, since these aspects of the plan sparked virtually no public debate, they have not been considered in this article. On domestics, see Barber, ‘The Women Ontario Welcomed’ and Roberts, ‘“A Work of Empire”’.

39. ‘Wanted – an Immigration Policy’, 550–52. See also ‘The Problem of Emigration’, 134–35.

40. Mitchell, ‘Canada – Saviour of the Nordic Race’, 140. See also Braithwaite, ‘Canada as a World Leader’, 175–81.

41. Sifton, ‘Immigrants’, 33, 34.

42. For example, see Jacques, ‘Training Farms in Western Canada’, 1162–68; ‘The Immigration Problem’, 164–67; ‘The Land of Opportunity’; ‘Actual Experience in Agriculture Not Really Necessary’; Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles, 229–30. See also Cherwinski, ‘Wooden Horses and Rubber Cows’, 134–54.

43. For a good example of British responses to these criticisms, see Lamb, Somerville, Weigel, Lord Sandon and Lord Apsley, ‘What is Wrong with Migration?’, 10–17, 112–17, 117–20, 189–93, 315–19.

44. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 156 (1923), 1393, 1133, 1166

45. Ibid., 1253.

46. ‘The Backwash of the Wave’, 200.

47. ‘Colonizing British Immigrants’, 1. See also Chicanot, ‘The New Immigration’, 312–26, and Culliton, Assisted Immigration and Land Settlement, 72.

48. Munn, ‘Some Thoughts on Emigration to Canada’, 762.

49. Martin, ‘Canadian Impressions’, 431–32. For another survey of Canadian opinion by a British observer, see Macmillan, ‘Canadian Immigration’, 179–87.

50. De Brisay, ‘New Immigration Policy’, 395–96.

51. Soulsby, ‘Why Britons Stay at Home’, 743–44. See also de Brisay, ‘Viceroys and Other Subjects’, 668–69, Carrothers, Emigration, 300–01, and Clark, ‘Canada's Immigration Problem’, 741–45.

52. See ‘Tact Needed with British Immigrants’, 1, and Ferguson, ‘Leaves from a Note Book’, 389–90.

53. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 179 (1929), 3875.

54. Plant, Oversea Settlement, 93–94.

55. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 179 (1929), 3882.

56. Peterson, ‘Large Decrease in British Immigration to Canada Disturbing’.

57. ‘Government Takes Action at Last’.

58. ‘Doubts about Assisted Immigration’. See also ‘Immigration Policy Considerations’.

59. See Lower, ‘Canada – A Motherland’, 440–50, ‘The Case Against Immigration’, 557–74, and ‘The Growth of Canada's Population in Recent Years’, 431–35; McArthur, ‘What is the Immigration Problem?’, 603–14; Whiteley, ‘What Need of Immigrants?’, 225–31, and ‘Can We Afford Immigration?’, 37, 44; Wilson, ‘Migration Movements in Canada, 1868–1925’, 157–82.

60. Lower, ‘Case against Immigration’, 573.

61. Lower, ‘The Evolution of a Sentimental Idea of Empire’, 289–303.

62. Dawson, ‘Introduction’, xix.

63. Sifton, ‘Immigrants’, 16.

64. Peterson, ‘British Immigration’.

65. ‘Immigration’, 622.