National Album: Collective Biography and the Formation of the Canadian Middle Class 9780773582910

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THE NATIONAL ALBUM

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THE NATIONAL ALBUM Collective Biography and the Formation of the Canadian Middle Class

Robert Lanning

CARLETON LIBRARY SERIES 186

Carleton University Press

Copyright © Carleton University Press, 1996 Printed and bound in Canada

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lanning, Robert, dateThe national album : collective biography and the formation of the Canadian middle class (Carleton Library series ; 186) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88629-288-3

2. 3. 4. 5.

1. Canada—Biography—History and criticism. Middle Class—Canada—History—19th century. Canada—Biography—Dictionaries—History. Canada—Biography—Dictionaries—Social aspects. Biographers—Canada. I. Title. II. Series.

CT34.C3L35 1996

971'.0072

C96-900696-9

Cover Design: Your Aunt Nellie Typeset: Mayhew & Associates Graphic Communications, Richmond, Ont. Front cover photos: Henry James Morgan, NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CANADA/ C-31146; Rev. William Cochrane, NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CANADA/PA-28842; George Mclean Rose (lithograph photographed by Tom Moore) from A Dictionary of Toronto Printers, Publishers, Booksellers and the Allied Trades: 1798-1900, by Elizabeth Hulse. (Toronto: Anson-Cartwright Editions, 1982). By kind permission of the author.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing program by the Canada Council and the financial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance.

This book is for Claire; for her humour, her courage and her love.

THE CARLETON LIBRARY SERIES

A series of original works, new collections, and reprints of source material relating to Canada, issued under the supervision of the Editorial Board, Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press Inc., Ottawa, Canada. General Editor John Flood Associate General Editor N.E.S. Griffiths Editorial Board Pat Armstrong (Canadian Studies) Bruce Cox (Anthropology) Tom Darby (Political Science) Irwin Gillespie (Economics) Alan Hunt (Sociology) Dominique Marshall (History) Iain Wallace (Geography)

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES

Biography and History, People and Cultures Historical Sociology and Collective Biography 2

THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT

The Progress of Canadian Culture The Meaning of Democracy and Equality in a Developing Culture Success Character as a Bridge for Social Change Samuel Smiles and the Sanctity of Individual Effort Phrenology: Physiognomy as an Image of Social Place 3

THE BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

The Proper Data for the Object Lesson Creating a Biographical Dictionary: Morgan's Method The Basic Data of Biographical Representation Three Representative Men 4

ix 1

SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

Horizontal Mobility as the Retention of Generational Power Group Affiliation and Social Participation Shared Affiliation in Two National Organizations Group Affiliations at the Local Level Levels of Social Participation

15 26 33 45 46 52 59 61 64 71 83 84 95 101 111

119 122 131 135 138 144

5

REPRESENTATIVE DISTINCTIONS: MEN AND WOMEN IN THE COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHIES

"Differentiation" and "Fidelity": A Cultural Analysis of Gender Representation 6

149 158

THE STRUCTURE OF FEELING IN THE EMERGING MIDDLE CLASS

Personality Characteristics of Biographical Subjects The Emergence of a Mediating Class The Professional Ideal and the Middle Class CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A Note on Methodology

173 179 184 190 197 201

FIGURES

1.1 Selected Canadian Biographical Dictionaries, 1862-1903 3. 1 Questionnaire for Morgans The Parliamentary Companion 3.2 Questionnaire for Morgans Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 2nd edition

22 97 98

TABLES

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 4.1 4.2

Occupational Categories in Group 1 Biographical Dictionaries Occupational Categories in Group 2 Biographical Dictionaries National Origin, Group 1 National Origin, Group 2 Residential Distribution by Province or Country, Group 2 Regional Distribution of Residence in Cochrane's Canadian Album Age Distribution, All Samples, Group 2 Religion, Group 2 Generational Mobility, Group 2 Biographies Generational Mobility, Group 2 Biographies, Combined Professional and Non-manual 4.3 Non-Career Specific Social Participation 5.1 Social Activity/Occupational Categories, Morgans Types of Canadian Women 5.2 Women's Occupations, Morgan's Canadian Men and Women of the Time

103 104 106 107 108 108 109 110 124 124 145 152

156

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I TAKE PLEASURE in acknowledging the contributions to this project that have been made by several people. David Nock read three chapters of the text in its early stages and deserves my thanks for his interest and criticism, and for providing some excellent examples of biographical work in his own socio-biographical studies. Bruce Curtis offered me an opportunity some years ago to develop my interest in collective biography in research for one of his admirable works of historical sociology. To David, Bruce, and to Bob Russell, I express my sincere appreciation for their years of intellectual support and academic comradeship; it has been important to this and to earlier projects. Eric Lanning spent considerable time using his electronic cleverness entering and programming data that provided me with breakdowns of residence, membership and social participation of the subjects of collective biographies. I thank him for sparing me the frustrations of learning a post-industrial skill while we shared the experience of novice rowing on the South Saskatchewan during the summer of'93. My thanks to Dacia Lanning for her research on an important body of documents at the United Church Archives, and to Ruth Dyck Wilson for her helpful introduction to them. The careful reading and encouraging critiques of this work by reviewers for Carleton University Press and the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada are greatly appreciated. Jennie Wilson, and Jennie Strickland of Carleton University Press provided many suggestions for improving the style of the manuscript; the book reads better for their efforts. While teaching at the University of Saskatchewan I received two small grants which helped with research assistance and travel to archives. The research contributions of Eleanor Cohen and Robin Walton are gratefully acknowledged. Various sections of this book appeared in an article published in the Journal of* Canadian Studies in 1995. Much has occurred in my own biography while this study was in progress. The research trips, the writing, and the apparently endless casual

labour appointments at several universities have served as the facade for the actual world of the worker. That these fragments and more have been held together is attributable to the harmony, trust and wonder that is my life with Donna Varga.

INTRODUCTION

THE REVEREND WILLIAM COCHRANE was a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister. He emigrated to the United States for his education, and then to Canada for a life of religious and community work and leadership. Besides his work as a clergyman in and around Brantford, Ontario, in the last four decades of the nineteenth century, Cochrane assisted in opening up the western part of Canada to his Church, published collections of his sermons, and wrote about theology and other matters. In 1874, he helped found the Young Ladies College in Brantford, where he served as principal and taught courses in philosophy.1 Over the better part of a decade he also managed to compile material for the more than two thousand biographical sketches published in the first four volumes of a series called The Canadian Album: Men of Canada, or Success by Example. Given his other commitments, it might be assumed that Cochrane was a sparetime enthusiast—that alongside his dual career of clergyman and educator, he was a hobbyist at biography. Indeed, Cochrane was a biographer only when time permitted; how central or peripheral it was to the position he held in society is a matter of conjecture. Cochrane made it abundantly clear in his diaries that his work as a clergyman, church official, administrator and teacher took up considerable time and energy in his daily life. These commitments consumed his vigour, were partly the cause of his physical illnesses, and by the end of his life caused him to question the value any of his contributions had been, what worth he or society should ascribe to his life. During a period of strenuous work and considerable self-doubt, from 1890 until his death eight years later, Cochrane devoted himself as much to compiling material for The Canadian Album as he did admitting new members to his congregation, visiting the sick, or praying over the dead. He wrote about many of these routine aspects of his daily life with an attitude that fluctuated between commitment to a vocation and a sense of drudgery.

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NATIONAL ALBUM

Consider his entry for the week of 8-13 September 1890: Visited 8 families. Wrote 14 short biographies for Linscott's Biographical Volume.2 At Prayer Meeting. Received Guelph ... classes at College and spoke in the Drill Shed again at night in Connection with their visit. Gave 2 lectures at College. Wrote sermon. Visited sick. Wrote many letters.

His entry for 5-11 October of that year conveys the same tone: At Toronto 3 days attending Home Mission meetings. Prayer Meeting Wednesday, at Dr. Grant's lecture Thursday. Friday at College. Saturday study. Have again ... a severe cold, that unfits me for much work or reading. Am invited to British Columbia in November to open a church. Wrote some biographies for Linscott's new book and a large number of letters, personal and official. Had 8 College girls to tea Friday night. Negotiated a loan for $16,000 for Mission payments.3

These entries are typical for this period of his life. Reading them gives the impression that writing biographical sketches was a rather mundane task but more or less equivalent to Cochrane's other daily activities. Given the number of sketches he wrote and the amount of time devoted to the entire project, however, the reader of his diaries and The Canadian Album must eventually come to the conclusion that, regardless of its tediousness, his work was an affirmation of the kind of man Cochrane was, the lifelong progression of his career, the position he held in the community, and his own character traits. Cochrane was writing as much about what moulded his own life as about the social phenomena that shaped the lives of others. He was highlighting the lives of those who represented a generalized social success that he also enjoyed. As the title page of each volume of his series announced, the short biographies were representations of "success by example ... object lessons for the present generation and examples to posterity." This characterization of his work was no mere convenience. In these phrases lay the cultural significance of the work of collective biography. This study attempts to make sense of some of the many collective biographies published in the nineteenth century. These have been standard sources of historical and biographical information for generations of Canadian scholars, as well as for the general public. These sources have

2

INTRODUCTION been used to situate individuals in their own time, and to identify the social events and processes that have contributed to a wider knowledge of Canadian society. Like census statistics, biographical dictionaries offer pertinent or minor details of the progress of Canadian society, often accurately, but sometimes with errors. Biographical dictionaries offer insights into the activities of people considered to be their pivotal contributions to society, and activities that closely resembled those of other individuals. Sidney Lee, one of the editors of the Dictionary of National Biography in England, acknowledged that the number of sketches in such volumes certainly helped to satisfy "a natural instinct in man—the commemorative instinct."4 As the art and science of biography have developed and improved, these texts were gradually undermined by their inherent weaknesses and overshadowed by the greater thoroughness of more recent efforts. The contemporary Dictionary of Canadian Biography (hereafter DCB), for example, has rendered many nineteenth-century biographical dictionaries obsolete. Earlier texts of short biographies have been superseded by more complete, and therefore more valuable collections for both general consumption and scholarly research. For practical reasons, then, this development in recent biographical dictionaries has been important. In this study I suggest that the incomplete fragments of the lives that undergird the portraits found in older biographical dictionaries have much more to offer. If the biographies of the last century have been outclassed, they should be recognized for their value as historical sources that incorporate a range of cultural knowledge beyond the superficial lifecourse information. Thus, they need to be examined for the cultural and intellectual basis of their production, their formative concepts, and their construction of meaning. In all the biographical dictionaries analyzed for this study, with the important exception of one devoted entirely to women, the concept of "success" as a kind of cultural capital was the chief matter explored by their editors or compilers. If the exploration of success was to be a viable project of popular education—a celebration of the men who "built" Canada—then its presentation as an object lesson, as Cochrane would have it, would have been considered a practical literary device in this cultural context. Object lessons were an accepted pedagogical practice of the day. For Cochrane to characterize biographies as such indicated that they could be approached by the reader as a source of information, knowledge, and personal development. Based on the simple practice of observation,

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NATIONAL ALBUM

object lessons were a powerful tool in schooling and carried a similar utility in science and in popular culture. The principles of object lessons originally focused on the laws governing the natural order of things, of either nature as a whole or one of its components. These principles were easily expanded into the social world as tools for understanding the "laws" governing relations among persons, institutions, and even states.5 As a means of understanding given natural structures and relations and their subsequent transformation into social things and relations, object lessons imparted forms of objective knowledge to practitioners with the added benefit of contributing to the development of individual faculties, and to the formation of the whole person engaged in observation. In this sense the short biography was an object from which some moral and cultural lessons could be derived. As a sketch of the progress of others through life, it was a map to follow with examples of choices made at particular junctures which the reader might apply to his or her own life situation. The Canadian Album? it may be said, provided nearly 3000 such object lessons, of men who had worked at achieving personal success and made contributions to their community and to their nation. Cochrane explained his concept of biography as an object lesson in the Preface to his first volume and declared his motivation for undertaking a work of multiple biography. Originally planned as a series portraying five thousand men, that figure was based on the proposition that "about one man to a thousand is a representative man." What or whom did they represent? For Cochrane, the biographical dictionaries were meant to portray those men who represented the nation—its traditions, values and future—to "that large class of persons spoken of as 'the public'." As a tool of popular education, his "national album," like the family album, should, he argued, become a household commodity. It was a vehicle to unite people throughout the country, breaking through geographical barriers, bringing together public and private citizens alike who "will live in our homes, telling the story of their lives, exerting the influences of head and heart which have distinguished them." In the biographical dictionary "space is annihilated, and each man visits every other man around his own hearthstone, in the library or the office."7 For Cochrane, the purpose of collective biography was the dissemination of knowledge about character and achievement. The biographical subject was selected in part because he had qualities to be emulated by others. Cochrane's collective representation of others' success can be said to have had three goals. The first was educational—to influence the

4

INTRODUCTION

reader to respond to collective portraits in much the same way he or she would to any other lesson. The second was to promote the growth of opportunity in Canadian society. To suggest that the successful men represented in Cochrane's biographies would "live in our homes," engaging in friendly chat, was to bring the most "culturally distant"8 persons within reach of the reader as proof of the possibility of improving one's status through social mobility. The third goal was to provide readers with a range of concrete, everyday situations from which to proceed toward their own successes. The complex of personal events in the context of one's own society produced a sense of time and place—familiar to both reader and biographical subject. The representative man had achieved success through participation in institutions that were rapidly becoming normative and familiar to all Canadians. His story would therefore be of interest to others regardless of their position in society. His achievements were an embodiment of the normative values of Canadian culture that should be sought, internalized, and expressed by persons of all classes. This study attempts to demonstrate that the content of short biographies has much to say about the culture, time and place in which they were written, as well as about the particular social contexts of their subjects and the contributions they made to their society. Just as the purpose of the current DCB has been a scholarly exploration and analysis of a multitude of well- and lesser-known Canadian lives, so did earlier collective biographies have a demonstrable intentionality. Certainly, those assessed in these pages did not confront their subjects, or their projects as a whole, with the same academic design as have the authors of the DCB entries. Authors and editors of the latter have at their disposal resources that have been accumulated over the last several generations. While personal motivations still underlie professional or other interests that enter into the selection, research and production of entries for the DCB, they are undoubtedly developed on more objective premises than the biographical sketches of the last century. Contemporary efforts of this kind are, after all, social scientific enterprises. But earlier biographers did approach their work with the intention of bringing to public notice the many Canadian men and comparatively few women whom they felt were the bearers of essential Canadian values. These men and women exhibited behaviour that their biographers felt would serve future generations well, and provide examples for securing and extending the progress of Canadian culture. Besides William Cochrane, two other major characters in this study are Henry James Morgan and George Maclean Rose. Each of these men

5

NATIONAL ALBUM

was a representative Canadian in his own right. Morgan was a career public servant whose second career might be said to have been that of professional chronicler of the personnel of Canada's developing institutional structure. Rose was a publisher by trade who devoted his life, both within and outside his occupational pursuits, to the cause of temperance. In their respective fields, the biographers exemplified success obtained through hard work and involvement in valuable social networks. In their works, they sought to celebrate those who had made or were making contributions to the settlement and development of Canada as a nation throughout the nineteenth century. After publishing his last work in 1912, Morgan spoke to a journalist about the plan of his youth and the limits he eventually placed on it. The idea of a biographical dictionary, he said, came to him before Confederation, when he decided to publish a volume "covering the world." That heady vision was not only too ambitious a task, but when "Confederation came, I saw that there would be ample field for a dictionary of biography among the men of our own Dominion. We have a great many big men in our country. So since that time I have confined my plans in that line to Canada."9 The biographical sketches Morgan and others wrote and compiled were meant to focus as much on the institutions and social structure built by their subjects as on the particulars of each person's life. The depth of exposure of each subject was not great; details that Morgan, Rose, and Cochrane included in their sketches were skeletal ones, denoting primarily those steps taken toward achieving personal success, and the public association with Canadian institutions that legitimized such success. Taken together, all the volumes of such biographies created what is referred to here as a "national album" of representative Canadians—people who were claimed to represent the nation and its culture during the period of development and consolidation in the last half of the nineteenth century They represented a set of accomplishments and characteristics generalizable to a larger body of citizens in the nation either as a factual mirror or as an ideological claim to the possibilities open to all. Regardless of the instrumental exploration of the lives represented in these texts, they contain a rich body of information about the movement of people through their own life-course and that of their nation. These people were members of a growing middle class of well-educated Canadians in a milieu of increasing opportunity in business and the professions. Many of the occupations were comparatively new scientific and social pursuits, and all of them were viewed by the biographers as essential to

6

INTRODUCTION

the growth of Canada as a culture and as a nation. In historical perspective, this was a period of growth and opportunity, restrained periodically by economic recessions and considerable class antagonisms from the 1880s onward. There was, however, comparatively little overt ethnic or gender conflict. The growth of educational institutions and of business opportunities, the recognition of new contributions to culture, even the crack in the gender barriers that allowed some women to make publicly acknowledged social contributions—these were the material conditions experienced by the subjects of these biographies in the last half, and especially the last fifteen years, of the century. This study is both historical and sociological in its orientation. With the application of the work of Philip Abrams, Leo Lowenthal, Georg Simmel and Pitirim Sorokin, the writing of collective biographies of this nature appears more as a sociological project in terms of both its historical construction and the present analysis. Biography is seen as a series of situations involving the person and his or her institutional or other relations. Analysis of social mobility, group affiliations, and the social significance of particular occupational groups, among other interconnected situations, serves to provide substance to the rather onedimensional portrayal of an individual. Some of the principles of cultural analysis put forward by Raymond Williams, such as his literary-cultural concepts of "structure of feeling" and "selective tradition," provide a critical understanding for the production of, and rationale for, the large body of short biographical sketches. Of course, Canadian history has not been studied in the absence of biography; knowledge of Canada's past has been well served by the abundance of biographical studies of politicians in particular, but also of businessmen and academics. Like the women whose contributions to society and culture have long been neglected, but who have become the focus of recent scholarly attention, most of the subjects of this study are a notch or two below the "great leaders" of Parliament or the "fearless entrepreneurs" of business, who tended to dominate the first few generations of historical and biographical study in Canada. CULTURE AND CLASS

Some specifics of "culture" and "class" need to be established before proceeding. In The Long Revolution, Raymond Williams denoted three categories in the definition of "culture": the ideal, the documentary, and

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the social. The ideal was a "state or process of human perfection, in terms of certain absolute or universal values." The documentary category of culture included literary and scholarly work which chronicled "human thought and experience." The social consisted of the ordinary and institutional reflections of values and meanings played out in the practical activity of the people.10 Williams then demonstrated how these categories of culture might be applied to particular historical periods. The relevance of each of these categories will become evident in this study. But difficulties with the boundaries between categories, the possibility of excluding some social phenomena as culture in one, while including it in another, led Williams to generalize the definition of culture. He ultimately defined it as the "relationships between elements in a whole way of life." An analysis of culture is an analysis of "the organization which is the complex of these relationships." A key word in such an analysis, is pattern: it is with the discovery of patterns of a characteristic kind that any useful cultural analysis begins, and it is with the relationships between these patterns, which sometimes reveal unexpected identities and correspondences in hitherto separately considered activities, sometimes again reveal discontinuities of an unexpected kind, that general cultural analysis is concerned.11

The patterns with which this study is most concerned are those that reflected the normative character, values and interests of a culturally significant group of people, and that were then used to make claims for Canadian culture as a whole. Thus, culture, in this instance, is a study of people's relationships to each other and to institutions, and the standards of character and commitment that those relationships established as normative and valuable for Canadian society. This orientation, the searching out of patterns of behaviour and organization, indicates the permeability of boundaries between culture, so defined, and a similarly dynamic, historical concept of class. E.P. Thompson's provisional definition of class is helpful: it "is defined by men as they live their own history, and in the end, this is its only definition."12 However, Thompson also indicated the active process by which people define class as the "patterns in their relationships, their ideas and their institutions," the core of Williams' definition of culture. Culture is an historical formation established through values, character, interests and relationships that are threaded into institutional relations. This complex consolidates patterns of behaviours that can be reproduced

8

INTRODUCTION over succeeding generations. So as not to reduce cultural development to a mechanical sequence, it is important to make distinctions between the values, behaviours and other factors within a residual moment of culture and an emerging culture, and a subsequent (possible) distinction at a further point of cultural development. For Williams the pattern of culture can be understood as a process-in-formation once we become aware of its emergence, first as a structure of feeling. This literary construction is used as a tool of cultural and sociological analysis in the present study. In literature, the structure of feeling is the expressed need to capture the feeling and experience of social change while it is taking place, as well as its residual affects, its ongoing contribution to sustaining the fabric of a culture. A culture may even be sustained in a reduced form as structured, taken-for-granted components of normative institutional relations. Changing language, manners, values, social roles, the transformation of the material landscape of society: these factors constitute the structure of feeling that produces and reproduces the more institutionalized features of a culture. For Williams, this structure of feeling represents the culture of a particular period; it is developed from the buried relations of culture. One mechanism for expressing the structure of feeling as a producer of culture is to select events, characteristics and persons as being representative of a particular era. This culling is what Williams referred to as the selective tradition. While this is a study of the emerging middle class in Canadian society, it would be inaccurate to suggest that representative Canadians identified themselves consciously and publicly as a class with any measure of consistency during this period. However, their collective self-confidence, their ideal of service, and their common interests are unmistakable signs of a social group able to assert itself as a class. As will be seen, what Anthony Giddens has termed "class awareness" is more applicable to the present context and is a more appropriate alternative than Karl Marx's concept of class consciousness. The conceptualization of the middle class that is relevant here is one which is consistent with Williams' cultural analysis in particular. Some preliminary, and limiting, statement must therefore be made about the concept of class employed in this study. For reasons that will become apparent as the study proceeds, the concept of class used here accords with the fundamental meaning given to it by Marx. Class is, first of all, the formation into a group of like-situated people, based on their material conditions of existence. Their individual circumstances are subsumed under the commonality of their social

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NATIONAL ALBUM

conditions. Secondly, "separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class." This will be represented in the present context as a struggle to limit the realization of equality in terms of a cultural attitude that put a view of human nature in conflict with the claimed opportunities and benefits of liberal-democratic institutions. Thirdly, and most important to this study, individual interests are transformed into class interests, which then appear to independently "assume the form of general interests,"13 that is, for society as a whole. It will become evident that these elements of class were the subject of active communication among representative Canadians, and that the latter were exceedingly conscious of the social role that their common interests and situations entailed in the development and fortification of Canadian culture. In other words, the interests and attitudes of representative Canadians emerged from their "feeling" for their place in the world, and were built on the buried social relations of class differences which they did not, for the most part, wish to bring to the surface. The idea that their common interests were or should be universalized is what I take to be the essential meaning of Williams' "general human culture" as discussed in the following chapter. It is a concept that refers ideologically to universality as much as it refers practically to difference and exclusion. This view of class is also an expression of Giddens' emphasis on analyzing the ways "in which 'economic' relationships become translated into 'non-economic' social structures."14 In this initial definition based on Marx's work, what is evident is the formation of class as a dynamic, varied but pattern-producing historical activity. That process is consistent with contemporary scholarship on class in which this concept retains qualities that are historical, active, experiential, and indicative of relationships people form with others and with objective social constructs. Thompson argued that class was as much a cultural as an economic formation.15 EJ. Hobsbawm recognized two levels of aspiration informing the basis of advocacy and the triumph of interest for any class: "the immediate day-by-day specific demands, and the more general demand for the kind of society which suits it."16 Thus, a wide range of interests are implied in the formation of class. How the middle class should be defined is a substantial historical and theoretical problem in itself. Marx's concept of class is central here but his views on the middle class remained underdeveloped. The importance of his concept of class in capitalist societies is that the very existence of the "two great classes" of bourgeoisie and proletariat denote a space, and to

10

INTRODUCTION

some extent a purpose, for a middle class. The middle class lies between the two more powerful classes and serves, in part, as an historically increasing proof of the opportunity of upward mobility for the working class in capitalist democracies, and a place of exile for those who lose their "property-right" to affiliation with the owners of capital. It is this "middling" position that characterizes the middle class. Attempting to define its range, Marx and Engels designated "small tradespeople, shopkeepers, ... peasants," among others, as comprising the lower-middle class, thus indicating the bottom end of the occupational range of this class.17 Defining the middle class family for a later historical period in Canada, Paul Axelrod has asserted that the "major income earners" in those families worked at non-manual occupations that limited their economic power while allowing them to enjoy a "standard of living [which] ranged from the very modest to the very comfortable."18 The range of possible living conditions in both classifications indicates the breadth of the middle class that extended both ways from a conceptual mid-point in the overall stratification of Canadian society. It is consistent with Williams, with variations in specifics, to argue that the middle class developed in Canada much as it did in England, without, however, the organic history of the latter nation. But like the English, the Canadian middling folk were motivated by a formative concept of service to the community and the development of the social institutions of education, law, medicine and government through which individuals served their community and nation. Williams contrasted the middle-class concept of service with the idea of solidarity as the formative concept of the working class in the nineteenth century. Importantly, neither of these formative ideas, he argues, included an individualist motive as such. Rather, with regard to the middle class of the Victorian era, the individual was subordinate to a more complex, but generalized motive. Williams noted a continuum of thought in English history; from "Coleridge to Tawney the idea of function, and thence of service to the community, has been most valuably stressed, in opposition to the individualist claim. The stress has been confirmed by the generations of training which substantiate the ethical practice of our professions, and of our public and civil service."19 Social function and service were possible because they could be carried out within institutional frameworks. They were formal expressions of power in society. In the same vein, Hobsbawm saw a fundamental difference between middle and working classes. He argued that the bourgeois or upper-middle class are elite groups in society

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NATIONAL ALBUM

because they are situated in "positions of command or influence."20 In capitalist, class stratified societies, such positions of power often lie within institutionalized arrangements. Class, then, must be understood in this study as a combination of similarly-situated people working out their common interests as national interests in Canadian society. This definition does not require that a class must be fully formed before one can speak of it as a class. Rather, a social class can only emerge from struggle with another class—Marx's second premise. Therefore, some relationships, ideas, sentiments, and so on must be "struggled over" by competing interests. In the social and historical context under investigation here the middle class had yet to establish a coherent and consistent identity. (In fact, the nature of the middle class suggests that this may not have occurred even now.) What we do see here is a struggle—however mild—over the meanings of success, representativeness and change which may have proven conducive to the consolidation of a middle class in the future. • The first chapter of The National Album attempts to place the short biography in context, and points to some similarities and differences among collections of biographies. Chapter 2 examines the late-Victorian social context of the biographies: the awareness of social change, the meaning of success, and ways in which a society might account for the probability of success by its members. The method of constructing a collective biography and the typical characteristics of its subjects are the topics of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of social mobility, the networks of group affiliation and the patterns of social participation. The differences in the representation of men and women are dealt with in the following chapter, and an argument is made as to the distinctions in cultural meaning behind such differential representation. The final chapter attempts to demonstrate the existence of a structure of feeling through character, class and professionalism both in the context of popular culture and as a buttress for national consolidation. Since the vast majority of the subjects of the biographical dictionaries studied here were men, the masculine pronoun has been used in large sections of the description and analysis. Where the discussion applies to men and women, or only to women, the appropriate language has been used. However, the concentrated use of the masculine here has a value beyond its empirical basis in the content of the texts. It reinforces what the content of these works and the national culture surrounding them

12

INTRODUCTION

imply: namely, that the progress of the nation was essentially a male concern. It is all the more important, therefore, that when women enter the analysis in Chapter 5, they do so on a significantly different basis than do men. The politics of dismissiveness based on the cultural dominance of these men and their attempts to create a fairly exclusive cultural domain is of no value to this study. What the contemporary analyst must do is expose social phenomena in their own context, in their own language, before analysis can be applied to them. Therein lies the major work and continued significance of social and historical critique. The biographical dictionaries used here have been divided into earlier and later groups, based on publication dates. This chronology and the methodology employed to study source material are fully explained in the Appendix. NOTES 1. See D.B. Marshall, "William Cochrane," DCB, vol. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 201-03; R.N. Grant, Life of Rev. William Cochrane, D.D. (Toronto, 1899). 2. Thomas Henry Linscott was the manager and principal owner of Bradley, Garretson and Co., the publisher of 77?^ Canadian Album. 3. Archives of Ontario, MS 409, Rev. William Cochrane Papers. 4. Quoted in David Novarr, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880-1970 (West Lafayette IN: Purdue University Press, 1986), 10. 5. I have expanded on the use of object lessons in education in the nineteenth century in my article, "On Developing 'representations from presentations': Observing the Laws of the Natural and Social Worlds," Journal of Historical Sociology, 4(4), 1991: 359-79. 6. The Canadian Album is referred to throughout this study as Cochrane's work, although he actually edited only the first four volumes. Volume 5 was edited by John Castell Hopkins. It is not clear how much work Cochrane may have devoted to that volume before illness forced him to give it up. 7. William Cochrane, The Canadian Album (Brantford ON: Bradley, Garretson and Co., 1891), vol. 1,4-5. 8. PA. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility (Glencoe ILL: The Free Press, 1959), 3-5. 9. Francis A. Carmen, "A Snapshot Biographer: A Sketch of the Pioneer in Canadian National Biography," Saturday Night, vol. 25 (March 30, 1912): 4. 10. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 41. 11. Williams, The Long Revolution, 46-47. 12. E.P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth U.K.: Penguin, 1980), 10. 13. See Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 82 and 103-04. 14. Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of Advanced Capitalist Societies (New York:

13

Harper and Row, 1973), 105. 15. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 12. 16. EJ. Hobsbawm, "Class Consciousness in History," in I. Meszaros, ed. Aspects of History and Class Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), 14-15. 17. K. Marx and F. Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," in Robert C. Tucker, ed. The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 579-80. 18. Paul Axelrod, Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada During the Thirties (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990), 170. 19. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (Harmondsworth U.K.: Penguin, 1961), 315. 20. Hobsbawm, "Class Consciousness," 14.

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CHAPTER 1 THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY IN SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES

MORE THAN ANY OTHER FORM of literature, biography seems to possess the greatest flexibility and is, therefore, open to a multiplicity of uses. Whether written and read critically, or as an affirmation of just what was said and done, a biography is always a history lesson of sorts, a chronicle of social as well as personal events and circumstances. Biography has often been about those who, it is claimed, have given shape to a nation— the "great" leaders in war, politics and business. Biography is a life-story. Because it is the retelling of a life it is necessarily distilled into a series of situations. The Canadian historian Donald Creighton, who argued that biography is "a distinct and special branch of historical writing," saw this genre as much more than the life story of a person: In a biography, as in a novel, the phases of historical development, the conflict of historical forces, are seen, not in generalities and abstractions, but concretely, in terms of a central, main character, a set of subordinate characters, and a series of particular situations.1

When we read the story of a person's life as situational, we are aware of circumstances and conditions deliberated upon by the person at particular moments. We read of a decision to take a course of action, the manner in which it is carried out and the results of it. People live their lives, or perhaps view them in hindsight, as a series of more or less related situations. A thorough, complete understanding of a life would be one that would lead the reader to comprehend one situation as at least informing the circumstances that influence subsequent situations, just as this moment is the consequence of earlier ones. Herein lies a key to understanding some forms of biography, especially the short biography. The full range of social conditions and circumstances

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that initiate one person's choice among existing alternatives may not be conveyed. That situations are more or less related allows the biographer to write of life experiences and achievements as more or less continuous, or more or less disconnected. A situational approach to biography presents barriers to our appreciation of specific contexts and of other social times and places. In the case of short biographies continuity may be evident, but complexity is often only marginally apparent. But this method does have a purpose. Having already occurred, these situations may also be viewed distinctly as object lessons for others, as well as a rationale for a person's life course. One of the tasks of a biographer is to market these situations, and the lessons to be drawn from them, as the currency with which the reader may acquire essential or trivial pieces of another's experiences. As an object lesson, each situation or series of situations is more implicit than directly instructive. They are a means of demonstrating the quality of character evident in the courses of action taken by a person who has become successful enough to be publicly acknowledged. In this way, the biography attributes a normalcy to important or ordinary life-decisions, imputing legitimacy, but also making the reader aware of at least a small range of possible courses of action. Even if few sketches are actually read—ten or twenty, for example—the reader may be impressed by the number of people following similar patterns, even though their social origins may have been different. Toward the end of the last century, biography was a popular literary genre. It was read in the home for leisure and popular education, and in school where it spanned the curriculum as a tool for intellectual and personal development. In her assessment of Canadian biographical literature, Clara Thomas wrote, "Any life or any talent can strike the biographer as wonderful, demanding from him an obsessive and patient effort towards framing, containing and elucidating the complexities of a personality and a time."2 Historians of the nineteenth century and educators of the time have discussed the value placed on knowing the lives of those individuals linked to Canada's prosperity as a nation.3 In his examination of late nineteenth-century imperial thought among the Canadian elite, the historian Carl Berger has pointed out that Henry Morgan's creativity as a biographer was limited. Morgan's systematic presentation of his subjects was nevertheless an attempt to recover something of their contributions to the "cause of Discovery, Civilization and Progress" of Canada.4 In other words, Berger's remark is a recognition that biographers do more than write about individual lives; the "framing" and "elucidating" that are essential to their genre promote the ideology of particular historical

16

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

moments. Thomas, for example, noted the numerous biographies of clergy produced in the nineteenth century that promoted not only their work as individuals, but also advanced the religious thought and doctrines they represented, and the relevance of these to their communities developing in the new land.5 Recently, biography has become a more widely used vehicle for Canadian history, as well as being subject to evaluation as a genre for explaining historical and cultural relations.6 Perhaps the most important Canadian study relevant to the present one is J.K. Johnson's Becoming Prominent, a collective biography of the 283 men who were members of the House of Assembly between 1791 and 1841.7 While Johnson's focus is on the political positions attained by these men, their lives are more thoroughly illuminated as a series of successive occupational and political situations. Each life appears as a progression of successful involvements with significant events and influential people. Johnson's study demonstrates that representative attributes of ethnicity, religion, land ownership, and prominence in initial occupations served to embellish the social character of these men, to show that, for the most part, before, during or after their public service they were worthy of the positions in society that they ultimately attained. Further, Johnson's work demonstrates the value their culture placed on certain personal attributes and social achievements. Similarly, Bruce Curtis developed his study of school inspection in Canada West during the 1840s around the collective biography of the first corps of school inspectors. He shows that wealth, education, and commonality in cultural background contributed to the decisions of district governing bodies to choose particular men for the task of inspection. Curtis concludes his study with a comment that suggests that he also sees culturally affirmative patterns of character and circumstance personified by early school inspectors. They "were men joined by bonds of property and propriety, culture and Christianity, in a collective project aimed at the moral, political, and, in some cases, economic improvement of their social inferiors and dependants: farmers and workers, women and children, Indians and blacks."8 In other words, these men were injecting into their work the cultural characteristics of their dominant social group, as well as their personal traits of character. At one level the analysis of educational inspection comprises its own biography, as exemplified by the individual life stories of personnel. Is it possible that personal characteristics and social achievements of politicians and state servants—and the object lessons they embody—are 17

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a marketable commodity? It will be argued that the short biography is.a cultural by-product of the situations in which people acted. When their biographies were written, such circumstances and visible patterns in their life-situations became reproducible and distributable commodities. The critical theorist Herbert Marcuse employed the concept of "cultural commodities," suggesting that they represent and affirm the "totality of social life ... [in] both the areas of ideational ... and of material reproduction." Through the interaction of individual lives and social events, cultural commodities of this kind claim to affirm that the values of the class or social group which has dominated a culture are universally valid. In his analysis of capitalist cultures, Marcuse described how cultural commodities are used. He wrote that by their very nature, cultural commodities such as "the truth of a philosophical judgement, the goodness of a moral action, and the beauty of a work of art should appeal to everyone, relate to everyone, be binding upon everyone. Without distinction of sex or birth, regardless of their position in the process of production, individuals must subordinate themselves to cultural values."9 The judgement, action or object of art written of as events in a life may be reified in the text. Nevertheless, they are implied courses of action, criteria of social behaviour for the reader to appropriate. It is these values that are produced by the interaction of persons and social institutions. They instruct the young and affirm what like-situated contemporaries have achieved. While biographies are ostensibly about the individual, it is obviously impossible to avoid the institutional framework and wider social contexts in which situations of a life occur. This is true even where the context described is little more than an ideological moment, a set of proclamations that rationalize a person's actions in social events. For example, in Clara Thomas' view, the form biography took in the last century was that of a "eulogistic memoir." Perhaps authors of these works suffered constraints in their creative capacities, as did Morgan. Even so, Thomas argues, biographies of this period offered "documentary evidence" of cultural values and attitudes as well as evidence of the mental apparatus of the prominent or celebrated Canadian.10 This is, after all, a large component of the cultural reproduction that biographers achieve. They objectify the values reproduced in cultural commodities through the lives they present. At the same time, biographers exemplify the practical merit of successful fellow-citizens for others to revere or to emulate. Biographies, therefore, present a rationale to the 18

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

masses for interpreting the present and projecting probable futures. Leo Lowenthal described the popular German biography as "the supplier of sociology for mass consumption." He argued that what occurs in the writing of popular biography "is a caricature of that inductive method which attempts to develop from empirical observations reliable rules of the game of human life across the ages. The political sociology of the biographers is the 'sunken cultural heritage' of social research concerned with laws."11 The "favourite themes" of popular biographies, according to Lowenthal, "are politics, power and the leader." They are about events and circumstances that are claimed to have contributed to a permanence of values or a course of action in society. Politics, power, leadership, occupation, success—together these are evidence of the commodification of social values and actions communicated through the character of individuals. Biographies of this kind search for, and propagate, the laws of society that produce and reproduce the normative. Among the "laws" biographers may be concerned with are those guiding the form and content of the work of collective biography. This is ultimately the selection of people and events as representative. But the end product must be based on what are seen to be the durable and enduring characteristics of the culture itself, even if these appear somewhat transformed in a new structure of feeling. One such guide is what Raymond Williams, the English cultural historian and critic, referred to as the "selective tradition." Williams maintained that there are three levels of culture: a "lived culture ... fully accessible to those living in that time and place"; the recorded culture of a period; and the culture that is no longer lived but survives, in part, through the selective tradition.12 While the selective tradition is a means of organizing and interpreting the past, its processes are initiated, Williams wrote, in the particular historical period in question. The selective tradition is embodied in social institutions, and it acts to preserve those aspects of cultural heritage that correspond to the interests and values of the period. A selective tradition emerges in an historical moment and it is, therefore, promoted as both a product of the past and a movement beyond the past. The selection of what is deemed important to understand in any historical present is determined by the dominance of particular social groups, their ideologies and their access to cultural resources. The selective tradition works in three ways. First, it creates a "general human culture" through the standardization of human interests and 19

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values along the lines Marcuse suggested. Secondly, it establishes "the historical record of a particular society," the empirical basis upon which social cohesion can take place. Finally, through the inclusion and exclusion that are unavoidable consequences of the process of selection, it rejects "considerable areas of what was once a living culture," and confirms those areas of personal and social life that are judged worth preserving and representing as cultured The selective tradition is a confirmation of relations, interests, and values essential for the social order and a rejection of others as a hindrance to the "single line of development" in the social and political institutions of a culture.14 The selective tradition is the methodology through which the structure of feeling of a period is formed. While Williams referred primarily to literature in his use of the selective tradition (as well as the structure of feeling), it can also be employed in other areas of cultural analysis. Biography is one area in which particular cultural meanings of a period may be established, and Williams himself recognized this in The Long Revolution.^ When used to create a collective biography, the selective tradition begins the process of determining how an historical period will be understood by future generations. It promotes dominant, and emerging values as cultural commodities, by which an historical moment can be legitimated, and upon which the grounds for its reproduction and its progress can be affirmed. The mediator in historical time between "the given" as legitimate and its reproduction—its future value—is the individual who becomes the personification of dominant cultural values. In other words, the selective tradition is an exercise in partiality which claims to be a representation of a whole historical period and its culture. The engine of this partiality is immediacy—the adoption of a social expediency that defines the most marketable cultural commodities of the period. This is popular culture.16 Perhaps this definition, more than anything else, clarifies the often used concept of dominant culture. The latter is not simply linked to the most powerful social class or elite group in a society. Rather, dominant culture is powerful and pervasive; the range and affect of its values and meanings actively creates that commonality of interests which is popular culture. While biographies covering the full range of a person's life are the standard means of promoting great citizens and the social values they represent, the biographical sketch, the portrait gallery, and the encyclopedia entry also deserve attention. These have a significance quite apart from the major treatment of a life. Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the

20

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

Dictionary of National Biography in England, acknowledged that more thorough accounts of the great men and women of history already existed, but that the purpose of his Dictionary was to record something of the lives of those who ranked below them.17 Even though they may stand at some arbitrarily determined social "second-level" or lower, Sidney Lee, Stephen's assistant, recognized that "national biography" of the kind examined here still aimed "to do honour to the memories of those who, by character and exploits, have distinguished themselves from the mass of their countrymen." 18 There is a symbolic impact that several hundred short biographies in single volume can bring to an understanding of a period of social development. From such large numbers of sketches it is possible to see more clearly the selective tradition at work. It also makes it possible, from the point of view of someone like Cochrane, to have access to multiple object lessons from which to identify and measure representativeness. It is legitimate to question whether this is a viable area of cultural analysis. One answer can be found in the concrete evidence of collective biography as a genre. Figure 1.1 gives an indication of the extent of this type of biography in Canada during the late nineteenth century. Further, the use of collective biography in contemporary historical and social analyses in and beyond Canada is evidence of its continued usefulness in the histories both of societies and of institutions.19 This form of biography provides at least one answer to a question posed by Franco Ferrarotti: "How many biographies are needed to arrive at a sociological 'truth,' and what biographical material will be most representative and give us first some general truths?" 20 By selecting from the mass and variety of actual persons and achievements, the collective biography reflects and anticipates some "representative truths" about a culture even while that culture undergoes transformation. It also goes some way to reducing the exclusivity of a social analysis based upon what E.H. Carr called the "great man theory of history"21 As R.B. Fleming remarks, biography "of necessity ignores 99 percent of humans, the ordinary mortals who live and die leaving few traces, although collective biography rectifies that bias to some extent and social historians are broadening biography's base by recalling figures who in their day were known to few people."22 There is a material reason for this historic imbalance in representation. In discussing the limitations of collective biography, Lawrence Stone has pointed out that, "At all times and in all places, the lower one goes in the social system the poorer becomes the documentation."23

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FIGURE 1.1 SELECTED CANADIAN BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES 1862-1903

Date

Number of Entries

1862

424

1865-68

84

The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery

1880

1102

The Canadian Portrait Gallery

1880

204

1886-88

1872

1892

256

1891-96

2776

HJ. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time

1898

2773

HJ. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women

1903

350

Author/Title HJ. Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians J.R Taylor (and W. Notman), Portraits of British Americans (3 vols.)

G.M. Rose, A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography (2 vols.) G.M. Adam , Pro m inent Men of Canada W. Cochrane, The Canadian Album (5 vols.)

In response to Fleming's comment, it may be legitimate to ask whether that 99 percent of people without public life stories would care enough to read a collective biography of the other 1 percent. There is a popular assumption that the biographical dictionaries were compiled and published almost solely for the people in them. That may be true in an immediate sense, especially insofar as they would have been the people most likely to purchase a subscription to a proposed volume or most able to purchase one at a bookstore. The self-serving celebration of representative Canadians that these texts offered cannot be ignored. But, as indicated in Chapter 2, the development of schools, libraries and other public institutions of reading and learning would certainly have afforded others an opportunity to explore these texts. Indeed, they were written to enlighten a subordinate class, and also to give lessons on possible advancement. Further, even sons and daughters of those portrayed in these texts needed this kind of socialization, just as their parents may have valued collective biographies of antiquity for accounts of exemplary lives. 22

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

It may also be suggested that collective biographies of this period extended one of the earliest kinds of sociological activity in England and, arguably, in Canada: statistics and information gathering and its use in informing the genesis of institutions, of social policy and ideology.24 The collective biographies provide different types of data from those described by Philip Abrams regarding the origin of sociological work in England,25 but they do emerge as similar collections of relevant numbers of people who had experienced and participated in the growth of their society. The representative Canadians in these texts were the living data of research on the progress of the nation. The end result was the positivist selection of achievements as the outcome of new institutional arrangements. But if the concept of selective tradition is applied to collective biographies as a way of explaining their content and purpose, does biography as a genre retain its essential meaning? Biography may have, as suggested above, a number of purposes. But should the biography be more about the life of a person than about his or her social surroundings? To what degree should events and grand historical processes encroach on the portrait of an individual? These questions suggest that the content and emphases within a biography are less than absolute. The purpose of the present undertaking, then, must be more precisely stated through an expansion of the meaning of biography and its cultural uses. In 1927, Harold Nicolson began his Development of English Biography with the definition found in the Oxford Dictionary: "the history of the lives of individual men as a branch of literature." Nicolson remarked that, on this account, biography consisted of the three essential elements of "history," the "individual," and "literature." For him, this definition prescribed "by implication that biography must be a truthful record of an individual and composed as a work of art."26 Feeling that these implications required clarification, he distinguished between "pure" and "impure" biography. Besides being well constructed, the pure biography was explicitly concerned with historical or absolute truth. The meanings of these two types of truth were essentially equivalent. This quality, he argued, was absent from much of English biography. In part, this absence was "caused by accidents in the history of [the] development" of biography. True, biographers left out this or that fact, innuendo, or rumour. Nicolson's point, however, was that many holes in the story of a life were intentional—so much so that this shortcoming had become part of the tradition in English biography with the "authority of a moral law." 23

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Nicolson found support for this position in Thomas Carlyle, who stated frankly that the "history of mankind is the history of its great men: to find these out, clean the dirt from them and place them on their proper pedestal."27 Apparently, Freud also believed that biography possesses deceitfulness as an inherent characteristic. The biographer, he wrote, "commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to flattery and even to hiding his own lack of understanding." 28 In any case, the cultural expediency in the content and construction of biography as popular culture is evident. The partial representation of some lives is what allows for their smooth elevation above the lives of others. How "impurities" such as the absence of truth, as Nicolson suggested, could be considered accidental is rather unclear. It seems that impurity as a fact of biographical writing grew out of its actuality in both the person and the historical lesson. The lives of great men were not a continuous flow of good deeds and sterling behaviour. These men had flaws; they made mistakes. It may have been widely accepted that their failures were not essential to their biographies; therefore, the representations of great men, in literary or historical form, were produced without reference to flaws in character, since it was not the biographical subjects alone who were being represented. Rather, their associates, the institutions to which they belonged, the traditions they were expected to uphold, and more were under scrutiny as much as was the behaviour of individuals. Modifying Nicolson's remarks, it might be suggested that the truthful, meaning complete and accurate, portrayal of a life would be accidental to the representative biography. In other words, there is something about representativeness that determines which events or behaviours are significant and encompass all that a man truly needs to be for his public and, just as important, what the public needs him to be. That, so to speak, is for the biographer—even the /2wtobiographer—to decide. If it is not a life as such that is being written about but a life as a representation of a culture and a period, then the biographer's life story—particularly his or her own conception of biography—becomes as important as his or her subject's. It takes on added significance in the collective biography. John Fennings Taylor alluded strongly to this viewpoint in some concluding remarks about John A. Macdonald, the future first prime minister of Canada: That every fibre of our intellectual and moral nature should be of equal strength would be as unreasonable to expect as that every feature of our face should be of equal regularity. All men have foibles; and if we have the disposition to pry

24

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

narrowly, our curiosity will probably be rewarded by the discovery that all characters have flaws. That the subject of our sketch is an exception to a universal law, no one pretends to affirm. We should, however do violence to our own opinions of fair criticism were we to judge a public man from any other than a public point of view. Let his public services be the standard by which his public worth shall be determined.29

As David Nock has suggested, there is more to the living, and the writing, of biography than the life itself. The person about whom a biography is being written requires a "knowing subject"; that is, a biographer who writes of a life fully aware of "his or her [own] social location within a society." The social influences on both subject and biographer affect the life finally portrayed. This is true simply because no one—subject or author—constitutes a person separate from the society and course of history of which he or she is a part. Nock writes that we "do not just reflect outer influences. We do have some space in which to construct our personal selves and even, to some degree, to choose which social influences we will allow to influence our individual persona."30 Cochrane's near despair over the daily grind of his life was not a part of his publicly represented character. Personal disagreements, self-doubt, questions about the value of certain social institutions—these were not among the features of a life that would be found in print in his texts. On the one hand, what was representative was more or less common to all those in the represented group: education, interests, patterns of progression through careers, and the activities that bound the group to the society to which they contributed. Society, by and large, in late nineteenth-century Canada, was one of increasing diversity, complexity, and conflict. It was not differences among men that should draw the public's attention to them, but the necessary points of similarity in their lives that expressed the unity of their citizenship. On the other hand, if each biography was an object lesson on the achievements and success of an individual, then those differences that were evident were only diverse means to the same end. What a man needed to be for his public was indeed the product of his own work, but only that which led the reader, in the most efficient manner, from birth through education to trials and partial success, and then to the pinnacle of achievement, actual or anticipated. Physical weakness and spiritual fatigue did not lend themselves to success except when they were used to demonstrate a man's power to overcome them. Cochrane was surely not 25

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the only man to falter along his path, but when doubt struck he did the representative thing with it: he relegated it to the privacy of his diary and let the public man always appear to be as committed and hard working as the successful naturally were. As a biographer, he did the same for others. BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY, PEOPLE AND CULTURES

If we view the above as some of the underlying rationale of collective biography in the late nineteenth century, it is important for us to note that it has been drawn from the continuum of biographical illustration that began with Plutarch's Lives. In his biographies, Plutarch sought to represent the ideals of courage and wisdom, and of doing good for "mankind" (a key term to which we will return). Reed Whittemore has suggested that Plutarch rarely found these ideals in his subjects, that flaws in performance and character were at times in evidence. While this is accurate, it must be remembered that Plutarch's subjects were engaged in the formation of the institutions of their society, and that politics, law, and the arts were their concerns. The "ideal" could be found, indeed, but in incomplete form, for only fragments of lives were highlighted in the biographies. The individual, so to speak, had only a few occasions in the written recovery of his life to achieve the ideal and to do so as a singular individual. Reflecting on the place of self in these biographies, Whittemore says that the self "became selfless not to be virtuous but because it could not help becoming so, being caught up completely in the sound and fury continuum it had in some measure created."31 That sound and fury consisted of the creation of the arts and law and a host of other institutions, but also, and equally important, of other great men and their subordinates. Herein lies the ideological beauty of such "ideals" of character. To speak of ideal courage and wisdom requires that it be, and appear to remain, an exclusive trait of character, attained by only a comparatively few men. As Plutarch and other early advocates of elitist authority allowed, it was necessary to demonstrate the diffusion of greatness, the diffusion of character, among a larger group of men dominant in and committed to the same social order. To say that the self was lost, that the ideal was rarely achieved is an understandable analysis, but one which depends on a more individualistic conception of self. The self was not lost, but represented or diffused to like-situated others, with similar intentions of being wise and courageous and of propagating these qualities as a group, to return to the individual self its true grounding, even in

26

THE ROLE OF BIOGRAPHY

Plutarch's day, in the company of others. The ideal self was spread in and through others to found a branch of the arts, or establish a state, for all men of like intellect. Plutarch arranged his biographies so that, in writing of one life, he represented at least one other—the subject's biographical mate, as Whittemore calls it—for comparison. It seems that this was to ensure that all subjects were seen in relation to the commonwealth, for which all persons of qualified status sought to achieve greatness. In other words, a sense of the self may be gained by reading about it in a social, not individual, context, even though the "social" may be severely limited to a narrow elite. It is a two-dimensional representation of the biographical subject. For again, it is others for whom people of leadership and greatness exist, even when they intentionally separate themselves into a small minority opposed to any direct connection with the masses, as in Plutarch's age. The sense of self may also be apprehended through contrast with similar or dissimilar others. Plutarch, for example, discussed one aspect of the self in the different physiognomies of Demosthenes and Cicero: And, indeed, Cicero was by natural temper very much disposed to mirth and pleasantry, and always appeared with a smiling and serene countenance. But Demosthenes had constant care and thoughtfulness in his look, and a serious anxiety, which he seldom, if ever, laid aside; and therefore was accounted by his enemies, as he himself confessed, morose and ill-mannered.32

Thus, an ideal was suggested through contrast with another person. Even in this early example of collective biography, social circumstances were important. Plutarch understood that men acted differently in events governed by different concrete circumstances. Of course, it was up to the individual to assess conditions properly, and that in itself made for another exemplary component of a life. Fabius and Pericles were both examples of "civil and military excellence," but in differing circumstances. In diverse contexts, each individual proved his worth by properly understanding the conditions he faced with others. Pericles achieved success under optimal circumstances. The "flourishing and opulent conditions" of society not only helped to elevate a group of men, but also allowed for material and mutual support. Fabius, on the other hand, achieved fame while attempting to improve "a sinking and ruinous commonwealth."33 It is in this sense that we now return to the concept of "mankind." Many contemporary academics have directed their search for the sources

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of masculine power toward language and have sought out the obvious "man" in such concepts as "mankind." Its claim is for all human society. Historically, scholars such as Georg Simmel initiated such analyses. For Simmel, the use of the term "mankind" was often a naive identification of men with human culture as such.34 But the term connotes more than an apparently exclusive reference to gender. More important, it is reserved for those in whose "interests" comparatively few men claim to act. The society built by Plutarch's and Cochrane's men was one that would serve their interests even as it was being built, they claimed, for all. That is, the founding of systems of law, mass schooling, and other institutional orders was to further their vision of society by actually including, most often as political subjects, that large portion of society that stood outside their ranks of commonality: women, the poor of both genders, and ethnic minorities. These groups may have been excluded from certain institutions, but not entirely from the overall cultural arrangements that "great men" built around those institutions. This simply affirms what Williams stated to be the first level on which the selective tradition works: the creation of a general human culture. This is a crucial part of the argument throughout this study. It is certainly possible to claim that Plutarch's society was elitist, and that his biographical subjects were those men who built, sustained and managed the socially reproductive capacities of their culture. As with all elites, as also with all persons or groups in dominant positions, their existence was premised on others being subordinate to them, or waiting to follow in their footsteps. For Plutarch, the coercive elements of Greek culture ensured the continuation of the structure of authority. For Cochrane, Morgan and others, the position of their representative men was less distinct because coercion rarely entered the picture, while concepts of democracy and equality often did. These aspects of society were present in some degree and acknowledged as ideological principles. They indicated the necessary interaction, even the interdependence, of those whom a culture required in order to sustain and legitimate itself. There is little sense in making claims of dominance if no subordinate groups or rising generations exist. Celebrating the power of an elite is hollow if the mechanisms for social and cultural reproduction are absent. But it is clear historically that such mechanisms were grounded in institutional arrangements which necessarily included "inferior" persons or subordinate groups. At the level of reading and appropriation, the point of all collective biography, it would seem, was that its subjects and its audience became

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aware of the multiple roles of this form of biography. First, representative men were successful; they achieved, they did good and responsible things for society. Secondly, a significant proportion of the audience was outside the boundaries of the group of representative men; their characters and achievements were no match for the subjects of representative biography. Thirdly, late nineteenth-century biographers had an advantage: they could claim that the opportunity for readers to achieve the same social status as representative men was available to anyone through hard work, the exercise of integrity, and social participation. Hence, Cochrane's implicit goal for his biographical representations of the successful to be in homes, in familiar cultural and institutional territory. These purposes and the contextualization proposed by men such as Cochrane constitute the first principle of difference between the type of biography studied here and more traditional forms of the genre: the interactive quality of the biography as an object lesson, providing readers with a familiar, approachable reference group against whom character and success may be measured. There will be numerous opportunities to prove this point with regard to the nineteenth century. However, it is worth demonstrating the validity of this point with additional evidence of the two-dimensional element such as that found in Plutarch's study of antique lives. Whittemore makes the point that Aristotle's view of the model self as a great man and cultural leader was premised on the traits of character exhibited by all such men. Of Aristotle's view, he says: "Only great beings could even have character, since character [Aristotle] said flatly, 'is that which achieves moral purpose' [meaning] purpose that influenced, that carried over into, the lives of others."35 An examination of one context in which Aristotle discussed character provides a picture of the ability of differently situated people to bring an interactive meaning to the character of "great beings." In his discussion of drama in the Poetics, Aristotle advocated a literary form that would present men of great character. But what was the significance of focusing on the "great" if there were no "others" to confirm greatness and to recognize their own place as not great? Of the guidelines for creating dramatic characters, two are important here: The first and most important is that characters should be good. A person will have a given kind of character if... his words or actions reveal a given kind of choice; and he will have a good character if they reveal a good choice. But goodness exists in every class of person: a woman can be good, and so can a slave, although one is inferior and the other altogether worthless. A second thing to aim at is suitability of

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character; there is such a thing as a brave and manly character, but it is not suitable for a female character to be brave or clever.36

Thus, to argue that only great men possessed character is to miss the point: only great men had good or great character worthy of public presentation and cultural reproduction. Others may have had character, but it was inferior or worthless and, therefore, did not constitute the positive influence commanded by great men. How do we recognize this quality, asks Aristotle? We know it because we can identify those persons with bad or inadequate characters; we can also identify those persons who cannot possess valuable character traits because of their position in society. However, inferior characters do provide the negative examples necessary to give credibility to the object lessons of others. The significance of Aristotle's position is that he not only promoted the great, but named the inferior. Is so-and-so a representative man? Whether he is or not is indicated by the quality of character he represents and his social position. Granted, there is a great cultural and historical distance between ancient Greek society and that of late nineteenth-century Canada. But a similarity constructed through diverse institutional frameworks is the recognition and legitimation of differences. The difference between them lies fundamentally in the fact that social mobility presented opportunities to overcome some differences between genders and among persons of different social ranks which legitimated both the differences and the ideology that brought diverse people together. For one society, no provisions were made for penetrating the barriers of socially constructed difference; for the other, the claim was made up front, that barriers existed only to the extent that individuals failed to work hard enough to overcome them. What is crucial to the argument here is the recognition of a concrete relationship between representative persons and those who were not, but could be. (We will return to the issue of differences again in Chapters 5 and 6.) This general rule can be applied to many attempts at biography, singular or collective, and autobiography from Plutarch to the Renaissance and beyond: character as a distributable ideal, and lessons on becoming a person of good character. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations presented a model of character that was an ideal to be disseminated throughout that portion of the population most likely to appropriate and value its features. "Aurelius was a public relations man for the ideals of discipline, moderation, uprightness,

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right-thinking, and avoidance of the trivial," writes Whittemore.37 In a different way, Aelfric's hagiography of the saints promoted character, namely, the route of men from conversion to martyrdom to salvation.38 The religious element as a mediator between individual and society in the writing of lives has been important. Guibert of Nogent offered his autobiography as an example of how writing about one's own life could illustrate the power of divine intervention. In the twelfth century, when autobiography was at best a marginal and private endeavour, one made it legitimate by telling the story of one's life as a story of what was meant MO be. Guibert's birth, for example, nearly cost both him and his mother their lives. His mother commenced labour on Good Friday and was near death the next day, when his father and other relatives vowed at the altar of the Lady Mary "that should a male child be born, he should be given up to the religious life in the service of God and the Lady, and if one of the inferior sex, she should be handed over to the corresponding calling."39 The birth of Guibert, his acceptance of a religious vocation, and the long life of his mother were the manifestations of God's will that gave status to his life and his story. It was a religious status because of his beliefs and his vocation, but it was also a social status, regardless of the fact that Guibert was essentially writing to God.40 As one of the first examples of autobiography, his life story chronicled a religious career in its social context, which simultaneously propagated religious ideas and those of social character. It was Guibert's way of proving that God is right and does right through persons of high character. That the ideals of character were for dissemination to those who lacked them is evident in Guibert's story of a Jew, Guillaume. After witnessing the slaughter of his community, Guillaume was taken in by "a lady of very high station" who converted him immediately to Christianity, in order to save him from the pogrom and, of course, to save his soul. He was educated and, fearing "that he might be recovered by his family and returned to his former condition, he entered the monastery of Fly" where he confirmed his faith in many ways, including the writing of religious tracts against Judaism.41 For Guibert, who had sent to Guillaume his own Treatise on the Incarnation in Answer to the Jews, this story of conversion affirmed the faith and the public character of his own life. While Guibert's account was of his influence as an individual—a consequence of God's intervention—its relevance to collective biography is the same as that of any individual biography or autobiography: it demonstrates that part of attaining personal legitimacy (real or imagined) is what

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one is in relation to others. Whether negative or affirmative references are used, the relationship with others is crucial. However, in the collective biography, there is no central character as such, but many people and a multiplicity of relations and events among them that heighten the value of the particular subject of a sketch. People of like mind and situation affirm each other's lives. Giorgio Vasari's Lives of Artists (1550) is an excellent early example of the importance of this kind of biographical writing. Whittemore suggests that one of Vasari's major emphases, besides describing genius, was to demonstrate how an artist became successful by "making connections, keeping an eye out for the main chance."42 An artist did not become successful solely because he was a genius, but because he painted or sculpted well for someone else's needs—a state or religious commission, or the demands of a patron. Vasari's work is a profound example of networking, in which shared class or cultural similarities and interests among people serve the same purpose as God's intervention in Guibert's life.43 In his "figurational model" of society, Norbert Elias argued similarly for the priority of relations among people, and between people and social institutions. This was a way of understanding that the representation of a group or a character trait was premised as much on those who were not represented as on those who were. In connection with either social strata or gender, the interdependent relationship is essential. Elias discussed the use of personal pronouns as representing both normative expressions in language and an aspect of the reproduction of culture.44 It is a model that is key to any argument about cultural differences and their legitimation. The pronoun "his" or "my" in reference to social position, action or intention implicates "their" or "your" social position, action, or intention. This approach does not imply that opposite or reciprocal actions will always be readily evident in a situation, nor does it propose a dichotomy It does indicate, as Brown and Gilman have argued, that an objective relationship of power between social groups or individuals is understandable only upon investigation of the specific historical context of pronoun use.45 Elias states that "personal pronouns are in fact an elementary expression of the fact that every person is fundamentally related to other people, and that every human individual is fundamentally a social being."46 In other words, in an examination of character representation in collective biographies, it is unreasonable to claim that inferior persons or subordinate groups were excluded without also claiming that they were excluded as social actors. This line of argument is not a justification for the exclusion

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or restriction of certain social groups from biographical dictionaries or from language, but rather points out a unique dialectical relationship. The referencing of a dominant class or gender does not exactly exclude inferior but necessary others. Instead, it draws them into the discourse insofar as their own "cultural meaning" prescribes certain relationships between persons or groups. It has to; otherwise, what type of person or what social groups would serve to legitimize dominance? The selective tradition rejects a considerable portion of society as not representative, but draws these people—in this case to the biographical dictionary—to see why they are not representative and, perhaps, how they might become so. In sum, what can initially be said about collective biographies is that they not only represent the dominance of a group, or even of a social elite, but that they also recognize the necessity of disseminating representative paths of achievement (with all these imply) to those who are not representative. The fact of actual mobility and opportunity is established, but so is the belief that success achieved in this way is, theoretically at least, open to everyone. The collective biography does not dissolve difference, but legitimizes it by selecting the most appropriate traits for representation and demonstrating that personal advancement begins from common cultural ground. In the simplest sociological terms, equality of opportunity is given priority over equality of condition. The biographical sketches analyzed for this study were, like all biographies, ostensibly about individuals. But, given what has been stated to this point, it is evident that the individual is only one component of these sketches. The biographical dictionaries present us with sketches of people that, taken together, inevitably form a picture of social groups: occupational and professional groups, men and women, classes and status groups. It is only in this latter sense that biographical sketches of this type can be treated sociologically. Thus, the meaning of biography must be further refined in the context of its multiple representations. HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY AND COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY At the centre of Philip Abrams' Historical Sociology (as well as some of his earlier work) has been the relationship between structure and agency through which institutional, class, and interpersonal formations take shape. His starting point is to question the relevance of analyzing social structures if the "problematic of structuring" through human agency does not form the central motivation for historical and sociological research.47

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In other words, what are the concrete events, the chronological order of them, the activities people engage in, that create institutional arrangements? Beyond a theory of society there must be an explanation and analysis of its empirical and symbolic orders. Abrams' concept of biographical contingencies best demonstrates this relationship for historical sociology. The term covers aspects of character and identity development, and social opportunities and constraints, but it is not necessarily tied to a specific series of events that make up individual lives. Abrams recognizes that paths of personal and individual development and experience run parallel to the broader paths of social and historical development. The points where the individual and the social relate most compellingly are the junctures where changes in direction, purpose, and self-perception occur in individual lives. Social structure is a framework of institutional and other social imperatives within which people, and the groups to which they belong, become active as social agents. Nowhere in events that occur in a society, even within the impersonal power of bureaucratic institutions, are people absent. Explaining their presence and their actions has been persistent in the history of social analysis. For Abrams, attempts at explaining human agency are confronted by the imbalanced but central interactional dynamic in human experience: "that history and society are made by constant and more or less purposeful individual actions and that individual action, however purposeful, is made by history and society."48 Regardless of a person's uniqueness or the "averageness" of social existence, his or her actions must be accounted for socially. Regardless of the rapidity or intensity of change, or the apparently unwavering grasp of tradition, societies are made understandable by the people who act in them. The relation between individual and society that is so often the starting point for introductions to the discipline of sociology is a fundamental without which sociology, or history or philosophy, would cease to have meaning. Abrams provides five premises for biography which are central to this study. The first is that the individual must be appreciated as a "process of becoming," a process through which he or she develops into a particular person. Secondly, "processes of becoming ... are embedded, enacted, lived in particular conjunctions of life-history and social history, a twodimensional time." This relates to context. Thirdly, it is by appreciating the juncture of social and personal context that we understand the biography of an individual as a "moral career ... the moving point of articulation of those two types of time." This refers to a person's participation

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in existing opportunity structures. Fourth, individual lives are lived by persons, "but at the same time they are typical destinies of collectives," those who share individual and social circumstances. Individual lives are also social lives. Finally, when we examine a person's life we are drawn to "the conditions that enable those who embark on them to succeed or cause them to fail, permit or impel them to make something new of the world, or allow them to do no more than dully repeat the experience of others."49 This complex definition of biography allows the term to apply more effectively to social research. Using Abrams' propositions for biographical inquiry provides a set of premises for the researcher to take his or her work beyond the confines of a single life, and especially what an individual makes of it with his or her own resources of self and circumstance. Abrams' reference to the individual is bound to his or her movement along the dual paths of historical and personal time, events, successes and failures, that is, as an individual and as one of a collective of persons moving toward "typical destinies." Such two-dimensionality is fundamental to all sociological and historical research. Any analysis of individuals (or groups) is, in essence, an appreciation of the relationship, in SimmePs words, of objective and subjective culture. For example, Simmel asks the question, "To what degree, both extensively and intensively, do individuals have a share in the contents of objective culture?"50 Abrams provides a response: "Individuals are their biographies,"51 meaning that, if we study the whole life of an individual, we must account for that person in the complex of social and personal time and space, in institutional and private relations. We must account for his or her role, or that of the group, in the structural development and transformation of society.52 The collective biography does limit the application of Abrams' five premises because its sketches are intentionally cursory and incomplete, and cannot do justice to the full range of events and experiences that can be explored in a full-length biography. Nevertheless, having presented his approach, we must now explore its usefulness. An example from George M. Rose's Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography will serve this purpose: Robb, David W., Manager of the Foundry and Machine Shops of A. Robb and Sons, Amherst, Nova Scotia, was born at Amherst on the 9th May, 1856. His father, Alexander Robb, the founder of the works he manages, is a gentleman very much respected by his fellow citizens. His mother is Emmeline Logan, daughter of David D. Logan of Amherst Point. David [Robb] received his education at the County Academy at Amherst, and had begun the study of mechanical engineering

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NATIONAL ALBUM when his fathers health gave way in 1872, in consequence of which he had to assume business responsibilities, and since that time has been actively employed in the foundry and machine business, which has now grown to large proportions under his careful management. Mr. Robb is a member of the order of Freemasons, having joined this organization in 1882. In 1881 he reorganized the fire department in his native town, and has been its chief engineer ever since. He is a member of the Liberal-Conservative Association of Amherst, and an active supporter of Sir Charles Tupper, minister of finance, who represents the county in the Dominion parliament. Mr. Robb, like his father, is a member of the Presbyterian church, and like him, a public spirited gentleman. He was married on the 15th of June, 1872, to Ida S., daughter of Dr. Nathan Tupper, and niece of Sir Charles Tupper. The fruit of this marriage is three children—two boys and a girl. Frederick B., the second son of Alexander, we may add, is the financial manager of the firm of A. Robb and Sons.

In this sketch we can see events and "conjunctions of life-history" that constituted some portion of David Robb's process of becoming an individual: birth into a family headed by a successful businessman engaged in the mechanical arts, whose place in the community mapped out a terrain of possible activities and potential successes for his son. Robb set out to determine his own career through his early schooling and his plans to become an engineer. He did so as a result, in part, of the juncture of conditions and opportunities afforded by the circumstances of his family and the presence of social institutions. A generation earlier, the opportunity for, and the probability of, success in these efforts would have been considerably less. Thus, the two-dimensional time of life-history and social history was established. His becoming an individual was further defined by an aspect of his father's own life-history, his failing health. It was a juncture of two life-histories that impelled David Robb "to make something new of [his] world," to establish his moral career as an "articulation" of these junctures. Abrams' fourth premise permits us to confirm the value of his concept of biographical contingencies, and at the same time to move on to a more precise understanding of collective biography. Abrams elaborates on the possibility of one person's life representing "typical destinies of collectives": "[Individual moral careers] may be specified either as the characteristic series of experiences of categories of people or, within that framework, the actual biographies of particular individuals."53 What "categories of people" could David Robb be said to have been a part of? He

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was a member of an established family in the community. His father's position as a community leader rested, in part, on his business success, which was reproduced in David's accomplishments. David Robb was a member of the Freemasons, the Presbyterian church, and a political party—all organizations made up of persons of similar interests and, in many cases, of like-situated people in the community. That Robb was a supporter of Sir Charles Tupper may not have been a precondition for marrying Tupper's niece, but his political sympathies may have been one factor in placing him in close social proximity to Ida. As an example of George Simmers web of group affiliations, Robb s circle as an individual grew wider while intersecting with the permeable boundaries of other circles. Family, community and social institutions offered to Robb opportunities which, once taken (or refused), contributed to the formation of his identity. It is in this sense that the collective biography becomes truly important to an individual biography. A full discussion of webs of affiliation will be presented in Chapter 4. This, then, is the second principle that distinguishes the form of biography in this study: they are biographies of social groups and institutions as much as they are biographies of individuals. As such, their collectivity becomes a representation—a biography—of what is deemed to be the representative portion of the nation, the creative or activating segment of national progress. Besides the interdependence of individuals and situations, character and cultural ideals, one other category is central to biography and historical sociology—the concept of time. Abrams argued in 1972 that, "If we really mean to introduce into sociology a perspective that takes individual becoming—whether that means becoming an adult, becoming black, becoming deviant, becoming a housewife or simply becoming a self—as its central concern, it will be necessary to take the social organization of time as one of the indispensable variables of sociological inquiry."54 For Abrams, this was essential for an understanding of how time is organized in ways that "fix the forms and limits of constraint and opportunity for the individual."55 Given that time is divided into units which mark both the broad ranges, such as generations, and the microscopic delineations that sometimes characterize labour processes, the social construction of time implicates social structure and human agency integrally and simultaneously. Abrams regarded as particularly crucial the relationship between everyday time and historical time: that is, the temporal means of organizing and understanding the personal and the social worlds.

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Evidence of the interdependence of structure and agency with regard to time may be found in a variety of historical sociological writings from Max Weber to Michel Foucault.56 In these uses of time, its organization framed individuals' actions, in immediate terms, but more so in terms of historical and cultural conventions which produced "time-maps" that ordered and evaluated human activity, that structured the formation of the moral career of the person consistent with the socially normative form of time.57 More important in this context is Agnes Heller's category of time in her historical sociology of the Renaissance. Heller defines three aspects of the category of time: point in time, continuity and consciousness of social events, and rhythm. The three aspects of time are generalizable beyond the historical context of the Renaissance. The first and third of these are relevant in this context to a conceptualization of time as a category necessarily made particular and practical for biography. In the Renaissance period, Heller states, "the whole value content of action became a function of knowing the times."™ Individual action was expected to be directed toward the "concrete demands of the historical moment," in spite of its constantly changing character. Without such intention, individual action could not be integrated into the scheme of possibilities available to people of particular social strata. A "structure of choice" existed for differently located individuals in which the possibilities for self-realization were defined. Such possibilities were intervals of time—"the 'now' of a lifetime"—in which opportunities for personal development were to be taken. Heller writes, "In adulthood, childhood with all its possibilities is 'past,' just as in old age most of adulthood is 'past'; 'now' is the 'point in time,' the seizing and use of opportunities of the given age in life. Through all these 'nows' character develops."59 The rhythm of time also implicates both the principles of social development and the agency of individual action, but it does so by homogenizing the needs of social structure into a singular acceleration or deceleration of the course of events. The formation of character must necessarily follow the speed of this rhythm because of the concreteness of events, but also because this rhythm affects "the restructuring of worlds of feeling and systems of moral values as well."60 There is a framework, then, of individual character development that must be parallel to the general flow of social movement in time. The appropriate development of character depends also on the opportune grasp of possibilities of extended or progressive social participation. All this, of course, is contingent on opportunities structured into class, race, gender

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and other elements of stratification in society. But, as a general framework, it means that time is a category specified in each of the possibilities of self-development and the stages of life in social participation. The rhythm of social movement conditions the range of participatory opportunities in labour, as E.P. Thompson has shown.61 Heller suggests, as does Raymond Williams, that the rhythm of social movement also conditions the structures of feeling and forms of expression among individuals.62 The concept of "point in time" represents, from Abrams' point of view, the contingencies produced by the conjuncture of historical and individual time lines in which decision making in the development of a person's moral career is imperative.63 What is the relevance of time for the world of feeling and of values, the continuum and structure of choice so essential to biography? Heller and Abrams especially indicate that the "point in time" is one in which not only character is formed, but where the ideals of character are found, offered for appropriation by the individual. "Knowing the times" is a part of the crucial networking identified implicitly in Vasari's biographies of artists. It is the "now" in which one comes to know what character is, and what it can mean to a life if properly formed. A part of that knowledge is an understanding of the cultural continuum in time of expressions and actions of good character—for oneself and for others. But the continuum is also relevant horizontally at a point in time. For among one's fellows of good character, or models of the same, there is a continuity of expression and action. This is evident in David Robb and some of his contemporaries in Amherst, Nova Scotia, at the end of the 1880s, as it is with many others represented in collective biographies. It was their awareness of the conditions and demands of society in their moments that led them to particular social and personal contingencies. Certainly, their access to social resources counted, in no small measure, for their achievements. The meaning of time, as discussed here, was also no insignificant component of the structure of feeling. In one respect, the model of biography studied here is among the most complete, in spite of the absence of details and an explanation of circumstances of particular subjects. The collective biography is the biography of many individuals in relation to many social institutions, in relation to the ideology of the time, and in relation to the contingencies of their own lives as "proof" of the viability and legitimacy of the social order in which they existed. As we proceed, we will see that the individual

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became less of a subject for biography than the complex of individual achievements integrated with the progress of society. Commenting on the collective biographies of Henry Morgan, M. Brook Taylor has remarked that Morgan was clearly attempting to demonstrate that individuals' lives were expressions of a larger and more uniform body of "political and social principles" characteristic of Canadian society. Large numbers of people were living examples of the viability of these cultural principles. Thus, Morgan and others "were not celebrating extraordinary men so much as the system that produced them."64 Through Abrams' premises for biography we have, perhaps, both complicated and clarified the definitions of biography. But its division into multiple components may offer more clarity, especially in terms of standard definitions of biography. Nicolson suggested three components for biography: the historical, the individual, and the literary. To what degree do these elements apply here? Each component is present in the short biography, but none of them are complete, nor are they meant to be so. English cultural history and the development of Canada as a nation make up the history component, but largely in terms of major events and the development of a variety of institutions over time. Other milestones or signposts of a struggling and maturing culture are abundantly evident. None of the compilers of collective biographies intended to write a complete history of Canada, except to the extent that its history could be fundamentally understood as the varied but ideologically appropriate actions of representative individuals. Similarly, the individual component is incomplete, but nonetheless present in skeletal form. Events, achievements and participatory roles are certainly relevant to understanding the characteristics of particular people. In this way, the short biographies can be said to meet, marginally, the first two essential requirements of the genre. That is, the historical and individual components are given the beginnings of appropriate contextualization as contingent relations of structure and agency. The literature component is even less in evidence in this form of biography. But, to the extent that "role types" may at least provide the cursory outline of the essential characteristics of a literary type, this component may have merit for related studies of the nineteenth century. This will be discussed further in Chapter 3. The structure of feeling, as a literary motif, has been re-figured in the final chapter as a means of historical sociological analysis. 40

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In sum, the fundamentals are present, but largely in outline form. But the emphasis still rests on the possibilities of greater understanding of this period by examining whatever contingent relations exist that help to form a more understandable complex of social and individual relations. A better understanding of Canadian culture and some of its individuals is possible through this legitimate, if limited, form of biography. What is important is that the limitations themselves are highly suggestive for an exploration of this period in Canada's history. NOTES 1. Donald G. Creighton, "Sir John A. Macdonald and Canadian Historians," Canadian Historical Review 29 (1948): 3. 2. Clara Thomas, "Biography," in C.E Klinck, ed., Literary History of Canada vol. 3, 2nd ed., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 180. 3. Creighton, "Sir John A. Macdonald," 1-13; Carl Berger, The Sense of Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970); R. Dawson, Notes on the High School Reader and Biographical Sketches (Toronto: Rose, 1889); J.O. Miller, Brief Biographies Supplementing Canadian History (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1902); W.S. Herrington, Heroines of Canadian History (Toronto: William Briggs, 1909). 4. Berger, The Sense of Power, 50. 5. Thomas, "Biography," 184-85. 6. A recent example is R.B. Fleming, ed., BosweWs Children: The Art of the Biographer (Toronto: Dundurn, 1992). 7. J.K. Johnson, Becoming Prominent (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989). 8. Bruce Curtis, True Government by Choice Men? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 123. 9. Herbert Marcuse, Negations (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 94. 10. Thomas, "Biography," 186-87. 11. Leo Lowenthal, "German Popular Biographies: Culture's Bargain Basement," in K. Wolff and B. Moore, eds., The Critical Spirit: Essays in Honour of Herbert Marcuse (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 271-72. 12. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 49.

13. Williams, The Long Revolution, 50-52. 14. Williams, The Long Revolution, 57'. 15. Williams, The Long Revolution, 230-45. 16. Leo Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture and Society (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 5-6. 17. Claire England, "Canadians in The Dictionary Of National Biography" in R.B. Fleming, BosweWs Children, 139. 18. Quoted in David Novarr, The Lines of Life, 9. Lee assumed the role of chief editor of the DNB'm 1891. 19. See, for example, Gerald Aylmer, The Kings Servants: The Civil Servants of Charles

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20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

/, 1625-1642 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), and The State's Servants (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973); see also Peter Burkes discussion of biography in Sociology and History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1980). In Canada, the history of medicine, as S.E.D. Shortt has shown, has largely been an exercise in biography; see his "Antiquarians and Amateurs: Reflections on the Writing of Medical History in Canada," in S.E.D. Shortt, ed. Medicine in Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1981), 1-17. Franco Ferrarotti, "Biography and the Social Sciences," Social Research, (Spring 1983): 66. E.H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage, 1961). R.B. Fleming, "The Two Solitudes of History and Biography," in Boswell's Children, 260. Lawrence Stone, "Prosopography," Daedalus, 100(1), (1971): 58. For a recent example of this, see Bruce Curtis, "The Canada 'Blue Books' and the Administrative Capacity of the Canadian State, 1822-1867," Canadian Historical Review, 74(4), (1993): 535-65. Philip Abrams, The Origins of British Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Harold Nicolson, The Development of English Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1927), 7-8. Quoted in Nicolson, English Biography, 11. Quoted in Elspeth Cameron, "Truth in Biography," in Fleming, Boswell's Children, 27. William Notman and John Fennings Taylor, Portraits of British North Americans, with Biographical Sketches, vol. 1 (Montreal: Lovell, 1865), 35. David Nock, "Biographical Truth," in Fleming, Boswell's Children, 34. Examples of Nock's approach to biography in relation to sociology can be found in his A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy: Cultural Synthesis vs. Cultural Replacement (Waterloo ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1988), and Star Wars in Canadian Sociology: Exploring the Social Construction of Knowledge (Halifax: Fernwood, 1993). Reed Whittemore, Pure Lives: The Early Biographers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 33. Plutarch, The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 1070-71. Plutarch, Lives, 231-32. Georg Simmel, "Female Culture," in G. Oakes, ed., George Simmel: On Women, Sexuality and Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 67. Whittemore, Pure Lives, 6. Aristotle, "Poetics," in R. Bambrough, ed., The Philosophy of Aristotle (New York: New American Library, 1963), 424. Whittemore, Pure Lives, 38-39. Whittemore, Pure Lives, 49. John F. Benton, Self and Society in Medieval France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 41-42.

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40. Benton, Self and Society, 11. Some sense of the historical importance of Guibert's work and reasons for its several translations and continued influence, can be found in Benton's introduction, 7-33. 41. Benton, Self and Society, 135-37. 42. Whittemore, Pure Lives, 72-73. 43. A recent example of collective (auto)biography in which networking is supremely evident is Bennett M. Berger, ed., Authors of Their Own Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Reading the text, it is evident that the title refers mainly to the authorship of the entries. On the other hand, it is apparent that the glue of academic professionalism and personal networks accounts more fully for many of the "individual" accomplishments. 44. Norbert Elias, What is Sociology? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 122-28. 45. R. Brown and A. Oilman, "The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity," in P.P. Giglioli, ed., Language and Social Context (Harmondsworth U.K.: Penguin, 1978), 252-82. 46. Elias, What is Sociology?, 124. 47. Philip Abrams, "History, Sociology and Historical Sociology," Past and Present %7 (1980): 5; see also his Being and Becoming in Sociology (Durham: University of Durham, 1972). 48. P. Abrams, Historical Sociology (Somerset: Open Books, 1982), xiii. 49. Ab rams, His to rical Sociology, 282. 50. Simmel, "Female Culture," 65. 51. Abrams, Historical Sociology, 280. 52. See also Oakes' introduction to Simmers text in On Women, Sexuality and Love, especially 6-7. 53. Abrams, Historical Sociology, 282. 54. Abrams, "Being and Becoming," 4. 55. Abrams, "Being and Becoming," 2. 56. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930), 157-58; see also Joan Simon, The Social Origins of English Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 86-87; Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," Ideology and Consciousness 6 (1979): 149-51. 57. Abrams, "Being and Becoming," 4; Historical Sociology, 271. 58. Agnes Heller, Renaissance Man (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 175. 59. Heller, Renaissance Man, 179. 60. Heller, Renaissance Man, 185-86. 61. E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present 38 (1967): 56-97. 62. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), and Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977). 63. Abrams, Historical Sociology, 280-82. 64. M. Brook Taylor, Promoters, Patriots and Partisans (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 167.

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CHAPTER 2 THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT ONE GOAL of the selective tradition is the creation of a "general human culture" through an ideologically driven selection of value, meaning and behaviour as cultural commodities. In the historical context of the present study, the ideological generalizations concerning human culture were enhanced by the increasing diversity of Canadian society and the progressive complexity of its institutional arrangements. In the same way as the discursive use of "man" has attempted to prefigure language, perception and reality as paternal in character (see Chapter 1), the use of "human" in this sense makes a claim that culture is defined—actually "built"—by and for all those who may claim the status of human. For all persons in a culture, so the argument would go, language, perception and other aspects of life need to be fundamentally the same. This is not to argue that all individuals are of the same rank, or experience the same opportunities or conflicts. Rather, it is a claim that the effects of a culture should direct all individuals toward the same social goals of personal success and social commitment that fill out a predetermined conception of culture. Social place, class and gender provide the specificities, the different points of entry into the culture, based upon a person's circumstances. As in all ideologies, contradictions abound, and internal logic is the motor of legitimation. Accepting that a standardized culture is both desirable and possible requires a prior assumption that a single line of development can be located and legitimated. It is the "reasoning about" and "working toward" that development that constitute the perpetuating elements of such a rationale for social order. In a practical sense, any class that dominates in a liberal democracy must be willing to express such an assumption and be able to point to a rational direction for social development that claims its realization.

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THE PROGRESS OF CANADIAN CULTURE

Much has been written about the empirical details of Canadian society in the last half of the nineteenth century. These need not be repeated here. What is essential to this study, however, is to note the direction of objective development and, more importantly, to demonstrate the rationale for claims about biographical and social representation in terms of national progress. During the last half of the century, economic downturns, such as those of the 1850s and 1870s, posed a serious obstacle to economic growth and social development. The negative effects of these events caused a reduction in the numbers of businesses and independent manufacturers. In spite of this, the size of the labour force in the affected industries actually increased in number.1 Further, especially during the 1880s, more people were leaving the country in hope of better opportunities than were immigrating to, and remaining in, Canada. The success of consolidated industrial output had to be administratively guaranteed by legislating the National Policy. The rationale for promoting national progress relied heavily on objective data, readily accessible to those in positions of cultural power. The progress of social development also made such information increasingly available to those not in positions of influence. A few facts of economic change as registered through the labour force will provide some evidence as to how the effects of cultural development could be claimed as real, beneficial and generalizable in terms of growing opportunity. In these very basic facts we can read something of social development in the changes in the labour force, such as farming and industrial labour, and, increasingly, instrumental and specialized occupations such as commercial and professional work. During a period of major economic, geographic and population expansion between 1861 and 1891, the labour force increased by more than 320 percent. The numbers of agricultural workers increased by more than 200 percent, still making up more than 28 percent of the labour force in 1891.2 The rise of manufacturing increased the proportion of industrial workers to more than 22 percent. Most significant were the increases in the professional sector, which in numbers rose from 6562 in 1861 to 63,184 in 1891, an increase of 860 percent; commercial occupations increased more than ninefold to 186,695. Together, these two broad occupational categories rose from 7.2 percent of the labour force to 17.4 percent. These data illustrate that an increasing proportion of the working population was achieving success through professional and entrepreneurial activities.

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While this data provides evidence of the progress of the nation, it also alludes to the development of classes. The growth of numbers of workers in manufacturing and commercial enterprises indicates a society undergoing the process of industrialization. The increase in the numbers of people working in commerce or becoming professionals clearly indicates the growing base of the middle class. By empirically grounding the selective tradition as a method for understanding the full implications of new cultural arrangements and meanings, such evidence compels us to recognize the concrete conditions in which it becomes possible to evaluate Canadian culture as a class divided culture. In Thompson's words, class "in a new sense, [is] present in the evidence itself."3 The growth of institutions offering higher education is also clearly evident. It is difficult to determine how many private or commercial schools there were in this period or their rate of growth, but in every decade from 1860 through to the turn of the century university enrolment increased substantially. Between the academic years 1861-62 and 1871-72, enrolment increased 44 percent. In the following decade, enrolment grew by another two-thirds, and by 83 percent between 1881-82 and 1891-92.4 Along with the growth of virtually all facets of education came an increase in the reading public, accompanied by developments in the production of reading material and provisions for access to it. Egerton Ryerson created the Educational Depository initially to provide textbooks and other educational appliances for the public school system, and it became a centre for the distribution of reading materials to Mechanics' Institutes as well. Township and city libraries sprang up across the country in the last half of the century, along with YMCA reading rooms, subscription libraries, and magazine and newspaper publishers, all of which were important elements in the development of Canadian culture.5 There was not, however, a uniform acceptance of the progress of Canadian culture based simply upon the statistical evidence of expansion. Rather, any serious discussion of progress had to begin with an evaluation of Canadian culture by some of its representative men. One of the more interesting statements on this topic was made by John George Bourinot in 1883. A constitutional expert, historian and promoter of Canada, especially its British heritage, Bourinot became the first secretary of the Royal Society of Canada in 1882, and became its president a decade later. While holding this position, and his prestigious occupation as Clerk of the House of Commons (Assistant, then Chief, from 1873 to 1902), Bourinot wrote several histories and school texts focused on Canada, its 47

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government and its culture. He received his B.A. in 1857 from Trinity University in Toronto, but his legal expertise and his movement in the highest social circles earned him higher degrees from five Canadian universities, the honorary title of Companion of St. Michael and St. George [CMC] in 1890, and a knighthood in 1898.6 In his speech before the Royal Society of Canada, "Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness," Bourinot evaluated Canadian culture. His conclusions were not all positive. His judgement, however, did reflect a conception of culture grounded in the civilizing process evident in the British Empire. Many of Bourinot's criticisms are curious, but they indicate some of the contradictory premises that emerge with the criticism of one culture based largely upon an affirmation of another. Bourinot began his critique by discussing the obvious shortcomings in Canadian cultural development, which rested on the minimal material conditions necessary for its improvement and their real contribution to a growing society: "Material success is good, but only as the necessary preliminary of better things. The measure of a nation's true success is the amount it has contributed to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual happiness, the spiritual hope and the consolation of mankind."7 Noting the absence of libraries in the major towns until the 1830s, Bourinot suggested that what "culture existed [had] to be hunted up among the clergy"; but even their sermons had "no pretensions to originality of thought or literary style." Here, Bourinot allowed unnecessary distinctions to invade his critique, showing the bias in his criteria of good culture. Bourinot acknowledged that "Joseph Howe's speeches displayed a wide culture," an assessment supported by noting that Howe was worthy of speaking among the great orators of the United States Senate. He showed he was aware of historical writings, such as Robert Christie's 1841 history of Lower Canada; it merited recommendation, but Christie had "no claim to literary style." While J.C. Dent's history was well done, Bourinot reminded his listeners that Dent was English by birth, not Canadian.8 But others, like Dent, who "only came to this country in the maturity of their mental powers" were nevertheless owed "a heavy debt of gratitude for the ability and earnestness with which they have elevated the intellectual standard of the community where they have laboured."9 Some Canadian poets were emerging, and some were good enough to be published in American magazines, but Bourinot devalued this apparent success. The kind of poetry published in magazines was a kind of "machine work." Lacking "true poetic inspiration," its authors were deficient in the 48

THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT

essential quality that would guarantee "permanent fame."10 At the same time, he regarded patriotic poetry as second to none, and that written in Canada was a reflection of the country's greatness through its imperial connection.11 It was not the quality of intellect that Bourinot saw as a reason for Canada's slow cultural development, but the absence of a sufficient distribution of wealth. Among other things, the limited publication and restricted availability of literature, and the absence of public galleries were two factors hindering the establishment "of successful and permanent work in art and literature."12 The idea of a different distribution of wealth was not one based upon equality. It referred, first, to the general increment of socially produced wealth in the country and, secondly, to cultural commodities made available with the approval of a self-appointed cultural and political elite. The distribution of wealth meant a distribution of ideas, ornaments and other artifacts of the dominant culture. Bourinot's doubts about the entrenchment and viability of Canadian culture were confirmed by others who had quite precise views about cultural criteria—as the highest aim and expression of civilization. Culture implied all aspects of activity necessary to produce and sustain essential social relations. Like Bourinot's assessment, an article in the Canada Educational Monthly stressed "intellectual wholeness" as a mark of the cultured person: Show us the man who, on the strength of a little general reading, will express opinions right and left, or who argues deductively, with reckless confidence, from a few general principles settled in his own mind, and we will show you one who has never risen to the conception of culture which we are endeavouring to set forth. 13

The wholeness that was at issue here was that of a moral and intellectual unity working in tandem with material culture.14 For some, like G. Mercer Adam, editor of Prominent Men of Canada, this completely cultured person was the key to the distribution of a social resources which in turn would entrench the dominant culture as the culture of all Canadians. Adam also complained about the lack of support for the arts and intellectual activity, and argued for the promotion of libraries and book clubs, and the establishment of high schools.15 James Douglas expressed the same sentiment after a visit to the Cooper Institute in New York, and reflected on such monetary gifts as Jacob Astor's, which were used to create libraries in the United States. 49

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After a visit to the Cooper Library, Douglas wrote: "There were in it not less than 600 men, principally mechanics and labourers, reading in hushed silence men who, from their appearance, had they not been there, would have been, that cold winter afternoon, warming themselves in far different resorts."16 As much as Bourinot's discussion of Canadian culture was an affirmation of English culture, it was also a consideration of cultural forms as national ideals, expressing a common proposition of nineteenth-century historians that nationalism was "the highest form of universalism."17 An understanding of these critiques of, and suggestions for, the promotion of national culture would be quite misguided if they were seen merely as a paternalistic imposition of the dominant culture or a quasi-egalitarian distribution of opportunities. The promotion of culture included both as the means of social participation in the exercise and affirmation of liberal democracy. Indeed, it can be argued that libraries, high schools and the like were physical and social manifestations of power: cultural, political and paternalistic. But it is also quite evident that the discourse on the promotion of a cultured population was an interactive one. Participation was the medium through which cultural values could be appropriated. Thus, the central emphasis of Bourinot's critique, and that of others, was to bring individual development into line with historical development through economic opportunity and both general and specialized education. These were essential resources for success and, therefore, for achieving the status of representative man. The other side of the issue of Canada's status as a nation belonged to the avid promoters of a particular national feeling. The Canada First movement is worthy of note, not least because Henry James Morgan was among its founding members in 1868. Along with George Taylor Denison, Charles Mair, William Foster, and Robert Grant Haliburton, Morgan formed the Canada First movement to boost Canada as a nation capable of sustaining itself within an imperial federation. They were united around a set of problems that they felt constrained national progress. These problems, according to Carl Berger, included conflicts along racial and cultural lines, Canada's geographic proximity to the economically powerful United States, and the possible weakening of material and political support from the Empire's centre.18 The Canada First men brought to their discussions of nationalism more of their own personal approaches to the issue than systematic analysis or programmatic proposals.19 This point is helpful in the present context.

50

THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT As the material limitations of the nation were eventually overcome, a more enduring issue remained—the kind of person who would fulfil Canada First's vision of a national future. Foster used the statistical record of growth in Canada—in territory, population and production—to demonstrate the viability of the nation. Others shared his view that, ultimately, the success of the nation would depend on its alliance with other nations of similar background in culture and people. It may be said that what the original group did was promote the belief that Canadians could be all that they desired, as individuals and as a nation. But these men eventually concentrated on the idea that Canada was populated by a type of people particularly strong of will and body, a Northern people, homogeneous, and therefore more single-minded about their potential. The movement had lost its non-political focus by the mid-1870s, but through its promotion of the settlement of the northwest, a greater internal alliance, and a stronger role in the Empire, it cultivated a cultural feeling that the nation's future lay in a combination of material development and the strength of character of the Canadian people. Noting Haliburton's celebration of Canada as a "northern" culture, a concept equated with "toughness, strength and hardihood," Berger writes that "Few of Haliburton's young friends could resist seizing upon his assurances that ' We are the Northmen of the New World?"2® The signs of a developing society were very much in evidence at the level of everyday life. Changes were taking place more rapidly in the urban areas, the growth of which was, in itself, an indication of social development. But change was evident in rural areas and small towns as well. Anyone able to appreciate the daily or weekly newspaper, and anyone consistently attending school, would have become aware of these and other changes, though not, perhaps, with Bourinot's cautions or Haliburton's national enthusiasm. The general acceptance of progress had much to do with the growth of certain occupations and the economy generally, which brought with them greater opportunities for individual growth. In fact, at the most fundamental level, the signs, and perhaps even the critique, of progress answered basic questions individuals had for their own lives: In what occupations are there opportunities for employment? What new form of economic or social activity will raise and ensure my standard of living and my social status? Despite changes that widened the horizon of opportunity for Canadian men particularly, the ideological underpinnings of the new structure of opportunity affected those who might, theoretically, have

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taken up these opportunities on the basis of class and gender privilege. That is, the social growth of this kind was also characterized by a resistance to equality among those best served by the dominant ideology. What are the risks of a general levelling of opportunities? What are the risks of weakening the constraints that hold people in their traditional social place? These are questions that seemed to be posed in the face of new social conditions. The issue of gender will be dealt with in Chapter 5; here, the participation of the lower class in democracy is a more generalizable concern. THE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY IN A DEVELOPING CULTURE

Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, changes in the material condition of Canadian society were accompanied by changes in religious and moral thought which, whatever the extent of their revision, retained some validity as a means of shaping the culture. In fact, there was much concern about the place of religion and morality because of the rapidity of material change, and a concern about the intellectual culture having lost ground to the advancing material culture. Religious thinking had shifted from a concentration on the sinfulness of human beings to a belief in human and social improvement—an obvious link to new material possibilities. Greater opportunities in education were available, but many still held a firm belief in education as the means to a personal piety backed by a political conservatism.21 In education, debate over the role of religion in the curriculum resulted in a reorientation away from direct religious instruction toward indirect moral education.22 This institutional adjustment neutralized parallel and often acrimonious debate in Canadian society, and trained the focus of debate on the responsibility of individuals in their role as moral citizens. Progress was important to Canadian society and was clearly well under way in many areas, but the possibility of cultural erosion was evident as well when one considered that progress was not always easily managed even by those with cultural power. Thus, one could easily, at this point, contest much of the "statistical success" of the nation with arguments about class struggle, or details of poor housing and sanitation, as evidence that all citizens were not experiencing the same level of benefit from the social progress of Canadian society. But, because this study is exploring representative people who promoted the ideology of progress

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and, ultimately, the emergence of their own class, it is important to understand the expectations and apprehensions felt within their own ranks. Their perspective concerned a rationale for the inevitability, even desirability, of inequality and limits to democracy. As Raymond Williams has pointed out, the way in which culture was understood and promoted during this period (in his case, England) would have been entirely different had it been a response to the Industrial Revolution alone, a response to the kind of growth noted above. But neither culture nor industrialization could be abstracted from its social context. Thus, culture became a more problematic set of standards, of ideas, "a court of human appeal"— because it was also "a response to the new political and social developments, to Democracy"2^* Essentially, the perspective within the rising middle class was that, however great the idea and actuality of social progress, it could not overcome some other fundamental conditions of Canadian society that were largely based in human nature. Bishop Strachan, in one of his most often used sermons of the 1820s and 1830s, had reflected on the functional character of unequal relationships: One is formed to rule, another to obey... The Magistrate requires the aid of his people—the Master of his Servant. They are all dependent upon one another, as they subsist by an exchange of good offices.... The lowest order enjoys its peculiar comforts and privileges, and contributes equally with the highest to the support and dignity of Society.24

The image of a unified, secure, and stable nation was quite frequently called upon to provide a context for the real or potential social problems that had resulted from large-scale economic development and population shifts. Reflecting on the possible difficulties arising from the immigration of sponsored children, for example, the Queens College Journal of 1888 remarked that, "so long as [pauper children's] constitutions are not hopelessly broken, their moral natures not black at the core, and their blood not poisoned with disease, there is always the possibility of their being converted into good serviceable citizens."25 Perhaps the authors of this sentiment would have agreed that class and cultural biases informed it, but this view was expressed as a more general, even politically neutral, concern over potential hindrances to the developmental trend of their society. The nations future was based, on the one hand, on the assumed continuation of the highest form of civilization—democracy. On the

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other hand, the intensity of social change caused the very concept of democracy to be scrutinized, with the view that its meaning in this particular context needed always to be guarded by the culturally powerful. If representative men were examples of what all men could be through hard work and good character, then Canadian society must be shown to have an egalitarian interest. But if, in fact, all men could not achieve the same level of status or have access to the same resources for mobility, there must be a rational explanation. The shifts in the social relations of production and in population precipitated a general concern among those in positions of authority about maintaining social order. Concern over character and citizenship, and the social reproduction of the next generation, was voiced publicly through established institutions and in popular periodicals of the day. Over a period of years, many speeches and papers given at the Dominion and Ontario Educational Associations, for example, promoted education among all classes as a means of protecting them from being led astray, away from the "general human culture" promoted by representative Canadians, and toward opposition and disorder. Labour leaders, anarchists, women activists, and the like were among those named as serving the interests of disorder. In fact, they were attempting to secure the undelivered promises of democracy. There were numerous concrete examples of labour unrest to lend credibility to these concerns. Alexander Steele, a teacher in Orangeville, Ontario, recognized that the opportunity to vote brought people into the stream of democratic participation; but he worried that the working class, having come to this point in the hope of overcoming the unequal distribution of wealth, would not be satisfied with the vote alone. From "their limited and very imperfect knowledge of social phenomena," he wrote, "there is the danger that they may become the dupes of unprincipled demagogues."26 Notwithstanding the possibility that education might eliminate this danger, Steele, quoting an unnamed source, recommended a more immediate solution: "The greatest work which the coming century has to do in this country is to build up an aristocracy of thought and feeling which shall hold its own against the aristocracy of mercantilism."27 The simple fact was that many educators had little confidence in the ability of the working class to make decisions beneficial to the direction in which empowered groups wanted to move Canadian society. Along with their counterparts in England, they feared the uneducated "commonness" of their subordinates and the violence to which they might resort in order 54

THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT

to address social inequalities.28 The least they could do was recognize the potential danger of an economic and political elitism, and hope the working class could overcome the petty effects of inequality and focus more on the "thought and feeling" generated by stronger cultural forces. In the slogan, "An illiterate voter is a menace to the state,"29 the working class was confronted with the reality of its position in democracy. The claim was made that the combination of an inherent mental laziness with regard to their own well-being and the increasing complexity of social relations made members of the working class quite ill-prepared to exercise properly their individual rights within a democracy.30 For some, a so-called "new democracy" was an affirmation of traditional values such as class relations and the structure of authority in the family The importance of such relations could be evaluated historically and beyond Canadian culture. For example, the looseness of cultural relations, it was claimed, had caused the downfall of the Greek and Roman empires. The University of Toronto philosopher, George Brett, argued that the ideals of a society were "sustained ... ultimately by class principles,"31 the heritage of which carried more weight in the reproduction of culture than did the emergence of pleas for the rights of the masses. The awareness of traditional personal relations and social obligations affirmed such principles as those which had "made themselves immortal by supporting such concepts as 'gentleman' and 'noblesse oblige.'"32 For others, the conditions of democracy required people to be specially trained to possess an "intelligent insight into the complex relations existing within the community."33 The ordinary person could not rationally understand the long-term consequences of his or her own decisions. J.V. Corless, Director and Manager of the Mond Nickel Company in Caniston, Ontario, was somewhat critical of the increased complexity of the new industrial order, for the ordinary man "finds the greatest difficulty in framing for himself any reliable ethical judgement."34 Therefore what was important in a democracy was to educate persons in "the rational ideas of social progress." It required a dual approach to education: vocational training and training "for entering social relationships."35 As an industrial manager, Corless could see the benefits of acquiring technical skills as a resource for social mobility, but also for understanding the unequal but interdependent relations of capital and labour, of social needs and industrial peace. Businessmen argued against legislative imposition of labour regulations, in part because legislation flew in the face of such "natural laws" as supply and demand and the natural impulse to work as

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long and hard as one could to achieve the end result of quality work. They felt that the imposition of the eight-hour day, for example, would have a negative effect on both workers and the social ends of their labour. As the historian Michael Bliss has put it, reflecting the attitude of businessmen toward working people, "Their incentive to achievement would be extinguished and idleness and poor workmanship substituted for energy and ambition."36 The contribution of each person to the social order was the criterion for receiving the benefits of democracy. The introduction of specialist training in public schooling was one resource for self-improvement and social mobility, but it also delineated differently empowered and privileged areas of social participation. In this regard, J.D. Logan, an educator and author, contributed to the debate over democracy and the role of culture in his Democracy, Education and the New Dispensation: A Constructive Essay in Social Theory. Logan's thesis was that the concept of democracy did not necessarily mean equality among citizens. Rather, democracy was a concept of social order. But it was only another form of political organization, since there was nothing more sacred in democracy than there was in aristocracy. Democracy, it seems, differed primarily in that it opened up possibilities for the "best development of the best minds."37 Opportunities for such development would be "invested in [a] person justly by his first consenting to the absolute righteousness of public or social order "^ although this opportunity was not to be extended to all. For example, the notion of equal access to education was, for Logan, "smug paternalism." He asserted that there were limits to education and other forms of social participation based on class, but at the same time he affirmed that the educated person, through the "skilled employment of faculties,"39 could become a cultured person, expanding the boundaries of his or her social space. In his pamphlet, Logan used the character of such persons as William S. Fielding,40 the federal Minister of Finance, and R.A. Falconer,41 the President of the University of Toronto, as proof of what educated persons could achieve. Their successes were partly due to individual capacities and partly, he suggested, due to the structure of opportunities available to any and all. These two men were " typical of what any native-born Canadian, whatever his social origin or status, may freely achieve ... [their] aspiration, effort, merit, achievement alone are significant and effective, and they alone are admired and abundantly rewarded."42

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If one explanation of human behaviour was the variety of individual capacities, a logical correlate was the difference in material conditions among families or other social groups. What some had and others did not was balanced by the effort and result of people striving to raise themselves to higher levels of status and achievement. Thus, in his analysis of democracy and culture, Logan was able to conclude that, without unequal distribution of material goods and wealth, "there could be no equal distribution of culture and its concomitant goods."43 Appearing to echo those who worried that the promises of democracy might fall into the wrong hands, Logan suggested that the pool of opportunities should be available first to those who affirmed the structure and relations of the existing social order and of trends in national progress, including the structure of inequality. The problem for many proponents of a "new democracy" was how to guarantee both its real and its ideological components by structuring both the means of participation and the criteria of personal expression. John Millar,44 the Deputy Minister of Education in Ontario, demonstrated in several works the possibilities that schooling held for directing individual participation in the promotion and preservation of the democratic state. In his Canadian Citizenship, written as a text for secondary schools, Millar suggested that citizenship contained a strong element of calculability in the relationship between the person and society. "No voluntary fight in the battle of life," he wrote, "should be undertaken if the successful competitor becomes less valuable as a citizen."45 Thus, Millar saw normative personal activity as the basis for the organization of civil government and a rationalization for the inequality prevalent in all civilizations: "Indeed, 'inequality and progress' are inseparably connected."46 The affirmation of inequality was central to the argument in Millar's text, and he developed it into a substantial theme in a later pamphlet, 77?^ Educational Demands of Democracy, published in 1901. Social conflicts arising from issues of housing, sanitation, and other social conditions were as much a crisis of civilization, as Millar and others saw it, as democracy. In these two works, Millar, like Logan, was careful to discuss historical inequalities as they related to the variety of individual capacities in society. As a form of social and political organization, democracy had the capacity to make "every man a citizen," to "give much to the idle, to the wasteful, to the injurious classes."47 The differences between individuals were not to be confused with the "perpetuation of artificial class distinctions" that were as much anathema to democracy as to Christianity. But,

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for Millar, it was a simple fact that the variety of individual capacities was a recognition of those who exhibited strength in their social relations and those who were weak in this regard. The priority of the social element was evident in this imbalance in that the strength of wealth was to "be used for community good."48 Equality in human capacities had once existed, but the civilizing process had drawn human relations away from "primitive" cooperation and common goals: It is only in a savage state of society that men display few inequalities. As mankind advances differences become greater. In more highly civilized nations there is less approach to political, economic, social and intellectual equality. It should be accepted that inequality has been the condition of progress. A state of equality, if such were possible, would be a state of stagnation and a return to savagery.49

Millar, therefore, made a connection between the need for social progress through different forms of participation and the variety of human capacities and interests, set against the backdrop of social stratification. Finally, Allan Smith has identified the ideological dilemma and its rational explanation in his exploration of the popular mythology surrounding the self-made man in Canadian society of this period. He suggests that the advocates of these views of democracy, equality and individualism rarely felt the need to pause and notice the contradictions. If individual circumstances appeared to limit a person's ability to succeed, this merely underscored both the role of individualism and the smooth running of the social system itself. Such situations did not require a rethinking of dominant cultural ideas: On the contrary, his modest stock of goods was a function of the fact that there existed a generally egalitarian system of proportioning society's bounty which was a necessary condition of individual fulfilment ... limited means, quite simply, signified equality of condition, and equality of condition was to be viewed as the sine qua non of individual happiness and achievement.50

To suggest, in the midst of a discourse on opportunity and individualism, that everyone began from the same social and economic conditions, was merely to illuminate, again, the kind of contradiction necessary to keep the engine of a class ideology running smoothly. For here we witness an element of class struggle, not over economic but over cultural and political matters, and ultimately over the development of people.

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THE VICTORIAN CONTEXT Amid concrete social change, the struggle over the meaning of democracy was to contest who would or could fully participate in Canadian society, and to what degree. Formally, that question would be decided through the franchise, and be grounded in the arguments of Millar, Logan and a host of others. The immediate political matter of the franchise was actually a cultural concern, as well as a matter of individual character. However resolved, the practical meaning of democracy would reflect the meaning of Canadian culture itself. The proposed interpretations of these men confirmed the fact of a struggle among social groups in the process of forming classes and establishing the grounds on which Canadian culture would be reproduced. Implicit in discussions about democracy and culture were reflections on the meaning of working class and middle class that could not be fully articulated without recourse to institutional control over the formation of persons, of character, and of their sense of self within the social order. Thus, conflict over the meaning of democracy was not only an issue of which men with what property could vote, but of how their character could be determined and interpreted. Elsewhere, I have explored the variety of ways educational institutions attempted to control the formation of character in the latter part of the nineteenth century.51 The concept at the root of this process is "determination." Raymond Williams defined determination as social forces which "set limits" or "exert pressures."52 Class assumes an additional, if imprecise, meaning with Thompson's assertion that class formation takes place "at the intersection of determination and self-activity,"53 between the objective forces of society and human agency. Classes are formed in this conjunction, but also class consciousness—the experience of class. Therefore, an increasing number of professional and commercial men found themselves debating culture and democracy in the interests of Canadian society—that is, in their interests—and also found they required a means to exert pressure and set limits on people that would determine their class status. The formation of class distinctions, if not also class consciousness, was achieved in part by establishing "success" and "mobility" as achievements of character consistent with middle class ideology. SUCCESS

Part of the ideology of the nineteenth century was the "Gospel of Success." It was embodied in a set of ideas generalized throughout England and North America. Success was concretely grounded in industrial expansion,

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the rise of the social and scientific professions, and the entrenchment of individualism as the pervasive ideology of the century. Success served as the measure of personal achievement and the rationale for wide social participation. Freed from traditional forms of authority and social organization, individuals were supposedly the authors of their own lives. The growth of opportunities in the professions and commerce gave rise to a range of assumptions about what individuals could and should do for themselves. But, consistent with a culture founded on and sustained by various manifestations of structured inequality, the notion that opportunities existed equally for all individuals was considerably misplaced. The class and gender limits of the political franchise meant that some forms of social participation, the acknowledged ground of success, were available to some groups of people rather than all individuals in Canadian society. Entry into the professions was formally limited to men until late in the century, and informally much beyond the period under study. Opportunity for status mobility was limited in a variety of ways more often than preachers of the "gospel" would admit. In this study, success has been treated as a concept that was applicable to the style of life and career patterns of men. For women, success entailed similar, if culturally and practically limited, usefulness. To both genders, in different ways, and to the idea of a general human culture, it had relevance only alongside the concept of tradition. The meaning of success, found in its own body of literature as well as the biographical dictionaries, was understood to derive primarily from the achievements of men in the past. Writing of Henry Morgan as an interpreter of Canadian history, for example, M. Brook Taylor discusses his conservative view of the nation in the last half of the nineteenth century. Morgan's outlook, along with that of the historian J.M. McMullen and fellow biographer John Fennings Taylor, was based on the belief that the "ever-improving future" was only legitimate if it recognized its debt to a proven cultural tradition. These men "sought to slacken the inherent tension between these positions by making future successes contingent on adherence to historical precedents. The future was only welcome if it built on the past and did not seek to overturn it in despotism or revolutionize it in anarchic democracy."54 As a concept intended to guide life-activity, however, success had priority over tradition. The editor of one biographical dictionary commented that the world "worships success," and the truth of this was evident "in the fact that if a man be poor, though he have the learning of a Blackstone, the genius

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of a Watt, or the patient perseverance of a Goodyear, yet, until he has achieved success mankind has no interest in his story."55 Thus, a man without success (and, in effect, women in general) populated those areas of living culture that the selective tradition chose to reject. Success was appropriate for portraying the achievements of individual male citizens, but tradition was valuable for demonstrating cultural continuity. George Bartlett's success as a merchant was an example of the continuum of cultural values essential for the reproduction of generations. For Cochrane, Bartlett's "dealings have been strictly upright, and his course, both public and private, thoroughly reliable throughout life, which makes his career worthy of emulation by our aspiring Canadian youth."56 The obvious economic implications of John McKellor's success were equally important: [He] is considered one of the best posted men in the district, and being yet in the zenith of his manhood and enterprise, gives promise of much future good to his country, by his experience in locating valuable mineral deposits, and otherwise opening up the vast resources of the west.57

Success was about movement through levels of one's occupation or through occupations of different status, or the expansion of one's business or professional arena. It demonstrated mobility in status through forms of social participation characterized increasingly by education, certification and association with scientific or economic advancement. Success, defined in this way, was increasingly attainable in the last half of the nineteenth century. But how did opportunities leading to success come about? What resources could one utilize or depend on to become successful enough to be representative? There are undoubtedly more answers to these questions than can be adequately dealt with here. Three approaches to the problem will suffice: the first concerns changing requirements of a society in transition; the second concerns what appears to be a purely individual course of action; and the third a physical matter of the body over which, presumably, one had little control. CHARACTER AS A BRIDGE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Debates over the nature of Canadian democracy were occurring while the educational system was growing in central and eastern regions of Canada. 61

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As we have seen, there were limits to the idea that education was the great equalizer. Authors of such debate would likely have agreed with the person who penned an article titled "Self-Education," which appeared in the New Dominion Monthly of 1868: Great men learn very little of what the world admires them for knowing, during what is called the "educational" course. They are men who are constantly observing little things and great things passing around them ... it is this knowledge obtained among men and from men that is the most useful in any walk of life, literary or commercial.58

In any case, promoters of systematic education attempted to organize schooling to meet the needs of a changing economy. One such person was Egerton Ryerson, the extraordinary energy and intellect behind the school system in Canada West. For Ryerson, the educated man was not one who used his individual capacity to realize personally defined goals. Rather, individual achievements of this kind were of questionable moral and civic value if they lay outside the needs of one's society. In the 1840s and 1850s, Ryerson was astute enough to understand the difficulties of social change that might emerge from industrialization and the construction of democratic institutions. He was particularly aware of the need for the parallel development of individuals and society in such periods of rapid, and sometimes radical, transition. Thus, on two of his province-wide tours Ryerson delivered talks to teachers, trustees and other local officials which outlined the role of public education in the formation of character and citizenship. His theme was the significance of a person's vocation to society as a whole. "The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People" (delivered in 1847) and "The Nature and Importance of the Education of Mechanics" (delivered in 1853)59 stressed the importance of culture and education. These lectures bridged two important sectors of the existing working population: the traditional agricultural sector and the growing class of industrial labour. Daniel Drache has noted that the 1851 census showed that, of 450,000 people working in the united provinces, 41 percent were classified as agricultural labour and 36 percent as wage labour in marketing and small industrial employment.60 Agrarian labour was still the leading occupational classification, but the choice of vocational topics in Ryerson's lectures reflected an awareness of the transitional nature of the economy and its effects on that sector. Industrial employment was certainly marginal in most areas of the provinces, but the obvious need for 62

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manufacturing skills could be found, for example, in the amount of metal implements and tools imported from the United States. Ryerson seemed to be signalling not only a growth in industry and new occupations but also, to his mind, the growth of a new social class, for which a new set of value orientations was relevant, especially the awareness of social mobility that could take people away from traditional occupations and cultural interests. Each of Ryerson's lectures began by outlining the threefold relation of the individual to the world—physical, intellectual and moral—and proceeded to note how both general and specialized education could be a preparation for an individual vocation and a vehicle for elevating Canadian culture. Ryerson was promoting his own conception of education, of course, which included a strong element of self-reliance. The latter was useful not only for the development of the individual, but also for developing a sense of citizenship for obvious political reasons. Developing self-reliance would encourage young men to find a place in the growing complexity of social institutions. Ryerson asked why a farmer, as well as a lawyer, needed to understand, speak and write about politics. He was aware that the successful farmer in Canadian history was, at least up to that point in time, the epitome of the self-made man.61 Ryerson then asked, why, if there were institutions of education for farmers, the same should not be available to mechanics. An educated lawyer, farmer or mechanic was "an ornament, a safeguard, a blessing to any Country ... a guardian, an honour, and benefactor of his Country." "It is the mind," Ryerson went on to say, "which makes the man; and it is the culture of this which makes the difference between the savage and civilized nations."62 The importance of acquiring a vocation was that it provided the impetus to acquire knowledge, and a skill that specified and made visible a person's form of participation in society. Ryerson listed the aspects of farming and industrial labour that required scientific observation and understanding, the intellectual resources necessary for self-development and cultural progress.63 Here was an articulate call for scientific interest and educational pursuit, the purpose of which was social progress and individual improvement. While it is clear that Ryerson viewed the scientific interests of both the mechanic and the farmer as the substance that connected them to social progress, they were some cultural distance from the professional and commercial men who would dominate the biographical dictionaries later in the century. But what was also important was the call to break 63

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from traditional occupations and follow the new forms of social participation. Ryerson advocated a wider democracy insofar as it meant access to citizenship as normative political action. Mechanics "have as much to do with the architecture of Government, as they have with the erection of cities, or the production of Manufactures." The mechanic, therefore, ought to be able to understand the terms "Civil Society" and "Civil Polity"; he ought "to know his rights and how to exercise them."64 This kind of knowledge was essential, since the nature of the mechanic's vocation brought him into public relations with others far more than that of the farmer. Ryerson's focus on these two occupations was a commentary on the immediate and future value of schooling to individuals and to society. It became a concern central for the consolidation of the educational system by the end of the century The meaning of vocation in this context was primarily its value as a form of social participation, a way of fulfilling obligations to society and maintaining the rights of civil liberty. Throughout these lectures, a certain quality of character remained the ideal, but accompanied by an emerging and increasingly complex social process through which it could be achieved. SAMUEL SMILES AND THE SANCTITY OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORT

Samuel Smiles' Self-Help was published in 1859 and revised in 1866; over 250,000 copies were sold up to 1905.65 It has remained in print through most of the twentieth century. The book is in many ways a collective biography of men whose notable achievements, inventions, scientific pursuits, industrial techniques, and the like were of recognized benefit to European society. Many of the men portrayed in Self-Help lived in the period before or during the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization not only set the stage for the dramas of these lives but also, in a practical sense, was the impetus for these men to set out to accomplish great deeds in the first place. The Industrial Revolution also offered the proper backdrop for discussing these individuals because so many legitimated the ideology of individualism, along with the social and status mobility associated with historic social change. It has been rightly noted that there was little new in the "phenomenon of self-made men"; history is full of them. But J.EC. Harrison, in an analysis of "success literature," has suggested that what was different was the public promotion of the lives of such men: "What was new was the 64

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deliberate and conscious use which was made of these examples, the elevation of the self-made man into an almost mystical figure, and as a corollary for the detailed analysis of the ingredients of his success."66 In fact, there was nothing new in the genre for which Smiles became so famous. In the middle of the nineteenth century, biographical sketches celebrating success and individualism had become quite a cottage industry in England, Canada and the United States.67 Those who tried to secure a name for themselves through their industriousness in the genre had few scruples about plagiarizing from each other to provide enough material to fill a respectably sized volume.68 Smiles had a broad motive for promoting the accomplishments of representative men. It had to do with the tension between men and institutions. There was an increasing tendency, he wrote, for men to rely on social institutions to achieve what they should strive to do for themselves. Electing political representatives, which "constitute the millionth part of a Legislature, by voting for one or two men every three or five years," seemed to Smiles to be a certain means of undermining the motivation to help oneself. While acknowledging that individuals—in fact, great, representative men—make up the state, and by extension all social institutions, these agencies should not be seen to be the legitimate sources of improvement. The idea of self-help went much deeper: The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.69

It is possible to identify several themes in Self-Help, all of which focus on the resources for, and the "how-to" of, achieving success. Four concepts can be seen as forming the personal and social junctures of the successful, self-made man: observation, time, personal qualities, and mobility. This study, following William Cochrane, has characterized biographical sketches as object lessons that necessarily require a cognitive activity: observation, or an awareness of the scientific, technical or social situations in which people exist, and evaluating these in relation to social norms.

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Similarly, Smiles wanted his readers to understand that, for them and the great men they were about to encounter, such arrangements were the primary source for understanding the achievement of great things: "For all experience serves to illustrate and enforce the lesson, that a man perfects himself by work more than by reading,—that it is life rather than literature, action rather than study, and character rather than biography, which tend to perpetually renovate mankind."70 This lesson was one of masculine common sense—the practical experimental activity destined for a concrete application. Smiles' inventors and tinkerers were men who saw opportunities for improvement and innovation in the obvious and ordinary. How many men had witnessed the swinging to and fro of a suspended object before Galileo used this everyday occurrence to measure time and make astronomical calculations? How many men had destroyed the common spider web without noticing that its construction might have value for human society? Many had done so before Sir Samuel Brown used his observations to create innovative designs for bridges. Human knowledge, wrote Smiles, was nothing more than the "accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men."71 One of the most important of "small facts" to observe was time. Indeed, "knowing the times" and the value of time in terms of working toward a goal could not escape the reader of Self-Help, for it had not been ignored by representative men. Time was a period of varying proportion in which one could be employed at some work or experiment. To be punctual was to adhere to a schedule by which things could be accomplished. Walter Scott determined to answer every letter he received as a part of his daily schedule; Dr. Darwin composed his major works while riding in his carriage between the houses of his patients; the elder Disraeli, like other great men, found a way to turn all things into goals, "even time itself."72 The concept of time was practical and physical, not obscure or abstract. Time was not an uncommon issue in Canadian literature, especially that directed toward the education of young men. Punctuality, for example, was an essential habit to acquire because it was a sign of promptness, a commitment to a schedule of social arrangements and, most importantly, the seizing of a moment that had been assigned a meaning, a connection with a specific task and social space. The Journal of Education for Upper Canada warned of the evils that would come from a "failure in meeting appointments," and extolled the benefits of punctuality: "integrity, stability,

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prosperity."73 The more punctual a person was in waking, the greater number of hours he had to spend in useful activity. Rising at 6:00 a.m. instead of two hours later would save 29,000 hours over the course of forty years, a gain of three years, four months, two weeks and six days to a person's life.74 In an issue of Our Boys, published by the students of the Victoria Industrial School in Mimico, Ontario, an article on time divided it into four categories of meaning: economic use, social value, lost opportunities, and time as the "stuff of life." Of these, the most usable conception of time was its relation to economic value.75 By using these categories, one could see how significant men deployed their time, and realize that respect for time was one of their personal characteristics. Perseverance, for example, was an indication of continuity and duration in one's use of time. As in other formative concepts in Smiles' work, contradictions existed, most importantly in the sense that what was being observed, or the time spent on an achievement, was an action on the part of the representative person that subordinated or obscured the related contributions of others. Smiles generalized his formative concepts to represent the experience and point of view of selected individuals. His literary device was to show the skill possessed by his selected men in employing these concepts for their own purposes. Their purposes never seemed to be out of line with what was, apparently, a general acceptance that these men had the prerogative to employ whatever means necessary to achieve their goals, regardless of the effect on others. For example, if punctuality and perseverance were appropriate personal qualities, was it not necessary for Smiles' subjects to exhibit them regularly? Apparently not, especially when there were alternative means at hand. Representative men achieved their positions by possessing qualities like "personal power" and knowing how to exercise that power over others.76 For the Comte de Buffon, this included using another's subordinate position to claim for himself the associated quality of perseverance. Smiles tells the story of Buffon's difficulty in rising early: in spite of his effort, he could not do it. He then promised his servant, Joseph, a one crown-reward for every day he was able to get his master out of bed on time. Joseph's efforts were in vain and, when Buffon finally awoke, Joseph was reproached for his failure to accomplish the task earlier. The remainder of the story is about Joseph's perseverance, as a result of which "Buffon at length conquered his habit; and he was accustomed to say that he owed to Joseph three or four volumes of his Natural History."77 It is unlikely, however, that either Joseph's

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name or a testament to his character appears anywhere in Buffon's works. This is one of many indications in Smiles' text that a supreme quality of men of stature was their ability to use others as a resource for their own achievements. There are many instances in Self-Help where Smiles takes the opportunity to promote the idea of good character as a generalizable concept and to personify it in his subjects. The quality of character Smiles was advocating was best summed up toward the end of his book: That character is power, is true in a much higher sense than that knowledge is power. Mind without heart, intelligence without conduct, cleverness without goodness, are powers in their way, but they may be powers only for mischief. We may be instructed or amused by them; but it is sometimes as difficult to admire them as it would be to admire the dexterity of a pickpocket or the horsemanship of a highwayman. Truthfulness, integrity and goodness—qualities that hang not on any man's breath—form the essence of manly character.... He who possesses these qualities, united with strength of purpose, carries with him a power which is irresistible.78

In other words, a concept or quality that defines good character must be paired with another, as if one were needed to check the other or keep it in balance. Cleverness, for example, was affirmed by goodness of purpose; an unacceptable purpose rendered cleverness a mask that could be worn by anyone for his own selfish ends. But this check on qualities of good character permitted a wide latitude in performance. Personal power remained an end in itself and the qualities of character were largely decorative resources for legitimizing the means to achieve that goal. That is, Self-Help promoted some men who refused to allow their own interests to be obstructed by the legitimate, and acceptable, needs of others. Bernard Palissy is a case in point.79 Palissy worked hard as a landsurveyor and at other temporary occupations, but his driving interest was in finding the formula and technique for enamelling pottery. This technique was known in Italy, to which Palissy could have travelled to seek the source of the one glazed piece of pottery he possessed, but "he was bound to his wife and his children, and could not leave them; so he remained by their side groping in the dark in the hope of finding out the process of baking and enamelling earthenware." This was apparently intended to show that Palissy's character included devotion to his family. However, his wife, while "dutiful in other respects," was, like other women, not eager to "sympathize with experiments whose only tangible effect is to

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dissipate the means of buying clothes and food for their children." Not only did Palissy spend his hard-earned money on chemicals, firewood and other materials for his experiments, leaving his family without the basic necessities, but in his final firing of a solution of clay he burned the last of the family's supply of firewood, then the garden fence. Then, certain that he needed only ten more minutes of fire to reach his goal, he burned the furniture and shelving in the house. He reached his goal, but that was not the last of the misery he brought upon his wife and children. But here was a representative man: he had an idea he wished to pursue and personal power to exercise over others to help him achieve his goal. He was head of a family he nearly starved, and he fuelled his own drive for success by throwing the family's possessions into his fire, but he lived a life "distinguished for heroic labour, extraordinary endurance, inflexible rectitude and the exhibition of many rare and noble virtues." That his cleverness did not seem to be accompanied by goodness toward his family, that his mind seemed to be functioning without reference to feelings of the heart, did not appear to be of concern to Smiles. Here, those marketable commodities of character correspond so well with the selective tradition informing Smiles' work as a whole, that it serves to confirm that contradictions within ideologies are what fuel their continuous drive. The point for Smiles, however, was that Palissy and others made progress through their own endeavour, and through their labours the nation progressed as well. Many of Smiles' subjects worked their way through the "school of difficulty." From humble births and adversity of all imaginable sorts, men like Josiah Wedgwood, William Shakespeare, and countless others had proved through their personal efforts that social mobility and honours were possible. Each success was a contribution to the progress and prosperity of civilization, as opposed to "individual idleness, selfishness and vice" which were contributions to "national decay." It is in this sense that representativeness was established as a public identity, that is, to the extent that individual lives could be seen or claimed to be parallel to the life of the nation, in terms of progress and the development of character and of purpose. The selectivity employed to promote these men also promoted the ideology of national progress as a benefit for all those who were clearly moving with modernizing, increasingly dominant social trends. Smiles spared little when he criticized the disruptiveness and backwardness demonstrated by workers against inventors of new machinery. The latter had the nation's well-being foremost in mind. The machine-wrecker, on

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the other hand, was motivated by an unmanly concern for the continuation of certain outmoded forms of labour. Industry in man and manufacture, after all, was "the best discipline of the state."80 Thus, in Smiles' work, part of the process of achieving success was to attain the personal power necessary to take command of the resources and people useful to reaching one's goals. Apparently self-serving tactics such as these were outweighed by the public benefit of inventors' new machines. Books such as Smiles' had the desired effect on some Canadians. John Beatty Crozier, a medical practitioner, author and one of Morgan's representative men, remarked in his autobiography that, growing up in Gait, Ontario, he found such resources to be "the greatest joy" when circumstances of a great man's boyhood matched his own.81 Biography was similarly used in the school curriculum to verify the importance and durability of masculine forms of power and social participation. In such texts, the great men of England were overwhelmingly present. History books revered those ubiquitous colonizers and nation-builders who, it was claimed, represented not only masculine courage and duty, but the civilized world as a whole. Schoolbook biographies subscribed to a code about a continuum of growth through personal experience and endeavour in and for society. It may have been birth into a good family, such as Richard Lovelace experienced, "the bitter bread of dependence" that initiated Jonathan Swift into life, or the craftsmanship of Izaak Walton, who was portrayed for pupils as having understood the place and purpose of virtually everything under the sun.82 In any case, each of these offered an example of a starting point at which a man's history could become relevant and instructive for others. The ability to take one's experience as given, but also to turn bad into good, was a Smiles-like attribute adopted by Crozier: From among the waifs and strays of the gutter and the street, the poor, the sickly, and the deformed, here and there some rarer spirit would like a wayside flower venture from amid the garbage in which it grew, to lift its petals to the sun like the children of the happiest climes; or from among those as little favoured as myself, a few, more stiff-ribbed than the rest, had carved their way up to eminence and renown, I was all aglow with youth and resolution and hope, and resolved that I too should make a strike for distinction and fame.83

Crozier's message seemed to be that the individual was indeed supreme; but more so was he who knew the times and recognized the new directions in which great men were moving their society. 70

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PHRENOLOGY: PHYSIOGNOMY AS AN IMAGE OF SOCIAL PLACE

While Smiles argued that success and national progress were to be generated from the individual, others approached the matter from a quasi-scientific point of view. After four volumes of Smiles-like promotion of the representative men of the day, an appendix to the fifth volume of Cochrane's series (edited by John Castell Hopkins) seemed to abandon self-motivation in favour of the physical arrangement of the cranium. The sixteen-page text on phrenology, written by Rev. JJ. Hunter (part of the subtitle being "A Timely Work for All Classes"), might appear to disclaim Smiles' perspective. Like Smiles, phrenologists employed formative concepts as a means of organizing their perspective as educational, making particular qualities of character easily identifiable and recognizably correspondent to patterns of social behaviour. In the standard phrenology chart, such as the one that accompanied Hunter's article, 42 "organs" were listed. Friendship, continuity, destructiveness, self-esteem, time, and the others were in fact concepts of people's social or personal makeup, a means to explain both their actions and their propensity for achieving personal goals and social status. Phrenology, however unscientific, achieved prominence in Canadian society in the last century through its use of concepts that were articulated as traditional or progressive attributes of character. John Carroll's assessment of a representative man is an appropriate example with which to begin. Carroll was a contemporary of Egerton Ryerson and once described Ryerson as a person who fulfilled everyone's idea of a great man.84 The essence of the popular view of great men was their representative features, visible and appreciable at a glance. Carroll described his friend in the following way: Rather over than under the medium size—well proportioned—fair complexioned—with large speaking blue eyes—large nose, more Jewish than either Grecian or Roman—and then such a head!, large, full, well-balanced without any sharp prominences, but gently embossed all over like a shield. The mass of brain before the ears is greater in him than any man we wot of. The height and breadth, and fullness of that forehead is marked by all observers.85

The interest in describing moral character in phrenological terms came in part from the quasi-scientific research and popular interest in phrenology beginning in the early nineteenth century. Practitioners and 71

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promoters of phrenology asserted that the character and personality of individuals could be determined by the shape—more accurately, the terrain—of their skulls. As such, phrenology was promoted as a form of psychology; phrenologists claimed an ability to understand the subjective possibilities of, and for, a person. Phrenology was eventually rejected as a pseudo-science. But its popularity suggests that its rejection as a scientific system did not signal its demise as a form of popular knowledge, or indeed as an aspect of acceptable pedagogy. By the 1830s and 1840s, England was saturated with phrenological maps, busts and models. George Combe's popularization of phrenology, Constitution of Man, published in 1839, had sold 100,000 copies in England by 1860, and 200,000 additional copies in twenty editions published in the United States. Combe's book combined a treatise on phrenology with "a scientific prescription for daily living ... based on a politically symbolic constitution of mental organization."86 Claims about the psychological aspects of character formation were not, and could not be, detached from their social grounding, that is, the social context of the person, and the body as a site of scientific investigation. Although the regard for phrenology was wide, as both popular psychology and entertainment, its claims were not endorsed by all. John Stuart Mill, in The Logic of the Moral Sciences, accepted that physical differences with regard to nerves and sensations could produce different mental affects, but argued that "differences of bodily structure ... [had] been accepted in the gross without due analysis [and had] been made the groundwork of empirical generalizations most detrimental to the progress of real knowledge." Any capacities of the mind that created differences in physical structure were, for Mill, "of a radically different character" than that proposed by the followers of Gall's phrenology87 Regardless of how correct Mill may have been, phrenology was a popular form of inquiry that would prove durable to the end of the century and relevant even when phrenological psychology had been formally displaced. One reason for this durability was phrenology's universally available site of inquiry into the substance of character, into the psychological terrain of the self—the head upon the body. Its physiological construction, organization and function—in short, its physical presence— constituted an obvious and knowable medium of individual capacities and their relevance in society. Phrenology was essentially a way of knowing the body. The physical form of the head itself was a tool for understanding the formation of mental processess that imparted direction and content to the formation of character. 72

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The uses of phrenology and physiological psychology in Canada were not uniform, but the interests of their advocates were evident in their promotion of these forms of knowledge as the means of establishing relations of mental processes, physical being, and social place. These relations were valuable for visibly determining the form of potential character or "planning" the social route of personal development. In the creation of these plans, the physical structure of the body provided the most convenient and stable basis for the perception of a person's moral development. What is of interest here is the physiognomy that revealed attributes of the person—the presentation of self in language, demeanour, gesture. As models of propriety, deportment, and attitudes toward circumstance, these were dictated by social rank. In Canada, phrenology was a form of popular entertainment as well as a means of assessment of self and one's potential. In his autobiography, John Beatty Crozier wrote of the popularity of phrenology lectures—part intellectual novelty, part entertainment—he attended as a youth in Gait, Ontario. He described the boyhood games of assessing the town's population—evaluations that did not always prove correct.88 When phrenology was promoted as a means of educational improvement, it was something that teachers and parents could use in their relations with children to become "great FORMERS of human character." Books, journals, newspaper articles, and public lectures and demonstrations introduced the populace to this "guide for the instruction of youth, and for preparing them for their different avocations of life."89 Travelling phrenologists examined people both at public exhibitions and in private consultation. They provided "delineations of character," "charts of characters," "biological tests" and, in the case of Professor Hogarty, a form of hypnotism—"putting [clients under] his control to think and act as he wills."90 The personal and social values of phrenology were implied in a journalist's description of John Phillips' public examinations: "At the close, Mr. Phillips examined the craniums of several young men, some of whom he considered better adapted to the plough than the pulpit, and would do better execution with a piece of the pork than attempt the construction of a locomotive."91 A more serious response to phrenology could be found in its relation to the faculty psychology associated with Scottish common sense philosophy. In a period of declining philosophical interest in faculty psychology, but increasing popular interest in phrenology, William Lyall, Professor of Logic and Psychology at Dalhousie University continued to advocate 73

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what A.B. McKillop has called "a veritable bureaucracy of the mind."92 The relationship was not a deep-seated one, but the discursive similarities of identifiable areas of the brain responsible for particular sets of actions and thought provided one that remained visible and effective. Rev. Hunter's addition to Cochrane's Canadian Album provided a basis for noting the similarities and differences between Samuel Smiles' approach to locating representative men and that of the phrenologists. Superficially, there appears to be an immediate contradiction: Is it selfmotivation that leads a person along the paths of discovery and success, or is it a set of physiological conditions that provide a natural foundation for a person's life-course? Hunter highlighted the contradictions and attempted (perhaps unconsciously) to resolve them in his short appendix. The physical structure of the head revealed, in the first instance, the foundation of personality defined by the extent of the "organs," which in turn was determined by the space allotted them in the skull. Brain size was important, but a genuine phrenologist had to ask, "In what part of the skull is the principal part of the brain found?"93 Whether more forward, in the middle, or more toward the rear of the head, brain placement determined the amount of space each organ had to influence the personality: If you should pass a wire from the opening of one ear, through the head to the opening of the other ear, you would strike what anatomists call the medulla oblongata ... the point at which the entire nervous system is connected with the brain. From this point the nerve fibres run in every direction to the surface of the brain, just as the spokes of a wheel run from the hub, and consequently an organ is large in proportion to the distance from the brain centre, to the surface where the organ is located.94

Thus, searching for "bumps" was not what the "educated phrenologist" did: "Bumpology is a humbug; phrenology is a science." The Canadian Alburn^ Hunter wrote, was an example of the principles of phrenology. One such principle was: "'Differences of external form are the result and measure of pre-existing differences of internal character.' That is to say, shape and form correspond with organization and function. In other words internal life moulds the external form."95 Initially, then, it would appear that one's cranial shape was the result of the internal energies of character. Look at the photographs accompanying the biographical sketches, Hunter seemed to say, and you will notice a correspondence between the physical structure and the achievements and personality of the subject. Hunter wanted the reader to know 74

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that, on the one hand, people were their cranial shape; on the other, the spatial organization of the head did not wholly determine a person's life. Regardless of the physical basis upon which phrenology rested, the focal point should not be the physiological, grounded in an unforgiving genetically established arrangement, but physiognomy. The physical structure of the head was the basis for physiognomy, but "outward appearance" or countenance was also relevant as physical evidence of structure and the practical expression of personality, or the person's outlook on the world. It seemed that experience, or the more intense use of a particular organ, could reshape the physical terrain, thus redirecting the life-course. For example: Two brothers on the farm may be very much alike in form and feature, but let one of them go to college and in five years what a change takes place in his appearance. He has cultivated his mental temperament; and, as the mind, so is the body. To-day you look at a smiling, happy bride; in ten years she is an aged, sad, and expressionless widow. The grief of the soul has traced its marks on the body. How soon do drunkenness and sensuality convert the handsome face of the young man into a bloated mass with the fire of hell shining through?96

In other words, the natural structure was primary only in the sense that it was first in appearance; it was not immutable. But Hunter seemed aware of an obvious problem: if the basic structure could be overridden, did that not also mean that there were wide-ranging choices regarding occupation that could be made regardless of phrenology; did it not mean that physiological destiny could be undermined by unlimited social mobility available to all? It would seem that many of Smiles' characters who came from the lower social orders had asked the same questions. Their answer was to assume an aggressive posture, and exploit their inclinations and talents in order to overcome personal or social barriers to success and fame. This was the same position advocated by the phrenologist Charles Bray, who wrote that, "Where the animal or selfish and other feelings are equally balanced, then education and existing circumstances or companionship will determine which shall predominate."97 It was true also for the representative men of The Canadian Album. More so than in Smiles' work, the emphasis in all the biographical dictionaries was a rough equivalence between personal and national progress. Here again, the two streams of temporal development that 75

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Abrams cites are relevant. It was the representative man who, in Heller's words, most clearly "knows the times"; he also knew his own place in those times. And it was the representative man who, in Cochrane's words, "represents the nation." Thus, when Hunter argued that it was the responsibility of all men to know their place in society—their personal life-course through their phrenological prospectus—it was not a contradiction of the significance of "representativeness," but an analogous reference to the intent of those, from Aristotle to Smiles, concerned with biography and character: namely, that representative people were models and teachers for others. Why are there so many "failed lives?", Hunter asked. Because people contradict what God and nature have arranged for them. Why is it that some claim that insufficient employment has caused pauperism and crime? Because those who incline toward an occupation for which they are not destined will inevitably fail to see that there would be sufficient employment "if every man were in his right place." Hunter went on to state that "The vast majority of men were made to till the soil, or for mechanical pursuits, and not for commerce, art, or professional life. We want at least a thousand farmers and mechanics to one merchant, one doctor, one lawyer and one clergyman."98 Like those who argued for a cautious move toward democracy and equality, the phrenologists seemed to suggest that individuals should develop their character, appreciate the many aspects of culture, strive for a greater social status, but know their place. The differences between the approaches of Smiles and Hunter are not, in the last analysis, as significant as their similarities. First, both wanted to appeal to natural capacities; initiative and motivation come from within individuals but not equally, a position supported by Millar and others. Secondly, both wanted to maintain that opportunity was present as an organic component of the social structure. Thirdly, they were promoting those who had sufficient natural capacities to exploit the opportunities available in an industrial and democratic society, but with the caution that natural capacities were not a limit to opportunity as long as both capacity and opportunity were individual expressions of social or national needs. Although it may appear to be more organic than social, there is a derivative of the selective tradition in these perspectives, in which the probability of success is linked to a calculus of capacities and their exploitation in the appropriate environment. But if there was a supreme component of representative character, it may be said to have been the recognition that the legitimate desires of the individual for occu-

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pation, development of self, success and happiness were actually an informed response to the needs of a culture in formation. Whatever the differences between Smiles and Hunter, personal development and social action were key similarities. In both cases, identifying success or the potential for it was based in a recognizable language which linked the qualities of a person with the demands of the social order. In other words, the concepts employed in phrenology and in the more individualistic approach were attributes of a society built up from their manifestation in individuals. We now turn to an examination and analysis of the biographical dictionaries. NOTES 1. See B. Palmer, Canadian Working Class Experience (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992), 82-86. 2. Despite their flaws all census data have been taken from Census Report of the Canadas, 1860-61, vol. I (Quebec: S.B. Foote, 1863) and Census of Canada, 1890-91 (Ottawa: Dawson, 1893). See also Brian D. Palmer, Canadian Working Class Experience, 117-21. 3. Thompson, "Eighteenth-century English Society: Class Struggle Without Class?," Social History 3 (1978): 133-65. 4. R.S. Harris, A History of Higher Education in Canada, 1663-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), App. 2, 622-25. 5. See J.A. Wiseman, "Silent Companions: The Dissemination of Books and Periodicals in Nineteenth Century Ontario," Publishing History 12 (1982): 17-50; Bruce Curtis, "'Littery Merrit', 'Useful Knowledge', and the Organization of Township Libraries in Canada West, 1840-1860," Ontario History!^), (1986): 285-311. 6. For biographical sketches of Bourinot, see George Maclean Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography (Toronto: Rose Publishing Co., 1888), 326-27; W.S. Wallace, ed., Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 87; and Margaret A. Banks, "John George Bourinot," DCB, vol. 13 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 98-102. 7. John George Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness (Montreal: Foster Brown, 1893), 2. 8. Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength, 10-19. 9. Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength, 19. 10. Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength, 21. 11. Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength, 25-26. 12. Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength, 54-55. 13. "The Relation of Science to Culture," Canada Educational Monthly (unsigned article), 7(4), (1885): 137.

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14. A.B. McKiliop, ed., A Critical Spirit: The Thought of William Dawson LeSueur (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1977), 11. 15. G. Mercer Adam, "The Promotion of Culture," Canada Educational Monthly (Feb. 1879): 67-68. 16. J.S. Douglas, "The Intellectual Progress of Canada During the Last Fifty Years, and the Present State of its Literature," Canadian Monthly and National Review (1875): 467. 17. E.H. Carr, What is History?, 40. 18. Carl Berger, The Sense of Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 61. 19. Berger, The Sense of Power, 55-56. 20. Berger, The Sense of Power, 53. 21. See, for example, A.B. McKiliop, A Disciplined Intelligence (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979); D.C. Masters, Protestant Church Colleges in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966); J.S. Douglas, "The Intellectual Progress of Canada," 465-76. 22. See my discussion of these issues in, "Assessing Morality: The Ontario Provincial Survey of 1896," Journal of Educational Thought 26(1), (1992): 5-21. 23. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (Harmondsworth U.K.: Penguin, 1961), 17. 24. Quoted in S.F. Wise, "Sermon Literature and Canadian Intellectual History," in J.M. Bumsted, ed., Canadian History Before Confederation: Essays and Interpretations (Georgetown ON: Irwin-Dorsey, 1979), 261. 25. Quoted in Kenneth Bagnell, 77?^ Little Immigrants (Toronto: Macmillan, 1980), 78. 26. Alexander Steele, "The Relationship of Education to Our National Development," Ontario Education Association [hereafter OEA], Proceedings (1894): 50-51. 27. Steele, "The Relation of Education," 52; see also J. Henderson, "Some Educational Needs," OEA, Proceedings (1902): 70. 28. See, for example, Williams, Culture and Society, 102, 120-22. 29. T.B. Kirkpatrick, "The Function of the Educator in the Making of the Nation," OEA, Proceedings (1906): 283. 30. Sir James Grant, "The Life of Our Young Nation," OEA, Proceedings (1909): 391-403; William T. Harris, "The Kindergarten as a Preparation for the Highest Civilization," Canadian Educational Monthly (1903): 361-67. 31. George Brett, "Democracy and Education," The School6(2), (1917): 138. 32. Brett, "Democracy and Education," 138. 33. Kirkpatrick, "The Function of the Educator," 282-83. 34. J.V. Corless, "Educational Reform: Its Relation to Social and Industrial Problems," OEA, Proceedings (1918): 245. Corless was also critical of the new economic environment for the poverty it created and the ill-gotten wealth it produced for some. 35. Corless, "Educational Reform," 252. 36. Michael Bliss, A Living Profit (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 78; for his discussion of business attitudes and natural laws, see 62-77. 37. J.D. Logan, Democracy, Education and the New Dispensation: A Constructive Essay in Social Theory (Toronto: William Briggs, 1908), 19. 38. Logan, Democracy, Education, 13. 39. Logan, Democracy, Education, 18.

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40. For biographical sketches of Fielding, see Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 297-98; and Henry James Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 328-29. 41. For a sketch of Falconer, see Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, 320. 42. Logan, Democracy, Education, 7. 43. Logan, Democracy, Education, 20. 44. A biographical sketch of Millar appears in Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, 630; see also my sketch of Millar in the DCS, vol. 13 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 703-05. 45. John Millar, Canadian Citizenship (Toronto: William Briggs, 1899), 10. 46. Millar, Canadian Citizenship, 10. For other material on Millar's promotion of moral character see Philip Corrigan, Bruce Curtis and Robert Lanning, "The Political Space of Schooling," in T. Wotherspoon, ed., The Political Economy of Canadian Schooling (Toronto: Methuen, 1987), 21-44. 47. John Millar, The Educational Demands of Democracy (Ottawa: Federal Press, 1901), 5; see also Canadian Citizenship, 149-50. 48. John Millar, The Educational Demands of Democracy 5', Canadian Citizenship, 149-55. 49. Millar, The Educational Demands of 'Democracy, 6. 50. Allan Smith, "The Myth of the Self-Made Man in English Canada, 1850-1914," Canadian Historical Review, 59(2), (1978): 199-200. 51. See R. Lanning, "Models of Art, Portraits of Self: Culture and the Drawing Courses in Ontario, 1875-1910," Journal of Canadian Studies 24(2), (1989): 5264; "On Developing 'representations from presentations'; Observing the Laws of the Natural and Social Worlds," Journal of 'Historical Sociology 4(4), (1991): 35979; and "Assessing Morality: The Ontario Provincial Survey of 1896," 5-21. 52. Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana, 1983), 101; see his application of this concept in "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Problems of Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980), 31-49. 53. E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), 106. 54. M. Brook Taylor, Promoters, Patriots and Partisans (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 178-79. 55. The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery (Toronto: American Biographical Publishing Co., 1880), Preface. 56. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 2, 224. 57. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 3, 154. 58. Quoted in Smith, "The Myth of the Self-Made Man," 158. 59. Egerton Ryerson, "The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People," in John George Hodgins, ed., Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, vol. 7 (Toronto: Cameron, 1900), 141-48; "The Nature and Importance of Education to Mechanics," in Hodgins, ed., Documentary History, vol. 11 (Toronto: Cameron, 1904), 40-52. 60. Daniel Drache, "The Formation and Fragmentation of the Canadian Working Class: 1820-1920," Studies in Political Economy 15 (1984): 50-51. 61. Smith, "The Myth of the Self-Made Man," 192. 62. Ryerson, "The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People," 143.

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63. Ryerson, "The Importance of Education to an Agricultural People," 144; "Nature and Importance of Education to Mechanics," 42-43. 64. Ryerson, "Nature and Importance of Education to Mechanics," 42. 65. Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 120. 66. J.EC. Harrison, "The Victorian Gospel of Success," Victorian Studies 1(2), (1957): 156. 67. For Canada, see Smith, "The Myth of the Self-Made Man," 189-219; for the United States see Irving G. Wylie, The Self-Made Man in America (New York: The Free Press, 1954). 68. Harrison, "The Victorian Gospel," 156; Wylie, in The Self-Made Man, 128, quotes a reviewer of one heavily plagiarized work: "Mr. Marsden's labors of the excerpting and arranging order, must have been something really appalling; and one is glad to reflect that his method was one which relieved him from the additional strain of severe and continuous thought." 69. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (London: John Murray, 1910), 1-2. 70. Smiles, Self-Help, 7. 71. Smiles, Self-Help, 141-43. 72. Smiles, Self-Help, 114, 126-27, 154. 73. Journal of Education for Upper Canada (1858), 116. 74. Journal of Education for Upper Canada (1851), 167. 75. Our Boys (February, 1894). 76. Smiles, Self-Help, 477. 77. Smiles, Self-Help, 123-24. 78. Smiles, Self-Help, 452-53. 79. Smiles, Self-Help, 82-94. 80. Smiles, Self-Help, 33; on the reaction of workers to new machinery, see 41-42, 51-53, 62-64. 81. John Beatty Crozier, My Inner Life (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), 129. Morgan's sketch of Crozier appeared in Canadian Men and Women, 229. 82. R. Dawson, Notes on the High School Reader and Biographical Sketches (Toronto: Rose Publishing Co., 1889), 25, 26, 72-75. 83. Crozier, My Inner Life, 130. 84. Biographical sketches of Ryerson can be found in Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, (Quebec, 1862), 534, and R.D. Gidney, DCB, vol. 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 783-95. 85. Quoted in Clara Thomas, Ryerson of Upper Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1969), 2. 86. Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science, 120-21, 136. 87. John Stuart Mill, The Logic of the Moral Sciences (LaSalle IL: Open Court, 1988), 42-45. 88. Crozier, My Inner Life, 137-48. 89. R.D. Gidney, "Centralization and Education: The Origins of an Ontario Tradition," Journal of Canadian Studies 7 (4), (1972): 33-48. 90. See the Tillsonberg Observer, October 1, 1863; St. Marys Argus, June 17, 1858; London Free Press, May 16, June 23, 1862.

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91. Stratford Weekly Beacon, August 24, 1860. 92. A.B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence, 46-48. 93. JJ. Hunter, "Phrenology and Physiognomy," Appendix to Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 5, 9. 94. Hunter, "Phrenology and Physiognomy," 9. 95. Hunter, "Phrenology and Physiognomy," 12. 96. Hunter, "Phrenology and Physiognomy," 12. 97. Charles Bray, How to Educate the Feelings or Affections (New York: S.R. Wells anda Co., 1880), 192. 98. Hunter, "Phrenology and Physiognomy," 13.

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CHAPTER 3 THE BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

A CONSPICUOUS FEATURE of collective biographies is the large number of similarly situated people portrayed in their pages. Reading across these works, similarities of data and literary style are readily evident. The style allowed for a generalization of object lessons to multiple lives and successes across a greater proportion of the population than was represented in a particular volume. While stylistic similarity had much to do with the requirements of the short form of biography, which distilled lives into standardized events and social meanings, it also was a way of establishing the representative person as a type. "Types" and "role-types" are conventional concepts of sociological analysis. In one of his most imaginative studies, the American sociologist Robert Nisbet explored social theories in the nineteenth century as the development of a form of cultural expression. Nisbet argued that the growth of social theory was in many ways consistent with developments in the literature, art, and science of the period. Although theorists such as Karl Marx and Max Weber did not think of themselves as masters of portraiture, Nisbet argued that their sociological constructions of the worker, the bourgeois and the bureaucrat, for example, were of the same genre as the political and economic portraiture produced by Charles Dickens and other novelists of the century. Both literature and sociology were means of bringing to public attention a vision of society and history. Nisbet's view of the relationship between the developing theories of society and the cultural representation of it suggests that the portrait, whether in stone, on canvas or on paper, was a particularly durable form for expressing what was socially significant about a person or social group. "Behind the burst of portraiture in [history]," Nisbet wrote, "is the eruption of large numbers of distinctive individuals, or, rather, of individual role-types'. politicians, diplomats, soldiers, financiers, businessmen, artists and scientists. Not only great individuals but reigning families become conspicuous in the portraits of such ages, and the desire for portraiture can

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be as great among the writers and artists who compose them as among the individuals who are subjects."1 Sociologically, Weber's "ideal type" is equivalent, Nisbet wrote, to the "role-type" because "the object, whether structure or personage, [is] stripped, so to speak, of all that is merely superficial and ephemeral, with only what is central and unifying left."2 In the portrait, the qualities of a person that are revealed make him or her uniquely an individual; simultaneously, these identify the person as a "tyPe" equivalent to others with similar "unique" qualities. The dualism of this approach is evident. At once there is an appeal to the individualism that legitimizes the social order itself and a promotion of the person as representative because he or she is identifiable as one of a group. The identification of the person as a "central and unifying" role-type, even a role model for others, comes to full flower in his or her association with characteristics, behaviours and achievements shared with others in leading or dominant social positions. Thus, some sense of the general approach to biographical compilation, such that it influenced and reinforced central and unifying components of the role-type, must be established. THE PROPER DATA FOR THE OBJECT LESSON

One task for all the biographers was to chronicle and celebrate those changes occurring in Canada in the second half of the century, in effect capturing moments of social transformation as the further development of the traditions upon which the society had been built. Still, noting elements of continuity in the midst of change was an appropriate conceptual framework for writing biographical sketches, thus marking the achievements of subjects as interactions with their collective pasts, and recording the progress of individuals in specific social circumstances. Activity, effort, triumph over adversity, achievement, progress—this was the stuff of even the shortest biographical sketch. These characteristics of representative men were the lifecourse activities to be diffused throughout the general population. The transformation of Canadian society was a problem Morgan felt confronted the nation and served as partial motivation for his work. He and other compilers wished to propagate the essence of what was gradually being removed from society—the representative character and activities of those men who had secured the foundation of Canada. Morgan introduced his sketch of Augustin-Norbert Morin by drawing the reader's attention to the fact that:

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BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK One by one the veterans of our country are passing away, leaving behind in many instances, as the one now before us, to posterity the legacy of an honourable name, and the remembrance of lives of rectitude and usefulness. When such men pass away from us it is well to recall the past and learn a lesson from the incidents of their history.3

Morgan compiled his Celebrated Canadians by consulting histories, newspapers, periodicals, and other biographical sources for those of his subjects who were deceased. From living subjects he solicited information and gave some of these people a degree of control over the content of their portrait. The latter sketches, then, were often composed by Morgan using auto biographical accounts, personal interpretations of the individual's role and that of others in historical events. Not surprisingly, as M. Brook Taylor has pointed out, there were a number of conflicting interpretations of events and the roles of different people in them.4 The entries were of varying lengths and inconsistent in detail, emphasizing a comparatively few central events that fell chiefly into two historical categories: first, those that were about the expansion of the British Empire to North America, such as "discovery" and settlement, the American war of Independence, and the War of 1812; and second, those that were about the emergence of a nation, the social development of Upper and Lower Canada, and the political struggles leading to and through the period of union and responsible government. More than anything else, historical processes of some duration were condensed to an "event," giving historical processes themselves a sense of unity and coherence. Sketches were built around a person's contribution to a central event in the period or a few historical moments in the course of empire expansion and nation building. In short, the event dominated the biographical sketch. Sketches of military men were largely taken up with esoteric details, in sequence, of campaigns or specific military engagements. These were presented as key moments in a person's life, perhaps milestones in hindsight, while serving also as a guide to the victorious conclusion of military and political campaigns. For example, Commander Elmes Steele's biography was largely taken up by a listing of the twelve ships he served on from 1798 through the period of the War of 1812.5 The career of Peregrine Maitland in the European campaigns was detailed, complete with medals awarded for outstanding service.6 A typical military biography was that of Major-General William Dunn.

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He entered the army on the 22nd December, .1803, and by 1857, had risen to the rank he holds, when he retired upon full pay, and resides in England. He has seen a great deal of active, and arduous service, beginning in 1805; he served the campaign in Italy; battle of Maida, and capture of Scylla Castle, in 1806, expedition to Egypt, in 1807, including the attack on Alexandria and Rosetta, and the battle of El Hamet, where he was taken prisoner, but soon after being exchanged, he took part in the defense of Scylla Castle, in 1808. He went through the Peninsula campaigns of 1810-11, including the operations before Ciudad Rodrigo, operations between the Agnada and Almeida, battles of Coa, Buasco, and Albuhera, and the actions at Usagre, and Aldea de Ponte, at which last he was severely wounded in the groin by a musket ball, which remains unextracted. Major-General Dunn also served in his native country [Canada] during the American War, including the taking of Moose Island, and the occupation of Castine.7

Some biographical subjects were concerned that significant moments in Canadian history might be immortalized, while personal contributions to them would be forgotten. In a letter to Morgan, Isaac Buchanan expressed concern that eliminating a mention of his contribution on the paper money issue would exclude not only the most important milestone in his political career, but a contribution that also testified to his character. He wrote, "It would be like the cry of Hamlet without the character of Hamlet seeing that the question ... compresses all my political character or all that I care about."8 The biographies written by John Fennings Taylor were of much the same form as Morgan's, concentrating on the important historical events in which his subjects were engaged at the moment of Confederation. Murray Barkley has referred to his style as "a deft blend of presentism and patriotism."9 His sketches tended to be of greater length than Morgan's, with much space taken up with flowery prose, as in the opening paragraph of the sketch on Alex Mathieson. Here, Taylor wrote of the stages of life corresponding with the rising and setting of the sun, highlighting the "belt of brief midsummer night" that alone divides "the opening and closing scenes of a long life."10 But, like Morgan's sketches in Celebrated Canadians, Taylor's were short on life-course details, the aura of a significant historical moment drawing attention away from them. Viscount Monck's entry is typical in this regard. It was less a biography than a schedule of official details around his life which set the scene for commemorating the necessity and efficiency of colonial administration.11

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These early sketches, therefore, reflected activities and achievements that immediately legitimated the person's claim to representativeness. Taylor's intention was to produce a history of the moment of Confederation; Morgan's was to produce a larger history of Canada. In contrast to later biographical dictionaries, Morgan's inclusion of a large proportion of deceased people in his early work (71 percent) served to emphasize the long historical process of colonization and settlement. Given the inclination of biographers toward portraying lives as object lessons, these early works may easily be read as history lessons. They did not form a chronological account of Canadian history, nor were they organized around major themes or topics. These sketches were ostensibly about individuals, but events more broadly relevant to establishing the Canadian nation appeared to be the actual subject of many of the entries. Individuals were the mediators of the process of nation building—bringing a conflict to resolution, establishing a legal or political precedent— even where they attempted to direct the process differently. Excerpts from a number of sketches illustrate this point. The portraits of three leading participants in the Rebellion of 1837 gave the reader an historical account of that event and a lesson on loyalty to the dominant culture, to the state, and to a norm of social behaviour. For the leader of the rebellion in Lower Canada, Louis Papineau, Morgan offered little support. Reflecting his own politics, perhaps exemplified by his position in the public service, Morgan rationalized his subject's lack of positive characteristics by exploiting Papineau's continuous opposition to the subordinate status of his culture: The Honourable Louis Joseph Papineau will be remarkable in history, chiefly as an agitator. Having all his life been in opposition, there are no tests by which to measure those administrative abilities which, because he never had an opportunity of displaying, his opponents have generally agreed in denying him. 12

Because of Morgan's acceptance of the Anglo-Saxon domination of Canada, any promotion of or adherence to another national feeling was an object lesson in disloyalty: M. Papineau was and is a great stickler for the preservation of the French Canadian nationality; and in this respect he does not differ in the least from the rest of his race. This love of nationality—undying and even gaining strength with time—is the most powerful feeling that influences the French Canadians.13

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William Lyon MacKenzie, on the other hand, deserved representative status, for he proffered an object lesson in honesty and a sense of commitment to doing the best for his country. The "best test of his political virtue," Morgan wrote, "is that he resisted the most alluring temptations when he thought their acceptance would be contrary to the interests of the public."14 Finally, Wolfred Nelson was forgiven for his role in the rebellion after his later "atonement."15 By reading of the role of others in Canada's history, such as Isaac Buchanan, Allan MacNab, Robert A. Harrison, and scores of others, one learns what was unifying in their efforts—the creation of a nation under the patronage of English culture—and how their contributions were carried out with character. English-born Henry Smith, for example, in his role as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, expressed none of that "nationality" that typified the French. He relied on nothing to support him but the universality of the manly disposition of an English statesman. Morgan wrote that, in contrast to others, Smith "has none of that clannish nationality which carries the Scotchman to success and to which the Irish, in spite of their division into Catholics and Protestants, are not a little indebted." Smith provided an example of the situation faced by a citizen of what was then one of the most powerful nations in the world: the Englishman "must stand or fall on his own merits."16 Unless there was resistance, as in Lower Canada, the creation of a universal culture was described as a normal undertaking for representative men. For example, in his dealings with those outside English culture, the life of M.B. Menard offered a lesson in "Truth, justice, honour and courage." Born in Montreal, Menard migrated to the American Midwest to engage in the fur trade, and eventually became a United States congressman. One of his great efforts was his attempt to gather all the northwestern aboriginal peoples under one treaty and remove them to territory in California and Utah. Menard was never able to achieve this goal, but not, apparently, for lack of belief in his personal destiny. "We have heard him say," wrote Morgan, "that he came very near uniting all the Indian tribes into one great nation, and being their king, with over 100,000 subjects."17 Both Morgan and Taylor wanted their historical projects sustained by people who were perceived to have made history. Certainly, "great men" were claimed to be mediators of historical progress and were well represented in these early works. But it was their contribution to formative events linked to their obvious collective interest in nation building that were celebrated.

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In the biographical dictionaries published later in the century (referred to in this study as the Group 2 biographies18), the emphasis tended more toward consolidation of a national culture. Given this variation in purpose, it is not surprising that one difference between the earlier and later publications was the shift in the national origin of the subjects. The majority of subjects in Morgan's early work and Taylor's (Group 1 biographies) were born outside Canada (59 and 69 percent, respectively),19 while Canadian-born subjects formed the majority in the later biographical dictionaries, averaging 72 percent in the Group 2 biographies compiled by Cochrane, Rose and Morgan. In the later biographical dictionaries, the history lesson ceased to be the main object of life sketches. There were perhaps a number of reasons for this. It may have been that the sheer quantity of representative men outweighed the importance of conveying details of events in the manner of earlier collective biographies. More likely, it was because the major events were, in fact, history. That is, the settlement and the laying of the formative basis of the nation were matters of accomplished fact, and national consolidation was well under way. What was more actively conveyed in the later works was not the political formation of Canada, but its institutional formation. The form of the sketch in the later biographies was, therefore, more uniform, consisting of three fundamental categories of information: lifehistory data, contributions made to the person's profession or occupation, community and nation; and traits of character. This form emphasized the person in the events of a life and, in turn, interpreted those more personal actions as contributions to the building of a national culture through engagement in Canadian institutions. This necessitated a change in style, a more objective form of reportage, and a greater uniformity in the physiognomy of those represented. In the Group 2 portraits, the contingent relations of men were registered in the sketches as a biographical continuum. For example, the standard biography offered an historical and social context by recording the subject's date and place of birth, his religion, and a reference to the previous one, two, or three generations on one or both sides of his family. The sketch proceeded, typically, to account for education and training, occupational or professional progress, participation in social institutions and associational activities, and finally, significant contributions to Canadian culture. Sketches of men ended with a note on marriage and children. It is in this type of portrait that the biographers may be characterized as 89

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"veritable Gradgrinds," as Carl Berger has labelled Morgan.20 A continuity of time and achievement was chronicled in a man's biography. These sketches illuminated men in an established social and economic structure of opportunity, mobility and individuality. The form of the sketch differed not only from those of Morgan's early work and that of Taylor, but also from those of women, as discussed in Chapter 5. The standard entry was hardly an historical lesson, and it may be suggested that Morgan and Rose shared Cochrane's perception of the short biography, namely, that it constituted an object lesson. The object lesson was assumed to be useful to the reader, but also was seen as an affirmation that each subject shared common characteristics and values, and for those reasons belonged to a group worthy of note in Canadian society. Inclusion in a biographical dictionary implied, first, that on the basis of some individual accomplishments, the person was deserving of an entry. Secondly, it implied that the institutions through which the person had achieved such accomplishments had already acquired a degree of status or legitimacy in Canadian society. Thirdly, the combination of these two elements had a reflective quality which suggested that, in themselves, particular achievements, specific networks of relations with others, and institutional settings had broad social meaning and cultural value. One way of understanding the meaning of a biographical entry is to note why some people initially declined, or were reluctant to accept, a place in Morgan's collections. That most eventually agreed to inclusion, despite some reluctance, was an indication of their awareness that such public notice of themselves was both personally and socially significant. "I am aware of my worth & I know for the present, at least, it has no place in the records of history," wrote D.R. Barry, who also declared that he had "the highest objection" to his inclusion. 21 Several others felt the same way. Although they both eventually appeared in the text, William Lyon Mackenzie and Susanna Moodie initially felt they did not belong. Moodie declined on a technicality. She wrote that by "birth and education English I cannot have the least claim to the honor you intend me"—presumably that of a celebrated Canadian. Mackenzie declined because he felt he was not representative in the eyes of the public. He would "defer anything for the present," he wrote, but added, "Nor would the public be much the losers if I never wrote at all."22 A.N. Morin, who had spent his life as a political leader of Quebec and of the United Canadas, did not wish to be included either. "However," he wrote to Morgan, "out of respect for the public positions

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I have held it is my duty to give you the following dates, hoping that your mention of my name will be as much as possible limited to them."23 Forty years later, C.R. Devlin declined out of modesty, but elaborated on the sentiment expressed by Morin and others that it was important to be named among the representative of the nation: I did not answer [Morgan's request for information] for the simple reason that I know my worth and I consider my career practically closed. I can be of very little interest to the reading public and have not done sufficient to warrant my name being placed in the columns of the great and successful workers for Canada. I have tried to do my best and that is all. Lately however I have much occasion to observe the great use even in this country to which your book of reference is put and I am breaking from my rule simply to oblige you and because I believe the little notice which I send will render a service.24

At least insofar as these and similar reservations and disclaimers have been preserved in Morgan's collected papers, there were more instances of individuals declining or objecting to his requests for entry into Celebrated Canadians than to entry in his later works. This may be an indication of a shift in attitude between the middle and the end of the century, which allowed people to look more openly upon a public acknowledgement of what was deemed to be, at least in part, the personal and private subject. Public representation under the guise of national contributions perhaps won out over an equally valuable characteristic, modesty. It may also be that the status of the biographical dictionary itself improved the social environment for the public portrayal of the individual—hence the proliferation of this genre. Many of the attempts to decline were principled efforts, but it was representation of the self that seemed to be what was declined, accompanied by doubt that the person's actions or achievements were equal to those of others. However, those persons taking such a position also recognized the importance for themselves and for Canada of being identified as people who had made a contribution. Morin and Devlin spoke for many others who objected but then provided Morgan with the basic dates and achievements that he desired in the first place. It was these events—birth, education, political offices, among others—that made up the substance of the person Morgan wished to portray. The status associated with the positive connection between individuals and institutions, and with the continuum of achievements, lent to 91

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the subject the character that the collective biographers wished to affirm publicly. The events, achievements, and their associated status were more readily usable as unifying factors to demonstrate the type of people who made up the group contributing to the formation of a culture. In some cases it was the consistency of events, the continuum of the lifecourse through several occupations, that allows us an understanding of the authority embedded in the object lesson. Because of the quantitative dominance of certain types of individuals, achievements and experiences, it is understandable how the biographical document was intended to go beyond the text itself in presenting events, first as situations, then as object lessons. For example, we take for granted the term "birth" because everyone has a date and place of birth. The universality of this experience tends to rob it of its meaningful content. Statements about "education," though more complex, are also taken for granted because compulsory education has been a feature of Canadian society for more than a century, and it has always been regarded as necessary for social mobility and effective social participation. It is easy enough to demonstrate that, for most of the twentieth century, the more education a person had, the greater his or her chances of occupational and financial stability. In the nineteenth century, twelve years of schooling were seen as useful, at least for Canadian men, and advanced education in a college or university was increasingly available and desirable for middle- and upper-class men. Although these patterns of schooling were not yet standard, "education" was nevertheless an increasingly normative activity. (This is discussed further in Chapter 4.) Election to political office or the first steps in a professional career can similarly be viewed as singular events that are taken for granted. In each of these and other cases, the assumption contained in the linguistic pattern of the written biography was that these events possessed a regularized status within the large group of representative individuals. The events of a life as expressed in this standardized pattern constituted objects to be appropriated by the reader. Here, the "fact" of education or the "fact" of career entry was an objective occurrence repeated by hundreds of representative people. These occurrences were not necessarily an expected outcome of the initial life circumstances of these individuals because, like many of Smiles' great men, not all representative people grew up in the most advantageous situation. Education and occupation stood as accomplishments in the sense that they were the expected results of the proper actions of men in contact with social institutions. At the

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same time such accomplishments were natural consequences of the public expression of character in these men. The point is that such achievements in the biographical sketches should not be considered static events, as if there were no process or series of actions or choices leading up to and through them; they should not be read as if the achievement were not also, in itself, a situation embedded in a dynamic process. To do so, as Norbert Elias has stated, is to commit the error of "process-reduction." To make this mistake is to drain from events the complex reality contained in categories of birth, education, occupation, and so on. As Elias explains, our "languages tend to place at the forefront of our attention substantives, which have the character of things in a state of rest. Furthermore they tend to express all change and action by means of an attribute or verb, or at least as something additional rather than integral. In many cases this is an unsuitable technique for conceptualizing what we really observe."25 His intention is to caution against the separation of a thing from its action and relations in a specific context. Let us return, then, to the notion of "birth." Sociologically, this is a generational process, not restricted to the moment of childbirth. The process of generations succeeding one another influences the moment of birth and, potentially, many moments beyond. Recognition of this process is evident in George Maclean Rose's biographical sketches, for it was clear to him that the subject worthy of entry in a biographical dictionary was often only one element in a succession of representative people. Rose's entries differed considerably in this regard from those of Morgan and Cochrane. While the latter two biographers nearly always made reference to the subject's father (less often the mother) by name, Rose was more likely to provide information about the first, second, or third generation that preceded the subject of the sketch. Some examples will help illustrate the point. After providing the occupation, birthplace, and date for Rev. John M. Macleod, Rose included the following: His father, Ebenezer Macleod, was also a native of the West River of Pictou. He was a man of fair education, of sound judgement, of extensive information, and of deep and fervent piety. He was for many years an elder in the congregation of Salem, Green Hill, and was secretary of what was claimed to have been the first temperance society in this Dominion. His parents were from Scotland. He was married to Barbara Benvie, daughter of James Benvie, of Musquodoboit, and died in the 82nd year of his age.26

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For J.M. Harper's biography, Rose informed his readers that Harper's father was a "printer, bookseller and publisher," and started the first weekly newspaper in Johnstone, Scotland. Rose also noted that Harper's maternal relatives were Celtic, and that his granduncle was "a prominent manufacturer in Johnstone, where he was held in high esteem by his fellow citizens." He then added a few words about the social environment of Harper's birthplace.27 In his sketch of the Rev. Isaac Brock, Rose named Brock's parents and other members of the family in order to convey an identifying, though distant, historical connection, namely, that the military hero "Sir Isaac Brock was first cousin to our subject's grandfather."28 These and a large number of other examples substantiate the claim that Rose was conscious of a continuum of representativeness into which many of his subjects fit. Concentrating on biographical categories such as birth, education, and others, regularized and typified the life-course of biographical subjects. This focus became a stylistic feature that at once contributed to the creation of role-types, and nominally committed the error of processreduction, especially in the works of Cochrane and Morgan. But the accumulated facts and events gathered by reading across a number of biographies revealed a stable pattern of meaning even in their reduction. Here we have, the biographers seemed to be saying, a regular sequence of events occurring in the lives of a large group of people that assists us in making our case that these are representative Canadians. The biographical sketch consisted of a series of situations; the selectivity behind the choice of persons for entry in the collective biographies may have hindered the reader from fully comprehending the conditions of, and influences on, people's lives. But by finding the pattern in multiple sketches, readers would be able to appreciate and learn from the sequence of situations presented as the standard or norm of successful persons. Success was achieved through normative events and a more or less standardized schedule, at least insofar as biographers portrayed the lives of their subjects. This allowed biographers to engage in a degree of processreduction while indicating to the reader that a linear sequence, in most cases, was occurring to establish these lives as regular and typical. Situations might appear to be reduced to static positions of accomplished fact, but the repeated sequences demonstrated that culturally significant men followed a pattern legitimated in the first instance by its wide dissemination, and secondly by its objectification in the collective biographies. We will return to the linear character of biographies in Chapter 4.

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CREATING A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY: MORGAN'S METHOD

Little is known about the method of work of either William Cochrane or George Maclean Rose, although their finished products provide a fairly consistent style of biographical portraiture. On that basis, it is arguable that all three biographers considered here were concerned with standardizing the biographical form to provide basic information on a subject's life-course, and details of a steady personal improvement and entrenchment in his occupation and community. Of the three, Morgan was the only one who left a quantity of evidence about how he worked. In this material can be discerned the methodology he used and the style in which he wrote. Morgan's methodology was grounded in his own life and career experience. From 1853 until his retirement in 1895, Morgan was a career public servant, holding various positions in the 1850s and 1860s from clerk to private secretary, up to the level of chief clerk in the Department of the Secretary of State. Besides his early biographical dictionary, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, Morgan produced valuable reference works on Canadian literature, members of Parliament and high-ranking public servants, a guide to the legal profession, annual chronicles of events and institutional activities, and he edited the works of several others.29 For generations of historians and other scholars, these publications were, and remain, valuable reference materials that chronicled essential aspects of our cultural development. Morgans talents were publicly proclaimed, although often overstated. Remarking on the publication of his Types of Canadian Women, in 1903, one reviewer praised his "energy, perseverance and ... passion for accuracy." Morgan's works were not simply heaps of information arranged between book covers. "Mr. Morgan is more than a mere delver," wrote the reviewer for Saturday Night. "He is a rare historical scholar and a master of literary expression."30 In carrying out all his research and compilation, Morgan was immersed in a network of politicians, public servants, and the cultural elite. He was a friend to some, a colleague or associate to others. The networks Morgan worked within provided the basic component of his method. He owed much of his own career advancement to a large body of individuals with whom he had worked or fraternized. Many of his acquaintances in the public service or in political office assisted in his attempts to obtain promotions in the state bureaucracy. In 1885, for example, "over eighty Conservative Gentlemen" petitioned John A. Macdonald, stating that they

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"would be much gratified to learn that the Government in consideration of HJ. Morgan's long and efficient public services, officially and otherwise, had decided to bestow upon him his well merited promotion."31 Many of these people became subjects of biographical sketches in one or more of his publications. In other words, while Morgan was the associate of many of these people, he also carried out a responsibility to this group to be their objective, collective biographer. Morgan's method was, in the first instance, derived from the relationships he had with his subjects and their interrelated networks, whether these were in fact personal or impersonal. Francis Carmen wrote a sketch of Morgan in the last year of his life which captured accurately his approach to public service. Morgan did not see it "as too many seem to do in this day," wrote Carmen, "as a soft snap, a chance to get a living easily." Rather, Morgan was one of those citizens "who look on post under Government as an opportunity. He went steadily to work to mount the ladder."32 The manner in which information was accumulated and categorized demonstrates the core of Morgan's methodology. From the beginning of his work on The Parliamentary Companion in 1862, through to the second edition of Canadian Men and Women of the Time in 1912, Morgan's research method became increasingly systematic and his style increasingly objective and instrumental. For these two works and The Canadian Legal Directory, he developed questionnaires, more detailed as time went on, and had them printed and sent to his prospective subjects (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2). He sought information on family background, educational, occupational or professional achievements, political and religious affiliations, and charitable and other public service activities. This approach tended to foster sketches standardized in style and content. The sequence of facts established a routinized presentation of each person's background and accomplishments. Morgan recognized that he was detailing the course of an individual's life, but he argued that his style of portraiture was objective and instrumental because the medium required it. Morgan's explanation of his approach, in response to a letter critical of an entry in Canadian Men and Women, identifies it as one of process-reduction: Now, in books of this class, as the veriest tyro is well aware, there is no need for any but the briefest form of narrative. There is no room for mere literary display, as such, nor any necessity for comment or the expression of opinion, touching anyone's merits or services. A man is born; goes to college; obtains a degree; enters a profession or business; is elected to parliament; is called to office; performs certain acts of administration; is elevated to the bench; marries; and so forth.33

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This method was very much akin to Leslie Stephens approach to gathering information for the sketches that would appear in The Dictionary of National Biography in England. Stephen advertised in 1882 that he wanted "the greatest possible amount of information in a thoroughly business-like form," although this was not to exclude information that might prove genuinely interesting to readers.34 All of Morgan's categories—birth, education, occupation, and so on— were objective categories and amenable to a respectable public representation of the person. Not that other details were unimportant; they were simply not useful to the public. It was not that they might reveal a different personal side or indiscretions; rather, Morgan was merely using those categories that would allow for the unification of all his subjects. Like other biographers, he was simply bringing forward the information necessary to present a representative man to his public.

FIGURE 3.1 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR MORGAN'S THE PARLIAMENTARY

COMPANION

State your name in full, and your occupation or calling? Place of residence or P.O. Address? Give sketch of family, and from whom descended, and state where you and your progenitors resided immediately before settling in Canada? State when and where you were born, where educated, when and where married, and to whom? Give the title of public offices or positions of importance you have filled from time to time, or are now filling? State when you were first returned to Parliament—in which Province and for what constituency, and whether to local House or Commons. State separately what period or periods you have sat in Parliament? State names of your opponents, and their places of residence, and the total number of votes polled for yourself and them, respectively, at last election in your constituency, making a line beneath the defeated candidate or candidates? State population and number of voters in your constituency? State whether you are "Liberal" or "Conservative" in politics; and what your opinions are on the leading public questions before the country? Enumerate the more prominent public measures, if any, you have carried through Parliament?

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FIGURE 3.2 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR MORGAN'S CANADIAN MEN AND WOMEN OF THE TIME, 2ND EDITION 1. State name in full, with titles possessed, including university or other degrees, if any: 2. Family and parentage: 3. Where and when born, educated, married, and to whom: 4. If a member of a profession, state date of admission thereto, with particulars of advancement therein, and other noteworthy events connected therewith: 5. State names of offices or public positions, if any, filled by you at any time, in the governmental, legislative, judicial, municipal, educational, military, banking, railway, commercial or industrial service of the country: 6. Other public position not included in the preceding inquiry: 7. Record in literature, journalism, science or art: 8. Political record: 9. Religious belief: 10. Opinions on public questions, if any: 11. Other noteworthy events in your career: 12. Extracts from recorded opinions on your work and services: 13. Residential address, with name of club, if any:

How did Morgan ensure that all his subjects possessed the appropriate qualities, and that the completed sketch gave an accurate portrait? Obviously, the final editing was crucial. But his own network of acquaintances who were themselves representative men, became an indispensable component of his methodology. There is no indication in Morgan's papers that he sent questionnaires to all possible subjects. There is abundant evidence, however, that for both editions of Canadian Men and Women he sought from his many acquaintances recommendations of people for inclusion. There is also evidence that many of these people wrote drafts of some biographies voluntarily or at Morgan's request. In some cases, a correspondent offered a single sketch of a friend or relative. Some of these were apparently unsolicited, since the correspondent noted that he or she "did not know what particulars were needed," or that the sketch was submitted after the first edition of Canadian Men and Women had been published and in anticipation of any future editions.35 The more frequent kind of assistance was a correspondent offering the names of individuals in his community whom he felt were deserving of an entry 98

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in Morgans work. H. Baby, from Joliette, Quebec, for example, sent Morgan biographical sketches of several people he thought Morgan would want to include. In response to a request from Morgan, E.A.R. Ross of Honolulu sent along the names of three individuals he knew in Hawaii. J.A. Huard submitted seven names to Morgan from three cities in Quebec.36 Some of the suggested names found a place in Morgan's work. The importance of these offers of names and sketches was that Morgan expanded his own web of influence into the networks of others; he relied heavily on those known to him as representative at least to nominate others who moved in their own social or professional circles. In at least one instance, he used an acquaintance to scrutinize the submission of a potential subject. Morgan sent the information supplied by Dr. P. Cameron to Edward Caswell of the Methodist Book and Publishing Company. Caswell responded as follows: The information I have elicited as to the writer of this letter, Dr. P. Cameron, is that he is demented, partially if not wholly. He may at one time have done literary work of some worth, but never made any great prominence for himself. Don't trust him with a book. There are a few dollars we'd like to get from him if we could. He's on our D.B. list.37

Morgan's close associates also assisted him abroad. John Ross Robertson, the Toronto journalist and historian, searched for vital statistics while in England on other business, and Kathleen Lizars, a local historian in Ontario, had apparently agreed to promote Morgan's Types of Canadian Women while she too was in England.38 Morgan also relied on a number of published sources for his Canadian Men and Women, not the least of which were a dozen or so biographical dictionaries published in Canada, England and the United States, including those of Rose and Cochrane. Published lists of members in professional organizations, and lists of military men and clergy were also used.39 Morgan's extended networks, other available resources, as well as his own sense of national purpose seem sufficient to have ensured that his subjects were truly representative. In only one instance was there possible interference in his selection process. Years after beginning work on the second edition of Canadian Men and Women, an official with the Methodist Book and Publishing Company wrote Morgan warning that to increase the size of his manuscript, already at 1100 pages, might lead to financial failure. The publisher set a page limit of 1200, with an

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interesting provision: "If, therefore, you are putting in new men not simply because they are subscribers, but because they are really important and must go in, then you must take out lesser lights who are already in your manuscript not yet in type."40 As indicated in Chapter 1, the late nineteenth century saw a proliferation of biographical dictionaries. Some compilers, as Wyllie suggested, saw this kind of work as an opportunity for elevation in status as well as monetary gain. The implication of G.R. Kingsmill's letter to Morgan was that his offer of assistance was also an application for paid employment in this cottage industry of success stories. Kingsmill wrote, "If you have any notes you wish to have extended, any biographical sketches you have not time to work up yourself, send them on to me and I shall be happy to fix them up for you."41 John Pariott offered to work for Morgan on the second edition of Canadian Men and Women, and in doing so suggested a way in which the work might prove more lucrative for Morgan: I could submit the sketches of those referred to (on a scale of rates) take their orders for their representation in the work to afterwards appear. Subscribers can be got afterwards. I could get someone to take in hand the publishing and do some financing for commissions, etc. It struck me you could have made a good deal of money out of "Canadian Men and Women" if orders had been taken on each sketch of the life at the time of submitting the sketch for approval, at say $10.00, $20.00 or $30.00 according to space and circumstances.42

There is no evidence that Morgan took up this offer, and little more than an implication that he required or accepted money for the inclusion of a sketch.43 But while he accepted (and apparently solicited) subscriptions, at least for the second edition of Canadian Men and Women, he evidently submitted the money to his publisher. All things being equal Morgan might have benefited monetarily more than he did. However, poor conditions in the Canadian book publishing industry and Morgan's own financial situation probably combined to make the second edition a financial liability. An original agreement with the publisher44 for the second edition (published in 1912), has been preserved. A first print run of 3500 copies was agreed to, with Briggs taking 50 percent of the cover price of $3.00, plus $730 for printing, $13 per hundred for binding, and 50 cents per page for the composition of advertisements. After these expenses Morgan could still realize around $4000 if all copies were sold.45 But the agreement appears to have changed. A

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more formal contract, dated 26 July 1906, stipulates that money from the sale of the book would go first toward repaying an outstanding debt Morgan had with his publishers, then to pay off his own advance (amounting to $900 by the time of publication), and finally toward the cost of "printing, binding, publishing ... and delivery" of the book.46 Because 5000 copies of a larger-than-anticipated edition were eventually published, costs increased and Morgan, shortly before his death in 1913, owed his publisher more than $10,000.47 Beyond the fiscal issues, what this situation indicates is that networking among members of a particular status group of Canadians ensured their representation. For Morgan (and arguably for Cochrane and Rose, although there is little evidence), the combination of a set questionnaire, which limited information to certain details and events, along with social networks, complemented a methodology that could be applied to all those deemed representative. Each person in this "web of affiliation" reflected, to some degree, everyone else. People's like-situatedness also posed a simple basis for determining who would be a likely candidate for inclusion. THE BASIC DATA OF BIOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

In this section, several categories of information are given some quantitative description to demonstrate the results of a method such as Morgan's. These categories also draw attention to the range of backgrounds and characteristics of the biographies.

Occupation For reasons that are familiar by this point, neither the early group of biographical dictionaries nor the later group attempted to provide an accurate social presentation of the actual population of Canada as a whole. The initially important criterion by which the biographical dictionaries represented men was occupation. As a result of social changes, discussed in Chapter 2, occupations were represented in different proportions depending on the period and the selection of candidates for entry. Determining a person's occupation was not always straightforward. Many men changed occupations—from lawyer or businessman to politician, for example— leading to doubt as to how to categorize them. On the assumption that the biographers were interested in acknowledging an accumulation of achievement over time, while giving priority to a person's contributions at 101

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the historical moment of representation, a person's occupation has been defined as the type of work that he or she had been engaged in for at least ten years prior to the date of publication. Admittedly, this was not always as precise as might be desired in a sociological study. Judgment calls had to be made for younger people, those who had two or more occupations over a comparatively short period, and those whose significance in a previous occupation was clearly of more interest to the biographer. Becoming a senator, for example, was an achievement that carried considerable status in Canadian society, but in the case of many successful businessmen, it was an achievement that might not have outweighed decades of success in the business field. In fact, being appointed a senator may certainly have had more to do with a person's business interests than his political skills. To indicate something of the shift in occupations, data taken from all samples have been divided into two tables. Table 3.1 provides a breakdown of occupations represented in Group 1 biographies, Morgan (1862) and Taylor's biographies in William Notman's album. Table 3.2 provides the same data for Group 2 biographical dictionaries published later in the century: the Cochrane series, Rose and the first edition of Morgan's Canadian Men and Women of the Time. A comparison of these two sets of data reveals different occupational representation within and between the two groups. Most importantly, it shows a greater range of occupational representation in Rose's and Cochrane's works and the later work of Morgan, which, though selective, does reflect empirical evidence of the expansion of Canadian society and the increased specialization of its division of labour. A major contrast between the data in these two Tables rests in the emphasis on the occupations requiring postsecondary education and/or other certifiable training. This was, implicitly, an acknowledgment of a major institutional advancement in Canadian society.48 As Table 3.1 indicates, entries for men in business occupations ranged from 6.7 percent in Morgan's Celebrated Canadians (1862) to 8.3 percent in Taylor's biographies. In the later period, this category was not much larger in Morgan's 1898 work, but (including "commercial agents") increased to 22.8 percent in Rose's Cyclopaedia, and averaged 29.2 percent over the five volumes of Cochrane's series. On the other hand, occupations in areas of official authority decreased between the two periods: the category of "Military/Police," for example, declined from 21.8 percent in Morgan's early work to a consistently insignificant proportion in all the Group 2

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TABLE 3.1 OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES IN GROUP 1 BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES (%) ! Morgan (1862) Religious Political— Elected Political—Appointed Public Servants Business Commercial Agents 2 Cultural3 Professional Medical Legal Academic4 Other Professional Mechanical/Manual Military/Police Agriculture Unknown

6.2 17.1 6.2

Notman/Taylor (1865-68)

6.7

16.7 40.5 4.8 4.8 8.3

14.5

1.2

5.2 9.8 5.7 5.2 — 21.8 1.0 0.6

— 11.9 1.2 3.5 — 7.1

1. Percentages based on total number of entries. 2. Middle-ranking occupations in business. 3. Arts and letters, and members of the cultural industries: journalists, editors, and publishers. 4. Teachers at all levels, librarians and school inspectors.

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TABLE 3.2 OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES IN GROUP 2 BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES (%)1

Cochrane (1891-96)

Morgan (1898)

Rose (1888)

17.9 4.0 — 3.9 28.4 0.8 5.3

17.4 5.6 0.2 5.5 12.0 0.8 13.3

13.5 8.6 — 5.4 22.2 0.6 3.2

15.4 13.7 3.1 3.1 1.4 1.9 1.0 —

6.0 18.3 10.6 4.4 0.7 4.4 0.3 0.1 0.4

8.6 23.7 6.8 1.4 0.4 3.3 0.8 — 1.5

Religious Political — Elected Political —Appointed Public Servants Business Commercial Agents2 Cultural3 Professional Medical Legal Academic4 Other Professional Mechanical/Manual Military/Police Agriculture Sportsmen

0.1

Unknown/Other

1. Percentages based on total number of entries. 2. Middle-ranking occupations in business. 3. Arts and letters and members of the cultural industries: journalists, editors and publishers. 4. Teaching at all levels, librarians and school inspectors.

The biographical dictionaries celebrated the continuity of Canadian culture. But the transformation of objective conditions that the dictionaries represented also explained the rationale for the disproportionate ranking of occupations as social contributions. For example, it has already been noted that the "Military/Police" category accounted for almost 22 percent in Morgan s Celebrated Canadians. This was the largest occupational group represented, but it did not figure in the census of Canada East or Canada West for 1861. The two next-largest categories were political and professional occupations, the latter being nearly twelve

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times larger in Morgan's text than its proportion of the labour force. Conversely, agriculture accounted for over 41 percent of the labour force in the Canadas, but was insignificantly represented in Morgan's text and not at all in Taylor's. The representations for the later period were similarly disproportionate. A comparison can be made between the Ontario census data for 1891 and volume 1 of Cochrane's series, of which only 1 percent of the entries lived outside the province. Cochrane's selection represented what he felt was an important social change, in which professionals, businessmen, and politicians were the most significant representatives of cultural capital. Men in these categories personified the increasing specialization of labour as a normative characteristic of the culture. For example, whereas the census registered 45 percent of Ontario's working population as agricultural,49 Cochrane represented this segment in only 1.1 percent of his entries in the entire volume. The mechanical or manual occupations accounted for 21.6 percent of Ontarians, but only 1.4 percent of Cochrane's entries. On the other hand, the business and commercial categories accounted for nearly 12 percent of all occupations, but 20.4 percent of entries in Cochrane's first volume. A more dramatic disproportionate representation was that of the professions: while clergy, doctors, dentists, lawyers, judges and teachers accounted for 2.6 percent of the working population, they were represented by more than 65 percent of the entries in volume one of Cochrane's work. But none of these representations was out of line with the stated intention of celebrating those persons engaged in the formation of the nation. Of those in the "Military/Police" category in Morgan's Celebrated Canadians, for example, all were members of the French or British military or the Canadian militia. Their appearance in the biographies rested on service to the Empire, such as settlement activities, maintaining military hegemony on the seas, building political and social institutions, and securing commerce. The over-representation of political men in Taylor's work served to highlight the infrastructure of social authority in the new nation. In contrast, it seemed evident to the compilers of the later biographical dictionaries that it was the professional and commercial men who would carry the development of Canadian culture on its natural course. Obviously, the comparison of these figures cannot be considered to suggest misrepresentation; it was merely the choice of empirical data based upon an adherence to a selective tradition. However, the selective 105

NATIONAL ALBUM

tradition was rooted deep enough to legitimize the disproportionate representation of those groups that went beyond traditional social contributions. It extended to those considered to be the most useful in the context of the social developments the biographers wished to underscore. Given these disproportionate representations, an obvious question arises: Was there any attempt in these texts to give a fair accounting of other aspects of biographical subjects with universal and generalizing characteristics? In four categories of data the answer is, to a degree, affirmative.

National Origin Tables 3.3 and 3.4 show the national origin of individuals in each group of biographies. Although it is not surprising that the majority of subjects in the samples from the Group 1 biographies were born in the British Isles, the difference between that group and those born in Canada is not overwhelming. In the Group 2 biographies, the proportion of Canadianborn is considerably greater and provides certain quantitative evidence that the representative man was a truly Canadian man.

TABLE 3.3 NATIONAL ORIGIN GROUP 1 (%)] Morgan (1862) Lower Canada Upper Canada Nova Scotia New Brunswick Newfoundland England Scotland Ireland France United States Other Unknown

22.3 11.4 2.1 0.5 1.0 21.2 13.5 10.4 1.0 5.2 1.6 9.8

1. Based on samples only.

106

Notman/Taylor (1865-68)

21.4 8.3 4.8 1.2 1.2 14.3 17.8 14.3 2.4 3.6 — 10.7

BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

TABLE 3.4 NATIONAL ORIGIN GROUP 2 (^o) 1

Canada2 England Ireland Scotland U.S. France Other Unknown

Cochrane (1891-96)

Rose (1888)

Morgan (1898)

69.9 8.6 5.3 9.5 4.2 0.9 0.7 0.9

69.6 7.7 7.7 11.0 1.7 — —

73.4 10.8 3.1 5.9 3.1 — 1.8 1.8

2.2

1. Based on samples only. 2. All territorial Canada, including all provinces and territories at the time of publication, and Newfoundland.

Region of Residence Table 3.5 demonstrates the efforts of Rose, Cochrane and Morgan to gather their subjects from a cross-section of Canadian territory. The compilers of these texts sought to find the representative man in a geographically generalized Canadian culture. The pattern of residence in Cochrane's series (Table 3.6) is interesting in that it also suggests Cochrane's methodological guide for locating representative men. For his first volume he concentrated almost entirely on Ontarian subjects, and the second was divided between Ontario and Quebec. His third and fourth volumes covered the whole country, but Hopkins (Cochrane's successor) returned to the centre for the final volume.

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TABLE 3.5 RESIDENTIAL DISTRIBUTION BY PROVINCE OR COUNTRY GROUP 2 (%)

Cochrane (1891-96) — 2.0 7.8 4.7 28.0 47.9 6.0 0.2 0.7 0.7 0.2 0.2 1.3 0.2

Newfoundland Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia New Brunswick Quebec Ontario Manitoba Saskatchewan Alberta British Columbia Northwest Territories England United States Other/Unknown

Rose (1888)

Morgan (1898)

1.0 3.7 12.6 13.6 37.7 28.0 1.0 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.2

0.9 0.7 5.1 3.4 24.9 39.5 2.5 0.7 0.8 3.0 0.6 3.9 11.3 2.1

TABLE 3.6 REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF RESIDENCE

IN COCHRANE'S CANADIAN ALBUM (%) Vol. 1

Newfoundland — Prince Edward Island — Nova Scotia — Cape Breton — New Brunswick — Quebec — Ontario 99.0 Manitoba 0.3 Saskatchewan — Alberta — British Columbia — Northwest Territories 0.15 England 0.15 United States 0.3 Unknown —

Vol. 2 — — — — 55.5 44.5 — — — — — — —

108

Vol. 3 — 5.8 18.0 I 4 20.7 6.8 8.9 31.6 0.2 3.7 25 0.4 — — —

Vol.4 — 0.4 13.0 3.2 4.4 35.8 39.4 0.2 — — 1.7 — 0.1 0.4 1.3

Vol. 5 — — 4.1 — 0.8 46.0 48.7 0.2 — — — — — 0.2 —

BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

Age Only Group 2 texts provided sufficient information on age to permit analysis of this variable. The ages of persons in the Group 2 samples were clustered between 35 and 55 years, with the average age being just over 49 years. This suggests that one aspect of representativeness was a maturity in years, while another was accumulated experience in a chosen occupation or series of occupations. To be representative, the data in Table 3.7 suggest, required a length of time in which to gather the requisite attributes of personal accomplishment and social connections.

TABLE 3.7 AGE DISTRIBUTION, ALL SAMPLES GROUP 2

(%v

Age

20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85-89

0.8 3.2 9.1 10.6 12.3 16.4 12.7 10.1 9.8 5.3 3.9 3.6 1.2 1.0

Average age = 49.3 years 1. These figures are derived from the number known, 95% of the sample of Group 2. Not included here are those under the age of 20, about 1% of the sample.

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NATIONAL ALBUM

Religion Finally, Table 3.8 gives a breakdown of the subjects' religion, showing a well-distributed range of faiths. Again, these figures reflect a fair distribution of religious denominations, with the obvious leaders being the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. It is unlikely that with regard to either religion or national origin, the biographers exercised a selective bias other than that already empirically evident in Canadian society.50 For Morgan's earlier efforts in compiling Celebrated Canadians, representation did not include reference to religion; it was noted in only 14 percent of the sample and represented only three religious groups rather unevenly51

TABLE 3.8 RELIGION GROUP 2 (%)]

Church of England 2 Roman Catholic Presbyterian Methodist Baptist Congregational Other Protestant Jewish Unknown

Cochrane (1891-96)

Rose (1888)

Morgan (1898)

14.4 16.2 23.9 17.3 3.3 0.4 2.0 — 22.5

24.2 15.5 19.9 5.5 4.4 1.7 1.1 0.5 27.1

21.3 16.8 16.1 9.8 4.2 0.7 0.4 — 30.7

1. Samples only. 2. Includes Anglican and Episcopalian.

It is through this kind of basic data that one can begin to see the construction of a type of representative person—those whose similar backgrounds corresponded with the activities of settlement, formation and consolidation of the nation as generalized interests. This is, again, the first component of Williams' selective tradition. His second, the "historical record," is tantamount to the empirical basis of social cohesion that these basic life-course data illustrate. Obviously, one could not suggest that the biographers were trying to make a claim that the representative Canadian

no

BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

could only be a person who was, for example, English, a member of the Church of England, and employed in a professional occupation. Although concentrations are evident in each of the variables, biographers were interested in demonstrating some variety of characteristics of the representative life, but particularly those confirming unity of effort toward forming and consolidating a culture. Theoretically, the stereotypical person worthy of entry in these texts could have had a fairly wide range of life circumstances. It was their like-situatedness in personal aspirations and their contributions to the nation that provided the basis for representativeness. THREE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

It is not plausible to create strict role-types for the men in these texts, for this would merely continue, and perhaps legitimate, process-reduction as a style of portraiture. One could be representative with a variety of attributes, with personal success, social participation and contributions to nation building being leading characteristics. It might be useful to explore the characteristics that three particular men embodied and that may be said to have constituted a pattern of necessary attributes for inclusion in these texts, particularly those of Group 2. The choice of three examples is not difficult. Who better to exemplify the representative Canadian than those who selected them? Something has already been said about William Cochrane and Henry James Morgan. Here, it will be helpful to restate some of that and to add to it, to contextualize their lives more fully, as well as the life of George Rose. Their achievements, and the recognition accorded them by others suggest that they could certainly be classified among Cochrane's "one man in a thousand."

Rev. William Cochrane Cochrane was born in 1831, the son of a Paisley watchmaker. After initial employment as a messenger for a bookseller, he worked his way up to the position of manager before setting off for America at the age of twentytwo to study for the Presbyterian ministry. After study at Hanover College, Indiana, and Princeton Theological Seminary, Cochrane was ordained in 1859, and three years later he accepted a position at the Zion Presbyterian Church in Brantford, Ontario. There Cochrane worked to unite the factions in his Church and expand its missionary work as far 111

NATIONAL ALBUM

west as British Columbia. He also helped to establish and administer the Young Ladies College of Brantford, where he also lectured.52 Cochrane was very much involved in his community, thoroughly committed to its institutions and its people. He devoted much energy to the organizations to which he belonged. He was a delegate to several Church conventions, Moderator of the General Assembly, and the author of works on theological questions. He was also active on the Board of the Public Library and President of the Mechanics Institute for twenty-five years. Cochrane was conscious of his own shortcomings, modest about his achievements, but devoted to the idea of self-reliance as the source of manhood and the means of personal success. He had raised himself up from his father's station as a watchmaker to that of an eminent clergyman and community leader. Was he representative? His achievements were the object lessons that he left for others. William Cochrane availed himself of opportunities that came his way in order to succeed in his youthful aspirations and to extend them to myriad tangential activities that affirmed the usefulness and social benefit of his initial successes. As he extended his reach into church and community work, he made contact with important people in virtually all his occupational and social pursuits, establishing a network of associates who saw in Cochrane an intellect and an energy that were in demand across the United States and Canada. He was indeed representative. George Rose included a biographical sketch of him in the first volume of his Cyclopaedia, and Henry Morgan did likewise in the first edition of Canadian Men and Women. As testament to himself, Cochrane's own biographical sketch appeared in the first volume of his Canadian Album.

George Maclean Rose Like Cochrane, Rose was Scottish by birth and began his career in the printing and publishing industry. After an apprenticeship, Rose emigrated in 1851 with his family to Montreal, where he and his brother, Henry, began a printing and publishing business of their own. Rose quickly established himself as an able craftsman, even though financial difficulties created periodic distress. In the 1860s, the company he had established with Robert Hunter won contracts to print federal and Ontario government documents. His name became even more well known through his publishing: magazines such as the Canadian Monthly and National Review, works of history, British and Canadian literature,

112

BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

and school textbooks. One of his early publishing ventures was Henry Morgan's Sketches of Celebrated Canadians. Rose's work in the temperance movement put him in the public eye as well. He was a leader of the Sons of Temperance, and was involved in the Temperance Colonization Society which founded the city of Saskatoon in 1882.53 Rose was prominent in his church in Toronto—the Unitarian—the only "atypical" characteristic about him. That Rose considered himself a representative man is evident in the fact that he gave himself an entry in both the first and second volumes of his Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, an entry that had previously been printed in The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery, published by his own company as well. But Morgan also considered him a representative man: Mr. Rose is now the "Nestor" of his profession in Canada, and it is satisfactory to know that his industry and enterprise have placed him in a position of pecuniary independence. Widely as he is known to the Canadian people in his business relations, he has acquired a still more extended reputation through his efforts as a promoter of temperance and moral reform.54

In other words, Rose achieved a considerable degree of success in a number of aspects of his life. Most particularly, he was a representative man because his personal efforts in printing and publishing brought him a degree of social status while bringing to many other Canadians scholarship, literature and politics. He also contributed substantially to the debates of his day on the moral condition of his society and the direction of its progress.

Henry James Morgan Like Cochrane and Rose, Morgan was from a Scottish family, though born in Quebec (in 1842). His father was a constable and a military veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. Morgan began his career as a public servant at the age of eleven, working his way up from page to private secretary to such notables as Isaac Buchanan and William McDougall. He became chief clerk in the Department of the Secretary of State, and held the title of "Keeper of the Records," a position that allowed him access to official documents for cataloguing. (His work in this capacity, with his associate, Douglas Brymner,55 provided the groundwork for the establishment of the Public Archives of Canada.) Besides Morgan's publications noted

113

NATIONAL ALBUM

earlier in this chapter, he compiled and edited the works of several of his superiors and mentors in politics and the public service, such as D'Arcy McGee, Isaac Buchanan, Benjamin Suite, Lord Elgin and Charles Tupper. Morgan received honourary degrees from two Canadian universities, was made a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1904, and was a member of several other literary and scientific organizations. As has already been indicated, Morgan relied on networks he established and those of others he could either penetrate or integrate with his own. This was undoubtedly a skill acquired in the process of survival in the public service. For his contributions to the public, Morgan was recognized as early as 1881 in J.C. Dent's The Canadian Portrait Gallery,56 and in the first volume of Rose's Cyclopaedia. The similarities among these and other men do not warrant the creation of categorical "types" beyond the designation of "representative men." Reading through the collections of biographical portraits we can confirm Robert Nisbet's understanding of role-types as "the sociologist's compromise between the generality or recurrence of human experience and its individuality."57 These three men were typical of the those included in their own works. Morgan, Rose and Cochrane had come from the British Isles, and they had worked their own way up from humble beginnings in families of average social status. They lived in wider circles than those bounded by their own families and occupations, contributing to the development of their chosen vocations and to the institutions with which they interacted. Finally, these men made recognized and lasting contributions to the development of Canadian society as a whole, their ultimate act in common being the propagation of representativeness through their biographical dictionaries. None of these men lived a rags-to-riches life; they were, in the end, examples of both representativeness and mediocrity. Details of their personal and occupational activities would allow us to learn something of their personalities, perhaps their mannerisms and their faults. What is here is what is necessary, in the terms they established in their own work, for emphasizing the central and unifying characteristics of men at their particular juncture of history, at a particular point in the development of their culture.

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NOTES 1. Robert Nisbet, Sociology as an Art Form (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 68. The literary theme in sociology has been addressed more recently by sociologists. See, for example, Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and, for a critique of Nisbet, see Bryan S. Green, Literary Methods and Sociological Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 2. Nisbet, Sociology as an Art Form, 11. 3. Henry James Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 431. 4. M. Brook Taylor, Promoters, Patriots and Partisans (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 171-72. 5. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 154-55. 6. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 244-45. 7. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 273-74. 8. Morgan Papers, National Archives of Canada, MG29, D61, vol. 47, Buchanan to Morgan, 11 Nov. 1861. For Morgan, this may have come more as a command than a suggestion since Buchanan was his immediate superior in the public service at the time, and had also agreed to subsidize the publication of Celebrated Canadians. See, D. McCalla, "Isaac Buchanan," DCB, vol. 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 129; Robert Lanning, "Henry James Morgan," DCB, vol. 14 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), forthcoming. 9. M. Barkley, "John Fennings Taylor," DCB, vol. 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 871. 10. William Notman and John Fennings Taylor, Portraits of British North Americans, vol. 1 (Montreal, 1865), 81. 11. Notman and Taylor, Portraits, vol. 1, 1-14. 12. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 327. 13. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 329. 14. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 337. 15. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 337'. 16. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 622-25. 17. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 380-82. 18. See Appendix to this volume, "A Note on Methodology." 19. Because of the shortage of basic details in Morgan's and Taylor's work, I have used, where possible, information from the contemporary DCB to compile these two figures for Group 1. 20. Carl Berger, The Sense of Power, 49-52. 21. Morgan Papers, vol. 23, Barry to Morgan, 3 July 1908. 22. Morgan Papers, vol. 47, Moodie to Morgan, 24 July 1861; Mackenzie to Morgan, 25 February 1861. 23. Morgan Papers, vol. 47, Morin to Morgan, 21 February 1861. 24. Morgan Papers, vol. 25, Devlin to Morgan, 12 January 1903. 25. Norbert Elias, What is Sociology? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 112. Elias also employs this critique of language in his Time: An Essay (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

115

NATIONAL ALBUM

26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

George Maclean Rose, A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 46. Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 231-33. Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 480-81. See his Bibliotheca Canadensis (Ottawa: Desbarats, 1867), The Parliamentary Companion (Quebec: Desbarats and Derbyshire, 1862-1876), The Canadian Legal Directory (Toronto: Carswell, 1878), and the Dominion Annual Register and Review (Montreal: Dawson, 1878-1886). For references to his editing of the works of others and additional biographical details, see my sketch of Morgan in the DCB, vol. 14, forthcoming. Saturday Night'vol. 16 (October 10, 1903): 5. Morgan Papers, vol. 28, JJ. Curran to Macdonald, 17 July 1885 (with petition attached), and J.B. Plumb and others to Macdonald, May 1886. Francis A. Carmen, "A Snapshot Biographer; A Sketch of the pioneer in Canadian National Biography," Saturday Night vol. 25 (March 30, 1912): 4. Draft of a letter to the editor of The Province, in Morgan Papers, vol. 28, 23 December 1895. Quoted in David Novarr, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880-1970, 1. See, for example, Morgan Papers, vol. 25, R. Carr-Harris to Morgan, 24 Feb. 1903, and Arthur H. Eaton to Morgan, 1 June 1898. Morgan Papers, respectively, vol. 23, Baby to Morgan, 4 Sept. and 21 Nov. 1898, and 11 Mar. 1899; vol. 29, Ross to Morgan, 19 Nov. 1903; and vol. 26, Huard to Morgan, 5 Apr. 1907. After the first edition of Celebrated Canadians in 1862, Morgan let it be known that he intended to publish another biographical dictionary, with portraits, which he proposed to call The Men and Women of the Nineteenth Century. This text did not materialize, but at least one person submitted biographical sketches of an unknown number of people and seventeen additional names Morgan might wish to consider. See vol. 26, W. Gillespie to Morgan, 8 and 18 Aug. 1865. Morgan Papers, Caswell to Morgan, 24 September, 1902, Reel C-1990, 1441. Cameron's biographical information was solicited for the 1912 edition; it appears that Morgan agreed with Caswell s opinion, as Cameron was not included. Morgan Papers, vol. 29, Robertson to Morgan, 2 October 1902; vol. 27, Lizars to Morgan, 10 January 1903. These are listed at the beginning of Canadian Men and Women of the Time. United Church of Canada Board of Publication, Victoria University Archives, 83.061C, Files 10-22, unsigned letter to Morgan, July 7, 1910. Morgan Papers, vol. 27, Kingsmill to Morgan, 6 November 1871. Morgan Papers, vol. 29, Pariott to Morgan, 21 September 1901. In the course of presenting some of this material to others, I have encountered what I believe is a popular myth that Morgan required payment for an entry in his biographical dictionaries. This may have been the case with other biographers, but in forty-seven volumes of Morgan's papers in the National Archives I found nothing to substantiate this in Morgans case. That subscriptions for the finished text were sold but not required was typical of the Canadian publishing industry at the time, even for works of fiction.

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BIOGRAPHERS AT WORK

44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Along with the myth comes a criticism of the present study—that because people paid for their entry, and because the audience was more or less limited to those who paid, the collective biographies represent only a self-selected group of people and do not constitute a set of social documents worthy of analysis. Even if it were true that people paid for entry, it is irrelevant. This study deals with the manner of portrayal of people's lives in these texts, related content, and its mode of presentation—the objectified material in the sketches. The motives of individuals which might have caused them to buy a subscription or pay for a sketch to be written, are not being analyzed here. Canadian Men and Women was published by William Briggs. However, "William Briggs" was an imprint of the Methodist Book and Publishing company, Briggs being the Book Steward. On the state of the publishing industry in Canada at the time, particularly the Methodist Book and Publishing Company, see Michael A. Peterman and Janet B. Friskey, "'Booming' the Canuck Book: Edward Caswell and the Promotion of Canadian Writing," Journal of Canadian Studies, 30(3), (1995): 60-90. Morgan Papers, vol. 39, agreement with William Briggs, publisher. United Church of Canada Board of Publication, Victoria University Archives, Series 1, 83.061C, contract between Morgan and Briggs. United Church of Canada Board of Publication, 83.016C, Files 10-23, statement of account. While the clergy are traditionally considered professionals, this group has been separated from the others. Occupations such as medicine and law are among the popularly labelled "learned professions," a distinction based on increased technical and/or scientific educational requirements; those occupations I have designated "professional." Census of Canada, 163-69. This figure includes fishing, lumbering and mining. This in spite of William Cochrane's apparent anti-Catholicism. See D.B. Marshall, DCB, vol. 12, 202. Roman Catholic: 58.3 percent; Church of England: 25 percent; Presbyterian: 16.7 percent. See Marshall, "William Cochrane," 201-03. Elizabeth Hulse, "George Maclean Rose," DCB, vol. 12, 921-24. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, 881. See Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, 123; Glenn Wright, "Douglas Brymner," DO?, vol. 13, 118-21. J.C. Dent, The Canadian Portrait Gallery (Toronto: J.B. Magurn, 1881), vol. 4, 207-08. Nisbet, Sociology as an Art Form, 7.

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CHAPTER 4 SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

THE HISTORIAN EJ. Hobsbawm writes that, because of the individual autonomy and personal authority of middle class positions in society, social movements which contribute to the promotion of the middle class are "rarely explicitly class movements."1 Rather, they tend to be carried out within the contexts of a class ideology, such as economic liberalism, particular conceptions of democracy, or even moral character. The deemphasis on explicit class interests, despite the existence of a visible social movement, reinforces the image of classlessness (a component of middleclass culture to be discussed in Chapter 6), even while it generalizes the dominant class and cultural ideology as a national consciousness. Political parties are obviously the most explicit of class-based organizations. National or professional groups may advance society-wide value-laden issues, or may encourage national or localized expressions of civic morality which may be implicitly oriented toward the interests of a particular class. Social mobility and group affiliation constitute two types of social movement that were consequences of the growth of Canadian society, its component institutions and occupational and opportunity structures. The volume of people moving within the opportunity structure and the opening of new occupations signified a process of class formation, as well as the working out of individual lives that were linked with, and led to, contributions of wider cultural significance. This process highlights the relationship between the character of a group's membership and what it considers to be normative social and political action. Thus, statistical trends may best be understood as expressions of a common interest in supporting the formation of a larger, recognizable, if not coherent social class. This chapter begins with an analysis of social mobility among biographical subjects, followed by a discussion of personal and occupational networks and rates of participation in various institutions.

119

NATIONAL ALBUM

Any discussion of the social mobility of Canadians represented in the biographical dictionaries is limited by the nature of the texts. A simple statistical analysis reveals that most representative Canadian men were of the middle or upper ranks of society, that they either worked to maintain a position of inherited social superiority from previous generations, or to move vertically, improving on their fathers' social position. Canadians deserving of an entry in a biographical dictionary should, by definition, have already achieved a position of success or should have been demonstrably well on their way to doing so. This provisional assessment is consistent with other research, and provides an important basis for understanding the issue of mobility. Mobility, or the absence of it, cannot be gauged adequately unless it is seen to have a broader meaning than the movement of numbers of individuals from one social stratum to another. For example, Michael Mascuch has shown that the overwhelming intergenerational status stability among a group of autobiographers in early modern England bears out the social basis of status maintenance, a phenomenon that is as important as vertical movement in status. The virtual absence of upward or downward mobility is accredited to "family property" consisting of several forms of cultural capital.2 The cultural context is given greater weight than quantitative data because it lends a certain dynamism to a group that was comparatively static in society—maintaining rather than elevating their position in the structure of stratification. T.W. Acheson's studies of the Canadian industrial elite during this period show that, over two generations, the rate of upward social mobility declined, but that horizontal mobility increased. In his sample from the period 1880 to 1885, 68 percent of the fathers of leading industrialists were either businessmen, manufacturers or managers—all occupations included in the category of "Business" in Tables 3.1 and 3.2.3 Of his later group, up to 1910, 84 percent were of similar class origins. Although mobility seemed to be more constrained in the latter group than in the former, the major point to be emphasized is not so much the acknowledged degree of mobility but the overwhelming precondition for industrial success—the status achieved by previous generations.4 Two other conclusions reached by Acheson are also important. First, there was a tendency for those among the later elite group to have established their careers on the basis of institutional affiliation more often than on that of personal effort alone. Acheson states that they "tended to be organization men or financiers rather than individuals who, through heroic personal efforts, created major [business or industrial] concerns."5

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SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

According to this evidence, the Samuel Smiles type of entrepreneurial hero was in decline. Institutions had been seen by Smiles to work against his image of the successful individual. "Perhaps," he wrote, "the most [institutions] can do is to leave [a man] free to develop himself and improve his individual condition."6 What had changed by the late nineteenth century was the critical mass of social, business and political institutional arrangements in Canadian society, and the increasing necessity of participation in them. The representative Canadian's drive for personal success was carried out more frequently in organizational milieux and therefore strongly linked to the success of others. The importance of the shift from an individual to an organizational basis for success was twofold. First, it provided a practical legitimation for the growth of a complex and interdependent division of labour in Canadian society; second, it drew attention to the importance of the professions and other occupational groups associated with organizations and institutions where the basis of expertise was increasingly objective, scientific forms of knowledge, from actuarial to medical. The development of new occupations and complex divisions of labour made it possible to improve status without actually attaining the highest professional ranks or financial independence in business. Social mobility in this context was an affirmation of the political and cultural legitimacy of divisions of labour, established in turn to fortify and expand a class of people already in positions of significance and influence in Canadian society. These were the men (for the most part) who were able to develop and utilize new forms of social organization and occupational endeavour. In representing significant individuals participating in the transformation of society, biographers put emphasis on those with similar class interests, for whom a social position of higher status was seen to be generally available and generally beneficial for the progress of Canadian society. In short, moving horizontally along a middle social stratum, or vertically, was merely another symbol, another affirmation, of success. Acheson also notes the importance of virtually all group affiliations for representative Canadians. He argues that, of all the "loyalties" a successful industrialist had, the most important ones to the earlier group were regional and religious affiliations, while occupational class was least important: "In the final analysis, the industrialist of the 1880s tended to be essentially a community entrepreneur of rather narrow horizons; a product of mid-nineteenth century colonial society with an essentially regional bias; a man, frequently of modest origins, who on most issues 121

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tended to side with his community rather than his class."7 While such affiliations may suggest more parochial than cosmopolitan social groupings, what remains important is the social significance of the group itself as a basis for success. Acheson's conclusions merely affirm Hobsbawm's assertion that organizations to which such persons belonged were not defined primarily by class. But as group affiliations became less traditional and more occupationally mediated, they effectively created a stronger basis for class cohesion. Mobility, as an opportunity and an experience, is a product of biographical contingencies emerging from the intersection of individuals and institutional orders. For a modern society such as Canada in the late nineteenth century, arriving at a sense of people's group affiliation and institutional relations was the most obvious way that social mobility could be recognized as increasingly possible. Inherited status, the status of the groups with which an individual took up membership, and the institutions to which these may have been affiliated, were all equally important. The next task will be to consider the type of social mobility evident in the collective biographies, and then to examine it in terms of the groups to which representative men were affiliated. HORIZONTAL MOBILITY AS THE RETENTION OF GENERATIONAL POWER

The range of social and occupational mobility represented in biographical dictionaries was limited by the selective means employed in compiling them. The selective tradition reduced the field of possible backgrounds, opportunities and life experiences. It has already been suggested that representative Canadians were necessarily people who had maintained their father's social status or had risen to a higher one. Thus, the question as to whether these Canadians were socially mobile is quite a moot point. Indeed, mobility was evident, but it was by and large horizontal. Where vertical mobility occurred, it was achieved as something other than a ragsto-riches tale. Social mobility can be accurately assessed only in the Group 2 biographical dictionaries, as the earlier texts provided too little of the life-course information required to establish generational continuity or difference. However, while the samples from Group 2 contained sufficient information for a cross-section of entries, all entries in Rose's

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Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography—903 in total—were also assessed to ensure greater accuracy in the search for any pattern that may have existed. Thus, the complete set of entries from Rose's text, and the samples from Morgan's Canadian Men and Women of the Time and those from Cochrane's series, provided over 1700 sketches with which to measure social mobility. The use of a larger group of subjects was necessary because information on father's occupation was not available in every case, and even among the 1700-plus entries appropriate information was available in only 46 percent of them.8 Biographical subjects were divided into four occupational categories: agricultural (farmer), manual, non-manual, and professional. The professional category was obviously an extension of the non-manual occupations; since the professions were promoted as prestigious occupations of education and expertise that made special contributions to the progress of the nation, it seemed appropriate to make this distinction (at least initially) to demonstrate any significant difference between this group and the non-manual group. As will be seen, combining the non-manual and the professional categories, overwhelmingly affirmed a selective emphasis in these texts. The need for a larger data base to assess mobility also had to do with the comparatively fewer numbers of farmers and manual workers given space in the collective biographies. Fathers in these categories were less under-represented than their sons, the subjects of the sketches. When all the Group 2 samples were averaged, farmers comprised only 0.7 percent of the entries. Subjects' fathers who were farmers, however, comprised more than 23 percent of the larger mobility sample, for whom father-son occupational data were available. As for manual workers, these made up 0.8 percent (on average) of the Group 2 samples, but 6.0 percent of subjects' fathers in the mobility sample. In itself, this demonstrated considerable generational movement with regard to these two categories. Table 4.1 provides a complete breakdown of mobility in the four categories. Two things about this distribution are important. First, it is evident that those men whose fathers were professionals, or who did other types of non-manual labour, remained in one of these two categories. Sons of professionals especially would have had access to the financial and cultural means necessary to maintain their fathers' social position. Among subjects who were professionals, there were fewer men who had been involved in another occupation prior to taking up their career in

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comparison with the other categories. Financial power and institutional networks would likely have assisted in a relatively smooth transition to adult social status.

TABLE 4.1 GENERATIONAL MOBILITY, GROUP 2 BIOGRAPHIES (%)

Father Professional Professional Non-manual Manual Farmer

Son Non-manual

Manual

Farmer

0.5 0.5 8.3 1.1

— — — 1.6

26.4 53.1 45.8 39.8

73.1 46.4 45.8 57.5

Secondly, with regard to other occupational categories, it is evident that the movement from all strata toward professional status was the principal direction. It was only among the sons of manual workers that a significant number retained the social position of their fathers. If the professional and non-manual categories are combined, as in Table 4.2, it becomes more evident that upward mobility occurred among the sons of manual and agricultural workers. It is not unusual, of course, that professional and other non-manual groups would retain their status, and their ability to remain in higher social positions served to reinforce these categories of work as models for those among the lower strata.

TABLE 4.2 GENERATIONAL MOBILITY, GROUP 2 BIOGRAPHIES COMBINED PROFESSIONAL AND NON-MANUAL (%)

Father Non-manual Manual Farmer

Son Non-manual

Manual

Farmer

99.5 91.6 97.3

0.5 8.3 1.1

—

124

—

1.6

SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

The status of some occupations had changed over a comparatively short time in the last half of the century. Farmers, as independent small commodity producers, enjoyed considerable popular status at mid-century as settlers of the Canadian wilderness and as a major source of township and municipal politicians and other leadership personnel. The upward movement of farmers' sons indicates some decline in their previous status if only because the compilers of biographical dictionaries, and other influential individuals such as Egerton Ryerson, championed the movement of succeeding generations away from the farm and into business, industrial labour or the new occupations requiring expertise. As for manual workers, they fared least well in virtually all aspects of the biographical dictionaries. While more men retained the status of their fathers in this category, their low level of representation to begin with undermined the significance of this trend. Mobility can also be assessed through the educational patterns of the men in the biographical dictionaries. Higher education of one type or another was a virtual necessity for almost all the certifiable occupations. Because of the varied means of obtaining professional and other qualifications for entry into an occupation, higher education could be divided into three categories: university; education or training leading to certification, such as normal schools for teachers and commercial schools for businessmen; and entry into professions through forms of apprenticeship in legal, medical or architectural offices, and subsequent professional examination. However, these categories should not be viewed as a hierarchical arrangement of education or qualification, at least during this period of Canadian history, since the third category was the norm for virtually all occupations that had or would acquire the status of "professional." Nearly 94 percent of all men in the "professional" occupations had some type of higher education. Among physicians, 97.5 percent had university degrees, but more than 43 percent of lawyers used professional training and examination rather than university as their means of entry. This high ratio among the former is undoubtedly because professional institutions for the training and certification of physicians were in place early enough in the century for most biographical subjects to have attended them. The College of Physicians and Surgeons in Upper Canada and Ontario, for example, had required four years of professional study since the 1860s (all, after 1880, at a recognized medical school), along with a period of apprenticeship with a qualified practitioner.9 In contrast, most legal professionals in Ontario were trained in the office rather than 125

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the classroom prior to 1889.10 Only among those in the category of "other professionals," such as engineers, architects, pharmacists and the like, was there a significant proportion (25.7 percent) without higher education of any kind. 11 Businessmen were the least well educated at 13.3 percent (besides, of course, farmers and manual labourers)—even lower than those in the category of police and the military, of whom nearly 45 percent of their comparatively small number had some kind of higher education. Of military men, 37 percent obtained certificates from such institutions as Sandhurst in England or the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ontario. On the whole, almost two-thirds of the total sample obtained some measure of higher education. More than one-half of that total attended university. One reason for this high figure was certainly the expansion of universities in the last half of the century. Therefore, crucial factors in determining the proportion of those having higher education and training would be the contingent relations of age, of establishment or change in occupational requirements, and of their linkage in turn with emerging universities or other institutions of higher learning. In writing their sketches, Rose, Cochrane, and Morgan included information about the type of work carried out by their subjects before they established a definite career. This information provides a means of understanding the "orderliness" or "disorderliness" of career development—the straight or interrupted line from adolescence through education or training to the beginning of an anticipated lifelong career.12 The nature of political or business careers suggests that some degree of disorderliness should be expected. This makes these occupations difficult to include in any attempt at systematic analysis with inexact or incomplete data. Thus, the business and political categories have been excluded from this aspect of the study, although we will return to a related analysis of business careers shortly. It is worth noting again at this point that, in this study, "career" was determined by the type of work carried out over the ten years prior to the publication of the biographical dictionary. Of men in the occupational categories other than politics and business, only 12 percent worked at an occupation other than their career occupation for two years or longer; less than half that figure worked longer than four years. When allowance is made for incomplete information regarding other work experience, the data available strongly suggest that the majority of representative men had orderly careers, moving rapidly into them from public-level schooling or upper levels of education or training, and remaining in these occupations. 126

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If one considers the types of work in which these men were engaged prior to establishing their careers, it is evident that, for the most part, their earlier, temporary occupations were significant for their advancement in social status. The single most frequent occupational "sidetrack"13 was teaching. A second- or third-class teacher's certificate could be obtained with comparatively little education beyond the common school level, aided by some connection with local politicians or the school inspector.14 The lowest level of credential in Upper Canada and Ontario was the third-class certificate, obtainable from the County Board. This certificate required little from the applicant besides reading, spelling, some elements of grammar and geometry, and the ability to "write a plain hand."15 Requirements for Nova Scotia were similar: the lowest level of certification required only knowledge of geography, school management, arithmetic and grammar.16 Well into the twentieth century, many provinces permitted a wide range of teaching certification that, for better or worse, permitted young men and women with little education to at least begin adulthood (and in some cases adolescence) in an occupation of some social status and cultural relevance. While teaching was not well remunerated until late in the century, it did provide people with an income and a position within the community through which their status might begin to climb. Teaching was also an excellent occupation in which to begin to establish a socially significant network. Other frequently cited pre-career types of work were mercantile and bank clerking; both offered financial and cultural resources with which to progress toward other occupations.17 The pre-career work of businessmen can be viewed differently. Beyond considering generational movement, one must take note of similar or related types of work that men did in their progress toward ownership or positions of prominence in management or administration. Moves up the business ladder took several forms. Some apprenticed at skilled work in their fathers' business; others took quite different paths that demonstrated individually developed business talent and innovation. George A. Cox is an interesting and typical example. The son of an Upper Canadian farmer, Cox began work as a telegraph operator in Colborne, Ontario, at the age of 16. After two years, he took charge of the Peterborough office of the Montreal Telegraph Company. He kept this position while holding a number of local political offices, eventually becoming mayor for seven years. By the time Morgan wrote his sketch of Cox in 1898, Cox was an officer of, took "part in the direction of," or 127

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"had an interest in" no fewer than twelve businesses in the Peterborough area, including railways, banking, and Canadian General Electric.18 William Cluxton, also of Peterborough, began as a mercantile clerk before he was 16 years old. Then he entered another man's dry goods company, eventually being placed in charge of its operation, and he repeated this process later in another mercantile establishment. At the age of 23, he began his own dry goods business, becoming successful enough in this effectively to retire 30 years later. By the time his sketch was written, he was, or had been, involved in six other businesses, including banking, mining and railways.19 Slightly more than one-half (51.1 percent) of men in the business categories had laboured as apprentices, clerks, or skilled or semi-skilled labourers before taking up the career upon which their biographical entry was based. The relative orderliness of career and of the life-course in general, was evident among those who attended university or obtained other higher education credentials. Of these men, more than 70 percent had acquired their first degree or certificate by the age of 24 (ages 21 to 23 being the median years for university completion). Further, by the age of 24, more than one-half (52.8 percent) had already entered the occupation that would be their career. More than 83 percent had done so by the age of 30. As Philip Abrams suggested, it is useful to think of the patterns of education and work in terms of social and individual time. The rapid and apparently certain movement of so many of these men was a linear progress which, with higher education becoming increasingly desirable for the middle class, became the norm in fact. For the remainder of society higher education was more elusive, but increasingly a publicly defined expectation for success. Beyond these kinds of changes, there was little shifting of occupations. The most frequently registered and more or less permanent change was the movement of lawyers and businessmen to career politics. But even this change was often incomplete, as many of these men continued to some extent in their previous occupational activities. The length of time that representative men remained in their occupations was a further indication of the orderliness of their careers. At the various publication dates of the Group 2 biographies, 58 percent of the subjects for whom this could be determined (75 percent of the total sample) had worked at their careers for more than 20 years and 28 percent for more than 30 years. To achieve representative status required not only social position and education, but, by implication, a career span that indicated the person's

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maturity and the steadiness and commitment of his contribution to Canadian society. In other words, for him to be a model for others, his attributes had to demonstrate continuity and duration. To fall within a certain age group was therefore implicit for representativeness. The average age of these men was 49.3 years, an age that suggested ample time to have become well trained or well educated and/or to have spent at least two decades plying a single career. If one designates ten years on either side of this average age as an arbitrary range for career establishment, during which major social contributions would be made, more than 51 per cent of the entries fall into this range. An orderly progression through the life-course was, therefore, a characteristic of the representative Canadian man, along with a rise to, or retention of, a high level of social status. Although much was made of the "success through adversity" route by Samuel Smiles and others, this was not a biographical feature written into the sketches of these men. Indeed, comments about growing up in poor circumstances with few opportunities, bad luck, or early loss of parents were frequently recorded, but none of the compilers exploited such circumstances. Naturally, some men did not follow an orderly path, but such "nonlinear" life-courses were not well represented in the biographical dictionaries. However, those who may be considered to have had a disorderly career not only worked at various occupations, but migrated widely to do so. In the comparatively few sketches in which such a pattern was deemed a noteworthy part of the person's life, it was presented in such a way that the reader might be inclined to draw a positive inference with regard to the nature of the "sidetracking." Norman Addison, for example, became a successful "medical electrician," developing appliances to be used in the healing arts. He did not begin this career, however, until 1870 when he was in his late 20s. But Cochrane notes that in "1863 [at the age of 20] he came to this country [from England] and after travelling over a portion of Canada and the United States, staying in various cities and acquiring information and experience in the ways of the people, finally settled in Toronto."20 It serves no useful purpose to question the legitimacy of the claims imputed to Addison s travels. But it may have served the purpose of collective biography to assist the promotion of representativeness in this case by creating a portrait that shifted Addison's early life from that of a possible vagabond to that of an amateur sociologist; hence the reference to Addison's acquisition of "information and experience in the ways of the people."

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Another occupational wanderer was Frank Dillon Tims, who, at the time his biography was written, had become the Deputy Provincial Auditor in Quebec. But he did not achieve this status until more than 20 years after he first set out for the California gold fields for three years of mining. He returned to Canada in 1852 and "was principally engaged in mercantile pursuits down to 1857, when he went to Illinois, entered the lumber business for some time, and while there, in 1859, he was licensed to practice as an attorney and counsellor-at-law in that state."21 Two years later, he returned to Canada and again entered a lumber business owned by Senator James Skead, a connection that may have served him well in obtaining an appointment to the Treasury Department in 1868. From there he moved to the position of Deputy Provincial Auditor in 1870. The end result of such sidetracks was what recommended a person for representative status, and the networking along the way was no small matter. Regional mobility is also useful here. For the Canadian-born, the province and region of birth tended to remain their place of residence. Fewer than 23 percent of the sample left their province of birth, but most of those who did (15 percent of the sample) also left the region in which they were born—moving from the Atlantic provinces to central Canada, or from central Canada to the Prairies, and so on. Either of these patterns of migration represents fairly significant proportions of those who migrated substantial distances to achieve renown. Morgan, especially, included many individuals who had made important social contributions outside Canada, elsewhere in the British Empire or in the United States. On the whole, representative Canadians remained close to home and, intentionally or not, this was a feature of their collective lives that emphasized the steadiness or orderliness useful for making such contributions. Both social mobility and occupational orderliness attest to the strength of Canadian culture as it was developing in this period. These characteristics reveal that many people worked through their life-courses where "moments"—personal development, education, experience, work and career—compounded and complemented one another to confirm the normalcy of linear improvement. These "new" patterns affirmed the direction Canadian culture was taking, as well as its power to direct and influence the lives of people. They departed from expressed continuities of earlier generations, where self-activity was determined to a far greater extent by the rigidity of the social structure. The newer mobility patterns seemed to break with the stable conditions of the immediate past, encapsulated in the

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SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

upward movement of sons of farmers and manual workers to higher positions on the scale of social stratification. Another significant point, of course, was the retention of positions across generations. Together these trends describe the "regularities of response" in the life experience of people under new social conditions, where institutions formed to satisfy needs determined by economy, politics and culture. This could be most efficiently achieved when the interests of individuals were clearly understood to be those of a social group or, however loosely articulated, as class interests. GROUP AFFILIATION AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION

Sociologists and historians who use life-course material as data agree generally on the value of biography for integrating individual characteristics with, first, the characteristics of groups to which a person belongs and, ultimately, with broader components of society. Scholars such as Franco Ferrarotti and Georg Simmel argue for the "totalizing effect" of the individual in society—that groups in close proximity to the person provide a clearer picture of motivations, opportunities, the structure of mobility, and cultural attitudes. Ferrarotti contends that biographical data provide "the basic elements of... the dialectic of the social? permitting the individual biography to be connected "with the global, structural characteristics of the given, lived, historical situation."22 The formation of an identity emerges from the relationship of the individual to his or her social context. From different perspectives, the work of Simmel and Pitirim Sorokin are instructive. Sorokin claimed that the "biography of a man in its essence is largely a description of the groups to which the man had had a relation, and the man's place within each of them."23 In the first instance, there are the population groupings, such as nationality, region of birth and/or residence, race, and age groupings. While these may appear to be more or less "natural" groupings, Georg Simmel, writing in 1890, suggested that for the most part, such groups stand between what he termed organic and rational collections of people. On one hand, groups with organic bases for affiliation and solidarity were those, such as sex, that were considered "primary and fundamental," and devoid of arbitrary determination. Simmel suggested that limitations of affiliation to age and sex groups occur because of the absence or lack of sufficient development of other aspects of cultural life.24 Hence, groups formed along rational 131

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lines were developed through intentional, conscious decisions to affiliate similarly interested, but not necessarily organically connected persons. Initial (organic) groupings may be expanded or restricted on the basis of rational criteria established by the group itself. Gender and age groups, for example, could be formed exclusively for the young or for the elderly, for men or for women, on the basis of each of these single, organic criteria, or for reasons peculiar to cultural organization. A high proportion of men in a particular age group and occupation is both an obvious example of the limitation of organic groupings—based simply on sex—and a reason for reconsidering such a group according to "rational" criteria—an ideology based on a widely held belief that the male gender ought to be culturally dominant. Thus, there are those social groups into which people enter because of the expectations of group membership and its anticipated benefits or consequences. Simmel showed that the development of common interests among group members not only fortifies solidarity within the group, but also allows the common interests, as well as those of individual members, to intersect, even integrate. A cohort of men might be expanded intentionally in response to the intellectual development of society, the growth of its institutions, its existing divisions of labour, as well as the groups' collective attitude regarding the role of women in society. Simmel was making reference to rationally developed group affiliations extending beyond primary or organic group ties. That he saw a relationship between the number of affiliations a person has and the development of culture may be seen as an indication of the multiplication of successful socialization agencies, and their effect on those who have contact with them. Considering rational groups as Simmel described them, in what ways can they be said to integrate the individual and the social? As Acheson indicates in his studies, religious affiliations, occupational paths, and educational careers may be initially determined, encouraged or constrained by the circumstances of the men and women within each group. "Beyond this," writes Simmel, the person "belongs to his occupational group, which often involves him in several interest groups."25 A person's occupational group extends beyond his or her place of employment to include others working in the same or similar occupations in other business establishments. Professional organizations, regional or broader-based labour affiliations, gatherings of occupational groups with interrelated skills, among others, may constitute a person's extended affiliations with different

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SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION

groups or like-situated others. These affiliations make the person "aware of his citizenship, of the fact that he belongs to a particular social class."26 Sorokin provided an important theoretical approach that assists in understanding both Acheson and Simmel. Sorokin argued that the paths or careers a person embarks upon are increasingly mediated by related social agencies—institutions—working as "sieves," "which test and sift, select and distribute the individuals within different social strata or positions."27 In Sorokin's view there are two types of such social agencies. Family, school and religion test and select for individuals' general qualities—"biological, mental and moral qualities." Such qualities are the result of basic socialization and the consequences of inherited social circumstances and the opportunities they provide or limit. Sorokin, not unlike the compilers of the biographical dictionaries, educators, or politicians writing fifty years earlier, suggested that one immediate result of basic socialization in these areas was the growth of the individual as a person and as a social participant. The qualities acquired by the individual in the process of socialization are forms of social knowledge. The mass of knowledge or volume of qualities also act as a defence against decline in social position. For Sorokin, it is the construction of social agencies as "sieves" that determine "what 'human particles' will remain in the upper and what will slip into the lower strata."28 The accumulation of the kind of data essential to studies like Acheson's, and the present one, means taking into consideration the general qualities social agencies instil or invest in individuals.29 Those with the greatest access to the best social agencies of this type would arguably have a better chance of obtaining sufficient cultural magnitude to avoid falling through the sieve. Remaining above the level of the sifting screen provides these people with greater potential for vertical and horizontal mobility. It is Sorokin's second set of institutions that instils in individuals specific qualities through their occupational activity and the cultural experience associated with it. These skills and experience equip the person to both enter and remain in higher social strata. All the activity of social agencies that affects individuals takes place in social space. Sorokin considered the social mobility of individuals or groups to be the movement in social space "from one position to another," whether horizontal or vertical.30 Sorokin's concept of social space was not limited to individual movement but included a series or pattern of relationships between the person and the groups to which he or she belonged,

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and the social position of those groups. Understanding a person's place in society requires a systematic method like a "system of coordinates used for the location of a thing in geometric space." In order to know a man's social position, his family status, the state of which he is a citizen, his nationality, his religious group, his occupational group, his political party his economic status, his race, and so on must be known. Only when a man is located in all these respects is his social position definitely located.31

The key, it seems, is an understanding of the relationships developed and pursued by people in groups associated, more often than not, with established or emerging institutional relations and, consequently, the association of institutions to one another. Where the life-course of those in the collective biographies was organized around such relations, as in the Group 2 texts, they served as an implicit critique of Smiles' celebration of singular biographical heroes. This had much to do with the institutional level of development in society. The sketches in Morgan's Celebrated Canadians and in Taylor's Portraits of British North Americans, had comparatively less to focus on in terms of institutional participation, or the formation of social groups in institutional contexts. This stresses the point noted previously that the styles of Morgan and Taylor earlier in the century reflected the less developed infrastructure of Canadian society. Simmel argued that the availability of a variety of social groups and the number of groups in which an individual is involved (like the growth of institutions discussed earlier) "is one of the earmarks of culture." The multiplicity of associations is evidence of the complexity of social development in two ways. First, it bears out the proliferation of institutions, and a more fragmented and specialized division of labour. Secondly, it suggests possibilities for joining multiple groups which, according to Simmel, "give an individual of many gifts the opportunity to pursue each of his interests in association with others";32 this creates a greater variety of situations in which individual interests can be pursued and social goals realized: On the one hand the individual finds a community for each of his inclinations and strivings which makes it easier to satisfy them. This community provides an organizational form for his activities, and it offers in this way all the advantages of group-membership as well as of organizational experience. On the other hand, the

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SOCIAL MOBILITY AND GROUP AFFILIATION specific qualities of the individual are preserved through the combination of groups which can be a different combination in each case.33

This serves to emphasize the position that both Sorokin and Abrams put forward: that biography must go beyond the individual, expanding to include the groups to which the person belongs—from the intimacy of the family to the impersonal relations of scientific expertise. An example has already been presented, in Chapter 1, of the multiplicity of relations in the life of David Robb. This could be repeated for the majority of individuals about whom a biographical sketch was written. It would certainly substantiate the theoretical points outlined by Abrams, Simmel and Sorokin. It can also be done by demonstrating the levels of interaction of selected groups of biographical subjects to illustrate the varied affiliations of people in different towns and cities. Further, attention can be drawn to the power of personal prominence in bringing together people from all areas of the country and from different occupational interests. SHARED AFFILIATIONS IN TWO NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

In his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Canadian society (discussed in Chapter 2), J.G. Bourinot included a history and other details of the Royal Society of Canada to support his view of its national significance. The Royal Society brought together some of the most influential scientists and academics to create a forum for the acknowledgment and celebration of scholarship in Canada. Although Bourinot was at pains to assure his listeners and readers that the Society was not exclusive, its membership was intentionally limited, rising from only 80 at its first meeting in 1882 to just 88 in 1898. Bourinot insisted that suggestions of exclusiveness, such as the number of members and the title "Royal Society," should not eclipse the society's true aim of recognizing and disseminating knowledge and achievements relevant to the nation: In this country and, indeed, in America generally, a notable tendency is what may be called the levelling principle—to depreciate the idea that any man should be in any way better than another; and in order to prevent that result it is necessary to assail him as soon as he shows any political or intellectual merit and stop him, if possible, from attaining that mental superiority above his fellows that his industry or ability may enable him to reach.34

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After each annual meeting, the Transactions of the Royal Society were published at federal expense and distributed "to every library, society, university and learned institution of note" in thirty countries and every state in the United States. In addition, every author of a paper published in the Transactions received 100 copies for his personal distribution. Thus, some 4000-5000 copies of the scholarly work of Society members were widely circulated. Through this method of distribution, Bourinot said, "any value these works may have is considerably enhanced."35 The Royal Society's nation-wide membership and international reputation attested to the status proffered to men who were members of this institution. It is not surprising, then, that Henry Morgan used Bourinot's "Bibliography of the Members of the Royal Society of Canada" as one source for his Canadian Men and Women.36 Of the 88 men who were members for the year 1898, all but one were given a sketch in Morgan's text. It is truly curious that the only absentee was Bourinot himself37 (Morgan became a member in 1904.) Of the 88 people who were members in 1898, and the 55 who had been members since 1882 (143 in total), Morgan included 96 of them.38 William Cochrane included 22 of these men over the five-year course of the publication of his volumes. Rose included 18 of the 80 men who had been members up to 1888, the year his Cyclopaedia was published. Some men, of course, were well on their way to prominence in their field and were consequently featured in a biographical dictionary before being granted admission to the Royal Society. Thus, 85 percent of the total membership between 1882 and 1898 were given an entry in the Group 2 biographies either before or while they held membership in the Society. Each edition of the Transactions provided a list not only of current members, but also of non-members who read reports and people in attendance at the meetings but who did not give formal presentations. There is little value in attempting a quantitative analysis of these last two lists. It is enough to say that the most cursory survey of these lists shows the extent of the potential—but more likely real—personal interaction of these men in the course of a three- or four-day meeting. It is significant that these men were members of the same prestigious national organization, and more so that many of them came into contact with one another for discussion of diverse, as well as similar, interests at least once a year. An examination of office holding in the Dominion Educational Association (DEA) shows a similarly high proportion of biographical subjects. The DEA, established in 1892, was the national organization for

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addressing educational issues and for disseminating ideas among teachers in the primary and secondary levels of schooling. Fifteen of the twenty officers in 1898, the year of publication of Morgan's Canadian Men and Women, were included in that text. All but three of the officers were directly connected with educational institutions in the capacity of teachers or inspectors; two were provincial ministers of education. Rose and Cochrane included six and seven of these men, respectively, all prior to their attainment of the position of Association officer, and for Rose prior to the establishment of the Association itself. Thus, in the case of the latter two texts, officers of the DEA became representative because of other qualifications which, it may be speculated, anticipated to some extent their later achievement. Four of these officers were further connected as members of the Royal Society. Being on the membership list of a culturally significant organization did not guarantee entry into a biographical dictionary. The character of a person and an identifiable life-course generally compatible with likesituated others, were also to be considered. In both national organizations membership or officeholding was an expression both of individual interests and achievement and of national interests. As Simmel pointed out with regard to labourers, merchants and women, each group embodied an organizing concept that was, at base, an organic or rational expression of common interest with others. In this regard, both the Royal Society and the DEA were the pinnacle of persons with scholarly or educational prominence first attained at a local institutional level, and which was later the identifying characteristic that brought disparate individuals together at the national level. Common concepts identifying interests, type of work, and so on were what created an element of social solidarity among people not otherwise related.39 Each of the DEA officers and each of the Royal Society members shared a cultural and professional circle defined by common concepts of solidarity. These were circles of interest which emerged from other circles of rational or organic commonality. Each of these men belonged to a family and to an occupational group; it is likely that most belonged to a church and to other social organizations within their communities. In many cases, the biographical sketch showed a multiplicity of relations in which the person was engaged, demonstrating a number of sources from which the ultimate concept of solidarity was derived—representative Canadian.

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NATIONAL ALBUM

As indicated in the previous chapter, Morgan used the membership lists of many organizations and professional groups. A similar analysis, therefore, could be made of several additional national groups. GROUP AFFILIATIONS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

Concepts of solidarity and complex webs of affiliation are more evident at the level of the city or town. In identifying local groups to which representative men belonged, it is possible to see the intricacy of affiliations and the peculiarities of commonality in some locations. It is also possible to speculate further on the power of the local network for establishing representativeness and its recognition by those who compiled collective biographies. The group affiliations of numerous individuals are difficult to quantify with any consistency, and are difficult to present in such a way that the relationships of small numbers of people can be appreciated. Thus, in order to grasp the significance of such relationships, the most fruitful approach is to demonstrate interconnections between those who shared occupational, social or political interests, with an emphasis on the institutional centres in specific towns with which a number of subjects were associated. The major concern was to demonstrate the significance of networks developed in and among the categories of occupation, political office and, broadly speaking, voluntary associations of a social or public service nature, as the most common and important categories of affiliation. Religion was an important category because of its social significance during this period, and it would have been useful in this aspect of the analysis. However, the names of specific churches actually attended by subjects were missing from all but a few sketches. More frequently noted was the subject's denomination. It is important to show that some degree of affiliation did exist among these men, and to demonstrate that the more groups to which a person belonged, the greater was his status as a representative man. A high rate of group participation could not be put forward as the only, or most important, criterion for entry into a collective biography, because the singular achievements of many individuals were obviously sufficient to permit their inclusion in such a volume. However, extensive affiliations remained significant because of the networks established by the linkage of several people. It must be remembered that Morgan relied in the first

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instance on his own networks and those of his associates to supply him with names of potential subjects. Morgan, at least, worked on the assumption that virtually all representative men were somehow locally connected in socially relevant groups. The extent of affiliation in given towns or cities varied widely among individuals and locations, depending not only on the number of individuals represented in the biographies but on the organizations and institutions actually situated in these places. The range of organizations—an indicator of social development—had a bearing upon the range of social connections people had. Consequently, individual participation was equally determinant in the "development of the public mind," as Simmel put it. That is, the creation or extension of social organizations of authority and regulation—city councils, school boards, etc.—was largely determined by social structural demands. However, branches of the Masons, the St. Jean-Baptiste Society, the Imperial Federation League, and businessmen's clubs were also founded by men as expressions of their collective sense of occupational, professional or social solidarity. Even while one may suggest that political organizations were necessary, participation in them in a strict sense was not. But for representative men, participation was seen to be an integral part of their exemplary status—to demonstrate an energetic devotion to their town, city, or nation, and to have their contributions recognized as personal quests and social commitment. In examining the extent of affiliations in the ten towns and cities selected, a note of caution is in order. The relations of men outlined below must be seen as networks of interest, the most important criterion of class in this study, as suggested in the Introduction. It has not always been possible to determine, for example, whether two or more people served at the same time on a city council or a school board. But the comparatively small size of these towns and the number of networks suggest that common interests would likely have meant common or partially integrated social circles, or at least some personal contact over time.

Kingston, Ontario Queen's University and the Royal Military College were two institutional centres with which large numbers of representative men were associated in Kingston, Ontario. Fifty-two percent of Morgan's subjects resident in Kingston were connected with these schools as faculty, administrators or men whose professional expertise was the basis for their part-time employment as lecturers. Further, fourteen of the forty-six Kingston residents were educated at one of these schools.

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Other examples of affiliation illustrate how like-situated people formed social and occupational networks. Edward Handley Smythe, for example, was a member of eight distinct social groups in the city: he was a lawyer by profession, member of the city council (at one time mayor), a school trustee, an officeholder in his church, president of the Kingston branch of the Upper Canada Bible Society, a member of the local militia, the St. George's Society, and a Mason. Smythe shared his educational interests with four other Kingston men included in Morgan's text, two of whom also spent time on the city council. Cornelius Price, who shared these two networks with Smythe, also shared his professional circle; Richard Walkem, another lawyer (and judge) was, like Smythe, a Mason. A companion of Walkem and Smythe in Freemasonry was Clarendon Worrell, one of four Church of England clergy in the volume who were residents of Kingston, and associated with eight men as faculty or administrators at the Royal Military College. Of Worrell's associates there, Robert Harris, a professor of civil engineering, was one of three members of the Imperial Federation League, as was John Louis Neilson, the medical officer at the College and one of three medical practitioners given an entry. One of Neilson's associates in that profession, John Herald, served on the faculty of Queen's, and was elected mayor of the city in 1894. Of the forty-six Kingstonians entered in Morgan's text, seventeen were involved in two or more groups along with other subjects.

Sherbrooke, Quebec George M. Rose included twelve men from this city in his Cyclopaedia, seven of whom were members of the legal profession. Among these were Hubert Cabana and Louis-Charles Belanger, who were law partners, coowners of the Pionnier de Sherbrooke, and members of the city council. Belanger was also a school commissioner, as was Louis E. Panne ton, to whom Belanger and Cabana sold the Pionnier. Panneton, Cabana, and fellow lawyer Robert N. Hall were, along with two others, officeholders or faculty at Bishop's College in Lennoxville, Quebec. Hall, who was Dean of Law at Bishop's (and simultaneously a Member of Parliament), and Edward T. Brooks, a trustee (and Superior Court judge), were both connected with the promotion of rail expansion in their regions, although with different companies. Occupational solidarity among legal men registered high in Sherbrooke's entries, which seemed to lead to the creation of several other networks.

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Perth, Ontario Rose collected eleven biographies from Perth. Among them were two men, Edward Elliott and Francis A. Hall, who seemed to be the key figures in several networks that brought together other model citizens. Elliott and Hall shared a social network in the local Masonic Temple, and had interests in common with Thomas Cairns, the local postmaster, and John S. Hart on the Board of Education. Elliott and Hall were law partners, and shared the same profession as three others Rose had chosen. Among those in their professional circle were Arthur J. Matheson and W. H. Radenhurst; these four all held seats on the city council. Matheson was a member of the militia, along with his fellow lawyer William S. Senkler, Hart, and Matheson's father, Senator Roderick Matheson. It is also worth noting that Thomas Cairns' son, George, who was practising law in nearby Smith's Falls, obtained his legal training in the office of Francis Hall.

Victoria, British Columbia In Morgan's 1898 volume, there were sketches of forty-eight people from Victoria. Eight of these were engaged in local business enterprises and were interconnected through several other networks. Frank Barnard, Robert Beaven, Thomas Earle, John H. Turner and Robert Ward had been members of the city council at one time. Earle and Ward were members of the local Board of Trade, and Beaven and another businessman, William J. MacDonald, served in education. Beaven, David M. Eberts, MacDonald, Edward G. Prior and Turner had been members of the provincial legislature at one time. Socially, Barnard, Eberts, Prior, Turner and Ward were members of the Union Club in Victoria, and Barnard, Earle and Prior were members of the Rideau Club in Ottawa. Of the Victoria residents, nearly one-half were involved in three or more networks of shared interest with others.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia To locate representative men in this town, Acadia University, as the leading social institution, was obviously the place to look first, and perhaps last. Of the eleven people from Wolfville represented in Morgan's text, eight were faculty members at Acadia. The significance of this institution, and the importance of being personally associated with it, go beyond the faculty ratio. All eleven of the subjects from Wolfville were either faculty or administrators at the university; seven of these were also educated at

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Acadia, and four at the nearby Horton Academy. That Acadia University began its existence as a Baptist institution provides one explanation as to why all eleven subjects were of that faith, and why three of them were active as delegates or other officials at the Baptist Convention for the district. Thus, the complex of representative individuals and representative institutions is abundantly evident in this instance.

St. Stephen, New Brunswick Small towns would naturally have fewer people to choose from for biographical elevation, and would therefore produce only a small group of representative men. St. Stephen was one such town, with a population of 4000, in which the select group was not only small but appeared to be constructed around the activities of two men, James Mitchell, a lawyer, and James Murchie, a merchant. Their different occupations did not prevent them from sharing interests in social and political circles. They were both engaged in the promotion of railroads in the region, and shared an interest in local educational issues, Mitchell as a school inspector and Murchie as a trustee. Along with Frank I. Blair, they belonged to the Masons, and along with Mitchell's fellow lawyer, George F. Hill, they served in the provincial legislature as members of the same political party. St. John's, Newfoundland Some cities were reasonably well represented, but had comparatively low levels of networking among their distinguished men. Twenty-four men from St. John's were given a sketch in Morgan's text. The majority of these men apparently stayed close to their occupational circle, few branching out to form additional networks. Two clergymen, G.S. Milligan and William Pilot, also served in an official capacity in their respective denominational school systems, Methodist and Church of England. Fellow clergyman J.R. McCowan also served on the school board and was a member of one of the local temperance organizations. The legal profession was well represented by nine men and, of those, six had served as members of the legislature at one time. Saint John, New Brunswick The legal profession figured prominently in Saint John as well, accounting for thirteen of thirty-six subjects in Morgan's work. In this case, its

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members seemed to restrict their interaction with other groups as well. Four lawyers served in the provincial legislature, and two pursued educational interests in the city. But the real hub of interaction in Saint John seemed to be the Union Club. Eight of the lawyers belonged to the Club, as did four of the six journalists from the Daily Telegraph, and the three men who served on the city's Board of Trade. London, Ontario Again, the legal profession figured prominently in Morgan's text, this time in their interaction with London's social and political circles. Emmanuel Essery, Albert Jeffery and Edmund Meredith were Masons, Essery and Jeffery also being members of the Oddfellows Lodge. Jeffery served on the Board of Education along with Clarence T. Campbell, a doctor by profession, who was also a Mason and an Oddfellow. Essery and fellow lawyer James Magee were members of the militia; another militiaman, William Gartshore, shared Essery's and Meredith's interest in city council politics. Regina, Northwest Territories From this comparatively small but important Prairie centre, Morgan selected twelve men from several different occupations. Five of these men, A.E. Forget, Frederick W.G. Haultain, Hugh Richardson, James H. Ross and John Secord, had served on the Territorial Council in some capacity. This institution seemed to be the core of representative action; or perhaps the status of many of these men was acquired by association with Secord, whom the Regina Leader called "The soul of honour." Haultain, Richardson and Secord were lawyers, the latter two also being members of the Assiniboia Club. Secord was a member of the city council and, along with Forget, shared an interest in local educational matters. At a minimum, these sample towns and cities indicate occupations and interests with significant degrees of affiliation, at least suggesting what culturally significant groups a person might have belonged to in order to attain representative status. The high ratio of men in the legal profession in some towns lends support to the claim that this occupation carried a high degree of status within the community, an affirmation of the significance of the proportion of judges and lawyers in the collective biographies (see Table 3.2). In some cities, the number of academics was disproportionately high in comparison with their overall representation. 143

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But, as with other occupational groups, such as the clergy, they were representing their institution as well as their individual achievements. This disproportional representation lends support to the claim made in this study that the institutional framework of Canadian society was a matter of great importance to the compilers of collective biographies. It is also worth noting the important centres of affiliation overall. In these ten towns or cities, 12.5 percent (one in eight) of the individuals portrayed were affiliated with some aspect of city politics (mayor, alderman, member of council). Twenty percent (one in five) were members of Boards of Education, as trustees or in related positions. Similar networks of varying size could be identified for many of the other towns and cities across Canada. These few examples give substantial indication that the compilers of collective biographies included similarly situated individuals engaged in coincident social activities. Terms such as "political stability," "educational progress," "Imperial federation," and others which relate to groups' particular interests may be seen to describe concepts of solidarity likely to have been found among these affiliations. These are terms, in other words, according to which these networks of interest were formed and perpetuated. Concepts of solidarity may be peculiar to particular group relations or, like "success" and "representative," may be more generalized, transcending specific relations to establish cultural meanings at the national level. The theoretical linkage between Simmel's concepts of solidarity in group affiliations and Raymond Williams' "general human culture" should not be ignored. LEVELS OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION

It is not possible to explore fully the range of concepts of solidarity. However, a more general view of the extent of social participation among those in the collective biographies is possible. Table 4.3 provides an assessment of three categories of social participation: church work, social or benevolent organizations, and political officeholding. Separate figures have been provided for each author's volume(s) to indicate something of the differences that were certainly related to the categories of information requested by the biographer and/or the accuracy of recording. These figures represent only those who were not directly associated with a particular type of activity through their occupation. For example, clergy have been excluded from the category "Engaged in church work," and career politicians excluded from the category "Political/Administrative."

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Thus, the actual rate of participation was higher and could be calculated by correlating these data with those on occupations in Table 3.2. In terms of assessing social participation, however, it seems important to note the proportion of biographical subjects who went outside their occupational circle to engage in relevant social activity.

TABLE 4.3 NON-CAREER SOCIAL PARTICIPATION (%)

Engaged in church work ' Active in two organizations 2 Active in three organizations Political/administrative 3

Cochrane

Rose

Morgan

21.1 32.8 18.4 38.8

9.6 26.0 10.0 55.6

8.1 26.9 16.4 31.1

All

15.3 29.6 16.3 39.6

1. Church officeholders, Sunday school teachers, conference/Synod delegates. Excludes career clergy. 2. Fraternal and benevolent societies, social clubs, volunteer organizations, athletic clubs. Excludes activities that were career-specific. 3. Elected or appointed officials. Excludes career politicians.

The evidence presented above of group affiliation and social participation requires some contextualization in terms of Philip Abrams' discussion of careers and contingent biographical relations. As noted in the initial discussion of Abrams' work in Chapter 1, careers and contingent relations must be understood as expressions of the "two-dimensional time" of individual history and social history. Affiliation and participation link the processes of socialization and individuation, drawing a person willingly into relations that are both personally important and socially relevant. Despite the obvious differences in social structural importance in some of the groups mentioned above, all were networks open to individuals at a "point in time," to recall a crucial phrase from Agnes Heller. The opportunity to make connections with others in equally important and/or developing careers was a matter of "knowing the times" for those wishing to embark on a path to a higher level of social status. What are the organizations or occupations that will enhance my career and are open to membership? Which of the various types of social involvement may be seen to be relevant in themselves, or beyond themselves as a national contribution? These were the kinds of questions men undoubtedly asked on

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their way to establishing themselves as significant for others. In other words, what was relevant for the success of the individual was, more often than not, contingent on what was relevant to cultural development and the stability of the local community and the nation. This is part of the dialectic of the social. Individuals gave priority to the social structure of a developing nation in trying to determine a life-course; while their affiliations and activities may have been confined to their community, these were perceived as no less intrinsic to nation building, even if the relative weights of individual preference and social structural demands differed from person to person. Samuel Smiles, of course, put it differently. He might have written: "In other words, what is relevant for the progress of the nation is, more often than not, contingent on what is generated by individual creativity and foresight, the product of which serves the interests of cultural development and the stability of the nation." In the context of a society consolidating its institutional structures, an analysis of the life course of the Canadian middle class male might swing between highlighting individual capacity and motivation, and institutional or cultural demands. In this analysis, the latter carries more weight because they affirm individual choices within limits imposed by the demand structure of society. Further, to the extent individuals made relatively autonomous life-course choices, these were motivated, in part, by the affiliation they felt to the structure of class stratification, institutional forms, decision-making processes and, indeed, the entire structure of personal and political power in Canada. Affiliation and participation are easily seen in this context as "typical destinies of collectives." Sherbrooke's lawyers, for example, established careers for themselves, and four of them extended their efforts beyond their occupational networks to make similar important contributions to business, educational and civil life in their region. In Kingston and Wolfville, the educational institutions to which significant groups of people were affiliated apparently carried a status that offered an important link to other social networks. Too little is known about the childhood and adolescence of the subjects of these sketches to speculate on how much the events and circumstances of the earlier periods of their lives contributed to the destinies described in the biographical dictionaries. But, given the comparatively high level of social status retained by these subjects, the typical destinies that can be identified had strong class connections.

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Simmel's point about the relation of memberships in groups to cultural development in this context goes beyond class and opportunity as such. Without taking it for granted, what has been said to this point in the study has been confined to a description and explanation of the typical destinies of men. The following chapter attempts to provide information on the comparatively few women who were subjects of biographies and, utilizing Simmel's theory of culture, to analyze representativeness in terms of gender. NOTES 1. EJ. Hobsbawm, "Class Consciousness in History," 13. 2. Michael Mascuch, "Continuity and Change in a Patronage Society: The Social Mobility of British Autobiographers, 1600-1750," Journal of Historical Sociology 7(2), 1994: 177-97. 3. T.W. Acheson, "Changing Origins of the Canadian Industrial Elite, 1880-1910," Business History Review 47(2), 1973: Table 12, p.205. 4. Acheson, "Changing Origins," 209-10. 5. Acheson, "Changing Origins," 215. For a study of social mobility earlier in the nineteenth century, see RA. Russell, Attitudes to Social Structure and Mobility in Upper Canada, 1815-1840 (Lewiston NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). 6. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 2. 7. T.W. Acheson, "The Social Origins of the Canadian Industrial Elite, 1880-1885," in D.S. Macmillan, ed., Canadian Business History: Selected Studies, 1497-1971 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 171. 8. In the volumes in question occupational data across generations ranged from a low of 30.4 percent in Morgan's work to a high of 54.4 percent in Rose's. 9. R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar, Professional Gentlemen: The Professions in Nineteenth Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 155. 10. Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 372. 11. Training requirements were, however, quite high for some of these occupations. Surveyors in Ontario, for example, were required as early as 1849 to serve a three-year apprenticeship prior to licensing. See Gidney and Millar, Professional Gentlemen, 223. 12. For an analysis of social mobility in the twentieth century using the concept of "orderly career," see Harold L. Wilensky, "Orderly Careers and Social Participation: The Impact of Work History on Social Integration in the Middle Mass," American Sociological Review 26 (1961): 521-39. 13. The concept of "sidetracking" is taken from Stanford Lyman and Marvin B. Scott, The Sociology of the Absurd (New York: General Hall, 1989), 41-46. 14. See Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational State (London: Althouse, 1988), especially Chapter 6. 15. See E.H. Dodds, The History of Education in Dufferin County, 1834-1983 (Grand Valley ON, 1983).

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16. See C.E. Phillips, The Development of Education in Canada (Toronto: Gage, 1957), 561. 17. See Graham S. Lowe, Women and the Administrative Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 47-51. 18. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 216. 19. George Maclean Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 63-64. 20. - William Cochrane, Canadian Album, vol.1, 488. 21. Rose, Cyclopaedia of 'Canadian Biography, 545. 22. Franco Ferrarotti, "Biography and the Social Sciences," 62; see also his "On the Autonomy of the Biographical Method," in D. Bertaux, ed., Biography and Society (London: Sage, 1981), 19-27. 23. P.A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility, 6. 24. Georg Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations (New York: The Free Press, 1955), 133-35. 25. Simmel, Group Affiliations, 138. 26. Simmel, Group Affiliations, 138. 27. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility, 183. 28. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility, 194. 29. Other studies which use similar data and theoretical orientation are those of C. Wright Mills. See, for example, The New Men of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), and "The American Business Elite: A Collective Portrait," in Power, Politics and People (New York: Ballantine, 1963), 110-39. 30. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility, 133. 31. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility, 5. 32. Simmel, Group Affiliations, 162. 33. Simmel, Group Affiliations, 162-63. 34. John George Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness, 35. 35. Bourinot, Intellectual Strength and Weakness, 41. 36. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, vii. 37. This may have had something to do with personal or political disagreements between the two; see M.A. Banks, "John George Bourinot," DCB, vol.13, 100. 38. It must be remembered that Morgan's biographical dictionary was meant to be of living people; the deceased who were entered—in this case members of the Royal Society—had died shortly before the date of publication. 39. Simmel, Group Affiliations, 172-84.

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CHAPTER 5 REPRESENTATIVE DISTINCTIONS: MEN AND WOMEN IN THE COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHIES

THE MEN SKETCHED in the biographical dictionaries and discussed in the previous chapters make up the bulk of a conceivable "national album" of representative Canadians. The simple reason for concentrating on the male content of collective biographies in this study, as stated in the Introduction, is that women are all but absent. William Cochrane did not include a single woman in his series, Henry Morgan's early Celebrated Canadians contained four women, and Rose managed to include only three in his second volume.1 Morgan included 94 women in the first edition of Canadian Men and Women of the Time, which amounted to 3 percent of the total number of entries. However small a proportion, it was nevertheless a quantum leap in the representation of women in this genre. The contribution of women to the settlement and consolidation of Canadian society was crucial. But their not having a central, determining role—possible only with a recognized base of social power—meant that women did not press upon the public domain in Canada, as in so many other national histories. Even so, as with the other social changes of this period, the biographical representation of women was one that highlighted, however marginally, the change from activities which sustained their traditional domestic roles to a collective portrait of more varied occupations and contributions to Canadian society. This chapter explores what Morgan saw as the representative woman. Given the constraints of representativeness guided by a selective tradition, Morgan gave a significant account of women's contributions to Canadian culture. This is not to suggest that their portrayal in his texts was generalizable to women across all social strata. Rather, his work was a portrayal of representative women within the bounds of the selective tradition and of the rising middle class. The analysis of women in this context, in other

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words, was no more accurate than that of men. First, the selection of women lent itself to the support of an ideological claim to universality of class and opportunity, just as in the selection of men. Secondly, Morgan's portrayal was based on the empirical relations between men and women that were well established in Canadian culture. These were the relations that he and others accepted as principles of Canadian culture. Thirdly, as with men, Morgan excluded a large number of the possible categories of women by excluding many categories of their labour. The activities they pursued as "careers," and their status as political subjects, were severely restricted in both the recognition of their labours and their voice in society. But before exploring what may have been Morgan's finest offering to the recognition of women's contributions of 1898, it is useful to examine a quite different text that he published five years later. Types of Canadian Women, published in 1903, was, as its name suggests, devoted to women. One motivation for publishing such a text was Morgan's own awareness of what was available in the field of multiple biography. Morgan felt that the proliferation of men's biographies in the kind of texts he and others had compiled gave an incomplete representation of Canadian culture. This he proposed to correct. The absence of large-scale biographical representations of women was, he suggested, a mere oversight in Canada, "where the status of women had always been high, [and where] the needed changes [in the relations between men and women] were brought to pass with less acrimony than elsewhere, and were furthered by the chivalrous generosity of both our men of learning and our men of wealth."2 He abandoned his usual mechanical prose in introducing the volume, commenting here on the labour involved in producing it: If it sometimes caused weariness of the flesh, the languor was dispelled by refreshings of the patriotic heart as ever new surprises disclosed the wealth of the mine which it was my happy lot to have opened to the world. That this good fortune should have fallen to me was doubtless due to the fact I had been so long engaged in biographic investigation. For almost half a century I had been eagerly watching the careers ... of the more distinguished of my fellow-countrymen. In such a pursuit I could not fail to be attracted to the rare deserts of many Canadian women.3

Morgan was unclear as to the precise nature of his "types." They were partly of the "two races, of two orders of civilization, two great systems of belief and worship," suggesting the two major European settler groups and their respective religions. He also mentioned "lady pioneers" and

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REPRESENTATIVE DISTINCTIONS

"women worthy to be called saints." He misrepresented the actual content of his text, at least proportionately, by claiming that it contained representatives from "every class, from royalty to that of the bourgeoisie and the ranks of industry." "Every sphere of beneficent activity," he continued, "may be said to be exemplified in these pages. Religion, philanthropy, society, art, letters, science are all illustrated."4 As with the men Morgan, Rose and Cochrane had portrayed, these statements suggested a certain classlessness. It will be shown below that Morgan's selection of women in his 1903 text tended to follow established cultural norms, emphasizing women's traditional roles to a greater degree than his statements implied. Morgan's choice of entries also reflected a continuation of the selective tradition he and others had typically employed. Morgan's own very positive experience of networking in Canada's political circles undoubtedly led him to many of the women portrayed in this text. They were the wives of the great men Morgan had contact with in his years in the public service, and about whom he had written biographical sketches for one of his other publications. Further, as will be evident shortly, many of the texts accompanying the women's photographs were testimonials to their male relatives (husbands, fathers, brothers) rather than informative descriptions of the women allegedly represented. Table 5.1 provides a breakdown of categories for the women portrayed by Morgan in 1903. Women could not be neatly divided into occupational groups, as was the case with male subjects. At the turn of the century, being classified as a "woman of title" or a woman engaged almost solely in domestic work would not have been indicative of a legitimate occupation. Both of these, however, might properly have been considered acceptable, natural vocations for women. It is evident that, if the first two categories—"Homemakers/Housewives" and "Women of Title"—are combined, over 70 percent were engaged in traditional female occupations. This was also predominantly true for those classified here as combining their philanthropic work in the community with their domestic duties, making the traditional category even larger. In this respect, a description of one of Morgan's "types" is appropriate. The historical task of "lady pioneers," he wrote, was one of "perpetuating in the wilderness the graces and amenities of polite society, to be models of good behaviour, to inculcate a sense of honour and keep alive the torch of household virtues." Despite the significant social changes which Morgan himself helped to chronicle, "the old manners and morals, thanks to these good 151

NATIONAL ALBUM

ladies and those who walked in their footsteps, remained with us."5 It appears, then, that the "domestic type" was the dominant type of representative woman, although the upper-class version of this "type" was the only one deemed worth representing.

TABLE 5.1

SOCIAL ACTIVITY/OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORIES MORGAN'S TYPES OF CANADIAN WOMEN (%) Homemakers/Housewives Women of Title Cultural ] Philanthropic/Domestic 2 Professional Members of Religious Orders Other

41.2 30.2 15.8 5.6 3.6 1.0 2.3

1. Plastic and dramatic artists, novelists, poets, journalists. 2. Essentially domestic, but with an apparently high level of social recognition for active philanthropic work, such as attending the sick and needy, child welfare activities, etc. As many of these women were related to men of considerable social status, it may be suggested that female representativeness in the larger of these categories was grounded in the fact that their short biographies were merely conduits for additional praise of their exemplary husbands. Two examples will serve to demonstrate the limited portrayal of these women which makes their biographies appear to be life-sketches of absent subjects. Lady Edward Russell Alice, daughter of the late William Smith Sewell, Esquire, Sheriff of Quebec, and his wife, Lavina Marion, eldest daughter of Dr. George Griffin, surgeon, 85th Regiment, was born and educated in Quebec. She married, first, June llth, 1867, John Duff, Esquire, surgeon Royal Artillery (who died); and, secondly, at Southsea, England, February 24th, 1876, Lieut.-General Sir Edward Lechmere Russell, K.C.S.I., a distinguished soldier, who received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for his services during the Abyssinian war, 1868, and was, subsequently, Resident and Commandant in Aden. Lady Russell is the mother of several children.6

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Mrs. E.D.C O'Brien Annie Parish, second daughter of the Hon. W.B. Vail, P.C., formerly leader of the Government in the Nova Scotia Assembly, and subsequently Minister of Militia and Defence of Canada, and his wife, Charlotte Leslie, daughter of Charles Jones, Esquire, of Weymouth, N.S., was born at Digby, N.S., December 15th, 1863, and married at Halifax, September 22nd, 1885, Colonel Edmund Donough Collins O'Brien, R.E., an officer of extended and distinguished service. The Vails are of U.E. Loyalist descent, and were connected with the family of the late General Sir William Fenwick Williams of Kars.7

Far less than a man's biography did a woman's represent much beyond the immediate context of her life and those who gave it legitimation. The predominance of the domestic "type" of woman also referenced the "undifferentiated person," for whom domestic activity comprised the major part of her self, as well as her principal social contribution. The content of the sketch made this relationship obvious. It involved her dress, the home she "made" for others, and her contribution to the success of her husband. This was apparent in the case of Jane Mackenzie, the wife of the second Canadian prime minister, who showed through her "undifferentiated" personality "how well she merited her husband's confidence and love."8 Likewise, Julia May LaTouche made significant contributions to the life of her husband, the Lieutenant Governor of India, "by the exercise of many winning qualities, [which] added much to his popularity."9 That women as individuals and their social activities were legitimated by others is demonstrated by the fact that less than one-half of the textual content of these biographical sketches was devoted to their activities as individuals. The remainder of the sketches, like those of Lady Russell and Mrs. O'Brien, were devoted to the achievements of others who were culturally more significant. Critically, it can be argued that the style of portraiture used in Types of Canadian Women located the female subject on the periphery of her own life. From Morgans point of view as a chronicler of empirical facts about individuals, his style simply reflected a positivist, not critical, observation of the position and activities of women in his culture. As has been suggested throughout this study, the biographical dictionaries attempted to represent both cultural continuity—some sense of tradition—and the progressive, beneficial changes Canadian culture was undergoing. While biographical dictionaries promoted the continuity of

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Canadian culture, they also served to rationalize certain discontinuities, such as changes in women's social activities and their relation to the established social order. Thus, Morgan allowed for certain "advances" or anomalies in women's contributions in his Types of Canadian Women. The categories of importance in this regard are "Cultural" and "Professional." While the former is quite significant in proportion to, even in comparison with, male biographies, the percentage of women engaged in professional occupations does little more than make them appear as strangers to a growing trend in Canadian society. The representation of professional women in the text (3.6 percent) is hardly an overemphasis, comparable to the disproportionate representation of men in professional categories in other biographical dictionaries, which, as has been argued, symbolized the changing character of Canadian culture. This small proportion begs a simple question: if Morgan saw, in his Types of Canadian Women, a testament to the high regard for women's contributions to Canadian society, as he suggested, then why did he not overemphasize their "new" form of social participation as professionals, as he and others had done with regard to men? The answer to that question, in the case of the 1903 text, lies chiefly in the assertion that Morgan was reflecting more the sustaining role of women as the life-companions of the country's great men than making any serious attempt to explore women's new contributions. Morgan's book was "eagerly anticipated by the public," according to a reviewer, and proved to be "a genuine repository of Canadian Beauty and cleverness."10 However, in many ways Morgan's Types of Canadian Women was a backward step. The changes that Canadian society was undergoing at the time had already pushed Morgan to take note of occupational activities engaged in by women that were outside the domestic sphere. It is common knowledge that the proportion of women engaged in work outside the home was minimal, with the exception of workingclass women who laboured as domestics, mercantile clerks, or in factories. There were few women in medicine11 or law12 until well into the twentieth century, but their rate of participation in the teaching profession was quite high. The composition of the teaching profession in Ontario provides a good example. From 1871 onward, women began to outnumber men as public school teachers. By 1891, 60 percent of the over 10,000 public school teachers were women. By 1900, the percentages of women and men in public school teaching were 73 percent and 27 percent, respectively.13 In fact, by 1891 women teachers accounted for nearly 20 percent

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of all professionals in Ontario alone, as indicated in the census. As many scholars have demonstrated, women's teaching roles were largely confined to the primary grades and often regarded as an extension of their biological role as nurturers. Thus, the issue of professional women must be contextualized more clearly. For example, according to the Ontario data, the proportion of women among all professionals was 19.8 percent in 1891; when female public and high school teachers are removed from this figure, the percentage drops to 6.7 percent. 14 It was Canadian Men and Women of the Time that actually provided a better depiction of representative women. The selective tradition was equally hard at work in Morgan's choice of women and their occupations as it was with men. The reasons for this selection will be discussed below. The space afforded to women in Morgan's text was significant for a number of reasons. First, as already mentioned, he included 94 women, an admittedly meagre number, amounting to little more than 3 percent of the total biographies in that edition. Given the cultural and administrative constraints imposed on women's opportunities in the professions, the clergy, and politics, Morgan was limited in the number of female subjects who fitted into those categories. Table 5.2 provides a breakdown of women's occupations in Canadian Men and Women of the Time. This provides a second point of significance. In contrast to his Types of Canadian Women, Morgan included only two "women of title"; these were the only women whose primary social role could be said to be domestic or traditional in character, at least as their entry-ticket into a biographical dictionary. In other words, virtually all the female subjects of this text were portrayed as having major interests and/or a career outside the home. As with Morgan's portraits of men, women were framed within their contributions to the nation. The most significant category in this regard is that classified as "Cultural." Nearly three-quarters of all female subjects can be categorized in one or another area of cultural activity. It is necessary to note subdivisions in this broad category, such as Author, Journalist and Artist, because these are the principal areas of occupational and social participation. No suggestion could be sustained that this was the dominant type of social activity for women in Canadian society at the time, but a strong argument can be made that this was the principal category of representativeness for women for cultural and class reasons, not simply because of the number of women represented. The occupation of the few women portrayed by Rose, and by Morgan in his earlier work, Celebrated

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Canadians, all fell within the "Cultural" category. The proportion of women in the professions in Morgan's later work was not insignificant either, although only fifteen women were in this category.

TABLE 5.2

WOMEN'S OCCUPATIONS MORGAN'S CANADIAN MEN AND WOMEN OF THE TIME (%) Cultural Author (Novelist, Poet) Journalist Artist Actress Vocalist Musician Professional Medical Academic Legal Business Other Temperance Advocate Women of Title Agricultural Factory Inspector Religious

31.9

22.3 7.4 5.3 5.3 2.1 8.5 6.4 1.1 1.1 3.2 2.1 1.1 1.1 1.1

At this point, the suggestion can be strongly made that the women Morgan included in 1898 appeared to possess a far greater degree of relative autonomy, individually and socially, than the majority of those in his text of five years later. Nearly 43 percent of the 1898 group had engaged in some type of higher educational activity relevant to their careers. Slightly less than one-half of this figure (20.2 percent of all female entries) had attended university, most of them graduating with a baccalaureate or higher degree. The remainder had engaged in some form of occupationally oriented education, such as artistic or vocal training with private tutors or in professional studios. These activities must be regarded as more than leisure interest, since it was noted in Morgan's descriptions as 156

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relevant to women's public recognition. As in the biographies of men, Morgan appeared to be drawing attention to the value and availability of higher education or training both because of its usefulness to individuals and because it became, in many cases, the vehicle through which their contributions to Canadian society were made. The inclusion of a more autonomous group of women demanded that the style of their representation be quite different in content and tone than that of the sketches in Morgan's text of 1903. Mary Louisa CarusWilson was a typical example of a woman whose initiative and intelligence appeared to be the chief resources for her achievements. Her sketch began with references to her parents, similar to so many of the sketches in Morgan's later work. But important points of contextualization filled out the remainder of the biography: Born at Yorktown, Surrey, England, she was educated at University College, London (B.A. 1883), and has since devoted herself to a life of usefulness. Besides giving many lectures in London and elsewhere on the history of Christian missions, the systematic study of Holy Scripture, General Literature and Education, she became the founder and president of the "College by Post," which gives gratuitous instruction by correspondence to girls unable to avail themselves of professional teaching. Over 250 teachers have been enroled on its staff, and nearly 4,000 students have availed themselves of its classes. Mrs C.-W. is the author of several works, among them "Clews to Holy Writ" (1892); "Medical Education of Women" (1895) ... [etc.]. In Canada she has been elected V.-P. of the Montreal branch of the National Council of Women, and has lectured on Browning and other subjects before the Women's Art Association of Montreal.15

A few other details followed, including mention of her husband, a professor of engineering at McGill University, but the sketch was far different in tone from those that were essentially celebrating a woman as a domestic helpmate for a socially significant male. Sketches of such autonomous women could also be found in Morgan's Types of Canadian Women, although they comprised a minority. One such sketch was that of the sculptor Mildred Peel: Miss Peel Miss Mildred Peel, a successful sculptor and painter, is a sister of the late Paul Peel, R.C.A., who received the gold medal at the Paris Salon for especial excellence in painting. A native of London, Ontario, she studied abroad, and on her return to

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Canada, opened a studio in Toronto. Her chief work has been the execution of a number of portrait busts of Canadian public men for the Provincial Museum, Toronto. In 1901 she executed a very fine bust of Laura Secord for the public monument erected in honour of the heroine at Lundy's Lane, and in 1903 she painted a successful portrait of the late Chief Justice Sir M.C. Cameron, for the Legislative Buildings, Toronto.16

In the sketches of women, life-course details were provided less frequently than in the sketches of men. The average age of women in Canadian Men and Women of the Time was 43.5 years, slightly lower than that of men. Nearly one-half of the women were between the ages of 30 and 44 years. Generational differences or similarities of social position can be only a matter of speculation. Fewer than 12 percent of women's sketches contained such information, but of those that did, the women's fathers held either professional or other non-manual occupations. On the whole, the women in Morgan's texts were split into two distinct groups—one that represented the traditional role of women in general in Canadian society, and one that represented some degree of change in opportunities and the adoption of a more autonomous role. The latter group displayed a wider range of social activities by which the representative woman could be defined. The types of women portrayed, and the style of their biographical portraits, need to be explained in a broader theoretical context, which requires a more thorough analysis of the dynamics of culture and a language that helps to explain it.

"DIFFERENTIATION" AND "FIDELITY": A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF GENDER REPRESENTATION An adequate analysis of women's biographies in this context can best be achieved through the application of a theory of society that provides a better understanding of the cultural arrangements between men and women. Although it is complex and often impressionistic, aspects of Georg Simmers theory of culture are useful here. In two of his essays, "Female Culture" and "The Relative and the Absolute in the Problem of the Sexes," there are direct and accessible statements concerning objective characteristics of culture, and the way gender relations operate within a culture.17 These writings are particularly useful here because of the historical juncture at which they were written—1911, not far removed from the period with which the present study is concerned. Simmel's essays

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provide two essential concepts—"differentiation" and "fidelity"—which serve as interpretive tools for understanding the overall representation of women and of men in the biographical dictionaries under study here. In the opening arguments in Chapter 1, it is stated that there is little possibility of understanding either the position of women in Canadian society or their biographical representation outside their integral relation to the social position and representation of men. Simmers two concepts, while not reciprocal, are strongly interactive, and their value for understanding gender relations should lend clarity to the entire study. Simmel's concepts of "differentiation" and "fidelity" as related to the formation of individuals and their social interactions, reflected, in general, the division of labour in society.18 They also focused on a social concept as well as a self-concept of what it meant to be male or female. There is evidence that, as generalizable cultural conceptualizations of men and women respectively, the meanings of these two concepts were functional in Canadian culture during the nineteenth century. Differentiation as a concept is practically manifested in, and is inseparable from, the historical development of the division of labour in society. In some respects, it is correspondent or equivalent to fragmentation as a social process relevant to labour. Without the assumption of a simplistic distinction between men's and women's labour,19 this process can be discussed briefly in elementary terms that are consistent with the styles of biographical portraiture. The gradual distancing of paid work from the domain of the household and its familial grouping was an initial differentiation in the style of life for men.20 This division created two distinct sites of social activity: the home and the workplace separate from it, such as the factory. These two social spaces contained different relations of authority. Further, two consequences of the progress of the division of labour in the workplace were a reduction of holistic labour processes and the acquisition of specialized knowledge applicable to fragmented processes or components. Since it was predominantly men who pursued paid labour outside the home, and since it was predominantly men who acquired formal and diversifiable knowledge, as was abundantly evident in their representative biographies (and elsewhere), it was men's lives that were differentiated in social activity and authority. That is, men's lives were fragmented into the different social roles of worker, father, husband, citizen, and so on. The advantage for men was a division of personality and an extension of its components into varied social spaces and activities, each of which had a 159

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distinct, objective status. "Moreover," Simmel argued, "and this is quite curious and difficult to express conceptually—this holds true even if he is committed to this objective and specialized task with a total intensity."21 For men, differentiation of self provided a social space for the adoption of roles that were dissimilar, by degrees, in purpose, location, and content. Each of these roles contained a fragment of identity, only partially related to other roles. The distinction between roles, however, was neither an empty space nor a value-free zone. Rather, the fact that there was a distinction between roles was the cultural affirmation of the differentiated self—its legitimation. Men's social participation and the range of social circles to which they belonged, discussed in the previous chapter, provided the empirical basis upon which such an assertion could be justified. That it was important and useful for men to extend themselves outside the home and family was a social consequence of the historical shift in places and types of labour, and the growth of specialized knowledge associated with fundamentally gender-privileged institutions. That it was also expedient socially to circulate more widely and in ever more situations outside both the home and the workplace was a testament to the necessity of differentiation for the development of the culture.22 Thus, as has been suggested in the previous chapter, one pillar upon which success for men rested was that of the varied social connections and networks they were able to establish and use for their own as well as national purposes. Furthermore, in contrast to evaluations of women, the probability was greatly reduced that one of these roles (or a component of his personality) would become the basis for an evaluation of a man's whole person. Men were not seen simply as doctors, businessmen or politicians, but as individuals whose value to society was based on their multiple progressive, complementary but distinct roles. The disadvantage of this was that it undermined what Simmel saw as the cooperative and creative powers of individuals and of human society as a whole. Of course, the networks established by men were seen to be of benefit to Canadian society, as well as to those individuals who belonged to them; that is simply the way in which the empirical relations of culture worked at one level. That the selective tradition identified representative men with a general human culture and with an emerging structure of feeling made it possible for wider claims to be made for their contributions than were actually real and significant. The differentiation of roles was a cultural condition that provided men with a social space for more varied interactions, and lent to them a

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more fluid morality. This is not to suggest that men shifted from moral to outright immoral behaviour. After all, to be characterized as representative required that a general standard of social behaviour be maintained in all situations, however self-defined by the community of men that might be. Rather, a more flexible morality allowed for a shifting between public behaviour and forms of private behaviour appropriate to male culture. The public persona of men was composed of those social relations, besides the domestic side of life, established as normative for occupational and other public service activities. One anomaly in public behaviour that was likely under scrutiny by women (as it sometimes was by institutions such as the Church) was the quasi-private activities of men in fraternities and clubs. The Masons, the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Oddfellows, and the like were personal networks of representative men. The ritualism that characterized these networks constituted respectable behaviour carried out in strict secrecy. Dramas depicting war and savagery, esoteric codes, and a ranking system based on the extent of a persons engagement in the ritual were all features that were distinct from other aspects of social participation. Mark C. Carnes has argued that these rituals were a release from the demands of public life.23 But whether or not such ritualism is included as an element of a man's diverse behaviour, it was the normative variability of social space and behaviour in men's style of life that projected—in form at least—standards of morality with potentially wider and more flexible boundaries. This did not go unnoticed by women. Some made this aspect of gender difference a public issue. Canadian, American and European women attending the International Congress of Women (lew), held in London, England, in 1899, were acutely aware of the double standard of morality that such differentiation legitimized. Five women, from England, Germany, Canada, Norway and France, read papers that spoke directly to the issue. One was Mrs. George Drummond, a Canadian (and one of Morgan's subjects):24 [T]he principle of one standard as opposed to two standards of morality was the principle whereby the life of the individual and of society as a whole could find its fullest realization. The idea that there was one standard for men and another for women led, by inevitable consequence, to terrible evils, both physical and moral.23

Although many of the concerns expressed in this context were motivated by the morality of the historical period, they should not be 161

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dismissed as merely a reflection of Victorian conservatism. Rather, there was a clear recognition that women as a social group, and especially the state through its legislative and educational systems, condoned the double standard of morality. Voicing these concerns constituted a recognition by these women that their respective national cultures had delineated modes of behaviour for each gender that were often in direct opposition and were generally contradictory. The contradiction in social relations moved Iva Welhaven of Norway to stress the object lesson in this problem. She argued that schools and churches promoted a single, generalized standard of morality. What she referred to as "the horrible heathen theory that there are two" standards of moral behaviour "has ruled life in home and society. From this vile idea have come numerous evils."26 Differentiation, with its legitimation of diverse behaviours, was the historically accepted form of the male personality and life-course in Canadian culture. It allowed boys the prerogative of diverse social action, while the lives of girls were expected to be more homogeneous and selfcontained. An article in an issue of the Journal of Education for Upper Canada in 1873, for example, offered the following characterization of boys and girls: All the way from the cradle up to womanhood a girl seems to fall naturally into her place, or to the place assigned to her, and never appears to feel awkward or in the way. But there is a period in the life of a boy, when neither he, his guardian, or friends know where he belongs or how he should be treated.27

It was under the pretence of such a potentially troublesome personal exploration that boys could experiment with indecision and commitment.28 This attitude was widely disseminated in children's literature, such as the periodical Pleasant Hours. An article titled "Being a Boy" described boys' chores as activities in which the time-honoured prerogative of procrastination, and getting away with as little work as possible, was what separated boyhood from the more rigid requirements for girls. The boy "has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business."29 Although experimentation on the part of growing boys was accepted, a freewheeling masculinity was not on the social agenda. Boys growing up for society remained the dominant theme of socialization. Therefore, along the path to becoming a man, a boy had to reproduce established forms of social interaction. Among the pleasures and duties of being male was the opportunity to affirm the historical and project change:

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A key premise of Simmel's argument was that culture was not asexual; the specialized activities of legal judgment, the propagation of religious faiths and certain forms of art were, for example, in the history of Western civilization, the domain of men. Men's lives, according to Simmel, always have the appearance of dynamism, of propelling culture forward while men as a group reap the most substantial benefits.31 Differentiation indicates that men's style of life moves along with the development of culture. The specialization of work and other social activities, and the legitimation of the social and psychological distance between those fragments, are the strongest social expressions of differentiation. Fidelity, on the other hand, characterized women's style of life. Whether or not women pursued paid labour outside of the home, the household remained their physical and biographical domain. As the household underwent an objective transformation from a place of work, remuneration and domestic activities to one of domestic activities alone, the subjective character of women underwent a similar transformation— from paid labour and domestic work to unpaid domestic work, a condition reflected upon by Canadian, American and European women during this period.32 The course of a woman's life was inwardly drawn and socially constrained, while that of a man's life was externally oriented. For Simmel, this transformation meant that a woman's life was grounded in domestic space as mother, wife and unpaid worker. As such, her biological being—her body—was the source of all her social relations. The interactions of a woman with others were based on the immediacy and cultural extension of her biological functions and needs: childbearing, the socialization of children, domestic duties, and personal appearance.33 All her expressions originated in and returned to her self. Simmel was sensitive to the way in which this exposure of the self left women vulnerable to the negative effects of even simple criticisms. "There is a sense in which the lack of differentiation," he wrote, "and the self-contained uniformity of woman's psychic nature make it impossible for any attack upon her to remain localized. Every assault continues from the point of attack until it covers the entire personality, in which case it effects all possible points that are easily vulnerable or injured."34 Where men enjoyed

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a moral and social diversification of their being, women were perceived as individuals whose "self-sufficient and self-contained character ... is oriented to the man—to what is intended to please, serve and complement him."35 A woman's biography, like her subjective being, was legitimated by her co-presence with significant others.36 Writing in the Canada Educational Monthly, John Franklin Goucher suggested a spatial image of gendered social involvement that corresponded with Simmel's assessment. "Woman's special work," Goucher wrote, "is still centred in the home and circles outward, while man's special work is outside the home and circles inward, each essential to supplement the other."37 How does this theoretical perspective on culture and gender help to explain the manner in which men and women were portrayed in, or selected for, the biographical dictionaries? As indicated above, affirming the relationship between the empirical data on men's lives and Simmel's concept of differentiation makes it virtually self-evident in the case of men. Where one finds even greater support for his perspective is in the selection of women deemed representative by Morgan (and minimally, by Rose). The differences that Simmel outlined in his conceptualization and representation of men and women are sustained in all the categories of occupational and social activity in the biographies. But these differences are especially relevant for those categories covering women's involvement in the arts and certain professions, precisely where Simmel put great emphasis in his explanation of the positive aspects of what he referred to as "female culture." Simmel argued that, for the most part, the arts were less than autonomous expressions of life-activity. Drama, musical performance, and the like were essentially "reproductive"—reproducing a given pattern formulated or otherwise determined by the predominantly male culture. These were not, Simmel insisted, original forms of production or expression, and because of the cultural context in which they were carried out, they did not have a life beyond their immediate, staged presentation. This was recognized implicitly in the field of drama by a participant in the ICW. In her speech, Genevieve Ward said that the "art of an actress consists in projecting an individuality not her own upon the consciousness of her audience. The words of the author of the play are her pigments, and all her art cannot save the picture if he or she has not known how to choose and use them in a real, yet picturesque manner."38 The actual "life" of these performance was within the woman herself, while their content and much of the form of performance were determined by others.

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Artistic effort was an expression of female fidelity—the self-contained woman whose person was never fragmented, but was whole throughout any work in which she was engaged.39 As an expression of an holistic self, artistic endeavour was analogous to domestic life. But if artistic work was virtually the same as every other aspect of a male-dominated culture, why did Simmel concentrate so much on demonstrating both the traditional character of this kind of personal and social activity, and its potential as a vehicle for truly autonomous expression? One reason was his own awareness of women's artistic endeavours, as demonstrated in "Female Culture."40 There, he was reflecting on an area of public display in which it was increasingly possible for women to enter and even make a career.41 This is the crucial point. Simmel's argument that women predominantly reproduced the previously composed and sanctioned patterns of male culture was undoubtedly valid. Their artistic expressions might then have been dismissed had it not been that these expressions were public in character. The constraints on women's expression could not obscure the fact that, in Europe and North America, the most available path to their representativeness was through music, drama, and art—through the public reproduction of cultural expressions already produced, for the most part, by men. This crack in the barriers that surrounded male culture was acclaimed at the ICW in 1899. Two afternoon sessions of this Congress were devoted to drama and art as legitimate and "noble" occupations for women. Genevieve Ward discussed her view of drama as an occupation for women—a means of gaining an independent livelihood, not a leisure activity or a hobby. She spoke of drama as a field of work in terms as strong as if they were to be applied to a scientific profession or to mechanical arts. Drama required good looks, good health, a knowledge of art and of history, and "quick intelligence, good memory, good temper, and a faculty for work." Success in any walk of life must be won by work. Work honours those who fit themselves to perform it worthily. It cannot be honoured by the worker, for it is in itself an instrument of progressive regeneration as well as development, and the divinely appointed means by which civilisation has been made possible. There is no higher privilege in this world than to be a good worker in any chosen field.42

Art was similarly described. Emily Sartain celebrated the independent female artist who was able to create a distinctive style. Her emphasis

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transcended the individual, however, and concentrated on the "business openings" afforded by the "spirit of invention and creative ideality [that] is undoubtedly the leading tendency of our time."43 The opportunities available to women in the field of art were numerous, but most such openings would be largely connected with "practical design." That is, many women were working in the field of art, "but more silently," for their skills "come before the public transmuted by machinery and unconnected with their names" in the production of "textile work, carpets of various weaves, lace curtains, table cloths, fringes, horse blankets, and so forth."44 The number of women who attempted to make a name or a living for themselves by writing was restricted by relations between the sexes. Judging from the number of women engaged in such work who were represented in Morgan's text, interest in a literary career was high. Few women were able to achieve genuine autonomy in this occupation, however, or a position of authority. Journalism, though, was a well-trod route for women, as Gillian Thomas recently noted. In her discussion of the English women who contributed to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, she remarked that, despite "the unlikelihood of achieving editorial power, it is clear that women tended to see the periodical press as one of the most promising routes to a literary career."45 Indeed, reading the biographical sketches of women in Morgan's work of 1898, one notices a general tendency among those classified as "authors" and "journalists" to bridge both forms of writing. A more in-depth study of the career trajectory of these women, not easily garnered from their sketches, might well show the pre-eminence of journalism in launching or sustaining other types of literary work. These views of women in art, drama and literature support Simmel's contentions as applied to the manner in which women were prefigured in Canadian culture. Their work clearly went beyond the traditional activity of domestic space, but retained aspects of the cultural constraints historically placed on women. But, because of the public character of artistic efforts, it was drama, art, and music that were the means by which women could enter the arena of representativeness. "Public" in this context transcends the stage or the printed page. It should be understood here in the sense of the domain of national progress. It is this dual, sometimes contradictory, rationale that brought women in such numbers into Morgan's work at the end of the century. It was the evident easing of constraints that permitted women to be recognized for their talents, which were, in some measure, devoted to the progress of the nation. After all, if Simmel

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was correct, artistic expression was fundamentally the promotion by women of a male-constructed culture. While these occupations may be considered of a less autonomous nature, Simmel had important things to say about the medical field, which was just opening up to women in Europe and Canada. Simmers argument perhaps offers reasons as to why Canadian and other societies were slower to make opportunities in the professions available to women than was the case in the arts. In contrast to artistic performance, Simmel speculated on the possibility of "a performance that is both more original and more specifically female [developing] in the spaces left by the male performance." Here he was referring to medical practice, but more generally to the professions that increasingly, at this historical juncture, involved an application of formal and specialized knowledge. Too often, the application of such objective knowledge in medicine resulted in a "premature conclusion" about a patient's condition. Instead, he argued, attention should be drawn to the ability of women "to empathize with the condition of the patient." Because the patient's condition was a part of his or her being—biologically and biographically—the discomfort, pain, or disability could not be extracted from the person; nor could they be separated from the social and occupational conditions out of which an infirmity arose. Because of the fidelity to person and social role that emphasized subjectivity, women possessed an ability, even a stronger desire, to bypass the objective, scientific approach and reach the patient through a more nurturing and empathetic understanding—a form of knowledge—of their physical (or mental) condition. "I regard this sort of knowledge [i.e., subjective] as a universally operative a priori of the medical art."46 For Simmel, this was an argument for restraining the impersonal approach to medical care that seemed to come naturally with "objectivity" and the specialization of knowledge. Instead, the unique qualities of female culture provided a space for women to enter this professional field. Henry Morgan was no social theorist and was not inclined to recognize that the potential for women's special perspective might alter the manner in which medical care was provided, or the substance of medical education. He was, however, quite willing to recognize women's contributions to the specialization of knowledge in medical occupations as the broadening of opportunity in Canadian society. This was conspicuous in some of his biographical sketches. For example, Georgina Pope of Prince Edward Island had been trained as a nurse in New York and assumed the 167

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superintendent's post at a hospital in Washington, D.C. She was decorated by the Empire for her services as head of nursing staff for the Canadian contingent in the South African campaigns. The sketch of Eliza Ritchie of Halifax offered a similar example of a comparatively non-traditional occupation. Women teachers were in great abundance, as has already been noted, but rare was the woman who went beyond the grammar school classroom into the heavily male-dominated field of university teaching and research. Ritchie, however, received a doctorate in philosophy from Cornell in 1889, and by 1897 was associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College, publishing widely in academic journals.47 In contrast to the biographical representations of artistic personalities, which tended to emphasize the expression of the whole self, those of professional women were taken over by the more socially significant specialization of their professions. In the sketches of these and virtually all the women in Canadian Men and Women of the Time, it is possible to see the "new" contributions of women to Canadian society. Simmers concepts of differentiation and fidelity provide some additional insight into the underlying significance of men and women in collective biographies. His approach provides a basis for analyzing durable social relations and their practical meanings in the conception and representation of gender relations. The application of Simmel's theory can be affirmed in three ways. First, as in other industrializing nations, there was a tendency in Canadian society toward occupations requiring specialized knowledge. These were dominated by men partly because of the historical development of the division of labour and partly because of men's prerogative of differentiation in cultural and occupational activities. Secondly, the social position of women was characterized by fidelity, in body and in biography. This conceptual and practical vehicle allowed for the retention of an holistic relationship between self and social action, but restricted women's range of social participation to largely traditional functions. However, social values as generalizable components of objective culture were potentially available to both men and women, albeit with differences and at the expense of the holistic relationship between self and social action. Thirdly, while these values and typologies of self were theoretically open to generalized distribution, only a minority of men and fewer women were considered representative. The conceptual and practical distinctions proposed by Simmel, were components of Canadian culture and provided an important basis for the depiction of men and women in these texts, although neither of the

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two genders was fully and adequately portrayed. The extent to which men and women were featured in these texts affirmed traditional gender relations. The fact that women were represented in the predominantly male domain of collective biography did not alter those relations, but merely showed ways in which women could also "represent the nation." While it is argued that Morgan's presentation of women and men affirms the theoretical propositions of Simmel, it stands as a critique, not a condemnation, of Morgan's efforts. If the theory is correct, how else could Morgan have portrayed his subjects, short of attempting a cultural critique of his own—not something that a man of Morgan's position and intellect would likely have done. Thus, while it confirms a cultural theory, the eventual inclusion of women in such texts as Canadian Men and Women of the Time, more or less on their own terms, must be seen as a genuine, if limited, attempt to celebrate the public emergence of women in Canadian society. Their belonging to a particular class or their relationships with middle class men were stressed, but Morgan neither questioned the value of their contributions, nor speculated on the dangers to Canadian society of women's deviation from traditional roles. In terms of the internal validity of these texts, Morgan's motive was to represent the traditional as well as the "new" forms of national contribution, and not to question the historical basis of women's restricted social participation. The biographical dictionaries operated on the basis of the ideology of the men behind them. The subjects of biographical dictionaries exhibited class values and cultural contexts that were alleged to be generalizable to all of Canadian society. But it was recognizable social power—class, prestige, political power—that determined who would be representative of Canadian culture. Both the men and the women given a space in these collective biographies conformed to a cultural standard. They were people who, consciously or not, at this historical juncture had the qualifications, the characteristics and the cultural prerogative to contribute to the formation of a distinctive middle class. NOTES 1. Rose included three women in the first volume of his Cyclopaedia published in 1886; two of these reappeared in the second volume. 2. Henry James Morgan, Types of Canadian Women (Toronto: William Briggs, 1903), vii. 3. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, v. 4. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, vii-viii.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, vii. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 299. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 259. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 219. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 194. Saturday Night, vol.16 (October 10, 1903), 5. In 1891, women accounted for 1.7 percent of doctors in Canada; twenty years later, this proportion had increased to just 2.7 percent. See V. Strong-Boag, "Canada's Women Doctors: Feminism Constrained," in L. Kealey, ed., A Not Unreasonable Claim (Toronto: Women's Press, 1979). See Constance Backhouse, Petticoats and Prejudice (Toronto: Women's Press, 1991). An important study which focuses on the character and statistical changes in women's position as teachers in Ontario is Donna Varga Heise (Varga), "Gender Differentiated Teacher Training: The Toronto Normal School, 1847-1902," M.A. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1987, some of which is available in Donna Varga, "Neutral and Timeless Truths: A Historical Analysis of Observation and Evaluation in Teacher Training," Journal of Educational Thought 25(1) 1991: 12-26. See also Alison Prentice, "The Feminization of Teaching in British North America," Histoire sociale/Social History (May 1975): 5-20. The census category is much broader than my category of "professional" in this study. But it should be noted that women's contribution to education and to the development of the profession itself was growing. A survey of the proceedings of the DEA and the Ontario Educational Association, beginning in the 1890s, provides evidence of the growth of women's participation. Henry James Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 165-66. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 269. Both essays in G. Oakes, ed., Georg Simmel, On Women, Sexuality and Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Simmel's theory of culture is found in its most systematic form in The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). David Frisby, Sociological Impressionism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1992), 27. A number of works could be cited, but the general orientation here follows R.E. Pahl, Divisions of Labour (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 17-73; and Maxine Berg, "Women's Work, Mechanisation and the Early Phases of Industrialization in England," in P. Joyce, ed. The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 64-98. Simmel, "Female Culture," 70, 90-94; The Philosophy of Money, 463-65. Simmel, "Female Culture," 70. Although the matter goes beyond our historical time-frame, it is precisely this necessity which limits historically, the point of Simmel's argument. Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); see also, M.A. Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). See Types of Canadian Women, 94. "Social Necessity for an Equal Moral Standard for Men and Women," Proceedings, ICW, vol. 7 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1900), 130. Interestingly, considering what has

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

been said about this above, about one-half of Morgan's biographical sketch of Mrs. Drummond's husband, George Alexander, was devoted to her work in the Women's National Council of Canada. See Morgan, Canadian Men and Women, 286-87. icw, vol. 7, 130. "Our Boys," Journal of Education for Upper Canada (1873), 154. Barbara Ehrenreich's The Hearts of Men (New York: Anchor, 1983) offers an excellent example of the durability of this aspect of men's style of life. "Being a Boy," Pleasant Hours (April 1888), 30. "Being a Boy," 30. Simmel, "Female Culture," 88-89, 93. Benjamin Fish Austin, Woman, Her Character, Culture and Calling (Brantford ON: Book and Bible House, 1890); icw 1900, vol. 6, 189-219. For examples of the latter, see the sketches of E. Allen and K. Buckland in Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 7, 37. Simmel, "Female Culture," 70. Simmel, "The Relative and the Absolute in the Problem of the Sexes," 105. Simmel, "Female Culture," 74. John Franklin Goucher, "The Advisable Differences Between the Education of Young Women and that of Young Men," Canada Educational Monthly (February 1900), 51. Genevieve Ward, "Drama as a Field for Women," ICW, vol. 3, 191-92. As regards such self-contained expressions, see Gillian Thomas, A Position to Command Respect: Women and the Eleventh Britannica (Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 62-63. See Simmel, "Female Culture," 81-84. On the rise of such occupations for women, see Mary Kelley, Private Women, Public Stage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Genevieve Ward, "Drama as a Field for Women," ICW, vol. 3, 191. Emily Sartain, "Art in its Various Branches as a Profession for Women," ICW, vol. 3, 65. Sartain, "Art in its Various Branches," 72. See Thomas, A Position to Command Respect, especially Chapter 5. Simmel, "Female Culture," 76. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 274, 284.

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CHAPTER 6 THE STRUCTURE OF FEELING IN THE EMERGING MIDDLE CLASS

AT THE LEVEL OF NATIONAL CULTURE the collective biographies promoted qualitative change in the "structure of feeling" as a universal interest in Canadian society. This literary-cultural term was introduced at the outset of this study as a concept within which the culture of a particular historical moment is represented. It is a way of articulating the buried relations of culture that tend to move, direct, or pressure individuals in a society. The use of this literary term is relevant because it provides a means of understanding a social group which, historically, has not yet been able to acquire a durable and accurate definition as a class. It is for this reason that historians have made much of the pervasiveness of middle-class culture. It is in the consolidation and dissemination of values and social meanings, a process that is undoubtedly linked to specific class interests, that a pervasive feeling becomes meaningful as a feeling of the whole culture, rather than a feeling confined to the class generating it. This seems especially true when a class has conflict attenuation as one of its defining characteristics. If language, manners, values, and attitudes, among other things, make up the structure of feeling, we can demonstrate that such a feeling, identifiable as a less tangible component of culture, is nevertheless something which is "as firm and definite as 'structure' suggests."1 If historical context includes the changing opportunity structure and economic and institutional relations in Canadian society, the symbolic force of a structure of feeling becomes distinguishable. Just as an individual looks at a painting, sees a play, or reads a novel, and thus gleans some of the substance of a culture, so too can the reading of multiple biography reveal a feeling for the conventions and contingencies of the normative life-course that are forged within that culture. Williams writes, "It is a way of responding to a particular world which in practice is not felt as one way among others—a conscious 'way'—but is, in experience, the only way possible."2 Such culturally determined responses may be 773

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one element which binds the parallel types of time with which Philip Abrams characterized biographical contingencies. The structure of feeling of any period must be understood as a product of social change, and both feeling and change are elementary to the method of collective biographers. Donald Creighton's characterization of biography as a series of situations to be explicated by the author of a life story was raised in Chapter 1 of this study. In Chapter 3, Henry Morgan's suggestion that a number of events or situations in a person's lifetime form the core of the short biography confirmed Creighton's view. Morgan's use of birth, marriage, entry into an occupation, and so on, were examples of what Norbert Elias referred to as "process-reduction"—a means of overshadowing the complex content of social relations which brought about the realization of personal situations and events. William Cochrane's belief that his biographies formed object lessons for his readers was an idea closely akin to Morgan's analysis of the life course as a series of readily definable situations. This style of biography is not without its problems. But it is in the very portrayal of situations that the limitations and opportunities of the short biography become apparent. For Morgan, the key situations of life imply process-reduction, and each situation appears to have only tentative links with others. The orderliness of a life depends on this chronological punctuation. Each biography appears as a fragmented account in a style accepted as inherent to the short form of the life story, thus sharing Carlyle's dictum for purifying the public presentation of a life: a person is represented as all that he or she needs to be for a public. Although he was remarking on the style of full-length biographies, Donald Creighton aptly described the stylistic effect of the shorter portrait. The problem with the style of Canadian biography, he suggested, was that after reading several of them, one became "aware of a growing and uncomfortable sensation that one is reading about one and the same man. Is it possible that, even in Canada, people can be so indistinguishably alike?"3 He called this style of representation "the Procedure Appropriate for the Portrayal of Public Personages." By the time of Creighton's writing in the mid-twentieth century, a standard had been reached and maintained. The key word in Creighton's formula was "public." It may have been that descriptors of character such as "uniqueness" and "individuality" suggested a variety of types of representativeness. The impression garnered when reading multiple biographies was that these men shared—in the public domain— more important practical and distributable qualities useful for nation 174

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building. Thus, the complex of reduction, fragmentation, and conformity is problematic and may at the time have diminished readers' understanding of the dynamic circumstances of social action that went into producing actual biographical situations deemed worthy of public recognition. But by engaging in such reductionism, collective biographers were merely abstracting the significant "structured" feelings that they preferred to be readily identifiable to their readers. So, while fragmentation and conformity may have had the result of reducing the individual, it was simultaneously—in cultural terms—the ultimate, conflict-free representation of the magnitude of the person in society in relation to his or her fellow subjects. The short biography amplified the singular through the filter of an individual's relation to a multiplicity of categorical situations lived by themselves and others. Each biography could be read against the backdrop of shared, personal similarities; each was a representation of the triumph of particular values, meanings, directions and expectations in that cultural present. The short biography is a starting point for unearthing buried social relations and the structure of feeling of a particular social time. Beyond the ordinary events of life, the biographers brought forward such phenomena as more extensive education opportunities, divers occupational possibilities, success, achievement, public participation—all of which were the ends of social processes that were comparatively new for this social period. The symbolic character of these events was designed to draw the reader's attention to opportunities open, it was claimed, to virtually all Canadians. Williams argues that the problem with many approaches to culture and society is the habitual reference to them in the past tense. Conditions of culture and society in any present moment were presented as the result of processes in the past, converting "relationship, institutions and formations ... into formed wholes rather than forming and formative processes." Analysis tended to centre on "the fixed explicit forms [while] living presence is always, by definition, receding."4 Perhaps the selected life-course events in a short biography signal the ever-receding past as they recount already-lived experiences. But if a structure of feeling can be extracted from the collective biographies, it is because a particular "quality of experience" is understood as emerging, or present, or distinguishable from the past characteristics of experience. All the compilers of the biographical dictionaries late in the century—Rose, Cochrane and Morgan—had concentrated on the living, not the dead, as Morgan did in his earlier work. 175

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They relied on their own present for instruction and example to new generations, for pointing toward a new structure of feeling. The same has been done in our own historical period. The genre of collective biography has grown substantially through the twentieth century. The international variants of the corporate biography Who's Who, for example, have retained the form and style of presentation found in the works studied here. The rise of popular magazines since the early part of this century has introduced an accessible, widely distributed source of short biographical sketches. These have differed in form from those of the nineteenth century, while retaining some elements of similarity. One of the most important studies of short popular biography in the twentieth century is one carried out by Leo Lowenthal. His analysis sheds some light on the subject of the present study: namely, the relationship of this kind of biographical writing to an emerging structure of feeling in popular culture in which a particular social group may play a prominent role. Lowenthal's study of biographies in popular magazines was first published in 1944.5 "The Triumph of Mass Idols" analyzed short biographies that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers in 1940 and 1941, and compared them with samples taken from those two magazines and other popular publications over a forty-year period. Much of Lowenthal's discussion of popular culture takes place in the context of its comparison with art and literature, and contains elements of cultural analysis compatible with that of Williams. Although popular biography does not fall neatly under the heading of art or literature, it does possess some of their essential components insofar as it conveys norms and values that are revealed in the dialectic of self and society, and the changing structure of feeling in a period of time. Lowenthal states that the difference between art and popular culture "is the difference between an increase in insight through a medium possessing selfsustaining means and mere repetition of given facts with the use of borrowed tools."6 Concepts such as nation, family, free enterprise, among others are themes that transcend national boundaries and political systems to form consistent meanings for a culture. These terms are equivalent to those that have already been described in this study as concepts of solidarity. These are the tools which can be transported over time and space to bind expediently the most diverse groups or individuals into a generalizable human culture, however superficial and transient that generality might be. 176

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It has already been noted that popular culture thrives on partiality in the portrayal of lives, the explanation of events, and the understanding of living cultures. Popular culture is the positivist appropriation of a multitude of facts that are deemed to be the marketable commodities of a particular ideology. In his discussion of this phenomenon, Lowenthal does not ignore the ideological value of popular culture. To him, it is a central, perhaps defining, element of a society. Both the expediency with which popular culture can appropriate, revise and disseminate information about people and its involvement in "the distribution of power' give it this measure of importance.7 The selective tradition is itself an instance of the distribution of power in its distinction and legitimation of the significant and, by implication, the less significant in culture. The specifics of this distribution include not only relations of class and gender, but also the meaning of character and certain traits of character marketed as normative commodities. Some analysis of Lowenthal's study is useful for the further development of the present project. Among biographies published in popular magazines from 1901 to 1941, the numbers of people in various occupational categories changed considerably. In this period there was a gradual decline in the proportion of biographies of politicians—from 46 percent to 25 percent. Business and professional categories declined from 28 to 14 percent between 1901 and 1934, and then rose to 20 percent in the period from 1940 to 1941. The percentage of entertainers more than doubled during this period—from 26 to 55 percent—but, within that category, the proportion of "serious writers and artists" was halved. Popular entertainers (singers, film stars and sports figures) made up the difference.8 The importance of this shift in popular interest, according to Lowenthal, lay in the difference between those engaged in manufacturing and those who had become "idols of consumption." The former group, which he called "idols of production," were the American counterpart of the generations of businessmen, politicians and others of equivalent stature found in the biographical dictionaries explored here: We called the heroes of the past "idols of production": we feel entitled to call the present-day magazine heroes "idols of consumption." Indeed almost every one of them is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time: either he does not belong to vocations which serve society's basic needs (e.g. the heroes of the world of entertainment and sport), or he amounts, more or less, to a caricature of a socially productive agent.

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Lowenthal saw in these trends a change in the orientation of popular culture. By the 1940s, biographies were no longer tools for socialization and education, designed to orient the reader to the particular economic and social conditions fostered by those with qualities of great leadership and character. Instead, these biographies served as a "dream world of the masses," filling their leisure reading time with accounts of lives almost totally devoid of activity within the processes of social production. What is important here is the shift in emphasis over time. Such a change between the nineteenth-century biographies in Groups 1 and 2 has been noted in Chapter 3. It was certainly not characterized by a move toward leisure activity or popular cultural idols, as in Lowenthal's study. Rather, it was motivated by social structural demands of a different form of labour and citizenship. In his study, Lowenthal also found that "success" was a major focus, although less as an end result for "everybody who was strong, clever, flexible, sober enough to try" for it. Success had lost its "seductive charm" and had become a cultural commodity merely to be consumed. The authors of these life stories had created stereotypical paths: making it the hard way or getting a good break. Language, in this context as well, had worked its magic of process-reduction to produce a set of marketable linguistic gadgets to denote functional personal achievements. In the occupational groups that emerged in the survey of the years 1940 and 1941, Lowenthal concentrated on the commonality of characteristics among biographical subjects. His assumption was that commonality in the selection of people would produce a set of conventional statements about them. One of his concerns was to illuminate what he called the three scales of behaviour, which became the measure of social adjustment for these selected individuals. The three scales were "behavior toward material tasks; behavior toward fellow men; and behavior in relation to one's own emotions."10 A character trait was associated with each of these, respectively: efficiency, sociability, and personal restraint. For Lowenthal, these were concepts of adjustment and, in fact, actual procedures to be undertaken to achieve distinction. He provided several series of quotations from biographical articles reflecting stereotypical characteristics of those who fitted what he called a "catalogue of adjustment," or catalogue of normalcy. Obviously, the people of Lowenthal's research were at some distance in time and culture from those of the present study, but his general frame of reference and analysis is applicable to the biographies examined here.

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He was concerned to demonstrate how language was used sparingly to encapsulate a whole personality, and how an occupation or vocation could be identified with a person or vice versa. For example, with regard to his second scale of adjustment, "behavior toward fellow men," Lowenthal noted the following attributes of character given to the subjects of biographies: cooperation, sociability, good sportsmanship, and generosity, among others. Common attributes such as these were also applied to individuals in the other two scales.11 Unlike Samuel Smiles, who argued for the supremacy and autonomy of great individuals, Lowenthal suggested that the stereotypical phrases used to characterize his subjects left "no room for individuality," eliminating the space in which a biographer would ordinarily have explored the peculiarities of emotion and temperament. Of course, this fragmentary view of the individual differed little from that of the biographies of the nineteenth century. While Lowenthal argued that there appeared to be a difference between the subjects of the biographies and their social subordinates, he concluded that these biographies celebrated an "averageness" of attributes and behaviours, "the typical cross-section of the socio-psychological condition of modern society."12 He showed a range of people whose average set of traits could be readily identified in popular culture and corresponded to the demand structure of their social order, even as that order shifted in organization and purpose from one of production and efficiency to one of consumption and dependency. PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF BIOGRAPHICAL SUBJECTS

The same categories Lowenthal employed cannot be used here, but commonalities in the characteristics of individuals in the present study did exist. These characteristics, like those of Lowenthal's subjects, were indications of social adjustment—a catalogue of normalcy. They also reveal a feeling about the appropriate elements of the representative personality linked to the more visible features of the culture. There was less of a variety of characterizations in the nineteenth-century subjects which, from Simmel's perspective, would be one indication of the level of social development. It also suggests an effort on the part of the biographers to concentrate on particular traits which revealed a feeling of the culture as a whole. The biographers seemed to be employing a premise of the genre identified by Sidney Lee. For Lee, character and action were "inseparable" qualities for biography: "Character which does not translate itself into 179

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exploit is for the biographer a mere phantom."13 By linking character to culture and national development, personal action and exploit could be more clearly defined and appreciated. One such attribute, self-reliance, was raised in Chapter 2. Three additional traits can be used to indicate the cultural commodities marketed through the sketched personalities of the biographies: what a man is or does "for others;" "integrity;" and a man's manner of personal presentation and public exhibition. What a man was or did for others indicated something of his public presence: the way he carried out his duties as a citizen through his efforts as a participant in or on behalf of social institutions. It also had to do with his capacity to solicit affirmation from others for socially normative behaviours. For example, Morgan noted that Lieutenant Colonel Griffin "was remarkable for the scrupulous performance of duty—of all duties, the foremost with him was his duty to God."14 Rev. Mclntyre, the Bishop of Charlottetown, had a particular interest in spiritual service to the young.15 Rev. George Mitchell was "a patient and persevering worker with children and young people"; his work was responsible for "securing increased numbers" of people for his congregation.16 John Weatherstone, a railway contractor, was regarded by one of his early employers as a man whose "vigilance and foresight and unusual energy of character" at a time when defective rails were a threat to safety had saved the railroad and its personnel from "serious accidents."17 Rev. Thomas Nixon's missionary service on the Canadian Pacific Railroad was equally appreciated "by those hard handed toilers of the iron way."18 Cochrane regarded the career of James Foster, who served in assorted legal capacities from justice of the peace to probate judge, as one that was "marked by those characteristics which lead to honor and command success in the various public trusts which are thrust upon able men."19 These and other testimonials to public interaction with others were used not only to provide a sketch of character and public duty, but also to show by example the effort men gave to the institutions relevant to their vocations. This kind of behaviour is expected from the clergy, as it is an integral part of their calling. But not all clergy were recognized in their biographies as having the same committed approach to their flock. The portraits of some consisted of life-course information showing little more than a sequence of pastorates held and conventions attended, much like many of the sketches of military personnel in Morgan's early work. Less of a sense of vocation might be expected among railroad contractors 180

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or members of the legal profession. But the characterizations of Weatherstone and Foster draw attention to the work of men in relation to institutions, such as the railroad and the legal system, that were important to Canadian society. The testimonial to Rev. Nixon's positive effects on railway workers was a confirmation of the national significance of the CPR itself, a generalized social value that was assumed in this and many other sketches. Character traits of this kind were more culturally relevant when expressed as indispensable to existing institutional arrangements. "Integrity" was a trait of character that William Cochrane employed with considerable vigour. In common usage this term means the unbroken, sound, and pure quality of being, not the differentiation that Simmel argued was a distinguishing characteristic of men. Integrity is an aspect of moral character particularly evident in a persons interactions with others. This quality was especially relevant in the business community, where integrity was synonymous with honesty. Many businessmen in Cochrane's series showed what he called a "strict integrity" in their "dealings with others." The "strict" form of integrity was the most frequently cited variety of this personal quality. For example, two of Cochrane's subjects possessed a strict integrity based on their thorough knowledge of the businesses in which they were involved; for a third man, integrity was coincident with his "honest activity in the prosecution of his business."20 Charles D. Proctor, a merchant and hop factor in Montreal, exhibited a "sterling integrity" that was "an example to the present generation."21 William Neil, a retired farmer, possessed a "uniform integrity [which] fully entitles him to the high esteem in which he is held."22 Integrity was something that the businessman used as a tool of trade: his character mediated the exchange between goods or services and money. Cochrane's wide application of this concept shows that he considered it an instrument for particular kinds of social interaction, integral to the person and to the exchange process, and a concept of solidarity in business and the professions. The association of integrity with a person's vocation gives some legitimation to the argument that aspects of biography, such as the character of the person, are cultural commodities. This is consistent with Marcuse's reasoning, as discussed at the beginning of this study. It is consistent also with Lowenthal's contention that certain types of literature are "marketoriented commodities," in this case the short biography. The third trait in the catalogue of normalcy is the manner of self-presentation. Integrity and similar character traits, as well as the 181

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commitment to act for others, are forms of personal expression. In many portraits, biographers made an effort to describe in dramatic detail some of their subjects' modes of presentation and bodily expression. Here were the means by which a man, especially, moved others and showed his constitution to be solidly rooted in the demands of the culture. These descriptions of individuals' public character often represented the greatest departure from the sparse, instrumental style of portraiture of the later biographies. The latter style was often jettisoned for more expressive language, designed to impress upon the reader an image of the person in action. In sketching the character of George Van Norman, a man with over 40 years of experience in the law, Cochrane described both his manner of personal presentation and its relation to his skill as a professional: Clear and logical in argument, felicitous in expression, calm and persuasive, though forcible, he readily secures the attention of the Bench, which invariably gives to his reasoning the respect and weight which are due the efforts of superior counsel.23

Wilbur Matthews had become a successful businessman in Toronto in spite of "the absence of many advantages in early life." By others, he was considered an "active and pushing member of society" whose "genial manners and obliging ways" endeared him to his fellow-citizens.24 Frederick Ure, in the initial stages of a career as an engineer, was an example of early success due a young man of "good habits, attentive and skilful in his profession."25 Cochrane utilized a number of ornate phrases when describing the character and work of Rev. H.T. Crossley. The language of this sketch could be applied to many others, but Crossley clearly had in his favour an abundance of superior traits. He was a man of "broad catholic spirit and large sympathy," devoid of sectarianism and, as an Evangelical Methodist minister, open to the conversion of anyone of any faith. But Cochrane's description of his roots contained an important qualification: "His language is plain Anglo-Saxon and free from cant, slang, or coarseness"; his use of language in sermons was "clear, logical, pointed and convincing." Elaborating on Crossley's delivery, Cochrane stated that he "sings from the heart to the heart. His voice is a welltrained baritone, and possesses great clearness, sweetness and pathos. Every word is distinctly uttered."26 That Cochrane's series and Morgan's Types of Canadian Women included photographs of subjects gave credibility to the literary representation of a

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person's physical features. Pictorial representation lent support to a description of the manner in which a person carried out his or her social activity. Not surprisingly, biographical sketches of women were accompanied by a visual characterization of physical features. As Morgan said of Mme. Papineau, she was, "as her portrait indicates, ... a woman of much amiability of character."27 Lady Wentworth was represented, presumably by others rather than Morgan himself, "as being beautiful, accomplished and gay."28 Physical attractiveness was a matter of social standing and, apparently, national or regional ranking. Mrs. Alexander Allan was "regarded by Saturday Night as one of the handsomest and most attractive women in Canada,"29 while Kate Buckland was "thought to be the handsomest woman in New York."30 Of the well-established author Sarah Mountcastle, George Rose remarked that as a girl she was "peculiarly simple and unsophisticated," and even in adulthood gave "little attention to the conventionalities of life."31 Perhaps this was a polite way of separating Mountcastle from those women whose public biographies written by men concentrated largely on physical appearance and subordinate companionship to men. Perhaps it was a way of placing her in that comparatively small category of women to be acclaimed for their intellectual and creative skills. Such physical traits of the female person were, it appears, equivalent to a mans manner of personal and social presentation. In such characterizations, however, women were to be observed more as objects of stasis than of action, consistent with the concept of fidelity employed in the analysis of women in the previous chapter. Character traits were used in the biographies as expressions of social context. They were not simply abstract items in a catalogue of normalcy, but "proof"—evidence in social action that a subject actually possessed such attributes. Describing normative behaviours as "adjustment" demonstrates their effect as well as their possession. That is, adjustment is the affirmation of social norms, documented by the subject's acceptance of them in his or her person and actions. Character traits, then, are active conceptualizations of normative behaviour turned to distributable cultural commodities. Certainly, more of the person and varieties of affirmative contexts could have been used to bring home with greater assurance the value of character. But the repetition of similar traits in men, and in some women, in a variety of occupations or circles of common interest was a good substitute for the missing details of a life and served to legitimize the incompleteness of individual portraits.

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An important aspect of Lowenthals conceptualization of popular culture is that nothing but the observable, the positive, the untranscendent, was relevant and therefore necessary to portray or explain. Character traits became, in this regard, familiar aphorisms of person, action and social context, available and meaningful in an immediate sense to the audience appropriating the sparely described features and deeds of representative men and women. THE EMERGENCE OF A MEDIATING CLASS

The personality traits of representative Canadians were not unconnected to the issue of class. If characteristics of individuals, as well as their rationale for networking, were expressions of solidarity, then suggestions of class identity or affiliation ought eventually to surface. But a direct, stable identification of a middle class made up of representative Canadians is problematic, especially for the period of its emergence. The middle class appeared, indeed, still appears, not so much as a coherent social group, but as a feeling, a new social disposition. The problem of the middle class is not an unfamiliar one to historical and sociological studies of stratification in Canadian society. John Porter opened his mid-twentieth century study of class and equality in Canada with a brief discussion of "the Canadian middle class image." "One of the most persistent images that Canadians have of their society," he wrote, "is that it has no classes."32 This perception is rooted in the claims of pioneer and rural equality experienced or professed in the literature and politics of the nineteenth century. The "myth of classlessness," as John Hofley has argued, has been sustained well into the twentieth century because people seem to confine themselves to social interactions with like-situated people, all of whom are perceived to be middle class. Hofley has suggested that it "is precisely because we perceive our structure in this way, that we ignore both the extremes, that is, the poor and the rich."33 Those at either end on any scale of stratification seem progressively more obscured by our perception of the middle class as growing ever larger. Stuart Blumin arrives at essentially the same point in his study of the American middle class. Noting the difficulty of accurately defining the middle class, he states that the political tradition of consensus in the United States decrees that "America has no middle class, but rather a ubiquitous middle class culture."34 This indicates something of the problem of definition, particularly when we attempt to portray the nature of classes as the result, in part, of conscious affiliation.

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Social classes in capitalist societies are rational groups constructed through the dynamics of social organization and historical development. Since Marx's day, social theorists have oriented themselves toward the concept of consciousness when analyzing the industrial working class. Where open conflict is at issue the same is true with regard to the ruling or dominant class. Class consciousness develops in opposition to other organized class interests, an oppositional activism which the middle class repels. To account for this, Anthony Giddens has suggested that class consciousness be replaced by "class awareness." Whether imputing consciousness or awareness to upper- or lower-level social classes, or a comprehension of like-situatedness, some similarity in attitudes and beliefs will be evident in that class. However, "class awareness" may be applied to the middle class precisely because it "does not involve a recognition that these attitudes and beliefs signify a particular class affiliation, or a recognition that there exist other classes." In fact, class awareness may be an appropriate identifier for the middle class as an expression of their "denial of the existence or reality of classes^ In no way does this undermine Thompson's definition of classes as formed historically through struggle and experience. It does affirm Hobsbawm's contention that the middle class does not consistently organize itself along class lines, thereby reducing the impetus for its members to expose themselves, or base their awareness of others, in class terms. This view of the world as classless has a sound basis in popular perceptions, even though it is rife with obvious contradictions such as the concurrent recognition of some kind of class location in society. The popular view registers a desire not to be perceived as located in the lower class, and a recognition of the inability of most people to become members of the upper, more powerful, and culturally distant class. The view that the middle class is pervasive is also ideologically sound. Increased opportunity for education, growth in the division of labour, and demand for expert knowledge increased the probability that people would claim a position in the middle class. But probabilities of movement and security seem always to need managing in a class society. One of the mechanisms for this, as discussed in Chapter 2, was the attempt to reduce the foreseeable or possible tensions between members of a class with some political and cultural power and those of'a class with little or none. By the late nineteenth century, then, the meaning of class in Canadian society had gone beyond its simplest connotation of "division." As Williams has pointed out, the meaning of class as a social division had,

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from the sixteenth century, been associated with such other terms as rank, order, degree or estate, indicating a division in quality or value.36 The use of the term "class" was necessarily a recognition of distinctions generated by social conditions and meanings. Thus, the emergence of a "mediating" class in the late-nineteenth century coincided, as has already been suggested, with a shift in economic structure, and a concern over the extension of democratic rights to Canadians who were raised and culturally grounded in the working class. The growth of a middle class began at an historical juncture of potential, and actual class conflict. The opportunity to rise through the social strata was being promoted even as historical limitations of opportunity and mobility were at work. While elites such as the Family Compact were active early in the nations history, they had neither the power nor the durability to enforce a structure of privilege on a scale with elites in England and Europe. Further, the consolidation of power in the upper class occurred in Canada in conjunction with the rise of working class consciousness, militancy and organization and, once again, along with structural opportunities for social mobility. In this context opportunity, self-reliance, and equality were more marketable claims than even mildly reformist social demands originating in the lower class. What better juncture, one might ask, at which to acknowledge the existence of classes and promote a neutralizing mediator, but one that implies the existence of contesting conditions and ideas? There are several phrases with a meaning similar to that of "a mediating class" which positively relate to the characterization of the middle class as denoted by Giddens' concept of "class awareness." These were used frequently by the biographers to capture this conceptualization of differences in social position and opportunity. Consistent with Norbert Elias' analysis of personal pronouns, discussed earlier, these phrases referenced in some way "all classes" and served to bridge statements about the character of a person and his or her social participation in an environment of differences, even inequalities. Statements that a person was "loved by all classes" or "popular with all classes" accomplished two important things within the short biographies. First, they implicitly acknowledged the existence of classes without committing the subject to affiliation with any class. Secondly, they placed the subject in a position of authority over those in other, mostly nameless but logically subordinate, classes. This authority was used, figuratively, to mediate differences at the same time as it neutralized, through mediation, possible tensions presumed to be inherent or feared in these differences.

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Morgan, writing of RJ. Routh, a military man and member of the Executive Council in Upper Canada, stated that he was a "universal favourite with all classes of the community," while the death of Colonel Mountain in 1854 was "sincerely and deeply regretted by members of all the classes and orders of society."37 The lifework of these men had extended across all social classes to affect the lives of those who had somehow come to know Routh and Mountain. At least, that was the claim. But how did Routh and Mountain acquire this respect from others? They worked from positions of power within the political system to arbitrate the different social forces and move them toward settlement. Through their authority and social commitment, institutional arrangements were established, military battles fought, and money distributed—all for the good of the developing Canadian society and not, insofar as their biographers were concerned, for their own individual interests or for the benefit of the class to which they adhered. Rather, these interests were seen as universal, and as the rationale for the achievements of representative Canadians. While playing down personal gain, these interests also transcended the contentious interests of different classes. As Morgan progressed through his own literary efforts, he apparently recognized that claims about the social, even political intentions of his subjects were inconsistent with his objective style of portraiture. He often permitted their inclusion only in quotations from other sources, which he appended to sketches in Canadian Men and Women. For example, he included a statement attributed to the Toronto Globe that Ontario's Lieutenant Governor, Sir George Kirkpatrick, "has popularized his office in an exceptional degree amongst all classes of our people."38 Montreal's Board of Trade Souvenir said of the manufacturer and politician Jean Damien Rolland that he was a "citizen of whom all classes in the community may be justly proud." Rolland had secured his class position through numerous business ventures from paper manufacturing to banking; he was active on the Board of Trade and in the Citizens' League, and "took a prominent part in raising the national monument to Maisonneuve." His connection with the working class was clear in that the Rolland Paper Company, established by Rolland's father in 1842, provided, Morgan wrote, "employment to a large number of hands."39 Rev. Edmund Wood was originally placed in charge of a small chapel in Montreal which grew into "the splendid Church of St. John the Evangelist" and from which later sprang a "fine school, rectory and other appurtenances all of which owe their existence to Mr. Wood." For these 187

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works, among others surely, he was "beloved of the poor and highly respected by all classes."40 Cochrane, too, employed this attribute widely in his biographies. Revs. Philip Brennan and Malcolm Leitch held the esteem and respect of all classes for their ministerial work, James Holt for his relations with others in business, James Cochrane for the way in which he conducted his side of a local political contest, and John Leys commanded the respect "not only of the [legal] profession in Toronto, but of all classes, irrespective of creed or nationality."41 These are a few of the many to whom this socio-political relationship was attributed. The ascription of a class feeling to the specific work of individuals in society appeared as an oblique suggestion that a social conflict of some kind had figured in a particular biography. For the most part, however, the suggestion was eclipsed by the respect, esteem or love that all players of significance felt for the person in question. In the biographies, the settled, stable social situation was a concept worth communicating as a central component of the informative portrait itself. The reader of biographical sketches may have been left with a fairly definite impression that the character of these individuals—their manner of interaction with others in the community—was an integral feature which mediated potential conflicts and actual differences in larger social situations. At the level of the individual, the accuracy of this contention was evident in such men as Thomas Vincent, whose life was "an unanswerable argument against antagonism, and he is very popular with all who know him."42 But, because these were texts of collective biography, written and disseminated as expressions of the structure of feeling in the culture, the representational traits of singular persons soon developed into an image of collective traits, shared values and interests, and common manners of communication and interaction. What one sees portrayed in the totality of these works is a social environment of stability, of neutralized differences mediated by leaders in particular communities. The manner and achievements of these men marginalized the discontinuities in their social order by placing them and their kind in positions to mediate differences deemed to have no legitimacy in the stream of development of the national culture. How is this position compatible with other aspects of Canadian culture? Along with "classlessness," compromise has a peculiar Canadian ring to it. It is characteristically accepted as a value that informed the pragmatic approach to social settlement and national development, and 188

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that is embraced by contemporary multi-culturalism. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott have suggested, in their work on Canadian philosophy, that the concept of reason espoused in this discipline was employed as a kind of "philosophical federalism"; it was "a device to explore alternatives, to suggest ways of combining apparently contradictory ideas."43 This approach was not confined to any presumed abstract activities of philosophical thinking. Rather, because of the practical morality that informed much of the philosophy of men like George Paxton Young and John Clark Murray,44 the principled integration or compromise of differences was useful in the formation and maintenance of the Canadian community. Young's philosophy, for example, emphasized the power of the will, the development of character and individuality through moral, reasoned action. These were relative characteristics, developed through personal experiences in the contingent relations of individual and community. The relativism of experience was necessary, as Armour and Trott argue, in a "philosophy for an essentially pluralist society," which Young experienced around the period of Confederation. The relativism of individual experience quickly spills over into the social: the experiences of multiple contingencies by a community of individuals leads to a commonality of experience—that all experience is relative—a logical and necessary outcome of relations among people from different social strata in which conflict emerging from differences has been neutralized or attenuated. The potential for uncertainty and instability in this approach was resolved by Young's demand for "disinterested actions in order that one might establish relations with other people which enable one to make rational decisions.... For though rationality does not demand the same actions of all men at all times, rationality does not, of itself, place any man in a special and privileged position."45 Murray's conception of the individual-society complex revolved around a principle that individuality was incomprehensible "apart from the social order by which it is maintained, and social order is properly the realization of individual freedom."46 Building a community might require the collective, though different, actions of many kinds of people. Obviously, people with financial, political, even gender power would make "special" contributions. The idea of disinterested action merely reframed those privileged or powerful contributions as efforts of service to the community as a whole, rather than of community participation as self- or class interest. That Murray had a certain class in mind, which was composed of men of disinterested action, is perhaps best reflected in the 189

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rather typical nod to concerns of the lower classes. Notwithstanding his interest in ameliorating the alienating conditions of some aspects of industrial labour, he placed the category of the rights of the labouring class alongside its familiar liberal twin, "obligation and duty,"47 which the middle class knew well as a necessary condition of citizenship. Young's and Murray's discussions were essentially attempts to work out a conception of self in relation to community, and whatever differences or distinctions existed within it. The university, as a training ground for high levels of practical morality, was attended by large numbers of representative Canadians, and the public school system itself was awash with similar principles of social ordering. It was in the institutional arrangements of education that these sentiments and traits of middle-class character were nourished through training in the scientific professions. THE PROFESSIONAL IDEAL AND THE MIDDLE CLASS

In an ideological environment of "classlessness" members of a social group may not think of themselves as members of a class. However, it must be acknowledged that representative Canadians aimed to succeed to positions of social power, even when this could only be achieved through the extension of their class-based values throughout society. A class strives to achieve some measure of power on the basis of the common interests and material conditions that can then be mustered through the socialization of its members toward some socially significant end. Concepts such as "disinterestedness" are equivalent in cultural meaning to "service," the descriptive concept applied by Raymond Williams to the English middle class of the last century. Of the social groups pertinent to the historical context of this study, such terms are most applicable to the professions, increasingly the domain of the middle class in this period. Service, working for the common good, or working for the interests of the whole were the ideals of those with scientific training or technical expertise. Such principles were not confined to helping others in social or physical distress; in the late nineteenth century, professionals such as engineers, teachers, and architects also served these ideals. All professions, whether or not directly involved in assisting individuals or in engineering inorganic social matter, found their services in the employ, ideologically and materially, of national progress. In his study of the rise of the professions in England, Harold Perkin has suggested that there are two ways in which professionalism permeates

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society. The first is through the diffusion of opportunities for professional training and education that cross class boundaries. Perkin suggests that part of the power of professionalism, more than in other historically powerful groups, has been its capacity for penetrating the lower social strata, thereby entrenching itself among those historically less able to follow these paths of personal advancement. Both ideologically and factually, opportunity was promoted as reality in the Canadian context. The second way in which professionalism permeates society is through its promotion of a social ideal. In Perkin's study, the social ideal was "a model of how society should be organized to suit a certain class or interest and of the ideal citizen and his contribution to it."48 In the case of the biographies, the commonality of interests and the need to consolidate a social order served as such an ideal, even if it was not always articulated. In Canada, the move toward organization as a union or professional association was, for many industrial occupations, a process that originated in mid-century. The twentieth century has seen the rise of a large number of professions and semi-professions. Movements to professionalize such occupations as social work and teaching have sought to define certifiable areas of knowledge and expertise around which people can build a collective domain of social service and group status. Much of the focus of contemporary professions has been individualized around the expertclient situation, in which knowledge is disseminated and authority confirmed. In the context of nineteenth-century popular biography, the professional-client relationship seemed to have been a less significant feature of the work than other matters. Among certified experts and occupations not yet given specialized status, the rationale for professional work lay mostly in the two major areas already emphasized in this study: individual success and national progress. In medical and legal practice, for example, the relationship between the professional and the client was alluded to only on occasion. Its tacit representation was almost obscured by more frequent biographical testimonials, such as "large and lucrative practice," as in the cases of Thomas R. Mclnnes, a physician, and Charles Young and John McCosh, both of whom were lawyers.49 This and similar phrases implied a persons wide and useful dissemination of expert knowledge and its public value. But in many cases, especially among medical practitioners, the aspect of professionalism most useful to the collective biographies was not their

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relations with patients or their scientific expertise as such. Rather, their active and ongoing contributions to the building of a material infrastructure and the production of personnel for their profession were broadcast as their major contribution. Biographers naturally cited membership and service in professional societies and organizations, as well as service on Boards of Health, which often combined medical expertise with a person's political position or aspirations in the community. They also elaborated on the initiative or influence of a person in the actual building of facilities. One of the distinguishing achievements of William Bayard of Saint John, New Brunswick, for example, was the pressure he put on businessmen and politicians to pass a bill for the raising of funds to build the city's first major hospital. "It may be said," asserted Rose, "that the general public hospital in the city of Saint John owes its existence to the energy and perseverance of Dr. Bayard."50 James T. Steeves, also of Saint John, had served the populace well during the cholera epidemic of 1854, but was also acclaimed for his administrative work as the superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum. It was under his direction that the asylum "attained a high position for successful work; and since under the present administration it has not lost a whit, but has kept fully abreast of the various modern improvements incident to asylum treatment everywhere."51 Much of Rose's sketch of Professor D.N. McEachran was taken up with his contributions to the development of the Montreal Veterinary College and the establishment of the profession in Canada.52 Thus, it was expert contributions in the area of social rather than personal professional service that were the hallmark of representative medical personnel. James Branston Willmott devoted his energy to the establishment of dentistry as a profession, beginning in the mid-1860s, through his private practice and his work at the Royal College of Dental Surgeons. As if there were even greater expectations, Rose concluded that, since Willmott moved to Toronto in 1871, "the pressure of practice and duties in the college have prevented him from giving much attention to public matters. What leisure he has been able to command has been devoted mainly to church work."53 The teaching profession was also developing rapidly during the 1890s, with the expansion of educational systems in central and eastern Canada and the export of administrative expertise to the western territories. Many of the biographies of educators emphasized their individual quests to discover better methods of education and administration, as well as 192

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including an inventory of publications that, no matter how esoteric their titles, seemed useful for convincing the reader of the expertise underlying these concrete achievements. Urgel-Eugene Archambault, a teacher, school superintendent, and administrator in Quebec, made at least two trips to the United States and Europe during his career; he met with educators and began a long acquaintance with American "methods of teaching and management" and, in the course of a seven-month stay in Paris in 1878, "he gathered an ample store of pedagogic ideas, which he has since utilized for the benefit of his country."54 Similarly, Ingram Burpee Oakes spent six months in England and some time in the eastern United States studying the organization and methods of educational systems.55 The broadening of the curriculum at University College in Toronto by Rev. John McCaul was an interest obviously derived from his own scholarship, but it also greatly enhanced the prestige and effect of the university. His influence on a generation of university-educated citizens was noted by Rose: His individual work is seen on every hand in the distinguished men who are to be found in every part of the province, and who cheerfully acknowledge their indebtedness to the late lamented President of University College, for the accuracy and thoroughness of their academic training.56

The relations between teachers and students, like those between doctors and patients, most often seemed to be a matter best left to descriptions of professional work in other publications, or more in-depth studies of particular lives that the collective biographies could not accommodate. The promotion of teaching, like that of medicine, was grounded in the wider social activities of knowledge-gathering for the improvement of policy making and curriculum development. What seemed most relevant to a persons representativeness were the efforts he had made in the development of the institutional and administrative structure of his profession. A component of the professional ideal must surely have been something akin to Matthew Arnold's conception of culture as the "study of perfection." Culture, he wrote, "moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good."57 The professional ideal of service included the kind of institution-building carried out by the middle class. Along with the individual's striving for personal success, what we have here are examples of the two-dimensional biography—efforts to achieve a 193

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degree of perfection on both the social and individual levels. In the representative Canadian's view of his work—that is, from the point of view of the middle class—the doing of good works of service inevitably worked its way down to those in need of assistance. The direction of social energy that flowed from the biographies was toward constructing a "perfect" infrastructure of institutional organization. Granted, the difficulty of conveying the individual work of professionals was an inherent problem in the short biography. The importance of knowledge production and dissemination in a medical, educational or other institution was given greater significance as a national exercise. NOTES 1. Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (Harmondsworth U.K.: Penguin, 1973), 10. 2. Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, 10. 3. Donald Creighton, "Sir John A. Macdonald and Canadian Historians," 4. 4. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 128. 5. This was originally published as "Biographies in Popular Magazines." References for this study are taken from "The Triumph of Mass Idols," reprinted in Leo Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture and Society (Englewood Cliffs NJ: PrenticeHall, 1961). 6. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 4. 7. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 5, my emphasis. 8. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 110-12. 9. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 115. 10. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 128. 11. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 128. 12. Lowenthal, Literature, Popular Culture, 129. 13. Quoted in David Novarr, The Lines of Life, 11. 14. Henry James Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 345. 15. George Maclean Rose, A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 111-12. 16. William Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 143. 17. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 261. 18. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 2, 167. 19. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 5, 449. 20. See the sketches in Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, of Alexander McMurchie (271), James Holt (348), and William Gray (370). 21. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 5, 126. 22. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 277. 23. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1,485. 24. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 190. 25. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1,441.

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 244. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 264. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 349. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 7. Morgan, Types of Canadian Women, 37. Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 294. John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 3. Quoted in D. Forcese, ed. The Canadian Class Structure (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1986), 24. Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 2. Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 111. Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana, 1983), 60-69. Morgan, Celebrated Canadians, 380 and 459-60. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 543. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 879. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 1099-1100. Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 1, 73 (Leys); 202 (Brennan); 217 (Leitch); 348 (Holt); vol. 2, 379 (Cochrane). Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 3, 302. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, The Faces of Reason (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), 4. See Young's entry in Cochrane, The Canadian Album, vol. 3, 329; Murray's in Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 672. See Armour and Trott, The Faces of Reason, 100-04. Armour and Trott, The Faces of Reason, 124. Armour and Trott, The Faces of Reason, 113-15. Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society (London: Routledge, 1990), 3. See Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 742; Rose, Cyclopaedia, 18, 74. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 24. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 152. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 162-63. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 173. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 36-37. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 774. Rose, Cyclopaedia, 165. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 45.

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CONCLUSION

AT FIRST READING it is apparent that short biographies lack the capacity to fully explore the life-course of an individual. The limitation of this genre disallows the biographical sketch from completely linking, at every stage, a life story and the history and condition of the subject's society. The writers of short biographies took this weakness as a given, an inherent limitation of their work. But the style of the short biography also contained its own opportunities. There was the opportunity to establish the sketch as a legitimate form of individual representation by offering details of personal circumstance and achievement. The short form of biography also offered an opportunity to reduce the process of becoming in the numerous lives portrayed, and to establish an implicit interdependency with broader social trends. Both the limitations and opportunities qualified the biographical sketch as an important element in the changing structure of feeling. The very notion of making public the biographies of a large body of men and women signalled an essential element in the structure of feeling for this historical period. The collective biographies produced by Morgan, Rose, and Cochrane centred on what they hoped was a distributable commonality of interest and character, exhibiting a group of people possessing a level of self-awareness, along with broad, well-established bases of economic and cultural power. Collective biographies drew into their frame of reference the interests of individuals from the lower orders. Opportunities for social and economic mobility were a structural necessity for the security of liberal democracy, and individuals who sought such opportunities legitimized, implicitly, the flexible and ever-widening boundaries of the formation of a middle class. Besides social mobility, guarded though it may have been, the idea of success, the growth of enabling institutional arrangements, and the potential for change in women's roles, all signalled the range of qualitative changes in society which came to be publicized through the personal elements of biography. That people of the nineteenth century could explore the partial lives of thousands of individuals in this way may have enhanced a sense of 197

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possibility for their own lives, even while it magnified their sense of the social. The concepts of solidarity which linked diverse backgrounds and experiences to one another created a body of people pursuing the common goal of nation building. The stable, positive obligation of service as a distributable ideal illuminated a group who achieved self-affirmation in the institutional orders they constructed. The biographical dictionaries made it possible for persons to consider their own and others' individuality as having social, even national implications. Representative Canadians were middle class, a social position derived to a great extent from the power pertaining to similarities of interest and aspiration. Their biographers strove to bring middle-class achievements, values, and social connections to public attention, offering some measure of proof that if the right opportunities were taken up, there were rewards for service to society and for personifying the virtue of self-reliance, even when bolstered by the well-placed assistance of like-situated others. The extent to which opportunities actually existed, and for what proportion of the population, and to what extent they were made available to those on the lower rungs of the social ladder, were questions that would become more pertinent in a later period of Canadian history. Much of the power and significance of the individuals portrayed in these texts derived from their relationship with those who were absent from the texts—men and women of the industrial working class, the agricultural labour force, and native peoples. The latter were present only marginally as trophies of colonization, Christian conversion, and civilization.1 In Raymond Williams' phrase, absent groups were among the "considerable areas of what was once a living culture," rejected by those who employed the selective tradition in their celebration of Canada. Yet all the absent subordinates existed nonetheless as the buried foundation upon which the cultural power of representative Canadians rested. The people portrayed in these texts were engaged in socially useful and apparently personally satisfying activities. They were men and women who had worked at achieving the positions they held, and whose contributions to the development of Canadian society and its institutions were fundamental to the nation. One could be critical about the ways that they achieved their status, and the manner in which opportunities were constructed for themselves and restricted for others. It is also important to understand something of the way in which the world they created remains culturally and politically significant, even as an object of social critique. Their worrisome appropriation of democracy, their confusion 198

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over possible explanations for individual success, their conspicuous networking practices, and the inequalities between men and women, have been subjects of critique in this portrait of the emerging middle class. These were problems for the nineteenth-century representative Canadian that were fundamental to their awareness of, and formation into, a social class. These same problems, never completely resolved, were a legacy to subsequent generations. NOTE 1. For sketches of aboriginal men, see Henry James Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 1 (Donnacona), 55 (Pontiac), 96 (Brant), and 184 (Tucumseh).

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APPENDIX A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY

THE SAMPLES TAKEN from the biographical dictionaries for this study were random, stratified samples based upon occupational categories. These samples have been used to document occupations, religion, region of residence, and other matters in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. Since many of the social changes in nineteenth-century Canada had to do with the changes in the division of labour, it seemed appropriate to first make an internal division in the data according to occupational categories in each collective biography. The sampling proceeded on this basis, ensuring that each occupational category was represented, though in different quantities. On this basis, differences or similarities among persons could be appreciated through this aspect of their social participation. The proportion of sketches taken from the biographical dictionaries varied for reasons peculiar to specific texts. Morgans Sketches of Celebrated Canadians was first published in 1862 and contained a wide representation of explorers, politicians and military men, whose lives spanned, collectively, a few hundred years. It seemed necessary to pare down this group to one with a narrower range of life-spans, so as to assist in obtaining greater consistency of information. An important feature of all the other biographical dictionaries was that the vast majority of their subjects were alive at the time of publication. Thus, the subject group for Celebrated Canadianswas confined to 193 persons, consisting of 120 who were alive in 1862, and the 73 subjects who had died within the previous decade. All 84 men appearing in the three volumes of John Fennings Taylor's and William Notman's Portraits of British North Americans became the sample for that text because of the comparatively small number of entries and the fact that the vast majority were alive at the time of publication. Because these two texts were published in the 1860s, they comprise what are referred to in the study as Group 1 biographies. Group 2 biographical dictionaries were those published between 1888 and 1898. From Rose's Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography and 201

NATIONAL ALBUM

Cochrane's Canadian Album, 20 percent of the total number of entries comprised the sample. Because of the large number of entries in Morgan's 1898 edition of Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 10 percent of the total number of entries were selected. Thus, the base sample in Group 2 biographies was 1017 subjects. The sample used for the analysis of social mobility in the Group 2 texts consisted of a larger number for reasons explained in Chapter 4. The sample from Morgan's Types of Canadian Women (1903) was 20 percent of the total, amounting to 70 entries. In addition, substantive and anecdotal material from any entry in the collective biographies was drawn on freely, so as to provide further insight into the representative Canadian.

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