From the Bread Line to the Front Line
© Maria Dunn, 2004 SOCAN
arranged M.Dunn, S. Johnson, J. McDade, S. McDade

In the early 1900s, Western Canada's massive railway expansion attracted immigrants from all over the world to work in railway construction. They called themselves "blanket stiffs", travelling from one work camp to another with their bedrolls on their backs. With the economic depression that preceded WWI and the completion of the construction projects, these newly unemployed men migrated into the cities of Edmonton and Calgary. At the time, federal and provincial social safety nets didn't exist, so relief programs fell to the municipal governments. In December 1913, the Industrial Workers of the World ("Wobblies") formed the Edmonton Unemployed League and organized a march down Edmonton's main street, Jasper Avenue, to demand work and wages for these men. A photo caption in Warren Caragata's book, Alberta Labour (1979) inspired the chorus here: "Recruits in Edmonton in the winter of 1914. Many workers marched off bread lines into uniform."

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From the Bread Line to the Front Line, did I travel so far?
Lost the war against hunger to the hunger for war
And my country's interest was never so brief
For a poor boy turned soldier would need no relief

"1912, building railways" should tell you enough
I worked for my pennies and slept worse than rough
And the typhoid and lice of those railroad camps
Made you wish you were back on the tramp

But with Europe waiting for prospect of war
Even that drudgery finally got slower
Like so many others I drifted to town
But there was no work to be found

That Christmas of 1913, it was then
We marched Jasper Avenue, desperate men
The city took pity with shelter and meals
Work a dollar a half day, the deal

But we've all been laid off now, the League's been shut down
And I'm tired of wandering Edmonton town
They've money to send us to fight overseas
But never enough for relief

Now there's talk of conscripting the working man
But it seems that I've long been signed up for that plan
I never chose to fight the Great War
It chose me because I was poor

And all of my years on the railway lines
Pulling my weight and driving those spikes
A hardworking blanket stiff3 finally beat
By too much of too little to eat

Maria Dunn vocal, guitar, accordion · Shannon Johnson violin ·
Jeremiah McDade whistle · Solon McDade upright bass ·
David Ward harmony vocal

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Photo in CD Liner Notes: "D" Company, 31st Battalion, 6th Brigade, leaving Calgary, Alberta, ca. 1915 (NA-3863-1)

Sources for From the Bread Line to the Front Line:

1. Caragata, W. (1979). Alberta Labour: A Heritage Untold (Chapter Four, pp. 52-60). Lorimer: Toronto.
2. Lazarus, M. (1974). Years of Hard Labour. Ontario Federation of Labour: Don Mills, ON.
3. Schulze, D. (2000). The Industrial Workers of the World and the Unemployed in Edmonton and Calgary in the Depression of 1913-1915. In L. Sefton MacDowell & I. Radforth (Eds.), Canadian Working Class History, 2nd Edition. Canadian Scholars' Press: Toronto.
4. Williams, J. (1975). The Story of Unions in Canada (pp. 90-109). Dent & Sons.