The Great Depression

by Pierre Berton

  Hepburn demanded total loyalty from his followers. He wanted more than passive acquiescence in his policies; he wanted full-throated support. When he didn’t get it from two of his most prominent Cabinet members, Attorney General Arthur Roebuck and Minister of Public Welfare, Municipal Affairs and Labour David Croll, he fired them on April 14. Both represented the left wing of the Liberal party and both were anathema to George McCullagh.

  Croll had just returned from a southern holiday in the belief that the negotiations, under way when he departed, had proved fruitful. He was nettled to discover that his chief had not only forced a strike but had also scuttled his promise to provide relief for the strikers, and he was equally indignant at Hepburn’s attempts to link the union with the communists.

  He and Roebuck held their tongues in Cabinet, but that wasn’t good enough for the Premier. “It is quite clear to me …” he wrote to Croll, “that you are not in accord with the policy of the Government in fighting the inroads of the Lewis organization and Communism in general.… Ontario is facing one of its greatest economic crises … there must be solidarity and unanimity within our ranks.” Croll’s famous reply made him a hero to the labour movement. His place, he told Hepburn, was “marching with the workers rather than riding with General Motors.”

  McCullagh’s newspaper, meanwhile, continued to predict bloodshed and lawlessness in Oshawa while hailing Hepburn on its front page as “Canada’s Man of the Hour.” These front-page editorials, which appeared almost daily, were masterpieces of venom. The titles alone give an idea of their quality: “DOUBLE CROSSING TREACHERY …”; “LEWIS BANDITRY SPREADS …”; “FIGHTING LEWIS FASCISM.” In McCullagh’s editorial view, the workers were “dupes of self serving and self seeking union agitators” while the CIO was “a gigantic dictatorship scheme.”

  “Is there a red-blooded Canadian,” the Globe asked on April 17, “whose anger does not boil over at the story of intrigue, duplicity, and double crossing, which has run through events of the past ten days in the motor city?” These were pure figments of George McCullagh’s overheated imagination, but they would have their effect on the voters in the fall provincial election.

  With Croll and Roebuck out of the picture, Hepburn announced that “there is no turning back now … this is a fight to the finish.” The mines, he said, would be next; industry would be demoralized; stock prices would tumble.

  Hepburn was prepared to use any pretext to keep the strike going. On April 17, he personally took over negotiations with Charles Millard and the union’s lawyer, J.L. Cohen. The meeting was genial enough until Hepburn discovered that Cohen was using the phone in his private vault, apparently to report to Homer Martin. Hepburn flew into a rage. “What!” he cried, “another long distance call?” With that he broke off negotiations, charging that the local had double-crossed him and the union was being run by remote control. He strode back into his office, clapped his hat on his head, pushed his way through a crowd of reporters, and headed for the elevator.

  Homer Martin, however, was quite prepared to allow the local to negotiate with GM without interference from or apparent connection with the CIO. He wanted a Canadian contract – one that would run concurrently with the GM contracts in the United States so that all could eventually be negotiated at the same time on both sides of the border. To achieve that he was content to keep the congress out of the picture.

  Hepburn was ecstatic at what he called Martin’s “surrender.” He had been vindicated, he declared, in his attempts “to root communism out of the Canadian labour movement.” Negotiations resumed at once and it looked as if the strike would be settled quickly. Then, inexplicably, Hepburn again broke them off.

  He had learned from his informants in Oshawa that Martin’s strategic withdrawal was causing dissension among the rank and file. Now he saw a chance to break the union and stave off the threat to the mining industry – a threat that concerned him more than any menace to the automobile industry. “Let me tell Lewis here and now,” he said, “that he and his gang will never get their greedy paws on the mines of northern Ontario as long as I am prime minister.” The financial world was sceptical. On April 19, gold shares plunged on the Toronto market.

  The Oshawa local was in trouble. Homer Martin had promised financial support from the United States, but none came. The union’s funds were almost gone; it could no longer afford to pay its own pickets. The strike would have to be settled quickly or the local would be destroyed. This was a closely guarded secret; neither the press and general public nor the Premier realized that the union was broke. Instead, Hugh Thompson announced that the UAW in Detroit had unanimously voted funds to keep the strike going. It had done nothing of the sort.

  Both sides were now desperate to end the strike; only Hepburn was desperate to keep it going. The union was facing bankruptcy. GM wanted to get back to making cars before its rivals stole a march on it. Hepburn pleaded (in vain) by wire with the vacationing GM president, Colonel R.S. McLaughlin, to break off negotiations. But GM feared Ford and Chrysler more than it feared the union. All that Hepburn was able to achieve in the parley that followed on April 22 was to force a statement from Charles Millard and J.L. Cohen that they did not represent the CIO.

  Hepburn exulted over this paper victory. “The CIO is repudiated,” the Globe and Mail reported triumphantly. But even George McCullagh admitted that it was not a decisive win. The CIO was in Canada for good – in fact if not in name. The strike ended on April 23, fifteen days after it had begun, and both sides, as usual, claimed to have won. The union got wage increases and a seniority system and compromised on a forty-four-hour week – almost everything it wanted except official recognition for the CIO. But once the strike was settled, the workers on their own boldly passed a resolution affirming their local’s alliance with both the United Automobile Workers union and the parent congress.

  Industrial unionism had arrived in Canada in spite of Mitchell Hepburn. Ironically, the CIO’s role in the strike had been very slight. It had been reluctant to enter Canada, it hadn’t contributed a nickel in funds, it hadn’t called a sympathy strike in the United States to support the Canadian workers, and the final settlement had been negotiated by Canadians without its help. By overemphasizing the role of the CIO in the walk-out, Hepburn had managed to give it a status it wouldn’t otherwise have enjoyed. As it was, the Oshawa strike opened the door for a massive CIO organizing campaign that changed the nature of Canadian labour.

  The strike also demonstrated the extent to which Hepburn was a creature of the Ontario mining industry. The most extraordinary postscript to this extraordinary affair was George McCullagh’s manipulation of the Premier after the strike ended. McCullagh, on behalf of the mining fraternity, actually proposed that Hepburn’s Liberals, who held seventy-three seats in the legislature, form a coalition with Earl Rowe’s Conservatives, numbering seventeen.

  Only a strong and united government, McCullagh felt, could keep the CIO out of the mines, and Hepburn apparently agreed. He had already informed Herbert Bruce, the lieutenant-governor, that a coalition government might be in the offing. Then he visited Rowe and offered the startled Tory leader not only the premiership but also the chance to choose half the Cabinet. Rowe turned him down, an action that caused his second-in-command, George Drew, to resign in protest. “The time had come,” Drew insisted, “to end the two-party system in Ontario since only a strong government could destroy communism.” Those words had a familiar ring. Democracy was on shaky ground in Ontario, as it was elsewhere in the world, where other voices were calling for strong one-party government to destroy the spectre that was haunting Europe.

  Even though it posited the end of the Liberal party in Ontario, the plan appealed to Hepburn because it would, in his view, strike the CIO a death blow and be a slap in the face to his enemy, the Prime Minister. The Oshawa strike had widened a breach with Mackenzie King – and between the federal and provincial Liberals – that would not be healed until Hepburn left office. In short, th
e Premier of Ontario was prepared to circumvent the democratic political system in order to pursue a paranoid vendetta with all the power of an authoritarian state. And in this he had the enthusiastic backing of the financial giants of Bay Street. Fortunately, the Toronto Star got wind of the plan, and Hepburn was forced to deny it publicly. That ended the idea of coalition.

  In spite of this, the small-c conservative voters, who formed the majority of the Ontario electorate, were solidly behind Hepburn in his anti-CIO, anti-communist campaign. His repeated declarations that he would never tolerate “CIO lawlessness” reassured them. They had read about industrial strife south of the border. Both Hepburn and the press had made the most of those incidents. The last thing the voters wanted was to see it explode in their peaceful province. Hepburn’s public announcement, “I am a Reformer but I am not a Mackenzie King liberal any longer,” reinforced their traditional suspicion of Ottawa.

  In the fall election campaign, Hepburn stumped the province with what was, in effect, a law-and-order platform. As others had before him, he conjured up the spectre of revolution – always an effective vote-getter in a nation historically sensitive to the very thought of violent revolt. Hepburn explained that he had needed extra police at the time of the strike because he had “confidential reports that 15,000 Communists were ready to take part in any uprising whether it took place in Toronto or elsewhere.” In short, not only Oshawa but the entire province had been threatened.

  The Oshawa strike became one of the major issues in the campaign. With his attacks on the American labour body, Hepburn scored a stunning victory, retaining sixty-three seats to his opponents’ twenty-three and keeping the northern Ontario mining country safe for capitalism. It was, according to one American mining entrepreneur interviewed by the New York Post, the one spot on the continent “where if a union organizer is ordered out of the district by the company police or a piece of rock drops down a 1,000-foot shaft on his head, there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.”

  But it was a Pyrrhic triumph. By moving the provincial Liberal party to the right and away from its traditional source of support, Hepburn effectively destroyed it and, in the process, made room for the CCF’s eventual move into the vacuum.

  4

  The Prime Minister and the dictator

  On the day the Oshawa strike ended, Mackenzie King left Ottawa to attend the Coronation of King George VI in London, to confer with Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, and to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berlin.

  Accompanied by Joan and Godfroy Patteson, he sailed for England on the CPR’s sleek Empress of Australia, occupying Suite 140, the finest on the ship – the one in which the former Prince of Wales had travelled on his visits to Canada. In spite of the presence of his closest friends, King felt an indescribable loneliness. “Some evil spirit seems to have entered into my house of rest & peace to destroy both,” he wrote. The evil spirit, no doubt, was responsible for the incessant jazz music, which King couldn’t abide and which seeped into his room from the ballroom, disturbing his sleep. He much preferred the motion pictures shown to the first-class passengers: Rhodes – Builder of Empire (though he found himself “in little sympathy with the Empire-making side of the performance”), and A Tale of Two Cities, with Ronald Colman, which he found “a marvellous movie – the unrest of the French Revolutionary Times. Like today in some respects.”

  At the Coronation in Westminster Abbey, his puritan sensibilities were offended by the costliness of the vestments worn by nobles and clergy. The heavy embroidery, he thought, contrasted unfavourably with the simple garments of the fishermen of Galilee; the spirit of Christ was being overlaid by the materialism of the times. “Indeed it was only too apparent that without wealth or position, no one could gain admission to the Abbey service or a place there. A great contrast to the scenes of Christ’s ministry on earth!”

  In June, he attended a small private dinner party given by Neville Chamberlain for the Dominion prime ministers. Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, was also present. When King told Chamberlain and Eden that he had seen Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, and arranged a meeting with Hitler in Berlin, both men heartily approved. Germany, Chamberlain said, was more likely to listen to King than to anyone from Britain. Eden thought the Germans would look upon him as speaking not only for Canada but “also to some extent for the United States” and would be much impressed by what he had to say.

  King was anxious to tell Hitler “of my desire of his continuing constructive work among Labour, and not permitting it to be outdone by destructive work.” He intended to make it clear that Canadians would not stand for aggression and that if Germany became aggressive “she would find it impossible to hold back our country or any of the Dominions.” A statement like that, Eden told him, would help more than all the dispatches in the world to preserve the peace in Europe.

  Nonetheless, King was careful to inform the British politicians that Canada had no intention of being drawn into a European war unless Germany or some other country was the aggressor. That would be “like expecting us to jump into a bag of fighting cats.” He was careful, also, to underscore the voluntary nature of any Canadian involvement. Even then, the Canadian prime minister foresaw that conscription might jeopardize Canadian unity.

  He left the dinner with the feeling that the British were “wholeheartedly working for the peace of Europe and are likely to be wise and sane in their attitudes.” For Chamberlain he had “the greatest admiration and the greatest confidence.”

  In Berlin, King met first with Britain’s ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, who asked if he might accompany him to the interview with the German dictator. King resented the suggestion; he told Henderson that “you people in the Old Land never seem to get an understanding of the point of view of the Dominions, or what is best in their own interests, in relations with other countries.” The last thing King wanted was to have the Germans believe that he was under the wing of the British and that Canada couldn’t handle her own international relations. Henderson immediately backed off.

  The British ambassador was badly afflicted with the virus of appeasement. Austria, he explained to King, was largely German; Czechoslovakia had a large German minority; Germany had her need to expand, and if Britain tried to prevent her moving peacefully into those countries, it would be a great mistake. King, on his part, agreed that Britain should not act “as ‘a dog in the manger’ re: Germany’s legitimate development.”

  Henderson believed England could learn a lot from Germany in the treatment of the masses. Nazism wasn’t all wrong, he told King. The German people were happy and had a right to live under any system they wished. Henderson spoke of the League of Nations as “a horror”; collective security “was worse than meaningless, a real danger.”

  King’s diary entries during his days in Germany are remarkable not for what they say but for what they don’t say. In his scribbled musings King could be remarkably prickly. His references to the British, especially the aristocracy, as well as to some of his own countrymen, such as Vincent Massey, were often tinged with asperity or, as in the case of Bennett and some other political opponents, with real venom. And yet, in the twenty-eight pages that cover his four days in Berlin, in which he met and talked with Hitler, Göring, Neurath, and a host of minor Nazi officials, there is scarcely a suggestion of reproof, let alone disgust or anger at the totalitarian and viciously racist program that held the German people in its thrall. King not only accepted passively and without comment the patent nonsense that was spoon-fed to him but he also, apparently, believed much of it, while his personal assessment of the Nazi leadership bordered on the sycophantic.

  King told the British ambassador that he wanted to speak with Hitler “about his work on behalf of the people.” Henderson was enthusiastic. Hitler, he said, was really an idealist who had the people’s welfare very much at heart. If King could make Hitler feel that he, a Canadian, had an understanding of the German peopl
e, it would go farther than anything else to improve relations with the Reich. King left with the conviction that he had done the right thing “in the interests of Canada and the Empire in coming to Berlin at this time.”

  Two days later, King met the German dictator. Hitler told him, “… my support comes from the people – the people don’t want war.” That impressed King very much – “a real note of humility” he wrote later. Hitler continued to emphasize that “you need have no fear of war at the instance of Germany.… We know what a terrible thing war is, and not one of us want to see another war.” This was pure hogwash; Germany that year was actively preparing for war. But Hitler, who had successfully tranquillized diplomats more worldly than King, covered his intentions with a thick varnish of sweet reason that impressed the gullible prime minister.

  “Let us assume that a war came,” the dictator mused. “What would it mean? Assuming that France were to get the victory [over Germany] … what she would find would be that European civilization had been wiped out. But suppose we were to win the war? … We would find exactly the same thing. We would have obliterated civilization of both countries, indeed of a greater part of Europe; all that would be left, would be anarchy.…” The interview, scheduled for half an hour, went on for more than twice that length, with Hitler quietly explaining the aspirations of his people and the German government’s sincere desire for peace. King was hoodwinked. When he thanked the dictator for giving him so much time, Hitler “smiled very pleasantly and indeed had a sort of appealing and an affectionate look in his eyes.” King sized him up as “really one who truly loves his fellow men and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good. That he feels himself to be a deliverer of his people from tyranny.”