The Diary of Alexander James McPhail by Harold A. Innis; Alexander James McPhailReview by: Harald S. PattonThe Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique etde Science politique, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Feb., 1941), pp. 122-124Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/137172 .

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122 The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 122 The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science

conditions can yield. The Editor, Professor W. A. Mackintosh, when his task is concluded, may well be proud not only of his own contributions but of the team-work which he has organized. Printing, proof-reading, maps, and index exhibit a uniform excellence.

C. R. FAY

Cambridge.

The Diary of Alexander James McPhail. Edited by HAROLD A. INNIS. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. 1940. Pp. x, 289. ($2.50)

IN this latest contribution of Professor Innis to Canadian economic literature, he has presented, in selective and annotated form, passages from the diary of the self-sacrificing president of the Saskatchewan and interprovincial wheat pool organizations from their inception in 1924 to his death in 1931.

The task confronting the editor in handling the entries in McPhail's diary over the period 1919-31 has been a difficult one. Publication of them as they stood would have involved the juxtaposition of the trivial and homely with the momentous and critical, and been largely unin- telligible without a background of reference in terms of the history and personalities of the wheat pool movement. On the other hand, the mere selection of copious extracts from McPhail's diary, correspondence, and speeches to feature a new history of the much publicized Canadian wheat pool would have involved a sacrifice of the biographical interest and play of personalities inherent in the twelve-year diary of this notable co-operative leader. Professor Innis has followed, therefore, the com- promise plan of topical chapterization, with amplifying, connecting, or interpreting editorial commentaries interlarding the selected diary extracts arranged chronologically under each topic. Even this device leaves many diary references to persons, organizations, and events rather obscure or confusing to readers other than those intimately informed or actively associated with them. The volume is perhaps only too appropriately dedicated "to those who worked with McPhail in the co-operative movement in Western Canada." If, in addition to the index, the editor had included a directory of identification of persons named in the diary entries and a chronology of the wheat pool move- ment, a distinct aid would have been rendered to interested but less initiated readers.

To those familiar with the post-war struggle for collective wheat marketing in Western Canada, this book contributes a revealing insight

conditions can yield. The Editor, Professor W. A. Mackintosh, when his task is concluded, may well be proud not only of his own contributions but of the team-work which he has organized. Printing, proof-reading, maps, and index exhibit a uniform excellence.

C. R. FAY

Cambridge.

The Diary of Alexander James McPhail. Edited by HAROLD A. INNIS. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. 1940. Pp. x, 289. ($2.50)

IN this latest contribution of Professor Innis to Canadian economic literature, he has presented, in selective and annotated form, passages from the diary of the self-sacrificing president of the Saskatchewan and interprovincial wheat pool organizations from their inception in 1924 to his death in 1931.

The task confronting the editor in handling the entries in McPhail's diary over the period 1919-31 has been a difficult one. Publication of them as they stood would have involved the juxtaposition of the trivial and homely with the momentous and critical, and been largely unin- telligible without a background of reference in terms of the history and personalities of the wheat pool movement. On the other hand, the mere selection of copious extracts from McPhail's diary, correspondence, and speeches to feature a new history of the much publicized Canadian wheat pool would have involved a sacrifice of the biographical interest and play of personalities inherent in the twelve-year diary of this notable co-operative leader. Professor Innis has followed, therefore, the com- promise plan of topical chapterization, with amplifying, connecting, or interpreting editorial commentaries interlarding the selected diary extracts arranged chronologically under each topic. Even this device leaves many diary references to persons, organizations, and events rather obscure or confusing to readers other than those intimately informed or actively associated with them. The volume is perhaps only too appropriately dedicated "to those who worked with McPhail in the co-operative movement in Western Canada." If, in addition to the index, the editor had included a directory of identification of persons named in the diary entries and a chronology of the wheat pool move- ment, a distinct aid would have been rendered to interested but less initiated readers.

To those familiar with the post-war struggle for collective wheat marketing in Western Canada, this book contributes a revealing insight

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into the internal problems of policy and administration in the formative, expansionist, critical, and disintegrative stages of the spectacular experi- ment in co-operative wheat pooling, and into the personalities of its leaders, as well as of prominent grain trade figures, bankers, and poli- ticians with whom McPhail and his associates had to deal.

To the student of co-operation, the diary is significant in revealing not only what McPhail championed, but also what he opposed as a co-operative leader. He possessed steadfast convictions with regard to the principle of democratic organization and control, and the entries of 1920-2 depict his successful revolt, as a member, director, and later as secretary, of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association against the existence of self-perpetuating, high-salaried office-holding and inter- locking directorships between the Association and the politically powerful Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator Company. Becoming convinced that the officers of the latter were more concerned with preserving their own organization and positions than in supporting either the Associ- ation's demand for a re-established wheat board or various proposals to join with the United Grain Growers in providing unified pool marketing facilities, he worked for the absorption of the provincial elevator company by the "grass-roots" Saskatchewan wheat pool through the democratic process of over-riding of management by vote of the "Co-op" delegates. He championed the principle of interprovincial federation in pool marketing, with equal provincial representation on the Central Board, and resisted to his death independent operation of the provincial pools after the crisis of 1930. He adhered steadfastly to the voluntary principle of co-operation, and refused to consent to any form of "100 per cent pool" in Saskatchewan which did not provide representation of non-member growers. He came to distrust Sapiro as "one of the most dangerous men to the cooperative movement." Although he personally invited J. L. McFarland to become manager of the Central Selling Agency in 1931, his disillusionment over the latter's managerial policy seems to have been embittered more than anything else by McFarland's early disposition to ignore the Board of Directors.

McPhail's diary entries appear to have afforded a psychological vent for the restraints he imposed upon himself in board and delegate meetings in the interests of democracy and harmony. The ultra-democratic organization and procedure, which he himself helped to create, in the Saskatchewan pool with its annually elected board of sixteen directors, and in the oft-dissentient Central Board with its equal provincial repre- sentation, produced at times a cynical reaction on the dual president which evoked such outbursts as: "Board meeting all day. Very slow progress. The greatest mistake we ever made was to have a Board of

123

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124 The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science

16 members. The best and most valuable members are without excep- tion the ones who have least to say" (p. 139). And again: "Delegates' meeting. More than usual wasted time. The delegates appear to take the attitude when they come to a meeting-'We'll just sit down here until we're through and we'll take as long to do it as we feel disposed to.' There is no sign of any disposition to expedite business or to do it in a business-like way" (p. 253). Nevertheless, in attending the Imperial Economic Conference at London in 1930, he was moved to write: "I told some of the men attending the conference that the more of the meetings I attend the more respect I have for our farmer Board members. I doubt if a stranger was listening to the discussion of our Board and the discussions of the Economic Committee of the conference that he would say the committee was more intelligent."

The diary entries of the later years become, as Dr. Innis observes, "a tragic and poignant document." They are a record of intensifying strain wearing down an overburdened co-operative leader who had continually wrestled with the fundamental problem of reconciling organizational democracy with administrative unity and efficiency, and whose devoted sense of duty under adversity exacted his life in the desperate effort to save the farmers' organization, not merely from the consequence of errors in collective judgment which he had personally resisted, but also from the world wheat debacle which no single organi- zation or government could withstand. While unable to prevent the collapse of the Central, McPhail's long-drawn-out negotiations with the bankers, western premiers, and the federal government were at least instrumental in preserving the individual provincial pool organizations and their elevator systems. His successor, Brouillette, lived to see the consummation in 1935 of the grain growers' long fight for a Canadian Wheat Board empowered to establish a minimum seasonal price to producers, representing a national underwriting of the exposed wheat economy of the Prairie Provinces.

The suppression by Dr. Innis of the names of certain living pool board members and other persons against whom McPhail allowed himself to vent his indignation and resentment in the confessional of his diary, was doubtless actuated by considerations of editorial discretion, but the recurring blanks are somewhat provocative to the interested reader. It is also to be regretted that the portrait of the subject of the diary, instead of appearing as a frontispiece to the volume, does not emerge until page 248.

HARALD S. PATTON

Michigan State College, East Lansing, Mich., U.S.A.

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