Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance

David Kimmel teaches history and Canadian studies at Brock University in
St. Catharines.

Capitalism is a morally ambiguous system. Historians sometimes forget
this fact, but the so-called robber barons of the late 19th and early
20th centuries never did. Saying one thing and doing another, performing
acts of philanthropy while serving their own interests—this was their
modus operandi. Max Aitken, the small-town boy who became Lord
Beaverbrook, was no different. His father told him that “principle and
uprightness” underlay material success. Aitken subscribed to this
notion only whenever it served his purpose, jettisoning it whenever it
stood in the way. He and his biographers both exaggerated his piety and
good deeds, omitting the unflattering truth. This book, therefore, is a
corrective as well as an exc-ellent contribution to Canadian business
history.

Aitken, the “chief rascal of Canadian finance,” flourished during
the Laurier Boom, one of Canada’s periods of greatest economic
progress. The latter years of this era were marked by the growth of the
finance sector. Entrepreneurs formed investment banks that helped to
consolidate industries and make millions for investors. Aitken formed
Canada Cement and Stelco before 1910, when he moved to England a very
rich man. Marchildon shows that Aitken differed from other finance
capitalists only in the scale of his achievements and that his story—a
tale involving conflicts of interest, bullying, price-fixing, excess
profit-making, skulduggery, and muckraking—is emblematic of the
business climate of the early 1900s.

Marchildon also puts the 1911 election into fresh perspective and does
a good job of explaining the global aspects of the Canadian merger
movement. This well-written book should inform and entertain even the
most econophobic reader.