"Along with the Ross rifle, the government was also publicly embarrassed by boots that disintegrated in the mud and trenching shovels that did not dig properly. Coupled with insistent press stories about suppliers with close ties to the Conservative Party and government inquiries into the way [Minister of Militia Sam] Hughes’ department was handing out contracts, it seemed at times like the war was a gigantic patronage opportunity for well-connected equipment makers. “Personally,” the Winnipeg anti-war activist Fred Dixon told a protest rally, “I think those responsible for the Ross rifle, defective shells, shoddy clothes, paper boots, and the whole black record of profiteering and graft gave ten thousand times more aid and comfort to the enemy than all the Socialists and conscientious objectors put together.”
The fat-cat capitalist who became the face of the profiteer for most Canadians was Joseph Flavelle, president of the William Davies Company, Toronto’s largest meat packer. Flavelle was a stiff-backed Methodist, opposed to drinking, smoking, and dancing (he was known as “Holy Joe”). According to his biographer Michael Bliss, he began each day by kneeling in prayer at the breakfast table with his family. He lived in one of the city’s most opulent brick mansions and was a leading member of the charmed circle of entrepreneurs-financiers who controlled Toronto’s financial life. Part of Flavelle’s personal ethic involved a commitment to public service; during the war he put this into practice by taking on the non-paying job of chair of the Imperial Munitions Board (IMB). The Board was the agency that organized the production of munitions in Canada for sale to the British. In its original incarnation as the Shell Committee, it had been plagued by incompetence and corruption, and it was widely agreed that Flavelle did an excellent job reforming its operations. It is ironic, therefore, that Flavelle ended up becoming in the public’s mind the most high profile war profiteer in the country.
Flavelle’s reputation first took a nose dive in 1916 when a dispute arose over wages and working conditions in the munitions factories over which he had control. As head of the IMB, Flavelle had refused to introduce the fair-wage clauses that were standard in other industries. He had little sympathy with the needs of the munitions workers. As far as he was concerned, they were fortunate to have jobs that gave them an opportunity to contribute to the war effort. Flavelle was more concerned that higher wages might cause employers to withdraw from the production of badly needed supplies.
Union leadership, not wanting to appear anti-war, refused to be drawn into a confrontation with the government or the employers. But the rank and file grew increasingly restive. They wanted a shorter workday (nine hours instead of the customary ten), better wages, and payment for overtime. In April 1916, faced with the threat of a general strike among munitions workers in Toronto, the federal government appointed a royal commission to look into the machinists’ grievances. Later that spring the commission reported in favour of the workers’ position. The work day should be nine hours, the commission recommended; workers should receive time and a half for overtime, double pay on Sundays and holidays; and hourly wages should be increased to between 27.5 cents and 42.5 cents, depending on the job.
It looked like a victory for the workers, except that employers simply refused to accept the commission report. The result, in Hamilton at least, where much of the war work was centred, was a strike by members of the machinists union. Both Flavelle and the union leadership tried to find a middle path, but the employers were adamant. One of them, Basil Magor, vice-president of the National Steel Car Company, assured Flavelle, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that: “Our men have got no complaint with regard to wages, conditions or anything else …” The problem, claimed Magor, was the interference of “a few Labour Agitators.”
Given such intransigence, the workers saw no alternative but to strike, and they did so on June 12, walking off the job at more than thirty plants across the city. Employers responded with an organized publicity campaign accusing strikers of being unpatriotic and blaming “paid outside agitators” for the unrest. In the name of wartime security and to stop sympathy strikes from occurring elsewhere, the federal government banned all reporting about the strike in the daily press. The union leadership itself remained uncommitted to the strike, which not surprisingly lost steam over the summer as employees went back to work or left town to find jobs elsewhere. Flavelle could have played a more decisive role in this affair by requiring the companies to meet the standards recommended by the royal commission, but he chose not to. As a result he appeared to make himself a collaborator in the efforts of capital to suppress the legitimate demands of labour.
But this was only the beginning of Flavelle’s fall from grace, at least as far as the labour movement was concerned. Along with the job at the IMB, he continued to be president of the William Davies Company, which was doing very well during war, selling bacon to the British and tinned “bully” beef for the men in the trenches. Company profits more than tripled, and in the summer of 1917 a federal government report seemed to indicate that the Davies Company had made an enormous profit on its sales of bacon. Press reports made the figures seem more damning than in fact they were. Suddenly Flavelle—or “His Lardship” as he came to be called—was tarred as a hypocritical millionaire making a fortune from the sacrifice of others. This time it was more than a few labour rabble rousers who were involved. The public was furious.
“I can truly say that I never before met with such widespread rage over any other scandal,” remarked one Ottawa politician. Flavelle’s own church rebuked him. “There is a general feeling abroad in Canada,” opined the Methodist Christian Guardian newspaper, “that the man or the corporation which comes out of this war richer than when they went into it […] have failed to exhibit true patriotism.” Customers boycotted Davies stores and editorialists vilified Flavelle in the daily press. In the end a government inquiry ruled that the Davies Company was simply conducting legitimate business. By then it didn’t really matter. Flavelle was held in contempt for making millions while young Canadians fought, and died, in the trenches for $1.10 a day, and the Toronto entrepreneur came to represent the whole range of manufacturers and financiers whom many people suspected of profiting from war."
- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 27-29.
