In December, 1913, there was a Literary Society dinner in the
University of Toronto at which Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the guest of
honour and speaker on "Democracy." My own seat at a table was next to
a restless, thick-bodied, sparse-haired man who seemed younger than his
years and to whom I had not been introduced. During the hour that
Laurier spoke this man continued to lean over the table so as to catch
a view of his fascinating face. He interested me almost as much as did
the speaker. I had never sat beside such an irrepressible vitality.
Like a bird to a succession of swinging boughs, he hung upon the golden
utterances of his old chieftain and political mentor concerning a
subject so poignantly dear to the experiences of one and the
imagination of the other.
First impressions are sometimes reversed on closer acquaintance. I was
uncomfortable beside Mackenzie King, but interested. On a latter
occasion I was still more interested, and rather more uncomfortable.
The early impression remained, that he had very little faculty of
restraint--what scientists call inhibition.
That occasion will not soon fade from memory. Often I can hear in
imagination a thousand students singing "Vive le roi! vive le
compagnie!" before the fine old leader spoke, and that earnest, hectic
disciple joining in. When I discovered who he was I ran back in fancy
to the time when Mackenzie King was a student at that same university.
At that time William Mulock was Vice-Chancellor and became keenly
interested in the brilliant young student of economics with whose
father he had attended law school. King entered the University the
year that the chief author of the National Policy died. He graduated
one year before Laurier became Premier, in the golden age of Liberalism
triumphant, when "freer" trade was emerging as a symbol of that brand
of democracy in opposition to free trade in a minority. How we have
fallen upon evil days! Farmers' sons at college no longer regard free
trade as the forerunner of political absorption by the United States,
but as the vindication of the farmer as a group in government.
Mackenzie King is a man about whom nobody ever could have a lukewarm
conviction. He is either cordially liked or disliked. More than most
other men in public life he has become the victim of violent opinions.
For this he is temperamentally responsible. People consistently
decline to reason about him. They speak of him vehemently. His
dominant note of character is rampant enthusiasm. King is always
intensely in love with whatever interests him. His enthusiasms are not
so much on the surface for many people, as underneath for causes--and
for a few men. Gifted with an uncommon capacity for absorbing
impressions and collecting data for research, he has made himself a
sort of pathological study to other people. In mastering economics he
has himself been enthralled by his own enthusiasm.
At the time of Laurier's speech on democracy King was peculiarly
enthusiastic about John D. Rockefeller, Jr., head of the Rockefeller
Foundation. But he had lost no jot of his fervent admiration for
Laurier in Ottawa and was still passionately devoted--as he remains--to
Sir William Mulock, his political godfather. Nobody has ever
criticized him for his ardent discipleship to the two older Canadians.
There is an old-fashioned spontaneity about this mutual regard much
above the common commercial admiration of one man for another in
business. Many have blamed King for his attachment to Rockefeller, and
have used that connection to his detriment as Liberal leader.
In April, 1920, he was flatly accused of having been an absentee from
Canada during the war, employed by the Rockefeller interests and so
"entangled in the octopus" that as leader of the Liberal party he would
become a menace to Canada. It was the old bogey of continentalism in a
new setting, and it took Mackenzie King twelve pages of Hansard to make
his defence in the House. The incident forms a hinge to a career which
is worth a brief survey.
King was born in Berlin, Ontario, son of a subsequent lecturer in law
at Osgoode Hall and of a daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie. At the
University of Toronto he was one of the '95 group that included also
Hamar Greenwood, Arthur Stringer, and the late Norman Duncan and James
Tucker. There was a rebellion during that period in which there is no
record of the grandson of a glorious rebel having taken part. At
college he displayed a passion for pardonable egotism in which there
were elements of a desire for public service. The Family Compact at
Ottawa must have interested him. Liberalism, as understood by the
Laurier group, was emerging from the disreputable mess known as
continentalism, fathered by Goldwin Smith, who was beginning to be
estimated for what he really was, a brilliant philosophical pamphleteer
bent upon the obliteration of Canadian nationality.
After graduation King went for a brief term on the staff of the
_Toronto Globe_. In that year the Liberals came into power. King was
engaged by Sir William Mulock, Postmaster-General, to inquire into
sweatshop methods in contracts for postoffice uniforms. No man could
have done it better. He had a native appetite for that sort of
investigation, and he was helping to establish the new Liberalism.
For the next four years King was out of the country. Had he followed
the academic fashion of that period he would have been in training to
become a citizen of the United States. Chicago University, built by
John D. Rockefeller, attracted him first; Harvard next. He was still
studying economics. No other Canadian had ever spent so much time and
talent on this subject. At Harvard he became a Lecturer, and was sent
to Europe to investigate economic conditions. While there he got a
cable from the Postmaster-General of Canada, who had created the
Department of Labour as an adjunct to the postal department, and
established the _Labour Gazette_, and wanted a deputy who should edit
the _Gazette_ and look after the details of the office. King
courteously declined, saying that he could not accept until the expiry
of his contract with Harvard. The salary of the Deputy-Minister of
Labour was $2,500 under a man whom he tremendously admired, and as yet
with no clear ambition to become a member of the House led by the man
whom he was afterwards to worship, and to succeed.
There is no proof that Laurier took any uncommon interest at this time,
as he afterwards did, in the Deputy-Minister of Labour, though he
noticed that the young man was making a great success of his work.
Much if not most of King's tuition in politics at this stage came from
William Mulock, who as a member of the Commons in Opposition, had
fathered the fair trade resolution in Convention and did much to
convert the Liberal party from free to "freer" trade.
In the eight years up till 1908, by experience with conditions, King
made himself master of the subject which was later to appear in his
book, "Industry and Humanity." He was repeatedly made chairman of this
or that mission, board, and commission at home or abroad, to get the
true facts about labour, immigration and employment. By a sort of
genius for conciliating groups, even when he antagonized individuals,
he became for a time the world's most successful mediator in labour
disputes. Industrial warfare had not as yet adopted the trench system.
Direct action, the One Big Union, the sympathetic strike and collective
bargaining were scarcely dreamed of, though anticipated in the
philosophy of Karl Marx, as yet not transplanted to America.
Socialism, as expressed by Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty"
was a classic in King's college days, was the most radical element with
which the young Deputy had to deal. But the Government's policy of
foreign labour nationals being gradually absorbed into labour unions
made Canada, in proportion to population, a very difficult country in
which to act as conciliator.
During his eight years as Deputy, King was made two offers, each of
which illuminates the criticism that in the war he was only a nominal
citizen of Canada. A group of Canadian employers, recognizing his
success as a mediator, offered him $8,000 a year to act on their behalf
with the heads of labour. Without consulting his chief, King declined
the offer. He said that he preferred the $2,500 from the Labour
Department, where he could be independent of either one side or the
other. Later President Eliot, of Harvard, on the death of the man who
occupied the chair of political economy, offered King the post,
pointing out that his duties would keep him but six months a year in
Boston. The salary was at least twice what he was getting in Ottawa.
Again without consulting his chief, King declined, on the pretext that
he had no desire to leave the useful work he was doing for the Ottawa
Government to become a citizen, even of eminence, in the United States.
During the same period he was asked to act as conciliator in a great
mining strike in Colorado, when violence and murder were the law, and
when the result of his action led to the enactment of a successful
arbitration measure by the Government of Colorado.
All this was prior to King's election as member of the House of
Commons. Eight years as Deputy in the Department of Labour, he stepped
into the Commons and the Ministry of Labour with exceptional qualities
to succeed. His record as Minister was the natural but uncommon sequel
to his experience as Deputy. King was so long the one man whose whole
time was spent in the effort to reconcile industry and humanity in
Canada that it seems hard to recollect that he spent but three years as
Minister. During that time, as well as before it, he became the ardent
disciple of Laurier. While there was great advantage in having spent
so many years as Deputy, it is a pity for the sake of the young
leader's subsequent elevation that he did not come under the spell of
the old chieftain as a candidate before Laurier had begun to grow
cynical in office. In 1908 Laurier had been at least three years tired
of public life when there was no man to succeed him, and when, as often
as he expressed his weariness of trying to govern a nation so
temperamentally difficult as Canada, he was tempted by the adulation of
his supporters to try again, until winning elections for the sake of
remaining in power became a habit.
Admiration such as King felt for Laurier made criticism impossible. He
worshipped Laurier. In this he was not alone. Older men than King,
among his colleagues, shared the same spell-binding sentiment. And
there was no member of the Cabinet who grieved more than King at the
defeat of Laurier in 1911.
Here begins the Standard Oil story. The _Montreal Gazette_, in a
report of two speeches made at a certain club, published an accusation
that King had "deserted Canada in her hour of crisis in search of
Standard Oil millions."
As similar statements may be made during the election campaign, it is
fair to know the facts. King was employed by the Rockefeller
Foundation, not by Standard Oil. The connection is merely one of cause
and effect. The Foundation spends on the wholesale betterment of
humanity the multi-millions which Standard Oil accumulated from the
people. The theory of justification here is that the people would have
spent these millions foolishly, whereas the Foundation spends them
well. There is some truth in the theory. King was engaged solely upon
the industrial relations programme of the Foundation, with special
reference later to industries of war, and with permission according to
his own stipulation to conduct his researches in Ottawa from which in
the ten years between 1911 and 1921 he has been absent only upon
special occasions. He was in the unusual position of working in Canada
and being paid in the United States, for researches of benefit to the
cause of American industrial relations during the war. His book,
Industry and Humanity, which is the literary form of those researches,
was all written in Ottawa.
These are respectable facts; the only objection to which is that the
full statement of the apologia occupies twelve pages of Hansard and
must have taken at least two hours of Parliamentary time. The original
accusation was a malicious stupidity. The vindication was a
confessional in which the Liberal leader told the House every item that
he knew. Half the number of words would have been twice as effective.
This introduces my second impression of the Liberal leader, two years
after the outbreak of war, at midnight in a baronial farmhouse in North
York, Ont. He had been addressing a political meeting in a
school-house some miles away. There was a golden harvest moon and the
scene from the spacious piazza overlooking the hills of York was a
dream of pastoral poetry. Suddenly motor headlights flared out of the
avenue and from the car alighted the same restless man whom I had met
three years before at the dinner to democracy. In a very little while
we both became so interested in what he had to say that neither of us
cared to go to bed.
Next day I found him still more interesting. He spoke with bubbling
frankness and uncontrolled fervour about many things and certain
people, chief among whom was John D. Rockefeller, Jr. He described the
young magnate's trip into Colorado during a recent great strike, an
itinerary planned on purpose that the son of John D. Rockefeller might
get a first-hand knowledge of what conditions actually were, what the
labour leaders thought, and what sort of people they might be. With
graphic interest he described the young financier's reception by the
miners, the speech he made, the big dance in which he took part, the
camps and mines he visited; a picture of capital conciliating labour
such as seldom comes to notice outside the pages of a novel. He made
no effort to eulogize himself. He was absorbed in generous admiration
for the other man and with enthusiasm for the glorious chance that
Rockefeller seemed to have to make a new Magna Charta of brotherhood
between Capital and Labour. In this he was a tremendous idealist. In
many respects one was forced to regret that the world somehow did not
seem quite so full of brotherly intention as Mr. King said that it was.
"The common ground of both capital and labour is humanity," he said
over and over in various form. "The antagonism of each will be
forgotten when both unite in an effort to forward the interests of the
whole community without which neither can prosper."
"Right!" I felt like screaming, had there been a moment to do so.
"Bravo!"
The idea found expression in his book which he was then engaged in
writing. And it is doubtful if any book on the subject of political
economy was ever the source of greater happiness to its author than
"Industry and Humanity" was to Mackenzie King. On the merits of
democratic statesmanship as revealed in that book, Mackenzie King
should be Premier of Canada in 1922. Alas! men are often greater in
what they say than in much they are able to do. Mackenzie King is a
species of rather emotional idealist. He has studied economic humanity
somewhat at the expense of his perception of human nature.
During the evening King talked with equal gusto upon his intimate
knowledge of a certain popular song writer in Chicago, the story of
whose life he told with vivid strokes of descriptive pathos; and upon
his still more intimate acquaintance with the late William Wilfred
Campbell, poet, whom he had seen in the same moment feed his pigs in a
near suburb of Ottawa, and create a line of poetry--which King
quoted--"The wild witchery of the winter woods." He was seized with
the idea that a Foundation such as the Rockefeller should subsidize
poets and song-writers. The pity of it always is that the world is far
too desperately cynical in high places to accommodate such generous
impulses. Mackenzie King's fervent advocacy of a reform sometimes
creates more antagonism than the cold attacks of an adversary. His
passion for the betterment of humanity often outruns his judgment. His
statements smack of exaggeration even when they are absolutely true.
He lacks a sense of proportion and a capacity for restraint. "Better
is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." But a
political leader must do both.
Had he expected the Liberal leadership, the close of the war and almost
the end of Laurier should have found the member for Prince ready for
action or advice. But there is no record that, at this time, his
counsels were sought by the Liberal party, or that he thrust himself
into the limelight. Three months after the Armistice, Laurier was
dead. Even then King was not mentioned as his successor. Four months
later he was chosen, when not even he quite understood how it was done.
King did nothing to reform his party along new lines, or publicly to
state what he considered its reasonable position to be as between the
Union party and the Agrarians. A broad manifesto from the new leader
at such a time would have been useful. Never had a political leader in
Canada such a duty of broad revision within his party. King neglected
the opportunity. The _Toronto Globe_ realizes what a squeezed lemon
the Liberal party has become between the other two groups and calls for
a working alliance between the Liberals and Agrarians to upset the
Government. The _Mail and Empire_ paternally points out that it is the
duty of Liberals to enlist, Quebec included, under the hegemony of the
party which has already incorporated Liberals and is ready to save that
party from obliteration by the free-trade group.
Beneath the conventional assurance displayed in each of these organs of
public opinion one detects an under-current of uneasiness, by no means
mitigated by the farmer victory for the Commons in Medicine Hat, which
the _Globe_ construed as a triumph on parade, and the Agrarian turnover
in Alberta which the _Mail and Empire_ with all its sturdy
protestations cannot honestly interpret as other than a calamity. Each
of the historic parties feels itself confronted by a new sort of menace
comparable to nothing in the history of Canadian politics. Two parties
which ten years ago were in opposition are now flung together by the
fear of a common danger and refuse to admit it. _The Globe's_ hope is
that Farmerism will become the new Liberalism. _The Globe_ is right.
But the captains may not be of _The Globe's_ choosing and the planks in
its platform are not those which _The Globe_ in its days of sanity
would have accepted for the good of the people. It is the intention of
Farmerism to absorb all there is of Liberalism. Mackenzie King knows
it. He knows that the Liberals will suffer more than the Government
from the plough movement. Yet he is invited by _The Globe_ to try the
trick of the bird swallowing the snake!
The essence of Liberalism has always been liberation; emancipation.
But the farmers are out to smite all the shackles from all of us. They
intend to stop short only of Bolshevism. An ex-Cabinet Minister of
Alberta predicts that the farmers will sweep the country at the next
election and steer it down the rapids of economic ruin. He cites Drury
and Co. as examples of a certain sort of cunning whereby they did not
at first show their real hand, in order to get people to feel that
Agrarianism is not half so bad as painted and then--the broadening out
into the People's party. The farmers are not notorious for sheer
cunning; neither for stupidity. They are naturally hesitant about
being as radical in office as they were on the stump. As an economic
group they are no different from the old Free Trade Liberals, except
that they seek to govern as a class on behalf of that particular group.
Meanwhile the nation more or less opposed to farmerism is
disintegrating itself into more groups. Labour is out for a species of
self-determination; a Labour Party. A veteran Liberal statesman
recently asked me this question:
"Suppose that in industrial centres like Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton
and Winnipeg, Labour puts a candidate into every constituency; that
in smaller factory centres which dominate essentially rural ridings
they do the same. In each of these more or less labour-dominated
fields suppose we have the possible four candidates. Is the
Labour-Unionist in doubt over his own candidate going to vote Liberal,
Liberal-Conservative, or Farmer?"
"As a man of long experience in elections--suppose you answer that?" I
suggested.
He did not, but went on:
"I know what I should say to a labour elector under such circumstances.
I should say to him: 'You had better not touch the farmer candidate
with a ten-foot pole because--the farmer wants dear food and you want
cheap food; he wants long hours and you want short hours; he wants
imported manufactures and you want employment in your home town; he
wants free trade and you depend upon a measure of protection.'"
Nobody has ever more pithily stated the case. There is no basic
mutuality between the farm and the labour union. The farmer is as much
a capitalist as he is a labourer.