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Article Excerpt
The historiography on western Canada has for a long time accepted the notion that the early western business elite was composed of largely self-made men, who identified with their community and promoted its economic growth. This holds particularly true for the historiography on Winnipeg. From the 1870s on into the beginning of the First World War, so this interpretation runs, there emerged a peculiarly western elite in Winnipeg; these men had made their fortunes in the city, and, as J. M. S. Careless stated, "they had all, above all, become Winnipeggers." (1) This line of interpretation has been most thoroughly argued by Alan Artibise in his studies on Winnipeg and in his essays on boosterism. (2) Artibise contended that Winnipeg's early bourgeoisie promoted the economic expansion of Winnipeg at all costs; but in the twenties and thirties, this boosterism was co-opted by the increasing number of branch-plant managers of central Canadian and American corporations who were arriving in the city. Unlike the businessmen that had emerged and identified with Winnipeg in the pre-war era, these men viewed their stay in Winnipeg as a mere stopover in their corporate careers, which would soon lead them to head office positions in Toronto, Montreal, or some such city. Proponents of the western exceptionalist thesis have also interpreted Winnipeg's early business elite in much the same way as Artibise and Careless; David Bercuson has suggested, for example, that a contributing factor to the labour radicalism that emerged in Winnipeg in the early twentieth century was the existence of "strong-willed," self-made businessmen, such as Thomas R. Deacon, who refused to recognize trade unions. (3) Similarly, J. M. Bumsted has characterized Winnipeg's early business class as an uncultured nouveau riche. (4)
At present, one needs only to mention the early western businessman to evoke images of a Horatio Alger-type figure. Robert McDonald's work on Vancouver's elite has helped to revise our understanding on this subject. He has argued that old wealth transported from other urban centres played an important role in shaping Vancouver's social structure. (5) This article sets out to add to a revisionist interpretation of the western business elite by examining the development of Winnipeg's elite from the 1870s on into the 1930s. Essentially, this article tells the story of a handful of Winnipeg's most prominent businessmen, examining their economic interests, and how they developed and changed over time. This article also examines the social, cultural and political world of these businessmen. In this way, this article attempts to construct a collective biography of Winnipeg's early business elite. The businessmen discussed in this article were those who were most significant in Winnipeg's financial and industrial decision making. (6) After consulting numerous biographical dictionaries, as well as other sources, information on over 300 members of the business elite was obtained, and from this grouping, the relatively small group of businessmen who are discussed in this article have been selected. In the selection of this group, a conscious attempt has been made to provide a representative picture of the elite; as suck the members of the elite who are discussed in this study can be said to be representative of the elite's general development. Of course, this methodology is somewhat impressionistic, and this article is not any sort of final word on Winnipeg's elite. What this article does suggest is that historians reexamine the sacrosanct truths about Winnipeg's early bourgeoisie that have been passed down to us.
The orthodox interpretation leads us to view Winnipeg's early bourgeoisie as, first and foremost, residents of Winnipeg. This line of interpretation pays scant attention to the concept of class, and as a result, the overarching class structure that connected Winnipeg's elite with a wider Canadian business elite has been neglected. J. M. S. Careless' claim, that the early business elite became Winnipeggers above all else, is somewhat dubious when one considers how profoundly class impacted the way in which the bourgeoisie experienced life in Winnipeg. The bourgeoisie formed a cohesive enclave in Winnipeg. They shared a common Anglo-Saxon Protestant background, they lived in common residential areas, they went to the same social and cultural clubs, and engaged in the same leisure activities, and they were a politically cohesive group. In a word, Winnipeg's elite shared a lot more in common with elites in other Canadian urban centres than they did with a substantial portion of the population in their own city; and, indeed, familial and business relationships connected Winnipeg's elite to other urban elites in Canada, primarily central Canada. Perhaps the last section of this article most emphatically underscores the need to abandon the orthodox interpretation of Winnipeg's business elite. In this section, we see how pretensions to community responsibility only lasted as long as they were economically viable. When the economy contracted after 1912, Winnipeg entered a period of relative economic decline, but the city's elite did not, first and foremost, fight to guard their city's economic stature. Rather, they sought to guard their own wealth within the context of a national economy that was concentrating and consolidating in central Canada. (7) As such, they merged their own concerns with larger central Canadian firms, and some members of the elite moved from the city altogether; as a result, members of Winnipeg's business elite actually heightened the city's relative economic decline. In a sense, this should not be surprising, for the elite arrived in Winnipeg because the city offered promising fields of business, and once those fields of business began to wilt, many members of the elite made the rational economic decision, either merging their interests with larger central Canadian firms or leaving the city altogether. This phenomenon is perhaps even less surprising when one considers the extent to which Winnipeg's elite was already connected to the central Canadian elite.
The origins of a business community independent of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in the Red River Settlement can be traced back to the early 1840s, when so-called "free traders" such as Andrew McDermott began to engage in the fur trade. By the early 1860s, this merchant group conducted trade that amounted to nearly half of the HBC's trade. These merchants held strong commercial relationships with American wholesalers, as goods were transported to the Red River Settlement through St. Paul, Minnesota, via cart or riverboat. Through the 1860s, central Canadian capitalists largely stood aloof from the Northwest, as it was a distant and sparsely populated region. The Red River Settlement, however, was beginning to attract a small amount of interest from the east. In 1867, Alexander Begg, representing several Hamilton firms, was the first to introduce "Canadian goods" into the region. (8) And in 1868, James H. Ashdown, an apprenticed tinsmith and the son of an Ontario farmer, arrived in the Red River Settlement. The following year, Ashdown established a tinsmith shop and purchased a small hardware business, which he ran out of a 16 x 18-foot room, with total assets not exceeding $1,000. (9)
In 1869, the site of Winnipeg was still only a settlement of fewer than 200 people, standing beyond the gates of Upper Fort Garry. (10) However, the following year, with the Canadian government's acquisition of the Northwest, the small village of Winnipeg embarked on a commercial journey, which, by the early twentieth century, resulted in it becoming the third largest city in Canada. The Canadian government acquired the Northwest intent on creating, as Gerald Friesen stated, "a new 'investment frontier' that would open the west and enrich the east in one fell swoop." (11) The development program adopted by the Canadian government--the National Policy--sought to impose an agricultural frontier in the newly acquired Northwest that would export grain and other agricultural products to the east, while providing a market for eastern manufacturers. Aboriginal and Metis peoples viewed the Canadian government's acquisition of the Northwest, quite rightfully, as an encroachment upon their traditional ways of life, and this concern was brought to the fore during the Red River Rebellion in 1869-70. In 1870, the Canadian government sent out a military expedition--the Wolseley Expedition--to impose its authority over the region, which it succeeded in doing. When the troops were disbanded from the expedition the following year, a number of them decided to stay, and engaged in local business. Private William Forbes Alloway opened a cigar and tabacco store and engaged in trading and freighting, operating as many as 6,000 oxen-carts. (12) Charles N. Bell arrived with the expedition as a sixteen-year-old bugler, and in 1871 he gained employment as a warehouse clerk with the firm of Bannatyne and Begg. The following year Bell also engaged in trading and freighting.
William Alloway described the Winnipeg of 1870 as "a tiny village with but eighteen structures, some frame, but mostly log buildings." (13) Few hints of Winnipeg's future commercial pre-eminence were apparent. Through the 1870s, however, Winnipeg underwent a period of steady growth: from a village of barely over 200 people in 1870, Winnipeg had grown to a bustling city of over 4,000 people ten years later, in 1879. (14) As Winnipeg grew, William Alloway's business interests proliferated. Like many Winnipeg businessmen of the time, Alloway invested in local real estate. He made his first "chunk of money" in Winnipeg when he sold a sizable portion of Armstrong's Point--which later became a choice residential area of the bourgeoisie--for a profit of $28,600. (15) Alloway was occupied by other endeavours as well. In 1876, he partnered with the Ogilivies of Montreal to establish a flour mill in Winnipeg. Two years later, Alloway retired from his trading and freighting business, as railways were in the process of rendering oxen-carts irrelevant, and engaged in the loan business. And in 1879, Alloway sought out his old friend H. T. Champion to form the private banking house of Alloway & Champion, which included Alloway's younger brother, Charles, as a junior partner. As a rising tide of settlers arrived in the West in the following years, the firm of Alloway & Champion vigorously bought and sold scrip, becoming "widely known as specialists in all classes of scrip." (16)
Charles Bell meanwhile, became the commercial agent for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway in western Canada, following the completion of the first railway to connect Winnipeg with other urban centres--the St. Paul Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway, which was completed in late 1878. By this time, the business interests of James Ashdown had expanded substantially. In 1873, Ashdown took his father into partnership, forming the firm of James H. Ashdown & Co. (17) Two years later, Ashdown moved into wholesaling hardware. He established branches in Portage la Prairie and Emerson, and in 1881, he built a three-story building in Winnipeg to handle his burgeoning wholesale trade. Ashdown also expanded his tinsmith shop to produce "sheet iron ware, galvanized cornices, [and] steam water and gas fitting[s]," employing thirty-five skilled-tradesmen. (18)
Winnipeg's initial growth spawned the formation of numerous local manufactories. Already by 1874, twenty-seven manufactories in the city were in operation; and this figure reached thirty-nine in 1881. (19) This industrial growth was initiated locally, by an emergent group of industrialists. Alexander Brown and Thomas Rutherford established a small planning mill in Winnipeg in the early 1870s--the first planning mill in the West. John McKechnie established Winnipeg's first foundry in 1874. In 1877, E. L. Drewry purchased and operated the idle Hercher and Batkin Brewery. And, in 1879, the business acumen of Elisha Hutchings was added to the saddlery concern of Stalker & Caswell, as Hutchings bought out the firm's junior partner. Taken as a whole, these men represented the core of Winnipeg's early industrialists.
The business class of the 1870s was a homogenous ethnic and religious group, being overwhelmingly British and Protestant, and this demographic remained consistent throughout the period under investigation in this article. The economic origins of the business class were, however, not so homogenous. The manufacturers of the 1870s had, to a large extent, come from peculiarly modest means. These men came to Winnipeg as skilled-tradesmen and emerged from the 1870s as manufacturers, propelling Winnipeg's transition to industrial capitalism, and it is to these men that this paper will now turn.
Before his arrival in Winnipeg in 1872, Alexander Brown worked as a wheelwright with the firm of Goldie & McLuton in Galt, Ontario. Brown was born in Muikirk, Scotland in 1842, and at the age of twenty, he moved to Canada with his parents and sisters. Upon arrival in Canada, Brown's father acquired a farm just north of Stratford, Ontario, and young Alexander Brown moved to Galt, where he married Margaret Neilson in 1865. In the spring of 1872, Brown left for Winnipeg with Thomas Rutherford, a co-worker from the Goldie & McLuton plant, while Mrs. Brown stayed behind in Galt with their three children. She wrote to her husband: "It is now nearly three days since you ... left do you think there is a good opening for you in Winnipeg[?]" (20) There was a "good opening," indeed, as Brown and Rutherford engaged in contract work as carpenters. Brown wrote back to his wife that summer: "We make very good wages and the weather keeps very good." (21)
Brown's reference to "wages" is rather misleading, for he was already beginning to hire labourers. In August 1872, Brown explained to his wife: "We took another contract on Saturday to build 4 houses ... We get 1000 dollars for building them ... We will have to get more men. We have got 3 men now and will have another in a day or two." Brown then went on to explain that he had been offered a contract to do the carpenter work involved in the construction of a hotel, which would necessitate the employment of "4 or 5 more men to carry on all the work at once." (22) The frontier conditions of Winnipeg during the early 1870s appear to have offered skilled-tradesmen like Brown considerable opportunities to achieve social mobility. Indeed, Brown was quite confident that he would accumulate wealth in the future. Brown wrote to his wife, regarding the partitioned home that he and Rutherford were constructing for their families: "I send you a rough plan of the house upstairs[.] ... we are going to brick it up inside ... and plaster both sides of the bricks[.] it will be very warm [.] we will put in board partitions with lath and plaster ... so that we can use it for something else when we get rich enough to build another." (23) He would, indeed, accumulate enough wealth in the future to build house.
In the fall of 1873, Mrs. Brown's brother, who lived in Scotland, wrote to her, expressing delight at his brother-in-law's success in the West: "I am glad to hear that Alexander is getting on so well. Why, it seems truly wonderful that the lad at Muikirk making 'Coal Boggus' should now be a master Cabinet Maker. It really does appear that a man, if pushing, will get better on in the West than here." (24) By this time, Brown and Thomas Rutherford were in the process of buying machinery for their nascent planning mill, laying the foundations of the firm of Brown & Rutherford. This firm enjoyed steady growth immediately after it was established, manufacturing "sash, doors, blinds and general builder's supplies in the lumber line." The firm's bustling planning mill on Bannatyne Avenue, which employed some thirty-five workers, was fed with lumber shipped up from Minnesota. And in 1879, Brown & Rutherford expanded its operations to manufacture lumber as well, building a sawmill on Lake Winnipeg, with a daily manufacturing capacity of 25,000 feet of lumber. The firm also purchased a steamboat and several barges, which were used to freight lumber from the Lake Winnipeg plant to the plant in the city. (25) The expansion of the firm's business had, by 1882, compelled Alexander Brown and Thomas Rutherford to relocate their Winnipeg operations to a larger plant; they sold the Bannatyne site, and built a large planning mill and lumber yard in Point Douglas. Adjacent to the new planning mill, Alexander Brown and Thomas Rutherford built two large and identical houses, side-by-side, for their families. (26)
Like Alexander Brown, John McKechnie arrived in Winnipeg in 1872. Born in Loch Lomond, Scotland, McKechnie came to Canada with his family at the age of ten. Through the next eight years, McKechnie remained on the family farm in Paris, Ontario, attending public school. Following this, McKechnie was apprenticed as a millwright and worked in the US and Canada. When McKechnie, at twenty-eight years of age, arrived in Winnipeg, he found work in a sawmill and shortly thereafter he was employed as an engineer in a flourmill. In less than two years, in 1874, with the small amount of capital that he had accumulated from his wages, McKechnie opened a small foundry. (27) The following year, McKechnie entered into a partnership with William W. McMillan, brother of grain merchant, flour-miller and future lieutenant governor, Daniel H. McMillan, forming the Winnipeg Foundry Company. This concern enjoyed substantial growth; by the early 1880s, the company's operations consisted of a well-outfitted machine shop, a pattern shop, a smith's shop, and a modern foundry, which produced two to three tons of metal, daily. (28)
Elisha Hutchings was born in Leeds County, Ontario in 1855, the son of English immigrants who had settled in Leeds County nearly twenty years earlier. Hutchings' childhood was spent on his father's farm, and he received his education in country schools. At the age of fifteen, Hutchings entered upon a three-and-a-half year apprenticeship to become a harness maker. Following his apprenticeship, Hutchings worked as a journeyman, saving money to head West, where he was determined to seek his fortune. Hutchings arrived in Winnipeg in the spring of 1876, and proceeded on oxen-cart to Edmonton, lured by the image of the "Eldorado" of the far west. Hutchings' time in Edmonton proved to be a disappointment; the stories of gold strikes had proven fallacious, and Hutchings subsisted by practicing his trade and by hunting and trapping. (29) In the spring of 1877, Hutchings returned to Winnipeg, but this time he stayed. Hutchings began to work independently, repairing the padded areas on carts and buggies. Initially, he...
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