Thus with elite sponsorship, a new, relatively coherent theoretical perspective on illiteracy has emerged during each transitional period, reflecting their needs and concerns. It has come to dominate educational thought and programing well beyond the immediate transitional period, and has become prominent in the media, books, government reports, etc. Moreover, it has come to function as the "common sense" outlook on illiteracy, even among laymen. We will explore the history of responses to illiteracy in Canada, and perspectives which informed them, beginning with the period of mid-1800's. When we have examined the three periods of response, we will advance -some generalizations about the role of adult basic educators in relation to class and class conflict.

Literacy and the Rise of the Factory System

Upper Canada in the 1840's was a society still heavily engaged in agrarian, artisanal and mercantile economic pursuits, but was poised on the threshold of the era of capitalist manufacturing. 14 The main factor delaying the takeoff of the factory system was the absence of a reserve of landless labourers to man this new form of enterprise. 15 The reserve was created through two principal means. On one hand, tens of thousands of immigrants, the majority of them from Southern Ireland, were attracted to Upper Canada to meet the demand unskilled labour generated by lumbering and railway, road, and canal construction. 16 On the other hand representatives of the incipient industrial capitalist class secured legislation severely restricting land grants, forcing the new immigrants to remain in the ranks of wage labour rather than enter farming as earlier immigrants had done.17 In this way, Irish Catholic immigrants became the first surplus population in Canada, a pool of disposable labour power for the emerging capitalist labour market.18

By the 1860's, Canada was experiencing its industrial revolution. Large factories dotted the landscape of many early industrial cities, largely manned by the propertyless labouring class of Irish immigrants. 19 The -transition to industrial capitalism generated growth and prosperity--growth of cities, transportation networks, markets and manufacturing capacity, and prosperity for investors, owners and builders--but at the cost of poverty, crime and social conflict, particularly among the Irish surplus population. 20 Elites feared the growing danger to social order posed by these conditions

For example, the low -wages, ill-treatment and unemployment suffered by Irish workers in the course of the canal, road and railway construction of the 1840's generated militant and sometimes violent strikes and protests. H. Clare Pentland writes that:

when the Irish felt themselves victimized by employers or governmental authorities--and they were victimized frequently--they combined for resistance readily... and often struck back violently. Employers and officials were infuriated by this behavior. They wanted Irish labourers to accept "the law of supply and demand" in economic matters...and the regular processes of law in allocating rights.21