Canadian Social History

In the song “Hogan’s Lake,” the lyrics to the final verse reveal how lumber workers during the 1860s reveled in the cultural milieu of so-called “shanty songs”:

If you were in the shanty when they came in at night,

To see them dance, to hear them sing, it would your heart delight.

Some asked for patriotic songs, some for love songs did call:

Fitzsimmons sung about the girl that wore the waterfall.

From these lyrics it is evident that songs were important to these workers, but what as historians can we learn from these shanty songs?  Are they simply songs that workers enjoyed?  Are they even reliable primary sources?  Or can these songs reveal more about the lives of workers in the mid-late nineteenth century?  I would argue that both the singing of and the lyrics to shanty songs offer a valuable insight into the lives of lumber workers.  Collectively the workers bonded together to discuss and celebrate their lives through the forum and performance of song.  Of course, by their very nature these shanty songs were insular, in the sense that the lyrics only related to the experience of a single group of workers – lumber workers.  That said, the songs and their lyrics do suggest that analyzing culture is crucial for historians studying the lives of workers.  By studying these shanty songs and treating them as valuable and usable primary sources, the experiences, values, and attitudes of lumber workers can be revealed.  And that from these types of primary sources, historians can piece together the cultural response of workers to the transition to industrialism during the mid-late nineteenth century.

Worksongs and Historians

While the historical value of songs such as shanty songs could be dismissed by historians, I believe it is important for historians to explore songs because of the universal appeal of music.  Although seemingly not carrying the weight of government or newspaper reports, songs can be revealing primary sources.  On one level, music needs no formal training to listen to it, and you even need relatively few tools and training to make it, therefore underscoring its popular appeal.  At another level, songs can be multifaceted in lyrical content, covering a wide range of subjects.  For historians, this means that songs can be used as a vehicle for understanding working-class culture – songs being a reflection of this culture and the lyrics being the language.

For example, take the lyrics of the shanty songs of lumber workers.  From these songs we can etch out the realities of life for these workers, from the rural isolation, to the dangerous working conditions, from the organization of work gangs, to the expressions of masculinity and how they perceived gender relations.  Case in point, in the song “The Shantyboy’s Alphabet,” an alphabetical list of the experience of lumber workers, D referred to the “danger we oft-times are in,” while V stood for the “valleys we force our roads through.”  Other themes are reflected in the lyrics, such as the gang mentality of the workers.  In the song “Hogan’s Lake,” the lyrics refer to a “gang of shantyboys” who work through “storm, frost, and snow.”  While in the song “When the Shanty Boy Comes Down,” the gang mentality dominates the culture.  The lyrics declare, “There’s a gang in command, so the old folks understand.”   Gluing these work gangs together was an overwhelming sense of masculinity.  Lyrics often emphasized the value of physical strength.  In “Hogan’s Lake,” the achievements of one worker is praised because “full fourteen inches of the line he’d split with every blow” and that “he swung his axe so freely, he done his work so clean.”  This hyper-masculinity extended to gender relations.  In the song “When the Shanty Boy Comes Down,” the lumber worker “will look around some pretty girl to find,” then at the end of the relationship “bid adieu to the girl I had in town.”

Shanty songs in the context of working-class culture

From the lyrics of these shanty songs, a historian is able to draw a picture of working life workers sourced directly from the workers themselves.  But what can a historian learn from these shanty songs about other workers during the same era?  On the surface, the answer seems to be very little, due primarily to the lyrics only relating to the experience of lumber workers.  However, if we place our analysis of shanty songs within the larger context of studies on working-class culture during the transition to industrialism certain themes become apparent, most notably the sense of community amongst workers.  Historians such as Gregory Kealey have studied skilled artisans in urban settings, noting how the “custom of workers’ control” became “deeply embedded in working class culture.”  While emphasizing their unique circumstances, Kealey also notes the importance of the wider community to skilled artisans, writing that “they provided the Toronto working class community and movement with important leadership,” and helped design outfits “for the various marches and parades that were so much a part of working life in Toronto in the 1880s.”  Peter Delottinville’s study of working-class culture and a tavern in Montreal during the late nineteenth century also stressed community.  DeLottinville noted how the working-class culture centred on the tavern “could be mobilized to produce benefits for the Canteen’s patrons.”  Even in Bettina Bradbury’s study of non-wage forms of survival, the culture of pig-raising, gardening, and the production of food and goods was family/community based.  So what about lumber workers?  Was community important to them?  As well as references to supporting each other in the work gangs, we also know from the song “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks” that looking after those less fortunate than themselves was an important part of the culture of lumber workers.  With the death of a foreman, the lumber workers grouped together to support his widow by making up for her “a liberal purse that day.” The fact that this song was one of the most popular and more widely known songs demonstrates the wider cultural connection with supporting community.

Conclusion

So what can we conclude from studying these shanty songs?  As historians analyzing the lyrics of these shanty songs provides a pathway into the experiences, values, and perspectives of lumber workers.  But perhaps more than this, the shanty songs remind us about the importance of culture to workers.  By placing culture at the centre of our understanding of working lives, we can begin to find out the common ground that the diverse workforce believed in when responding to the challenges of the transition to industrialism.  This leads me to believe that rather than producing studies that focus on a single group of workers or union, historians should explore a more diverse range of primary sources, such as shanty songs, for what these sources could reveal would help further understand the common ground amongst workers.

References

“Hogan’s Lake,” Lumbering Songs.

“The Shantyboy’s Alphabet,” Lumbering Songs.

“When the Shanty Boy Comes Down,” Lumbering Songs.

“The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks,” Lumbering Songs.

Gregory Kealey, “The Honest Workingman and Workers’ Control: The Experience of Toronto Skilled Workers, 1860-1892,” 184, 176.

Peter Delottinville, “Joe Beef of Montreal: Working-Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889,” Labour/Le Travail, 8/9 (1981/82), 60.

Bettina Bradbury, “Pigs, Cows, and Boarders: Non-Wage Forms of Survival among Montreal Families, 1861-91,” Labour/Le Travail, 14 (1984), 90.

Scott Nelson, “Who was John Henry? Railroad Construction, Southern Folklore, and the Birth of Rock and Roll,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 2:2 (2005), 54-55.

Rachel Lee Rubin, “Working Man’s Ph.D.: The Music of Working-Class Studies,” in New Working Class Studies, John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon, eds., (Ithaca: IHR press, 2005), 170.

A song associated with the “Shantymen.” Rural workers who cleared land and created lumber during the early-mid nineteenth century. Songs such as “The Jam on Jerry’s Rocks” can provide historians an insight into the lives these often neglected workers.