Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
few resources at their disposal (their revenues per capita were scant at best),
charitable institutions had very little, if any, presence in rural and agricultural
dependent areas (Patterson 1986). As a result, during these years chronic, long-
term poverty became particularly acute in the South (Alston and Ferrie 1999 :
49-50). Generally, it was the case in both countries that those with the worst
problems had the least resources with which to respond. The situation was
particularly extreme given the states' and provinces' very low fiscal capacity.
While the average provincial income per capita in Canada was around $240,
the average provincial revenue per capita was $18. Similarly, while the average
state income per capita was above $600, the average state revenue per capita
was just above $20. The right hand side of Figure 6.3 also suggests that this
scarcity was quasi-uniform throughout Canada (with the relative exception of
British Columbia) and slightly more heterogeneous in the United States. Faced
with such a worsening of social conditions the existing welfare institutions
were politically and financially powerless.
These patterns fostered distributive tensions within and between the two
countries, and demand for adjustment of existing fiscal and social security
institutions. Bankrupted provinces and states pleaded Ottawa and Washington
for help. Others, for different reasons to be explored below, were wary of
too much federal intervention. In the United States the case for centralizing
unemployment insurance to cope with these tensions failed. In Canada, it
succeeded. In the rest of this chapter I argue that the key difference between
the two experiences lies in the interplay between economic geography and the
mobility patterns of dependents and unskilled workers. This interplay works
differently in Canada and the United States because of the way large masses of
unskilled workers were incorporated into labor intensive agricultural sectors
during the two decades preceding the Depression. In this sense they were largely
exogenous with respect to contentions over the scope and organization of public
insurance systems.
THE BALANCE BETWEEN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY AND MOBILITY
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE DEPRESSION
To understand why mobility patterns vary between Canada and the United
States, it is helpful to revisit the way both countries dealt with the demand for
unskilled labor in the preceding decades, and how this in turn shaped inter-
nal migration patterns. To a large extent, migration patterns in Canada reflect
changes in demand for low-skilled workers along the East-West axis. Between
the early 1910s and early 20s, the unskilled workers migration pattern trans-
formed Canada, and settling the ever increasing contingents of workers became
a dominant policy priority. The recovery following the economic depression of
1907 was largely driven by the boost in agricultural production in the West.
By 1909, the number of immigrants into Canada was about 110,000;by1914,
the number had reached 400,000 (DMPI 1974). After the sharp break imposed
by World War I, immigration rose again between 1918 and the recession of
Search WWH ::




Custom Search