From Scavengers to Sanitation Workers: Practices of Purification and the Making of Civic Employees in Toronto, 1890–1920

In confronting the filth and decay of the early 20th century city, civic reformers often undertook ambitious programs that sought to not only eliminate the sources of disease from the urban environment but also to civilize urban dwellers, teaching them to live in pure and morally hygienic ways. Historical studies have tended to focus on the consumption side of this process, looking at how sanitary reformers and public health officials worked to establish fundamentally new understandings of household waste and its disposal, laying the foundation for the "throwaway" society of the 1950s and 1960s. However, they have tended to neglect the parallel efforts to fashion a new kind of city worker. Drawing on Toronto as a case study, this paper examines how the rise of a modern, scientifically managed waste regime in the early 20th century contributed to fundamentally new conceptions of civic employment, premised on the "purification" of the worker from the contaminating influence of neighbourhood-based patronage networks and an informal waste economy. I explore how efforts to expunge filth from urban space were paralleled by struggles to disentangle class from community-based solidarities in the labour process. Moreover, I explore how this contributed to the view that public workers somehow stood apart from the community as an anonymous and uniform service. I conclude by discussing the implications in how we think about city workers and their struggles today. Abstract: En confrontant la crasse et la decomposition de la ville du debut du xxe siecle, les reformateurs civils ont souvent entrepris des programmes ambitieux visant non seulement a eliminer les sources de maladies du milieu urbain, mais aussi a civiliser les citadins, a leur apprendre a vivre de facon pure et moralement hygienique. Les etudes historiques ont eu tendance a se concentrer sur le cote de la consommation de ce processus, en examinant comment les reformateurs sanitaires et les responsables de la sante publique ont travaille a etablir fondamentalement de nouvelles comprehensions des dechets menagers et de leur elimination, etablissant la fondation de la societe « des jetables » des annees 50 et 60. Cependant, ils ont eu tendance a negliger les efforts paralleles pour creer un nouveau type de travailleurs de la ville. En se basant sur Toronto en tant qu'etude de cas, cet article examine comment la montee d'un regime moderne et scientifique de gestion des dechets au debut du 20e siecle a contribue a des conceptions fondamentalement nouvelles de l'emploi civique, fondees sur la « purification » des travailleurs de l'influence contaminatrice des reseaux de mecenat bases sur le voisinage et une economie informelle des dechets. J'examine comment les efforts visant a eliminer la salete de l'espace urbain ont ete paralleles a des luttes pour demeler les classes des solidarites basees sur les communautes dans le processus de travail. De plus, j'explore comment cela a contribue a l'idee que les travailleurs du secteur public se distinguaient en quelque sorte de la communaute en tant que service anonyme et uniforme. Je termine en discutant les implications de la facon dont nous pensons aujourd'hui des travailleurs municipaux et de leurs luttes.