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The Farmers’ Storehouse was Canada's first farmers' cooperative, founded in Toronto and the Home District in 1824. It stood at the centre of a broad economic and political reform movement that, in its essentials, was not greatly different from contemporary movements such as the Owenite socialists in Britain, as well as much later cooperative movements such as the United Farmers of Alberta in the early twentieth century.
The Farmers’ Storehouse was organized as an unincorporated joint stock company on the 7 February 1824. It was in many ways similar to a large number of consumer-owned community flour and bread "societies" which flourished in England from 1759 to the 1860s. The "Bread societies" which developed in England during the Napoleonic Wars were largely extensions of existing "Friendly societies." Friendly Societies were democratically organized self-help community insurance organizations designed to alleviate tragedies arising from accident, sickness and old age. Regular contributions to a common fund entitled the society member to relief under prescribed circumstances thereby preserving that member’s respectability in the face of calamity. The rise in the price of flour during the Napoleonic Wars led many Friendly Societies to form "Flour clubs" which purchased and ground wheat for members, selling it to them at prime cost; and by 1800, an increasingly large number were collectively erecting their own mills to grind grain at cost. One of the largest was the Birmingham Union Mill, a three-storey mill built in 1797. [1]
Like these English examples, the Farmers’ Storehouse was organized on a joint stock basis to engage in trade on behalf of the poor; they were early co-operatives. These co-operative ventures were increasingly organized under the banner of Owenite socialism during the 1820s. [2]
After the Napoleonic Wars, as industrial production in Britain took off, English manufacturers began dumping cheap goods in Montreal; this allowed an increasing number of shopkeepers in York (Toronto) to obtain their goods competitively from Montreal wholesalers. With the consolidation of both the flour and wholesale trades in Montreal, a group of Home District millers and farmers formed the Farmers’ Storehouse Company, to circumvent the control of these new Toronto merchants. The company petitioned the Lt. Governor for a "water lot" on the beach on which to build the storehouse; they received the lot where the St. Lawrence market building now stands (and immediately south of the original market buildings). They built a warehouse 100 feet long by 20 ft. wide, and 20 ft. high. The first president of the Company was Joseph Shepard, a prominent Reform organizer with close ties to William Lyon Mackenzie. The company had 5 board members, a $3000 capitalization, and was operated by a store-keeper. [3]
The Farmers' Storehouse was both a producers and consumer cooperative. Farmers sold their wheat and flour through the company and purchased their needs from its store. They could also obtain small loans equal to the share capital they held.
Management of the Company soon passed to Samuel Hughes, a member of the Children of Peace, a religious group who lived in the village of Hope, East Gwillimbury township. The Children of Peace had just established a credit union within the group, and under their leadership, the Farmers' Storehouse company also tried to establish itself as a bank. It was widely emulated throughout the province by the "Newcastle District Accommodation Company" (near Peterborough) and the "Bath Freeholders’ Bank" (near Kingston). [4]
Both presidents of the Farmers's Storehouse Company, Joseph Shepard and Samuel Hughes, were prominent Reform organizers north of Toronto. The cooperative movement was politicized due to the obstruction of the Family Compact to the company's incorporation. There were no general incorporation laws in this period. Incorporation required a special law being passed in each case. The Company sought incorporation in 1828 in order to get the deed to their water lot. The bill to incorporate them was blocked in 1829, 1830, 1831. In 1835 they tried a different approach, seeking incorporation as a bank after a Special Committee of the Assembly had established that joint-stock banks did not require a legislated charter. The Family Compact, which had blocked their incorporation bills, made joint stock banks illegal in 1837. [5]
The Province of Upper Canada was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Quebec since 1763. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada to the northeast.
The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the oligarchic government of the British colony of Upper Canada in December 1837. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada, which started the previous month, that emboldened rebels in Upper Canada to revolt.
The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in Lower Canada. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy.
The Bank of Upper Canada was established in 1821 under a charter granted by the legislature of Upper Canada in 1819 to a group of Kingston merchants. The charter was appropriated by the more influential Executive Councillors to the Lt. Governor, the Rev. John Strachan and William Allan, and moved to Toronto. The bank was closely associated with the group that came to be known as the Family Compact, and it formed a large part of their wealth. The association with the Family Compact and its underhanded practices made Reformers, including Mackenzie, regard the Bank of Upper Canada as a prop of the government. Complaints about the bank were a staple of Reform agitation in the 1830s because of its monopoly and aggressive legal actions against debtors.
The Bank of the People was created by radical Reform politicians James Lesslie, James Hervey Price, and Dr John Rolph in Toronto in 1835. It was founded after they failed to establish a "Provincial Loan Office" in which farmers could borrow small sums guaranteed by their land holdings. The Bank of the People was the only bank in Upper Canada not to suspend payments during the financial panic of 1837-8. Many of the shareholders, however, took part in the Rebellion of 1837 and the Family Compact plotted to have it taken over by the Bank of Montreal in 1840.
Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative movement. The Owenite movement undertook several experiments in the establishment of utopian communities organized according to communitarian and cooperative principles. One of the best known of these efforts, which were largely unsuccessful, was the project at New Harmony, Indiana, which started in 1825 and was abandoned by 1829. Owenism is also closely associated with the development of the British trade union movement, and with the spread of the Mechanics' Institute movement.
Samuel Lount was a blacksmith, farmer, magistrate and member of the Legislative Assembly in the province of Upper Canada for Simcoe County from 1834 to 1836. He was an organizer of the failed Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, for which he was hanged as a traitor. His execution made him a martyr to the Upper Canadian Reform movement.
Thomas David Morrison was a doctor and political figure in Upper Canada. He was born in Quebec City around 1796 and worked as a clerk in the medical department of the British Army during the War of 1812. He studied medicine in the United States and returned to York in 1824 to become a doctor in Upper Canada. He treated patients and served on the Toronto Board of Health during the 1832 and 1834 cholera outbreaks and co-founded the York Dispensary. In 1834 he was elected to the 12th Parliament of Upper Canada, representing the third riding of York County as part of the reform movement. That same year he was elected as an alderman to the Toronto City Council and reelected the subsequent two years. In 1836, he served a term as mayor of Toronto.
John McIntosh was a Scottish-Canadian businessman, ship's captain and political figure in Upper Canada. He was a leading figure of the Upper Canadian reform movement, and was described by his contemporaries as a moderate reformer. He was elected to the province's legislature in 1834, but was unable to be elected to the parliament of the Province of Canada in 1841. He continued supporting reformers, allowing William Lyon Mackenzie to stay in his home upon Mackenzie's return to Canada in 1849.
James Lesslie was an Ontario bookseller, reform politician and newspaper publisher. His career was closely associated with - and somewhat overshadowed by - William Lyon Mackenzie, the Reform agitator, mayor of Toronto, and Rebellion leader. However, as a leader himself, Lesslie took a prominent role in founding the Mechanics Institute, the House of Refuge & Industry, the Bank of the People, as well as the political parties known as the Canadian Alliance Society and Clear Grits. In many way, he defined the Reform movement in Upper Canada without having reverted to the violent methods of Mackenzie. His legacy may thus have lasted longer.
David Willson (1778–1866) was a religious and political leader who founded the Quaker sect known as, 'The Children of Peace' or 'Davidites,' based at Sharon in York County, Upper Canada in 1812. As the primary minister to this group, he led them in constructing a series of remarkable buildings, the best known of which is the Sharon Temple, now a National Historic Site of Canada. A prolific writer, sympathizer and leader of the movement for political reform in Upper Canada, Willson, together with his followers, ensured the election of William Lyon Mackenzie, and both "fathers of Responsible Government", Robert Baldwin and Louis LaFontaine, in their riding.
Abraham Stouffer is the founder of the town of Stouffville, Ontario.
The Children of Peace (1812–1889) was an Upper Canadian Quaker sect under the leadership of David Willson, known also as 'Davidites', who separated during the War of 1812 from the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting in what is now Newmarket, Ontario, and moved to the Willsons' farm. Their last service was held in the Sharon Temple in 1889.
The Reform movement in Upper Canada was a political movement in British North America in the mid-19th century.
A series of parliamentary reports describe the scope of the problem of debt in Upper Canada; as early as 1827, the eleven district jails in the province had a capacity of 298 cells, of which 264 were occupied, 159 by debtors. In the Home District, 379 of 943 prisoners between 1833 and 1835 were being held for debt. Over the province as a whole, 48% or 2304 of 4726 prisoners were being held in jail for debt in 1836. The number of debtors jailed was the result of both widespread poverty, and the small amounts for which debtors could be indefinitely detained.
Upper Canada had few exports with which to pay for its imported manufactured needs. For those who settled in rural areas, debt could be paid off only through the sale of wheat and flour. However, for much of the 1820s, the price of wheat went through cycles of boom and bust depending upon the British markets that ultimately provided the credit upon which the farmer lived.
Samuel Hughes (1785–1856) was a prominent member of the Children of Peace, a reform politician in Upper Canada, and the president of Canada's first farmers cooperative, the Farmers' Storehouse Company. After the Rebellions of 1837 he rejoined the Hicksite Quakers and became a minister of note.
There were two types of corporations at work in the Upper Canadian economy: the legislatively chartered companies and the unregulated joint stock companies. These two business forms had different legal standing; chartered corporations had a "separate personality" - they were a legal person quite distinct from its members or shareholders, a legal fiction which protected those shareholders with limited liability. In contrast, joint stock companies were made illegal by the English Bubble Act of 1720. Joint stock companies were considered extensive partnerships under common law, and English legislation limited these to a maximum of six partners. Without incorporation, the company was not considered a "separate personality." It could not hold property; this was held by trustees, who usually had to provide a bond or security. Without incorporation, the company could neither sue nor be sued at law. And without incorporation, shareholders were personally responsible for the debts to the company to the full extent of their personal property; shareholders were not protected by limited liability. There were, then, significant legal hurdles that made the joint stock company an unwieldy form of partnership.
The Quakers immigrated from New York, the New England States and Pennsylvania. They are a pacifist religion, and during this period were also a "plain folk" rejecting all ornamentation in clothing, speech and meeting houses (churches). The Children of Peace were founded during the War of 1812 after a schism in York County. A further schism occurred in 1828, leaving two branches, "Orthodox" Quakers and "Hicksite" Quakers.
In 1834, the United Kingdom passed a new Poor Law which created the system of Victorian workhouses that Charles Dickens described in Oliver Twist. Sir Francis Bond Head, the new lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada in 1836, had been a Poor Law administrator before his appointment. Fearing that Head wanted to introduce these workhouses in Toronto, a small group of reformers and dissenting ministers led by publisher James Lesslie and Dr. William W. Baldwin founded the Toronto House of Industry on alternate, humane principles. The Toronto House of Industry was started by the reformers in the ‘unused’ courthouse on Richmond Street in January 1837 where they had previously met as the "Canadian Alliance Society" of which Lesslie had been president. The Toronto House of Refuge and Industry appears to have been founded on the model of the Owenite Socialist "Home Colonies". A constant struggle between the ruling elite, the "Family Compact", and the Reformers to gain control of the institution prevented this plan from ever fully being implemented.