Our Graphical History Tour has been revisiting recent history lately, so it must be time to catch up on the news from 100 Augusts ago.
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| "So Busy He Didn't Notice Him" by E.R. McTaggart in Vancouver Daily Province, July 26. 1926 |
On July 18, 1926 the Boston Post printed a letter from Channing H. Cox, a former Governor of Massachusetts, proposing a union of the United States and Canada. The Post lauded the idea, apparently a pet cause of its Financial Editor, Arthur J. Bean, who wrote, "It is of paramount interest to New England, which, as shown by the map, reaches up into Canada like a giant hand of friendship."
The Post editorial barely registered elsewhere in the United States, but was front page news north of the border, where parliamentary elections were underway. The campaign of Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Meighen, heading a minority government that lost a no confidence vote in record time, seized upon the spectre of annexation by the U.S. as a weapon against recently ousted Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
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| "Summer Studies" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, August 10, 1926 |
King had nothing to do with the Boston Post editorial, but that didn't stop Canada's Tory press from running with the story.
On the campaign trail, King brandished a full-page article in the August 26, 1926 Toronto Telegram, purportedly taken from the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Mackenzie King Pictured as Wall Street's Hero — Financial Interests of U.S. Are Told That King and His Followers Believe Canada Should Be Free of British Influence."
King told his audience, "The article, according to the statement which appears at its head, has been written not in the States but in Canada. I venture to say it was written not very far from the office of the Toronto Telegram itself."
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| "Welcome the Wanderer" by George Shields in Toronto Evening Telegram, August 6, 1926 |
Shields's reference to John D. Rockefeller apparently comes from the Wall Street Journal article in question, which, according to the Telegram, identified King as "a graduate of Harvard University and late head of the Rockefeller Foundation."
In 1914, during a stretch when he was out of office, King did in fact come to New York to advise Rockefeller how to resolve a coal miners' strike in Colorado. Rockefeller asked King to stay on as a Standard Oil executive, but King returned to Ontario for his career in Canadian politics.
The Telegram article quoted the Journal as saying, "If Mr. King and his party succeed then Great Britain might just as well give up on the idea of a united empire. If, on the other hand, the Conservative Party is successful, it will mean that a Conservative Premier will take his place at the Imperial Conference and that Canada will have assured Great Britain that she has turned her feet toward a closer relationship with the Empire."
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| "The Axe Is His Way" by George Shields in Toronto Evening Telegram, August 9, 1926 |
Thomas L. Church was the Conservative candidate running as the incumbent for the Toronto Northwest constituency in the House of Commons. As such, the former Mayor of Toronto was strongly favored by the Telegram, so their cartoonist depicted him touting several of their shared causes as a sturdy platform for the Tories. They included "forcing" Canadian coal into Ontario in place of coal from the U.S.; and stopping Canadian farmers from illegally smuggling grain, oats, and barley to U.S. grain elevators for better prices than they could find domestically; and extending the Tories' longstanding "National Policy" of high protective tariffs.
Church would win this election, after which he threatened to launch a rebel “ginger group” within the party if Meighen were reelected as its chief standard bearer.
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| "The Anti-English Cry" by George Shields in Toronto Evening Telegram, August 17, 1926 |
King and the Liberals heaped criticism upon Governor General Baron Byng, who, as the crown's representative, had called upon Meighen to form a government when King had asked him to call for new elections.
The other head in Shields's cartoon is Henri Bourassa, a former Liberal from Quebec recently returned to Parliament as an Independent. Also the publisher of Le Devoir, Bourassa declared his full support of King and accused Byng of playing politics: "He put himself at the service of Mr. Meighen to satisfy either personal rancor or perhaps to serve the Imperial policy, for, after all, the Governor General is an employee of London, responsible for his acts to England and not to Canada.
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| "Poor Shooting" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, August 17, 1926 |
"That is where the question becomes more grave than the customs inquiry," Bourassa concluded, bringing up the scandal hyped by Meighen's Conservative Party that was the reason for Lord Byng to dismiss Prime Minister King's government in the first place.
According to Sam Hunter's cartoon, the Canadian public agreed that the charges fell short of justifying a change in the government.
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| "Doesn't Desire to Be Rescued" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, August 28, 1926 |
Neither did Hunter think Meighen's policy of restoring higher National Policy tariffs on U.S. goods and services from the 1920-21 Conservative-led government was a winning issue for the Tories. The sheet held aloft by Tax Payer reads "The Robb Budget Suits Me!", referring to James Robb ("Baldy" Robb in the Toronto Evening Telegram), Finance Minister in the Mackenzie King cabinet.
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| "I Was Assured This Was to Be a Hot, Keenly-contested, Scrappy Election Campaign" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Evening Star, August 23, 1926 |
Ah, well, and zut alors. I suppose it was as difficult to keep Jean Q. Publique interested in politics in the heat of summer. Especially when he had to vote on a new government every couple of months.
