Whitehead & Hoag Co. Celluloid Pin ~ JAMES SIMPSON FOR BOARD OF CONTROL

Description

Hello and welcome!
Up for sale is this Antique 1912-1913 era Whitehead & Hoag Co. ~ JAMES SIMPSON - For Board Of Control 1 1/4" Celluloid Pin. It's in decent condition for the age with no broken or missing parts but a bit of wear and some rust on the metal parts and some discoloration.
James "Jimmie" Simpson (1973 - September 24th, 1938) was a British-Canadian trade unionist, printer, journalist and left-wing politician in Toronto, Ontario. He was a longtime member of Toronto's city council and served as Mayor of Toronto in 1935, the first member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation to serve in that capacity. He was also a member of the Orange Order in Canada.
Here's some information on his life from Wikipedia:
Printing trade and journalism
[
edit
]
In 1892, Simpson was one of 27 members of the Typographical Union on strike against the
Toronto News
. The strikers, including Simpson, founded the
Evening Star
on November 3, 1892, as a strike paper.
[2]
For ten years, Simpson served as the
Star
's
City Hall reporter including nine years as the paper's municipal editor.
[1]
[3]
He subsequently became editor of a labour newspaper.
[4]
In 1900, Simpson and eight others founded the Ruskin Literary and Debating Society. He served as its first president. Today, it is Canada's oldest debating society.
[5]
Labour leader
[
edit
]
Simpson went on to become a labour leader and was the vice-president of the Toronto and District Trades and Labour Council at the turn of the century and also served three terms as vice-president of the
Trades and Labour Congress of Canada
between 1904 and 1936.
Labour Party
[
edit
]
1932 election ad for Simpson
As a socialist labour politician, he ran in the May 1902 Ontario election in Toronto. As a candidate for the newly-formed
Socialist Party of Canada
, he ran in
Toronto North
in the 1905 Ontario provincial election and in a 1906 provincial by-election in Toronto and in the 1908 provincial election, all unsuccessfully.
[6]
He was elected and served as a Toronto school board trustee, 1905–10.
He ran for mayor of Toronto in the
1908 Toronto municipal election
as a Socialist but was not elected.
[7]
He was elected to the
Toronto Board of Control
in 1914 with the highest vote total ever given a candidate up to that time
[1]
and sat on the Board of Control again from 1930 to 1934.
[8]
He was one of the co-leaders of the
Ontario Labour Party
(Ontario section of the Canadian Labour Party) in the 1920s and a Labour candidate for the
House of Commons of Canada
in
Parkdale
in the
1921 Canadian federal election
, in
Toronto Northwest
in
1925
and
1926 Canadian federal elections
but was unable to win election to
Parliament
.
Simpson played a leading role in opposing
Communists
in the Labour Party. After Communists convinced the party to withdraw its nomination of Simpson as its candidate for Toronto city council's Board of Control in 1927, Simpson and his supporters quit the party leading to its collapse. They then formed the Toronto Labour Party, which explicitly excluded Communists from membership.
Mayor
[
edit
]
In the 1930s, he became a leading member of the
Ontario CCF
. In 1934 he ran as a CCF candidate for the Toronto Board of Control and was elected which set the stage for him to run for Mayor of Toronto in the
1935 municipal election
. The only one of the city's newspapers to support him was the
Toronto Daily Star
. The other papers and both the Conservative and Liberal parties supported Simpson's opponent, Alderman Harry Hunt and accused the CCF of being anti-British and under Communist influence. Percy Parker, a leading Liberal, declared on the radio that "the bells of Moscow will ring when Simpson is elected mayor."
Simpson's personal popularity and the organization put together by the CCF and the trade union movement was enough to elect him making Toronto the largest city in North America to have elected a socialist mayor. As mayor, Simpson supported the campaign to boycott the
1936 Summer Olympics
being held in
Nazi Germany
that summer.
[9]
Religion
[
edit
]
Simpson was a
Methodist
and
Christian socialist
who became active with the
Epworth League
movement at the age of 16 ultimately becoming president of the Epworth League Toronto Conference. He also served as president of the Toronto Methodist Young People's Union and the Toronto Methodists' Cycling Union.
[1]
Simpson was intensely anti-
Catholic
which cost him the support of the
Toronto Star
. When he ran for re-election as mayor in 1936 this contributed to his defeat.
Death
[
edit
]
Simpson was killed in 1938 when his car crashed into a
streetcar
.
[3]
To learn more about James Simpson's life you can check out his full background and early life info on Wikipedia or Google.
Sources : Wikipedia, Google.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send me a message and I'll be happy to help.