Pigs, Cows, and Boarders : Non-Wage Forms of Survival among Montreal Families, 1861-91

An examination of some non-wage economic strategies used by Montreal working-class families during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The author focuses on families living in two areas of Montreal -- the predominately Anglophone Ste. Anne Ward and St. Jacques Ward. She examines such non-wage strategies as animal raising, gardening, the taking in of borders, and house sharing. The author notes that keeping pigs was outlawed in the city in 1874, while keeping cows was not. She determines, through census examination, that professionals and proprietors were more likely to keep cows, while semi- and unskilled workers were more likely to keep pigs. The author concludes that the outlawing of pigs severely curtailed the proletariat's means to supplementing their wages and altered the contributions a wife and children could make to the family economy.

Labour / Le Travail

Vol. 14

9-48

1984

en