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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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Page 979 of 1109

STUART, HENRY HARVEY (1873-1952)

STUART, HENRY HARVEY, school principal, journalist, and social activist; b. Northfield parish, near Minto, N.B., 9 Aug 1873, s/o John Palmer Stuart and Margaret Craig; m. Bertha G. Alexander, of Fredericton Junction, N.B.; d. there, 21 Oct 1952.

Henry H. Stuart was the son of a teacher who instructed him at home but could not afford to send him to high school. As a youth he worked in printing shops in Fredericton. In 1893 he gained admission to the Provincial Normal School. He was granted a 2nd class license in 1894, which he upgraded later to a 1st class superior license. From 1894 onward he taught continuously, mostly for short terms in rural elementary and superior schools.

In 1902, when Stuart was teaching at Hopewell Hill, he played the largest part in creating an Albert County teachers' union. This led to the formation of an interim organization called the New Brunswick Teachers' Union. In 1903 the NBTU promoted the organization of local teachers' unions throughout New Brunswick. At a convention held in Moncton on 22 December 1903 it was decided that an official provincial teachers' organization was needed, and it was Stuart's privilege to second the motion which gave birth to the New Brunswick Teachers' Association. He had been secretary-treasurer of the NBTU, and he was elected to the same position in the NBTA.

Stuart had more than twelve years of teaching experience by the end of December 1906 when he resigned as principal of the superior school at Harcourt, N.B., to accept the editorship of the Union Advocate in Newcastle. Members of the Anslow family who conducted the Advocate previously had withdrawn from its management, leaving it in a precarious position. For whatever reason, Stuart's course with the paper was a downward one, from managing editor, to editor, to coeditor, over two and a half years, at the end of which time he resigned and returned to the field of education as principal of the Douglastown Superior School. He continued to keep a connection with the Advocate, however, and sometimes acted as supply editor. In 1916-18 he was the designated editor-in-chief on a part-time or consulting basis. At the same time, he was a freelance correspondent for the Moncton and Saint John dailies.

At the annual meeting of the Northumberland County Teachers' Institute in 1907, while he was still with the Advocate, Stuart engaged members in a spirited discussion of the need for teachers' pensions. At this time he was a licensed local preacher of the Methodist church and delivered guest sermons from both Methodist and Baptist pulpits. Also being a leader in the temperance movement in the province, he sometimes preached on that topic, but he was first and foremost a doctrinaire socialist, and when speaking from either pulpit or podium his favorite theme was socialism. Among his more daring addresses was one on "Christian Socialism" which he delivered to an assemblage of Baptist ministers at Whitneyville in 1907. "Socialism Invades Chatham" was the headline in The World, after a public meeting in the Temperance Hall in 1910, at which he described how his party "would deprive the rich of their ill-gotten wealth; abolish interest, rent, and profit; substitute collective for private ownership; put an end to competition; and make bankers work in some honest and useful occupation." He was less free-wheeling in the classroom or the editor's seat. He read a lengthy and relatively moderate paper to the Teachers' Institute in 1909 on "The Teaching of History," the text of which was published in The World, but one entitled "Some Ways of Improving Our School System," which he read in 1910, "verged strongly on socialism," according to the school inspector, George W. Mersereau.

On the Newcastle Town Council, on which he sat for six years, Stuart opposed tax breaks and low tax assessments for industry and advocated support for such volunteer organizations as the Newcastle Town Improvement League, of which he was an officer. He was a prime mover in the formation in 1918 of the Northumberland People's Union, which took credit for having the benefits of the Workmen's Compensation Act extended to loggers and stream-drivers. During a strike of Newcastle waterfront and millworkers the next summer he and John S. Martin spoke for labor and were instrumental in having industrial unions accepted by Miramichi employers. He was indirectly responsible for the election of independent labor candidates John W. Vanderbeck and John S. Martin in the provincial election of 1920, since their platforms were endorsed and promoted by an alliance of the unions which he helped create.

Stuart departed in 1919 to accept the principalship of the school at Sunny Brae, N.B. During his thirteen-year residency on the Miramichi he had issued a clarion call for social reform - the first to be heard since the 1860s, when Davis P. Howe was denouncing the employment practices of the Miramichi lumber barons. After he left, he kept on pursuing a

Sources

[b/d] official death records / Advance 31 Dec 1903; Advocate 5 Jan 1916 (re. Union Advocate), 17 Jul 1907, 24 Apr 1908, 7 Jun 1910ff, 11 Oct 1910, 12 Aug 1919, 25 Aug 1925; Chapman; Leader 7 Dec 1906, 16 Aug 1907; 3 Sep 1909, 8 Jun 1923, 17 Nov 1944 (contains errors), 31 Oct 1952, 6 Mar 1969; Star 23 Mar 1907; World 26 Oct 1907, 20 Oct 1909, 9 Feb 1910, 12 Feb 1910


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