In the Power of the Government : The Rise and Fall of Newsprint in Ontario, 1894-1932

Mark Kuhlberg challenges the orthodox interpretation of the relationship between the corporations which ran the Ontario’s pulp and paper mills and the politicians at Queen’s Park in the early twentieth century.

For forty years, historians have argued that early twentieth-century provincial governments in Canada were easily manipulated by the industrialists who developed Canada’s natural resources, such as pulpwood, water power, and minerals. With In the Power of the Government, Mark Kuhlberg uses the case of the Ontario pulp and paper industry to challenge that interpretation of Canadian provincial politics.

Examining the relationship between the corporations which ran the province’s pulp and paper mills and the politicians at Queen’s Park, Kuhlberg concludes that the Ontario government frequently rebuffed the demands of the industrialists who wanted to tap Ontario’s spruce timber and hydro-electric potential. A sophisticated empirical challenge to the orthodox literature on this issue, In the Power of the Government will be essential reading for historians and political scientists interested in the history of Canadian industrial development.

Contents 7 Maps, Charts, and Figures 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 19 Section I. The Setting and the Liberals, 1894–1905 31 Section II. “Large tracts of land are not necessary for the business of any company”: The Conservatives, 1905–1919 99 Section III. “In order to keep in office, they must play politics”: The United Farmers of Ontario, 1919–1923 161 Section IV. “The chief is the whole show”: The Conservatives, 1923–1932 207 Conclusion: “The availability of wood for industry is ambiguous” 313 Notes 329 Sources 393 Index 411