Industry and Humanity: A Study in the Principles Underlying Industrial Reconstruction (Classic Reprint)
(Rockefeller Foundation for the opportunity which has made...)
Rockefeller Foundation for the opportunity which has made possible the writing of this book. When I was invited by the Foundation, in June, 1914, to undertake a study of industrial relations, it was expected that I would visit different countries, make first-hand investigations, and, as a result of these inquiries, offer construetive suggestions concerning industrial and social policies. The War not only prevented me from making studies abroad, but so completely changed the industrial situation in all countries that I was compelled to modify my plans considerably. Hopeful of being constructively helpful, notwithstanding changed conditions, I decided to make a personal investigation into the root causes of some of the existing industrial controversies in A merica, and to contribute, by suggestion or otherwise, as opportunity offered, to working out improvements in the relations between Capital and Labor.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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William Lyon Mackenzie King, also commonly known as Mackenzie King, was the dominant Canadian political leader, as the Prime Minister of Canada, from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Background
On December 17, 1874, W. L. Mackenzie King was born at Berlin (later Kitchener), Ontario. His father, John King, was a lawyer, and his mother, Isabel Mackenzie King, was the daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the short-lived rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada.
His maternal spiritual inheritance was of some significance to King and may help to explain his lifelong ambivalence between his urge to be a reformer and his craving for social respectability.
Education
King graduated from the University of Toronto in 1895, undertook postgraduate studies at Chicago, and secured a doctorate in political economy from Harvard.
Career
In 1900 King joined the Canadian civil service as deputy minister of labor, and in 1908, when he entered politics and won the riding of Waterloo North for the Liberals, the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, appointed him Canada's first full-time minister of labor.
In the prewar years he achieved considerable prominence in Canada as a labor conciliator and was chiefly responsible for drafting and presenting to Parliament the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act (1907) and the Combines Investigation Act (1910).
These measures revealed King's tenaciously held faith that exposure of the facts of any situation to public scrutiny would create a public opinion strong enough to ensure the resolution of social problems.
During World War I King worked for the Rockefeller Foundation on labor research and served as an industrial counselor to the Rockefeller interests. His views on industrial relations were expounded vaguely and verbosely in Industry and Humanity (1918).
Party Leader and Prime Minister Following Laurier's death a Liberal party convention in 1919 chose King as party leader, and he reentered the House of Commons as leader of the opposition. He became prime minister in 1921 as the result of an election which brought an end to the two-party system in federal politics. A large part of his support then and later lay in a solid block of conservative French-Canadian members of Parliament.
While keeping their allegiance he endeavored to woo the 65 members of the second largest group in Parliament, the agrarian Progressive party, whom King described as "Liberals in a hurry, " temporarily adrift from their true political home.
By 1924 most of the Progressives had returned to the Liberal fold, thanks mainly to King's judicious concessions in the direction of a lower tariff. By adroit maneuvering rather than through any correct constitutional interpretation, King survived the "King-Byng constitutional crisis" of 1926 and held office again after a few weeks in opposition until he was defeated in 1930, an event he later perceived as good fortune since it labeled the victorious Conservatives for years to come as the "party of depression. "
On his return to power in 1935, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1948, King found a new force on the political scene in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He was not unwilling to use the existence of the new socialist group to strengthen reform elements within his own party. By the end of World War II he was genuinely alarmed by the apparently growing threat presented by the CCF, and this awareness did much to push through a program of postwar reconstruction measures, including the extension of social insurance and the establishment of family allowances. Foreign Relations In external relations King was a steady proponent of Canadian autonomy, and during his years in office complete sovereignty within the British Commonwealth was achieved.
He exercised this sovereignty with great caution, pursuing a policy of "no commitments" in the League of Nations and toward collective security generally. As the threat of war increased in the 19306, King consistently refused to declare Canadian policy beyond the assertion that "Parliament will decide. "
In 1939 Canada followed Britain into a war that saw Canada's contribution grow until it was for a time the second largest force after Britain, militarily and industrially, on the Allied side of the struggle. Under King's leadership Canada moved into a new era of closer relations with the United States, notably during World War II, when the Ogdensburg Agreement of 1940, establishing the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, was followed by the Hyde Park Agreement of 1941, to promote cooperation between the two countries in defense production. King's enormous skill as a politician was never better demonstrated than during the war, when he managed to prevent the conscription question from tearing the nation apart as it had in 1917.
It was perhaps his greatest achievement that he brought French and English Canadians through the war in relative harmony. Indeed, the most consistent theme in King's political philosophy and practice was his commitment to Canadian unity, and increasingly he saw the unity of the Liberal party as synonymous with national unity.
He died two years after his retirement at Kingsmere, his country home near Ottawa, on July 22, 1950.
(Rockefeller Foundation for the opportunity which has made...)
Membership
He was an early member and officer of the Kappa Alpha Society.
Personality
King had no personal magnetism, he was no orator, and he aroused little affection even in his warmest supporters. His political longevity was due to his acute political sense and, sometimes, to his ruthlessness.
Connections
He never married, and in his loneliness he confided his perpetual self-doubt and his ambitions to his voluminous diaries.