John M. Pratt

Who was John M. Pratt?

John Morgan Pratt was a tax resistance leader, activist in the Old Right, publicist and newspaper man. Along with James E. Bistor, he led the probably the largest tax strike since the Era of the American Revolution.

Pratt was born into a background of wealth. His father owned a tomato cannery and extensive farmland in the Sharpsville area. He attended Marion College, where he studied to be a teacher. In this period, the family lost most of its money because the cannery business failed. As a result, he permanently shelved a teaching career and moved to homestead farmland in northern Saskatchewan. Eventually, it became one of the largest farms in the immediate area. In 1913, Pratt began a long political career when the counselors of Lost River, a rural municipality, elected him as their secretary treasurer. One of his duties was tax collection. The irony was not lost on Pratt who often joked about it during his stint as a tax rebel in Chicago.

The life of a tax collector did not suit Pratt who moved to Winnipeg in 1917 to accept a position as municipal editor of The Grain Growers Guide, which spoke for the nascent cooperative movement in Canada.