A labour force for the consumer century: Commodification in Canada's largest department stores, 1890 to 1940

Labour/ Le Travail

Volumn , Issue 58, 2006, Pages 107-144

  Belisle, Donica ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 50349096549     PISSN: 07003862     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (211)

1. Flash, 19 June 1944, 2, Archives of Ontario [AO], T. Eaton Papers [TEP], Series 144.
2. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley 2003), 187-189;
3. Pei-Chia Lan, "Working in a Neon Cage: Bodily Labor of Cosmetics Saleswomen in Taiwan," Feminist Studies, 29 (Spring 2003), 21-45, esp. 39, 32;
4. Joan Sangster, "The Softball Solution: Female Workers, Male Managers and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923-60," Labour/Le Travail, 32 (Fall 1993), 167-200, esp. 193.
5. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd ed., 1989 〈http://www.oed. com〉 (28 January 2002).
6. Karl Marx, "Preface to the First German Edition," in "Capital, Volume One," trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and ed. Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York 1978), 295, 302-329.
7. Also "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts," trans. Martin Milligan, Marx-Engels Reader, 70-105;
8. Oxford English Dictionary Online (28 January 2002);
9. Marx, "Capital," 302-319.
10. Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts," 70;
11. "Capital," 336-337.
12. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London and Basingstoke 1936), 89.
13. Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1850-7020 (Princeton 1981);
14. Bill Lancaster, The Department Store: A Social History (London and New York 1995);
15. Susan Porter Benson, Countercultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (Urbana and Chicago 1988);
16. Joy Santink, Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store (Toronto 1990);
17. Susan Forbes, "The Influence of the Social Reform Movement and T. Eaton Company's Business Practices on the Leisure of Eaton's Female Employees During the Early Twentieth Century," PhD thesis, Department of Kinesiology, University of Western Ontario, 1998;
18. Forbes, "Gendering Corporate Welfare Practices: Female Sports and Recreation at Eaton's During the Depression," Rethinking History, 5 (2001), 59-74;
19. Mary Matthews, "Working for Family, Nation, and God: Paternalism and the Dupuis Frères Department Store, 1926-1952," MA thesis, Department of History, McGill University, 1997;
20. Gail Reekie, '"Humanising Industry': Paternalism, Welfarism, and Labour Control in Sydney's Big Stores, 1890-1930," Labour History, 53 (November 1987), 1-19;
21. Theresa McBride, "A Woman's World: Department Stores and the Evolution of Women's Employment, 1870-1920," French Historical Studies, 10 (Autumn 1978), 664-683.
22. Stephen Meyer III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany 1981), 106-108, 119, 200.
23. Miller, The Bon Marché;
24. Claire Walsh, "The Newness of the Department Store: A View from the Eighteenth Century," in Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850-1939 (Aldershot 1999), 68;
25. Crossick and Jaumain, "The World of the Department Store: Distribution, Culture and Social Change," Cathedrals of Consumption, 34;
26. H. Padermadjian, The Department Store: Its Origins, Evolution and Economics (New York 1976 [1954]), 3-4;
27. Lancaster, The Department Store;
28. Benson, Counter Cultures;
29. Elaine Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (Oxford 1989);
30. Erika Diane Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End (Princeton 2000), 74-107, 142-177;
31. William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York 1993);
32. David Monod, Store Wars: Shopkeepers and the Culture of Mass Marketing, 1890-1930 (Toronto 1996);
33. Gail Reekie, Temptations: Sex, Selling, and the Department Store (Sydney 1993);
34. Santink, Timothy Eaton.
35. Monod, Store Wars, 117-118;
36. also Miller, The Bon Marché;
37. Crossick and Jaumain, "The World of the Department Store";
38. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store;
39. Lancaster, The Department Store.
40. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store, 36-37;
41. Alvin Finkel and Margaret Conrad, History of the Canadian Peoples, 1867 to the Present (Toronto 1998), 118. Canada's population in 1891 was 4,833,236
42. (K.A.H. Buckley et al., Historical Statistics of Canada, 2nd ed. [Ottawa 1999], A2-14).
43. Wallace Ward, "Morgan's on the March," The Montrealer (October 1951), 19. It should be noted that Bowring Brothers, which became a department store in St. John's in the first decade of the 20th century, had been established in Newfoundland in 1811:
44. Carla J. Wheaton, "'... as modern as some of the fine new departmental stores... can make it': A Social History of the Large Water Street Stores, St. John's, Newfoundland, 1892-1949," PhD thesis, Department of History, Memorial University, 2002, 66.
45. Elizabeth Sifton, "Montreal's Fashion Mile: St Catherine Street, 1890-1930," in Alexandra Palmer, ed., Fashion: A Canadian Perspective, 1890-1930 (Toronto 2004), 205-206;
46. Santink, Timothy Eaton, 90-159.
47. "Sight-Seeing Calgary Store," The Beaver (March 1932), 420-421;
48. "Report on the Hudson's Bay Stores in Canada," Mr. Burbridge, 1912, Hudson's Bay Company Archives [HBCA], A. 102-2504;
49. "Hudson's Bay Co. 's Store Welcomes Public Today," clipping from Victoria Daily Times, 19 September 1921, HBCA, A.92/17/31;
50. "Vancouver Store," The Beaver (December 1926), 10-11;
51. "First Impressions of Winnipeg's New Store," The Beaver (December 1926), 8-9;
52. "Successful Opening," The Beaver (June 1922), 33;
53. "New H.B.C. Store at Victoria," The Calgary Daily Herald, 13 September 1921, in HBCA, A.92/17/31;
54. Untitled, The Beaver (December 1920), 20-21;
55. J. Prest, "From Pioneer Trading Post to Great Department Store," The Beaver (March 1921), 4;
56. H.T. Lockyer, "The Rise of H.B.C. Vancouver Retail Establishment," The Beaver (December 1920), 20;
57. David Monod, "Bay Days: The Managerial Revolution and the Hudson's Bay Company Stores Department," 4, unpub lished paper, HBCA, PP-1986-10;
58. "Hudson's Bay Co.'s Store Welcomes Public Today," clipping from Victoria Daily Times, 19 September 1921, HBCA, A.92/17/31.
59. Simpson's, Ltd., Thumbnail Sketches (Toronto 1921), 12;
60. Simpson's, Ltd., The Story of Simpson's: 68 Years of Progress (Toronto 1940), 2-5;
61. John Ferry, A History of the Department Store (New York 1960), 315;
62. William Stephenson, The Store that Timothy Built (Toronto 1969), 86-89;
63. Sifton, "Montreal's Fashion Mile," 219-220;
64. Cynthia Wright, '"The Most Prominent Rendezvous of the Feminine Toronto': Eaton's College Street and the Organization of Shopping in Toronto, 1920-1950," PhD thesis, Graduate Department of Education, University of Toronto, 1992;
65. John Willis, "The Mail Order Catalogue: An Achievement in Mass Distribution and Labour," Les Territoires de l'enterprise/The Territories of Business, dir. Claude Bellavance et Pierre Lanthier (Sainte-Foy, QC 2004), 184-185.
66. Monod, "Bay Days," 24;
67. Statistics Canada, Department Stores in Canada/Les Grands Magasins au Canada (Ottawa 1979), 17;
68. Monod, Store Wars, 219.
69. Norman Patterson, "Evolution of a Departmental Store," Canadian Magazine (September 1906), 438.
70. Miller, The Bon Marché, 145-146;
71. Lisa Tiersten, "Marianne in the Department Store: Gender and the Politics of Consumption in Turn-of-the-Century Paris," in Cathedrals of Consumption, 116-134;
72. Crossick and Jaumain, "The World of the Department Store," 1-45;
73. Benson, Counter Cultures, 128;
74. Mme Arthur Gibeault, "Les employées de magasins," La Bonne Parole (May 1927), 13-14. I am grateful to Andrée Lévesque for sharing this reference.
75. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Seventh Census of Canada, 1931: Volume X: Merchandising and Service Establishments-Parti: Retail Merchandise Trade (Ottawa 1934), 6-7.
76. Miller, The Bon Marché, 76;
77. Jim Matthews, Foreword to Eatonians: The Story of the Family Behind the Family by Patricia Phenix (Toronto 2002), xv;
78. Edith Burley, Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline, and Conflict in the Hudson Bay Company, 1770-1879 (Toronto 1997), 2.
79. Miller, The Bon Marché, 100-120;
80. Benson, Counter Cultures, 124-130;
81. Reekie, '"Humanising Industry"';
82. Andrea Tone, The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America (Ithaca and London 1997).
83. Ian Murray, "Employees - Welfare," 23 December 1965, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 31, File 990;
84. "Quarter-Century of Meritorious Service!," Contacts (June 1935), 10, AO, TEP, Series 141;
85. Simpson's, The History of Employee Benefits at Simpson's (June 1952), unpaginated, Hudson's Bay Company Heritage Services [HBCHS], RG17/1Q/3;
86. "Welfare," Bay Window (March 1938), HBCA.
87. Murray, "Employees - Welfare";
88. Simpson's, The History of Employee Benefits;
89. Edith MacDonald, Golden Jubilee (Toronto 1919), 232;
90. Assistant Secretary, Board of Directors, to Mr. R.W. Eaton, 14 May 1920, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 31, File 990;
91. Murray, "Employees - Welfare," 5;
92. "Beaver Club Notes," The Beaver (September 1931), 306;
93. Eaton's and You (Toronto 1940), 17-25, AO, TEP, Series 171, Box 1.
94. Contacts (17 July 1939), AO, TEP, Series 141;
95. Forbes, "The Influence," 117;
96. Stephenson, The Store that Timothy Built, 78-80;
97. Forbes, "The Influence," 117.
98. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 226-228;
99. Forbes, "The Influence," 167.
100. Forbes, "The Influence," 118-119;
101. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 228.
102. "Community Singing is Getting Results," The Beaver (January 1921);
103. "New Life for Calgary HBAAA," The Beaver (May 1921), 38;
104. "Employees' Association Formed," The Beaver (February 1922), 34;
105. "New Tennis and Quoits Courts," The Beaver (October 1920), 21;
106. "Junior Executive Club," The Beaver (March 1930), 382;
107. "HBC Business Club," The Beaver (September 1931), 307;
108. "Beaver Club Notes," The Beaver (September 1931), 306;
109. "Welfare," Bay Window (March 1938), HBCA.
110. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 176, 224;
111. Sherbourne House Club, c1920s, HBCHS;
112. "Fudger House Rules," no date, HBCA, Simpson's Search File;
113. Carolyn Strange, Toronto's Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930 (New York 1995), 178.
114. Forbes, "Gendering Corporate Welfare Practices," 62-63, 68;
115. EGC brochure, 1932, "Notices to Employees," AO, TEP, Series 171, 1.
116. Sangster, "The Softball Solution," 193. In 1940 the HBC started publishing a magazine called The Beaver Log for Saskatoon staff; and in 1944 published The Party Line for Interior Stores Division Staff. These magazines are at the HBCA.
117. Eaton's staff magazines are at the AO in TEP, Series 141. Simpson's newsletters are at HBCHS.
118. August Bridle, "The Founder and His Successor," 82;
119. Flash, 2 December 1935, 2;
120. Flash, 5 July 1937, 3;
121. H.M. Tucker to Miss C. Rowe, 27 August 1926, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 31, File 990;
122. "Shower of China," The Beaver (August-September 1921), 32;
123. "Mrs. L. McDermid to Edmonton," The Beaver (March 1923), 251;
124. "Saskatoon Store News," The Beaver (September 1923), 459;
125. "General News," The Beaver (September 1925), 43;
126. "Staff Supplement," The Beaver (September 1929), 272-273;
127. "Hoover Company," The Beaver (September 1928), 84;
128. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 232-234;
129. "The Top Ten Privileges," The Bayonet (May 1940), HBCA;
130. The Bay Builder (April 1937), HBCA.
131. "Miss Morris Honored," The Beaver (February 1922), 34.
132. Herbert H. Bishop, Superintendent of David Spencer, Ltd., to BC Commission on Labour, 1912 to 1914, British Columbia Archives [BCA], GR-0684, Box 2, File 2;
133. "Employees' Shopping," The Beaver (January 1923), 177;
134. The History of Employee Benefits;
135. "Discounts," HBCA, RG2/10/Base-Notes, File 59;
136. Employees' Book of Information (Toronto 1933), 23-25, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 23, File 792.
137. "Who's Your Hatter?," AO, TEP, Series 171, Box 1;
138. The Every-Tuesday-Morning Bulletin, no. 163 (c1937), 1, HBCHS, RG17/1S/1.
139. "What are Your Wants?," The Beaver (October 1921), 14;
140. "Noticed Around the Store," Flash (9 December 1935), 2.
141. "The Gingham Girl," Contacts (April 1934), 3.
142. Miller, The Bon Marché, 221;
143. "Choir Concert Pleases Many," The Bay Builder (May 1935), 4.
144. "Here and There with Eatonians," Flash (9 December 1935), 3.
145. Patrick Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (London 1980);
146. "Eaton's Proclaims Saturday Holiday," Winnipeg newspaper advertisement, late 1920s, AO, TEP, Series 162, File 682.
147. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 235;
148. "H.B.C. Vernon Accountant Winning Fame as An Author," The Beaver (December 1920);
149. "Jimmy Ball HBC Olympic Sensation," The Beaver (September 1928), 83.
150. Tone, The Business of Benevolence, 126, 58.
151. Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto 1991), 104, 119;
152. Paul Voisey, Vulcan: The Making of a Prairie Community (Toronto 1988), 28, 30, 32.
153. Wright, "The Most Prominent Rendezvous of the Feminine Toronto," 208-10.
154. Report of the Ontario Commission on Unemployment (Toronto 1916), 176;
155. "Unsurpassed in the British Empire," The Sunday World, 10 September 1907, AO, TEP, Series 162, File 660;
156. F.H. Richmond, "Report on Stores etc.," 1925, 39, HBCHS;
157. Phenix, Eatonians, 41;
158. Tamara Adilman, "A Preliminary Sketch of Chinese Women and Work in British Columbia, 1858-1950," in Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, eds., Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women's Work in British Columbia (Victoria, BC 1984), 53-78.
159. Also Katrina Srigley, '"In case you hadn't noticed!': Race, Ethnicity, and Women's Wage-Earning in a Depression-Era City," Labour/Le Travail, 55 (Spring 2005), 69-105.
160. "Keep Employees Well," The Beaver (March 1926), 76.
161. Canada and Toronto (Toronto 1931), unpaginated, HBCHS, box of Simpson's brochures;
162. About a Great Store (Toronto and Winnipeg 1908), unpaginated, AO, TEP, Series 162, File 1331.
163. Wayne Roberts, "The Last Artisans: Toronto Printers, 1896-1914," in Gregory S. Kealey and Peter Warrian, eds., Essays in Canadian Working Class History (Toronto 1976), 138. It should be noted that Eaton's employees also went on strike in 1906, 1912, 1919, and 1934.
164. Our Mail Order System (Toronto 1905), AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 48, File l535;
165. Evolution of a Store (Toronto 1911), AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 41, File 1333.
166. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 232;
167. "1914-1919," The Beaver (December 1925), 32-33;
168. Jonathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver 1997), 135.
169. "May Festival of Eaton Girls' Club," Eaton News Weekly (11 June 1927), 19.
170. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York 1995), 368-374.
171. Strange, Toronto's Girl Problem, 192.
172. Also Forbes, "The Influence."
173. Rosemary Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (New York 2000), 99-104.
174. Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality, and Advertising in Capitalist Society, trans. Robert Bock (London 1986 [1971]), 16-38, 23, 48-52.
175. "Beauty Contest," The Beaver (February 1922), 25;
176. also "Social Notes," The Beaver (February 1923), 201;
177. "Queen of the May," The Beaver (May 1923), 313;
178. "Models of Fashion," The Beaver (October 1921), 25.
179. "Windswept, Streamlined, and Going Places!," Contacts (April 1934), 2;
180. "The Store Sets High Mark in Style Exhibit," The Beaver (October 1921), 24;
181. also Donica Belisle, "Exploring Postwar Consumption: The Campaign to Unionize Eaton's in Toronto, 1948-1952," Canadian Historical Review, 86 (December 2005), 662-664.
182. "Complaint Column," The Little Helper (11 April 1908), 8, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 48, File 1548.
183. Misdemeanours," 15 March 1900, AO, TEP, Series 162, File 651.
184. "Store Warns Employees About Male Customers," Winnipeg Free Press, 7 January 1972, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 18, File 656;
185. "Uniformity and Neatness in Dress," The Beaver (March 1921), 41;
186. Employees' Book of Information (Toronto 1933), 8, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 23, File 792;
187. "Customers Don't Like," The Beaver (September 1928), 75;
188. "What is the Essence of Good Salesmanship?," Contacts (October 1935), 3;
189. Employees' Book of Information, 8;
190. Benson, Counter Cultures, 128-136;
191. Forbes, "The Influence," 144.
192. "Let's Make-Up," Contacts (April 1934), 13;
193. Haug, Critique, 65;
194. "C.E.A. Savage, "Physical Exercise and Store Life," The Beaver (June 1931), 241;
195. Every-Tuesday-Morning Bulletin (24 August 1937), HBCHS;
196. MacDonald, Golden Jubilee, 123;
197. Marie-Emmanelle Chessel, "Training Sales Personnel in France between the Wars," in Cathedrals of Consumption, 286-292;
198. J. Brooks, "Report on Staff Organization and Training," February 1925, HBCA, RG2/54/9.
199. Employees Book of Information (Toronto 1933), 17, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 23, File 792;
200. "All Fingers," Contacts (March 1933), 8.
201. "Tested Selling Sentences," Contacts (September 1933), 4-5;
202. "What Are You Selling?," Contacts (June 1933), 15
203. Also Benson, Counter Cultures, 156.
204. A Little Chat About Selling (Toronto 1931), 5, AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 24, File 816. In the 1950s such reification reached a new level when Eaton's - again following US developments - added two more stages to their three-step model: determining customers' needs and suggesting additional items
205. (5 Star Salesmanship at EATON'S [Toronto 1958], AO, TEP, Series 162, Box 24, File 816).
206. Georg Lukács, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," in Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London 1968), 83;
207. Hochschild, The Managed Heart, 187-189.
208. Especially Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York 1976).
209. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Norton 1963);
210. for further discussion see Lancaster, The Department Store, 172-175.
211. For example, Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York 1999), 167-202.