"Partridge of Sintaluta" -- E.A. Partridge -- author of A War on Poverty (1925)
- Tom Monto
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
E.A. Partridge (1862-1931)
agrarian activist
E.A. Partridge ("Partridge of Sintaluta") (1862-1931)
included a plan for a western Canadian co-operative commonwealth ("Coalsamao") in his 1925 monograph A War on Poverty, Chapter III, "Things as they might be")
page III: "My strong desire is that the people of Western Canada will peacefully achieve full political autonomy; and that, enjoying “self-determination,” as a single political unit, will exercise it to establish a CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH; and do it soon."
author of A War on Poverty (1925)
available online https://archive.org/details/P005018/page/112/mode/2up?view=theater
"Our present educational facilities and activities are not adequate to the task of preparing our people to desire, let alone live, this ideal social life, and to erect the ideal State for the better ordering of our activities in the common interest: in fact they are designedly obstructive of any change in our present socio-economic beliefs or practices." (from page 112)
"There is a great need of men; kind, broad-minded, brave men; men willing to enlist for active service in 'The Army of the Common Good.'” (from page 117)
"West of the Great Lakes is a new land of great size, generously supplied with a very varied assortment of natural resources, including all of the economically necessary ones, largely undeveloped; a land with a mere sprinkling of population; a population debt-encumbered and smarting from merciless exploitation of financial, industrial and transportational interests, who control, and are aided in their nefarious work by, a capitalistic-minded government. Here, if anywhere, is a people ripe for change." (from page 123)
"...a new Social Order which shall be non-competitive in character and in which the natural resources, also the greater part of the machinery of production and distribution, and most of the reproductive capital shall be communally owned: also they will plan a Model State to house it and help it to function." (from page 123)
"Herein we begin to see how opinions are formed, and how ruling classes are formed." from page 128
page 130-:
COALSAMAO
Coalsamao (pronounced Co-al-sa-ma-o) gets its name from the first two letters of the names of the former provinces now merged to form it (Br.) Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, with the final ‘‘o” for that part of Ontario also included.
It is a fully self-governed, self-constituted State with a single one-chambered legislative and administrative body, corresponding to a House of Representatives, but called “The High Court of Control,” consisting of twenty-five members elected annually, sitting in perpetual session, during their term of office, chiefly for investigatory, supervisory, and administrative purposes, there being but little legislative work for them to do.
This High Court of Control carries on under the terms of a written Constitution, changes in which can be initiated only by concerted action of at least a fourth of the primary organized socio-economic units called ‘‘Camps,” and consummated by popular assent indicated by a favorable plebiscite.
The Constitution defines ‘‘The State of Coalsamao” as a 'Co-operative Commonwealth”’
—“an association of the inhabitants thereof for the effective employment of the combined strength of the bodies, brains, and belongings of the associates,
for the securing of their common safety from the attacks of external and internal foes, human and non-human;
for the adequate and easy supplying of their common needs and the effective advancement of their common interests as recognized by the majority; and also,
for the extending of timely help and protection to such of them as in sudden vicissitude shall have need of help and protection.”
The population is grouped so as to form sub-associations—called 'Camps' containing not less than three thousand five hundred, nor more than seven thousand persons of all ages—-a Camp on reaching the seven thousand mark being divided into two...."
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