Jewish Immigrants and the Garment Industry of Toronto, 1901–1931: A Study of Ethnic and Class Relations

Abstract

Much research in North American urban historical geography focuses on the consequences of intensified European immigration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The selective labor-market participation of Southern and Eastern European immigrants is well documented, as is the tendency for these groups to form ethnic residential concentrations. But connections between ethnic labor-market segmentation and residential segregation have rarely been examined in close theoretical or empirical detail. In this article, I use tax assessment rolls, census documents, and archival materials to reconstruct the occupational structure and residential distribution of Jews in Toronto between 1901-31. At the turn of the century, most Jewish “heads” of households in Toronto were self-employed wholesalers, retailers, or peddlers, but a large proportion of the community entered the blue-collar labor force, especially the garment sector, between 1901–15. Subsequently, between 1915–31 Jewish entrepreneurs began to establish their own clothing factories, often employing Jewish workers. The garment industry therefore became the principle vehicle whereby class oppositions entered a community previously dominated by ethnic and religious identities. I use three theories of ethnic labor-market and entrepreneurial behavior to analyze the causes and consequences of this evolving economic participation: dual labor-market theory, trader-minority theory, and the concept of an ethnic-enclave economy. While these theories help explain certain aspects of the Jewish experience, particularly the rise of Jewish entrepreneurship, they do not adequately address the implications of class divisions within ethnic communities or the role of the ethnic landscape in crystallizing and defusing these class oppositions. I conclude that more attention should be given to the interweaving of class and ethnicity and that the social geography and labor-market participation of ethnic groups provides a fundamental starting point for such an analysis.

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