The Masques of Ottawa Part 4

HON. WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

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, spa.r.s.e-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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionately devoted--as he remains--to Sir William Mulock, his political G.o.dfather. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sion 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 appet.i.te 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 antic.i.p.ated in the philosophy of Karl Marx, as yet not transplanted to America.

Socialism, as expressed by Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty"

was a cla.s.sic 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 acc.u.mulated 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 s.p.a.cious 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.surance 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 st.u.r.dy 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; emanc.i.p.ation.

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 cla.s.s 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 const.i.tuency; 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 circ.u.mstances.

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.'"

n.o.body 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.

I asked the Liberal statesman bluntly:

"Don't you think that in order to avoid political devastation by splitting the vote into three opposition groups each fighting the other, it is the immediate business of the two historic parties to unite against all parties of experiment, especially against the emanc.i.p.ating fanner?"

He gave this evasive but shrewd reply:

"I am a lifelong Liberal. I have been in the habit of reading newspapers on both sides of politics. I am now driven to take the Conservative organ for my daily political food."

I commend that answer to Hon. Mackenzie King. If the Liberal leader is now as anxious to serve the nation of his birth as he was when he twice refused large salaries and comparative ease for the sake of continuing to do Canada's work, would it be high treason either to himself or to his party to call a Liberal convention out of which he would father a resolution of federation of historic parties based upon such a compromise as Macdonald created in the federation of provinces?

The answer is obvious: "Fantastic! Absurd! Impossible!"

Mackenzie King will put up a smoke screen to hide the defection of the West from historic Liberalism. He will insist that the Liberals want only a reasonable tariff for revenue while the Government want protection--when Heaven knows each of them wants substantially the same thing in opposition to the farmer who wants everything. He will point with confident pride to the solid Liberal _bloc_ Quebec, when he knows Quebec is dominated by Lapointe who can demand from him just what he wants as the price of Quebec's solidarity; and he knows equally well that Quebec is as much opposed to continentalism as the Liberal-Conservative Government can ever be. The man who wears the mantle of Laurier without his Orphean magic cannot lead Quebec.

However, Mackenzie King was put where he is to lead, and he intends to keep on doing it. If he can regulate a few of his enthusiasms and so adjust his personality as to make Liberalism as led by him powerful enough to be the dog that wags the Agrarian tail, he should be set down as one of the most remarkable men in the history of Canadian politics.

He legitimately chuckles over Quebec. One can fancy him matching that race-group against the Agrarian _bloc_ and the Government industrial centres group, and saying to himself: