MADE IN HAMILTON
19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

 

About This Tour
Come learn about Hamilton's 19th century Industrial Revolution by visiting the sites of some of the city's first factories and workshops. Let this site be your guide as you walk the narrow corridor between the harbour and downtown, where the city's first round of industrialization took place.

How to use this Site
There is a map below. You may click on the individually numbered locations on the map, or click on the name corresponding to each number in the ordered list below.


MADE IN HAMILTON 19TH CENTURY INDUSTRIAL TRAIL
ROUTE MAP

 

1. Whitehern	18. H.L. Bastien Boat Works
2. Bell Telephone Exchange	19. Gartshore & Cowie Iron Works
3. Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway	20. W.W. Grant Sail Loft
4. John McPherson & Company	21. Burlington Glass Company
5. Arthur E. Snelgrove Casket Manufactory	22. The Head of the Lake
6. Sanford, McInnes and Company	23. Hamilton Glass Company
7. Hamilton Spectator	24. F.G. Beckett Engine and Boiler Works
8. E. & C. Gurney Company	25. Hamilton Industrial Works
9. John Calder & Company	26. Hamilton Tool Manufacturing Company
10. Canada Sewing Machine Manufactory	27. Spring Brewery
11. City Coach Factory	28. Harper-Presnail Cigar Company
12. A.M. Forster Brass Foundry	29. Hamilton Gas Light Company
13. Canadian National Railway	30. W.G. Dunn & Company
14. Williamson & Company Vinegar Works	31. Hamilton Dairy & Creamery Company
15. Custom House (OWAHC)	32. Empire Foundry
16. Great Western Railway Works	33. Tuckett & Billings Tobacco Manufactory
17. Great Western Rolling Mill	34. E. Van Allen & Company
	35. Hamilton Coach Factory

INTRODUCTION

In the second half of the 19^th century, Hamilton was transformed from a commercial centre with a sprinkling of small artisan shops into Canada's pre-eminent industrial city. These changes did not occur overnight. The city's first round of industrialization was an uneven process that took decades to unfold.

This tour tells the story of the making of the 19th century industrial city.

Small manufacturers appeared in Hamilton as early as the 1830s, attracted by the city's extensive hinterland markets, stretching from London to Guelph. The opening of a canal through the sand bar separating Lake Ontario from Burlington Bay in 1827 put Hamilton in an advantageous position at the head of Lake Ontario, giving access to raw materials and technology from the larger manufacturing centres to the east along the St. Lawrence and Erie canal systems.

By the 1840s, the city had developed a reputation as a regional metal centre. Its fledgling foundries turned out stoves, farming equipment and other necessities for settlers on the agricultural frontier. Production was done mostly in small shops by artisans using traditional handicraft techniques.

The arrival of the Great Western Railway in 1854 opened up vast new markets and attracted more industry to the city. By the 1860s, the city's diverse industries included a large clothing factory, a boot and shoe enterprise, cigar and tobacco plants, steam engine and boiler works, sewing machine factories, stove foundries and many others.

Most of Hamilton's industrialists in the 1870s had started out in business as artisans, expanding their small shops as demand increased. Increasingly, they turned to steam engines to drive machinery through an elaborate system of belts, pulleys, wheels and shafting in their enlarged plants.

These modern "manufactories" were still a far cry from the automated plants of the 20th century. While steam-powered machinery replaced human muscle-power and skill in some cases, it sometimes simply allowed craftsworkers to perform traditional tasks with greater precision and ease. New mechanized work processes also created new groups of skilled workers: locomotive engineers, clothing cutters, and machinists, for example. Sometimes they had little or no impact on production. Moulders in Hamilton's foundries, for example, relied on old-fashioned hand production techniques until after 1900.

 Hamilton's first industrial revolution had mostly to do with the reorganization of work. For the first time, factory owners gathered together large groups of workers under the same roof, where their work could be closely monitored. Discipline was intensified. The clock regimented the work day. Strict rules governed the shop floor. Factory owners whittled away at apprenticeship and employed women and unskilled workers where possible, to reduce their reliance on highly paid skilled workers.

But skilled work survived. Craftsmen in many Hamilton workplaces maintained a high degree of shop floor control throughout the 19th century. Their craft unions fought hard to preserve workplace traditions. Hamilton became a union town. Workers from different crafts united at different times to voice complaints about the common injustices they were experiencing under the new industrial system. Canada's first labour council was formed here in 1864. Hamilton workers joined together to fight for the nine-hour day in 1872.

Women joined the local labour movement in the 1880s, when the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor organized many workers, skilled or not, under its banner. By this time, women had become a common sight on the shop floors of the city's boot and shoe factories, tobacco plants, and recently opened textile mills. Hundreds of female outworkers also worked at home sewing together garments for the city's burgeoning clothing industry.

By 1900, Hamilton was a city transformed. The efforts of workers and industrialists, together, had made it into Canada's premier industrial city.

The images used in this introduction celebrate the workers.

CREDITS