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"Union Is Strength": W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada
Nineteenth-century Canada experienced two other revolutions apart from those of W.L. Mackenzie and Louis the transition to capitalism, and to responsible government. Union Is Strength argues that these major socio-political changes happened in Ontario without a revolutionary moment because of the intertwined relationship of reformers with capitalists. Examining a small, utopian socialist group named the Children of Peace, Albert Schrauwers traces the emergence of a vibrant democratic culture in the province from the decade before the Rebellions of 1837.
Schrauwers shows how the overlapping boards of unincorporated joint stock companies managed by both Toronto reformers and the Children of Peace produced a culture of deliberative democracy in competition with the "gentlemanly capitalism" of chartered corporations. Noting the ways in which Ontario's capitalist and democratic revolutions were linked through cooperative joint stock operations, he also situates these revolutions in an international context and links them to the development of Owenite socialism and Chartism in the United Kingdom. Union Is Strength is an insightful study of both nineteenth century Canada and the ways in which regional political cultures arise.
Schrauwers shows how the overlapping boards of unincorporated joint stock companies managed by both Toronto reformers and the Children of Peace produced a culture of deliberative democracy in competition with the "gentlemanly capitalism" of chartered corporations. Noting the ways in which Ontario's capitalist and democratic revolutions were linked through cooperative joint stock operations, he also situates these revolutions in an international context and links them to the development of Owenite socialism and Chartism in the United Kingdom. Union Is Strength is an insightful study of both nineteenth century Canada and the ways in which regional political cultures arise.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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May 12, 2022
I became interested in W.L. Mackenzie because of Canadian communists who were really into him for some reason. The Canadian battalion sent to the Spanish Civil War was named after Mackenzie and Papineau, who both led the 1837 insurrections in Upper and Lower Canada respectively. I read this book for a course paper, and I’ve included a section from that paper (in modified form) that drew heavily from this text by Schrauwers. I think this will be an important book for my dissertation.
This book is about a utopian project in Upper Canada known as Hope in what is now Sharon, Ontario. The members of this community were often referred to as the Children of Peace and the Sharon Temple site that they built has become a national Historic Site of Canada and an open-air museum (which I hope to visit some time).
Sometimes called Davidites after their leader David Willson, the Children of Peace were not Owenite socialists, but Quakers. They, however, became involved in a constellation of institutions that were heavily influenced by British Owenism. Schrauwers (p. 10) notes how the Children of Peace had been compared with Owenite New Harmonists in the past. George Henry Hume in 1832 had remarked: “The principle of the Davidites appears to be, a mutual assistance to each other. They are not absolutely embodied in one and the same society, as is the case with Mr Owen’s establishments.” David Willson himself had mentioned possessing and reading some of Robert Owen’s writings (Shireff 1835).
Schrauwers’s work rigorously traces the overlaps in political program, co-operative organization, and joint stock economics that tied this utopian group to Owenism. Schrauwers (2009, 104) specifies the Orbiston community’s framing of itself as not “a self-subsistent commune, but a co-operative trading endeavour” to have much in common with what the Davidites were trying to do at their settlement of Hope. Orbiston was the Owenite commune Henry Jones had some role in managing and the community from which he drew many of his future members of Maxwell. The leader of the Orbiston commune, Arthur Combe, who had argued against against emigration to the colonies as a solution to British poverty (but worked with Henry Jones who ended up establishing Maxwell, the first Owenite commune in Canada), was also the author of the pamphlet The Sphere of Joint Stock Companies (1825). Joint stock banking and democracy became centerpieces within the reform movement that the Davidites at Hope were politically organizing around. Working class Owenite socialism in Britain held three institutions of principle importance, according to J.F.C. Harrison: “the cooperative store, the labour exchange and the trade union”. All of these became important institutions for the Davidites.
Adrian Desmond has commented upon the predominance of Owenism within particular industries in England, such as engineering, where managers refused to purge their operations of socialists and freethinkers because they composed most of their workforce. Schrauwers (p. 103-104) similarly specifies industrial flour mills as important sites around which Owenite joint stock institutions emerged in England, particularly as flour prices were escalating in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Flourishing ‘flour clubs’ constructed co-operative mills like the Birmingham Union Mill in 1797 to carry out highly technical milling at scale and sell flour at cost. This ‘joint stock form’ threatened local millers and were in fact illegal as companies, which is why they often styled themselves as ‘societies’ instead. Joint stock mills often emerged in communities hosting a noticeable presence of the ‘labour aristocracy’ who organized societies friendly to the working-class as an alternative to forms of poor relief that were more penal in nature. In Britain, these organizations often formed under the management of Owenite socialists such as Combe who organized Orbiston along these principles (p. 104).
In Upper Canada, the organization that took up this role was the Farmers’ Storehouse Company, run by a ‘labour aristocracy’ that were also largely millers as well. These middle-class figures often had far better access to capital than most other farmers and used co-operative strategies to bypass merchants in York to deal directly with wholesalers in Montreal. Two of the most prominent of these ‘labour aristocrats’ were Ely Playter—a Quaker—and Joseph Shepard, who both built and operated sawmills and grist mills on Yonge Street (p. 107). David Willson’s brother Stillwell Wilson was a land speculator and developer of a highly sought-after mill site in what is now Thornhill. He had incurred significant debt, and his creditor gained trusteeship over all of his property.
Debt was a significant problem in Upper Canada. Schrauwers (p. 66) mentions that of the 943 prisoners in the Home District of Upper Canada from 1833 to 1835, 379 were incarcerated for debt. These highly draconian debt laws became an important impetus to form joint stock institutions. The constellation of figures mentioned here who were involved in the Upper Canada’s milling industry were also important figures behind joint stock unions like the Farmers’ Storehouse Company and the Bank of the People – both sponsored by the Children of Peace. There are important parallels between this political network and radicals in Britain who followed the lead of mill owners like Robert Owen.
Millers like Joseph Shepard were also celebrated by the Davidites, who sponsored the establishment of Shepard Hall – a space they shared with Mackenzie’s newspaper The Constitution as well as the Mechanics’ Institute. This space hosted scientific lectures as well as political meetings associated with William Lyon Mackenzie who had strong connections to both the Shepard and Willson families. Joseph Shepard’s son Jacob operated a mill on the Don River, which sheltered Mackenzie after the failed 1837 Uprising. Both David Willson’s stepfather and stepbrother, John and Stillwell Willson, would also assist Mackenzie in his post-insurrection escape (Raible 2016). Mackenzie considered the Children of Peace friends and was known to publish the sermons of David Willson in his Colonial Advocate newspaper, alongside notices of planned Davidite processions on Yonge Street (Colonial Advocate, September 19, 1833).
The Davidites were staunchly anti-war and anti-authoritarian radicals, often provoking the anger of Orange Order monarchists, as Mackenzie was prone to do also (p. 126). Despite David Willson’s association with Shepard’s Hall, which hosted the Mechanics’ Institute and scientific lectures, he was critical of certain men of science, who he described as “the servants of big men, so called, because of an empty title. These are the men of our present renown; these are the men of talent, the directors of schools and science; these are the depending souls, that give the world the example of bonds… they are the wheel driven by the steam…” (Willson 1835, 192). Willson saw great men of science as instruments of the ruling class, “example of bonds” that were no different than the wheels they designed with complex mathematics to be driven by steam.
The Davidites were Quakers who also had developed a reputation for heterodoxy. The Anishinaabeg missionary, Kahkewaquonaby, alludes to them very critically in his diary, remarking:
"Heard a great deal about a division amongst the Quakers in the vicinity of Newmarket. It appears that one Elias Hicks, in the United States, propagated very pernicious doctrines amongst the Friends there… I understand that they deny there is any heaven, hell, judgment, or mediator; that all the heaven, hell, or judgment men will have, will be in this world; and that men require no mediator. Such blasphemous doctrines ought not to be suffered to exist in a Christian land;" (Diary of Peter Jones, p. 167-168).
Similar accusations had been levelled at Robert Owen, even by his own family, and his religious views were the principal issue by which he gathered opposition, far more so than his economic ideas. As for Elias Hicks, Owen had visited Hicks the day following his purchase of Harmony and left on good terms with him. Some of Owen’s earliest supporters in the U.S. were Quakers, such as the medical physician Cornelius Blatchly in New York (Mark Lause’s second chapter in "Long Road to Harpers Ferry: The Rise of the First American Left" has a section dedicated to Dr. Blatchly). Carol Kolmerten mentions in her book "Women in Utopia" that Owen’s communitarianism was highly influenced by the writings of a 17th century Quaker named John Bellers, whose text "Proposals for Raising a College of Industry" became a direct basis for the formulation of his own model communities. So then it is unsurprising many parallels are to be found between the ideas embodied by Willson’s Quaker settlement and those of Robert Owen.
Schrauwers (1990) draws similarities between David Willson and Elias Hicks who both appealed to a “peasant tradition which resisted the emergent capitalist ethic.” David Wilkie (1837) describes visiting Shepard’s Hall on a Sunday in Toronto when it was full of young working people, both girls and boys. Wilkie describes Willson’s sermon there treading lightly on the spiritual and far more on worldly affairs—going on about:
"the injustice practised towards the world by all those who possess an abundant share of the good things of life. That they are all usurpers and tyrants; that there ought neither to be masters nor servants; that all mankind are equal; and that it is the duty of the poor to pull down the rich. Such in short, we found were the doctrines advocated by the leader of the Children of Peace." (Wilkie 1837, 205).
This account by Wilkie likely happened in 1836 or earlier, in the years leading up to the 1837 Uprising—an event Stanley Ryerson (1937) associated with the birth of Canadian Democracy.
Dr. Thomas David Morrison was one of the figures tried for treason after the 1837 insurrection and was also closely associated with the Children of Peace. He was a distinguished doctor serving on the Medical Board of Upper Canada, managing the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834, lecturing at the Toronto School of Medicine, and co-founding the York Dispensary on Aug 22, 1832, which distributed free medicine to some 746 patients (Russell 2003). The Mississauga leader Kahkewaquonaby noted staying overnight at Dr. Morrison’s home in 1828 on a trip out to Bellville (Jones 1860, 156).
Dr. Morrison, as a former mayor of Toronto and political candidate, had played a crucial role in forming the organizational structure of the Upper Canada Central Political Union in 1832, which he based on both the Metropolitan Political Union organized by Rotunda radicals and Chartists in London, as well as drawing on the National Union of Working Classes—an explicitly Owenite organization with militant tendencies, chaired by the radical Thomas Wakley in 1831 (Desmond 1989, 125). Morrison’s political union would become the Canadian Alliance Society in 1834 and found its home in the newly formed Shepard’s Hall.
As a ‘radical hall,’ Shepard’s Hall shared much in common with Owen’s Harmony Hall in England, the New Harmony Hall in Indiana, and the Halls of Science movement. The Owenite feminist Frances Wright came to manage the Hall of Science in New York hosting scientific lectures every Sunday (Free Enquirer 1829, 128). In a speech during the Hall’s opening, Wright argued against the notion that science was only for scientists or that “knowledge is only good to be made a trade of.” For her, science did not only belong to the surgeon or physician, but it belonged in the hands of the working classes who should understand how to prevent their own injuries or illnesses. Desmond (1987) referred to this Owenite tendency as an attempt to “plebify” knowledge and “break the physician’s pecuniary hold on working-class patients.” Wright’s vision of the future was “for the training together as one family all the children of the land in national or state institutions. Then, in that day, shall we see equality! … There is no liberty for any until there is liberty for all,” (Free Enquirer 1829, 225).
While Shepard’s Hall resembled Owenite halls, they also differed in important ways. Desmond (1987) considered Owenite Halls of Science the radical alternative to Mechanics’ Institutes. The New York Hall of Science for instance eschewed from religious teaching, unlike Shepard’s Hall, which hosted sermons by Willson. The Owenite halls also exhibited a greater optimism in science’s potential for advancing equality, whereas Willson saw men of science as often being instruments for the ruling class. Willson’s perspective would bare out in the life of a figure named Thaddeus Osgood. While Osgood was a missionary, and not a scientist, he still drew upon Owen’s doctrines of poor relief and industrious and scientific education and in doing so, became an important influence to architects of Indigenous residential schools such as Egerton Ryerson, who also drew on the ideas of Pestalozzi — a figure whose pedagogy became the basis of the Owenite school at New Harmony, Indiana. Children at Owen’s New Lanark were separated from their families at the age of two to live in separate dormitories, and there is a strange boarding school tradition in Britain more broadly that came to have very disturbing iterations within British colonial projects around the world, including in so-called Canada.
This book by Schrauwers was a very interesting read that I enjoyed a lot.
This book is about a utopian project in Upper Canada known as Hope in what is now Sharon, Ontario. The members of this community were often referred to as the Children of Peace and the Sharon Temple site that they built has become a national Historic Site of Canada and an open-air museum (which I hope to visit some time).
Sometimes called Davidites after their leader David Willson, the Children of Peace were not Owenite socialists, but Quakers. They, however, became involved in a constellation of institutions that were heavily influenced by British Owenism. Schrauwers (p. 10) notes how the Children of Peace had been compared with Owenite New Harmonists in the past. George Henry Hume in 1832 had remarked: “The principle of the Davidites appears to be, a mutual assistance to each other. They are not absolutely embodied in one and the same society, as is the case with Mr Owen’s establishments.” David Willson himself had mentioned possessing and reading some of Robert Owen’s writings (Shireff 1835).
Schrauwers’s work rigorously traces the overlaps in political program, co-operative organization, and joint stock economics that tied this utopian group to Owenism. Schrauwers (2009, 104) specifies the Orbiston community’s framing of itself as not “a self-subsistent commune, but a co-operative trading endeavour” to have much in common with what the Davidites were trying to do at their settlement of Hope. Orbiston was the Owenite commune Henry Jones had some role in managing and the community from which he drew many of his future members of Maxwell. The leader of the Orbiston commune, Arthur Combe, who had argued against against emigration to the colonies as a solution to British poverty (but worked with Henry Jones who ended up establishing Maxwell, the first Owenite commune in Canada), was also the author of the pamphlet The Sphere of Joint Stock Companies (1825). Joint stock banking and democracy became centerpieces within the reform movement that the Davidites at Hope were politically organizing around. Working class Owenite socialism in Britain held three institutions of principle importance, according to J.F.C. Harrison: “the cooperative store, the labour exchange and the trade union”. All of these became important institutions for the Davidites.
Adrian Desmond has commented upon the predominance of Owenism within particular industries in England, such as engineering, where managers refused to purge their operations of socialists and freethinkers because they composed most of their workforce. Schrauwers (p. 103-104) similarly specifies industrial flour mills as important sites around which Owenite joint stock institutions emerged in England, particularly as flour prices were escalating in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Flourishing ‘flour clubs’ constructed co-operative mills like the Birmingham Union Mill in 1797 to carry out highly technical milling at scale and sell flour at cost. This ‘joint stock form’ threatened local millers and were in fact illegal as companies, which is why they often styled themselves as ‘societies’ instead. Joint stock mills often emerged in communities hosting a noticeable presence of the ‘labour aristocracy’ who organized societies friendly to the working-class as an alternative to forms of poor relief that were more penal in nature. In Britain, these organizations often formed under the management of Owenite socialists such as Combe who organized Orbiston along these principles (p. 104).
In Upper Canada, the organization that took up this role was the Farmers’ Storehouse Company, run by a ‘labour aristocracy’ that were also largely millers as well. These middle-class figures often had far better access to capital than most other farmers and used co-operative strategies to bypass merchants in York to deal directly with wholesalers in Montreal. Two of the most prominent of these ‘labour aristocrats’ were Ely Playter—a Quaker—and Joseph Shepard, who both built and operated sawmills and grist mills on Yonge Street (p. 107). David Willson’s brother Stillwell Wilson was a land speculator and developer of a highly sought-after mill site in what is now Thornhill. He had incurred significant debt, and his creditor gained trusteeship over all of his property.
Debt was a significant problem in Upper Canada. Schrauwers (p. 66) mentions that of the 943 prisoners in the Home District of Upper Canada from 1833 to 1835, 379 were incarcerated for debt. These highly draconian debt laws became an important impetus to form joint stock institutions. The constellation of figures mentioned here who were involved in the Upper Canada’s milling industry were also important figures behind joint stock unions like the Farmers’ Storehouse Company and the Bank of the People – both sponsored by the Children of Peace. There are important parallels between this political network and radicals in Britain who followed the lead of mill owners like Robert Owen.
Millers like Joseph Shepard were also celebrated by the Davidites, who sponsored the establishment of Shepard Hall – a space they shared with Mackenzie’s newspaper The Constitution as well as the Mechanics’ Institute. This space hosted scientific lectures as well as political meetings associated with William Lyon Mackenzie who had strong connections to both the Shepard and Willson families. Joseph Shepard’s son Jacob operated a mill on the Don River, which sheltered Mackenzie after the failed 1837 Uprising. Both David Willson’s stepfather and stepbrother, John and Stillwell Willson, would also assist Mackenzie in his post-insurrection escape (Raible 2016). Mackenzie considered the Children of Peace friends and was known to publish the sermons of David Willson in his Colonial Advocate newspaper, alongside notices of planned Davidite processions on Yonge Street (Colonial Advocate, September 19, 1833).
The Davidites were staunchly anti-war and anti-authoritarian radicals, often provoking the anger of Orange Order monarchists, as Mackenzie was prone to do also (p. 126). Despite David Willson’s association with Shepard’s Hall, which hosted the Mechanics’ Institute and scientific lectures, he was critical of certain men of science, who he described as “the servants of big men, so called, because of an empty title. These are the men of our present renown; these are the men of talent, the directors of schools and science; these are the depending souls, that give the world the example of bonds… they are the wheel driven by the steam…” (Willson 1835, 192). Willson saw great men of science as instruments of the ruling class, “example of bonds” that were no different than the wheels they designed with complex mathematics to be driven by steam.
The Davidites were Quakers who also had developed a reputation for heterodoxy. The Anishinaabeg missionary, Kahkewaquonaby, alludes to them very critically in his diary, remarking:
"Heard a great deal about a division amongst the Quakers in the vicinity of Newmarket. It appears that one Elias Hicks, in the United States, propagated very pernicious doctrines amongst the Friends there… I understand that they deny there is any heaven, hell, judgment, or mediator; that all the heaven, hell, or judgment men will have, will be in this world; and that men require no mediator. Such blasphemous doctrines ought not to be suffered to exist in a Christian land;" (Diary of Peter Jones, p. 167-168).
Similar accusations had been levelled at Robert Owen, even by his own family, and his religious views were the principal issue by which he gathered opposition, far more so than his economic ideas. As for Elias Hicks, Owen had visited Hicks the day following his purchase of Harmony and left on good terms with him. Some of Owen’s earliest supporters in the U.S. were Quakers, such as the medical physician Cornelius Blatchly in New York (Mark Lause’s second chapter in "Long Road to Harpers Ferry: The Rise of the First American Left" has a section dedicated to Dr. Blatchly). Carol Kolmerten mentions in her book "Women in Utopia" that Owen’s communitarianism was highly influenced by the writings of a 17th century Quaker named John Bellers, whose text "Proposals for Raising a College of Industry" became a direct basis for the formulation of his own model communities. So then it is unsurprising many parallels are to be found between the ideas embodied by Willson’s Quaker settlement and those of Robert Owen.
Schrauwers (1990) draws similarities between David Willson and Elias Hicks who both appealed to a “peasant tradition which resisted the emergent capitalist ethic.” David Wilkie (1837) describes visiting Shepard’s Hall on a Sunday in Toronto when it was full of young working people, both girls and boys. Wilkie describes Willson’s sermon there treading lightly on the spiritual and far more on worldly affairs—going on about:
"the injustice practised towards the world by all those who possess an abundant share of the good things of life. That they are all usurpers and tyrants; that there ought neither to be masters nor servants; that all mankind are equal; and that it is the duty of the poor to pull down the rich. Such in short, we found were the doctrines advocated by the leader of the Children of Peace." (Wilkie 1837, 205).
This account by Wilkie likely happened in 1836 or earlier, in the years leading up to the 1837 Uprising—an event Stanley Ryerson (1937) associated with the birth of Canadian Democracy.
Dr. Thomas David Morrison was one of the figures tried for treason after the 1837 insurrection and was also closely associated with the Children of Peace. He was a distinguished doctor serving on the Medical Board of Upper Canada, managing the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834, lecturing at the Toronto School of Medicine, and co-founding the York Dispensary on Aug 22, 1832, which distributed free medicine to some 746 patients (Russell 2003). The Mississauga leader Kahkewaquonaby noted staying overnight at Dr. Morrison’s home in 1828 on a trip out to Bellville (Jones 1860, 156).
Dr. Morrison, as a former mayor of Toronto and political candidate, had played a crucial role in forming the organizational structure of the Upper Canada Central Political Union in 1832, which he based on both the Metropolitan Political Union organized by Rotunda radicals and Chartists in London, as well as drawing on the National Union of Working Classes—an explicitly Owenite organization with militant tendencies, chaired by the radical Thomas Wakley in 1831 (Desmond 1989, 125). Morrison’s political union would become the Canadian Alliance Society in 1834 and found its home in the newly formed Shepard’s Hall.
As a ‘radical hall,’ Shepard’s Hall shared much in common with Owen’s Harmony Hall in England, the New Harmony Hall in Indiana, and the Halls of Science movement. The Owenite feminist Frances Wright came to manage the Hall of Science in New York hosting scientific lectures every Sunday (Free Enquirer 1829, 128). In a speech during the Hall’s opening, Wright argued against the notion that science was only for scientists or that “knowledge is only good to be made a trade of.” For her, science did not only belong to the surgeon or physician, but it belonged in the hands of the working classes who should understand how to prevent their own injuries or illnesses. Desmond (1987) referred to this Owenite tendency as an attempt to “plebify” knowledge and “break the physician’s pecuniary hold on working-class patients.” Wright’s vision of the future was “for the training together as one family all the children of the land in national or state institutions. Then, in that day, shall we see equality! … There is no liberty for any until there is liberty for all,” (Free Enquirer 1829, 225).
While Shepard’s Hall resembled Owenite halls, they also differed in important ways. Desmond (1987) considered Owenite Halls of Science the radical alternative to Mechanics’ Institutes. The New York Hall of Science for instance eschewed from religious teaching, unlike Shepard’s Hall, which hosted sermons by Willson. The Owenite halls also exhibited a greater optimism in science’s potential for advancing equality, whereas Willson saw men of science as often being instruments for the ruling class. Willson’s perspective would bare out in the life of a figure named Thaddeus Osgood. While Osgood was a missionary, and not a scientist, he still drew upon Owen’s doctrines of poor relief and industrious and scientific education and in doing so, became an important influence to architects of Indigenous residential schools such as Egerton Ryerson, who also drew on the ideas of Pestalozzi — a figure whose pedagogy became the basis of the Owenite school at New Harmony, Indiana. Children at Owen’s New Lanark were separated from their families at the age of two to live in separate dormitories, and there is a strange boarding school tradition in Britain more broadly that came to have very disturbing iterations within British colonial projects around the world, including in so-called Canada.
This book by Schrauwers was a very interesting read that I enjoyed a lot.
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