<P> Housewives updated strategies their mothers used when they were growing up in poor families . Cheap foods were used, such as soups, beans and noodles . They purchased the cheapest cuts of meat--sometimes even horse meat--and recycled the Sunday roast into sandwiches and soups . They sewed and patched clothing, traded with their neighbors for outgrown items, and made do with colder homes . New furniture and appliances were postponed until better days . These strategies show that women's domestic labor--cooking, cleaning, budgeting, shopping, childcare--was essential to the economic maintenance of the family and offered room for economies . Many women also worked outside the home, or took boarders, did laundry for trade or cash, and did sewing for neighbors in exchange for something they could offer . Extended families used mutual aid--extra food, spare rooms, repair - work, cash loans--to help cousins and in - laws . </P> <P> Women held 25 - 30% of the jobs in the cities . Few women were employed in heavy industry, railways or construction . Many were household workers or were employed in restaurants and family - owned shops . Women factory workers typically handled clothing and food . Educated women had a narrow range of jobs, such as clerical work and teaching . It was expected that a woman give up a good job when she married . Srigley emphasizes the wide range of background factors and family circumstances, arguing that "gender" itself was typically less important than race, ethnicity, or class . </P> <P> School budgets were cut across the country, although enrollments went up and up because dropouts could not find jobs . To save money the districts consolidated nearby schools, dropped staff lines, postponed new construction, and increased class size . Middle - class well - educated teachers were squeezed by the financial crisis facing their employers . In Ontario, new teachers were not hired so the average age and experience increased . However, their salaries fell and men who otherwise would have taken higher status business jobs increasingly competed against women . Married women were not hired on the grounds it was unfair for one family to have two scarce jobs that breadwinners needed . Women teachers, who had made major gains in the 1910 - 20 era, saw themselves discriminated against . The teacher's unions were practically helpless in the crisis, even in Ontario where they were strongest . After prosperity returned in the 1940s, however, money was available again, there was a shortage of teachers, and the unions proved more effective . For example, in Quebec, the Corporation Général des Instituteurs et des Institutrices Catholics (CIC) was founded in 1946 (it became the Centrale de l'Enseignement du Québec (CEQ) in 1967). It sought higher pensions and salaries and better working conditions, while insisting the teachers were full - fledged professionals . In remote rural areas professionalization was uncommon; local school boards tightly controlled the one - room schools, typically hiring local women with a high school education or a year at university as teachers, so their meagre salaries would remain in the community . </P> <P> Case studies of four Canadian textile firms--two cotton and two hosiery and knitting--demonstrate the range of business response to the economic crisis . Each faced a different array of conditions, and each devised the appropriate restructuring strategies . The large corporations responded by investing in more expensive machinery and automation, hiring less skilled workers to tend the automated equipment, and tweaking their product lines to changing consumer tastes . However the smaller hosiery and knitting firms lacked the capital to invest or the research needed to monitor consumer tastes . They used time - tested "Taylorized" scientific management or made piecemeal changes . Power shifted upward to management, as strikes were too risky in the early 1930s and the opportunity to find a better job had drastically narrowed . By 1935, however, the influence of militant American unions spilled over the border and Canadian unions became more forceful and harmonious . The activity was most notable in Ontario's automobile factories, beginning in Windsor in late 1936, where the new Automobile Workers of America (UAW) chartered its first Canadian local at the Kelsey - Hayes factory . </P>

Canada's dependence on the united states during great depression