Assignment:
Q1: Read the following two short articles:
• From Stories from Canada's Economic History : "A Subtle Ingenuity in Advertising" (1914), p. 440.
• Oyeniran, C. (2019). Sleeping Car Porters in Canada [Web Page]. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
a. According to "A Subtle Ingenuity in Advertising", the C.P.R. "tried the American cooks and waiters" but found them "unreliable, leaving after two or three months' employment." Meanwhile, "the men found in London remained the whole season". Based on the readings and other material from ECON 321, why do you think that American cooks and waiters were more likely to quit than cooks and waiters brought in from Europe? Briefly explain your reasoning.
b. According to "A Subtle Ingenuity in Advertising", the C.P.R. wanted to "harmonize" the skin tone and hair color of waiters and cooks to "the setting of the particular car to which the shade of color should be confined". In 1914, the company went to a lot of trouble and expense to find employees of just the right appearances in London. Based on the readings and other material from ECON 321, why would the C.P.R., in 1914, have found it desirable (and presumably, profitable) to employ cooks and waiters with appearances that matched the customers in the cars in which they would serve?
c. The C.P.R. made an effort to match the skin and hair tones of its cooks and waiters to the passengers in their cars, but even in 1914 most of its porters, who also had face-to-face contact with passengers, were black. Why would the C.P.R. in 1914 prefer black porters, but cooks and waiters of mixed appearances that matched the passengers?
Q2: Sources you will need for this question:
• Ogilvie Flour Mills Company. (1905). Ogilvie's Book for a Cook. Montreal: Ogilvie.
• Everitt, J. (1993). The early development of the flour milling industry on the Prairies. Journal of Historical Geography, 19(3), 278 - 298.
• Varty, J. F. (2004). On Protein, Prairie Wheat, and Good Bread. The Canadian Historical Review, 85(4), 721-753.
a. Use information from the Everitt (1993) paper (and, optionally, ECON 321 lecture material) to answer the following question: Why would the Ogilvie Company have first published the book in 1905, as opposed to earlier or later? (Note: New editions of the cookbook continued to be published at least until the 1930s.) For full marks, you must show that you are using information from Everitt (1993).
b. The cookbook was an effective way for the Ogilvie company to send messages to consumers of flour. Of all the messages the company could have chosen to send, it chose to focus on uniformity. There were at least two types of uniformity: uniformity in use (use our flour and you will get consistent, high-quality results in your baking) and uniformity in production (we use standardized equipment to produce large amounts of identical flour). See for example page 18 of the cookbook: "ROYAL HOUSEHOLD Flour is perfectly milled, all the flour granules are uniform in size, the sponge rises uniformly, the bread is even in texture, perfect in flavour, good-looking, appetizing bread, easily digested."
Using information from Everett (1993), Varty (2004) and (optionally) ECON 321 lecture material, explain why it made sense for the Ogilvie company to focus on uniformity. For full marks, you should make it clear that you are using material from the two papers, and you should explain why uniformity was valued by consumers, and why the Ogilvie company was in a better position to offer ‘uniformity' (in both senses) than most of its competitors in 1905.
Readings:
1. The early development of the flour milling industry on the prairies
By John Everitt
2. On protein, Prairie Wheat, and Good Bread: Rationalizing Technologies and the Canadian State, 1912 -1935
By John F. Varty