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Another Anti-Trust Tradition: Canadian Anti-Combines Policy, 1889–1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Michael Bliss
Michael Bliss
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, University of Toronto
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Abstract

Professor Bliss suggests that the Canadian anti-trust tradition was much more similar to the British experience than to the policies adopted in the United States. At no time, he argues, did Canadian legislation significantly expand the common law prohibition of undue or unreasonable restraints of trade, and the few prosecutions after 1900 had no significant effect in inhibiting the thrust of business resistance to market forces.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2: Canada , Summer 1973 , pp. 177 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1973

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References

1 Friedmann, W., Law in a Changing Society (Berkeley, Cal., 1959), 281–87Google Scholar; Friedmann, , ed., Anti-Trust Laws: A Comparative Symposium (Toronto, 1956)Google Scholar.

2 Thorelli, Hans B., The Federal Antitrust Policy (London, 1954)Google Scholar; Letwin, William, Law and Economic Policy in America (Edinburgh, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 House of Commons, Debates, February 29, 1888, 28–35.

4 “Report of the Select Committee to Investigate and Report Upon Alleged Combinations in Manufactures, Trade and Insurance in Canada,” House of Commons, Journals, 1888, Appendix 3, 10.

5 Ball, John A. Jr., Canadian Anti-Trust Legislation (Baltimore, 1934), 21–22Google Scholar. Other standard sources on the development of Canadian anti-combines policy are Reynolds, Lloyd G., The Control of Competition in Canada (Cambridge, Mass., 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bladen, Vincent W., An Introduction to Political Economy (Toronto, rev. ed., 1956), ch. VIIIGoogle Scholar; and Skeoch, L. A., ed., Restrictive Trade Practices in Canada (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar.

6 Canada, Statutes, 1889, 52 Vic, ch. 41.

7 Reynolds, Control of Competition, 131–32; House of Commons, Debates, July 20, 1891, 2579.

8 House of Commons, Debates, April 30, 1889, 1690.

9 “Report of the Select Committee,” passim.

10 Ibid., 5.

11 Monetary Times, May 25, 1888, 1448.

12 Blain, Hugh, Combines: An Address Delivered Before the Board of Trade of the City of Toronto (Toronto, 1889)Google Scholar.

13 “Report of the Select Committee,” 88–89, 113, 23.

14 Blain, Combines; Monetary Times, April 5, 1889, 1158.

15 Public Archives of Canada, John A. Macdonald Papers, p. 150845, “Report of Committee on Combines to the Council of the Board of Trade of the City of Toronto,” February 26, 1889; for details of resistance to competition see my unpublished doctoral thesis, “A Living Profit: Studies in the Social History of Canadian Business, 1883–1911” (University of Toronto, 1972), chs. 1–3Google Scholar.

16 “The Canadian Sugar Combine,” University Quarterly Review, I, 1 (February 1890), 12–39Google Scholar.

17 The Week, March 29, April 19, May 3, 1888.

18 House of Commons, Debates, April 22, 1889, 1441.

19 Ibid., April 8, 1889, 1113.

20 Toronto Globe, April 13, 17, 1889.

21 This account and interpretation of the passing of the legislation differs from those of Ball and Reynolds, who, by failing to notice that Wallace himself watered down his bill, credit him with good intentions and blame the final product on business lobbyists. There is also controversy about another section of the act affecting trade unions' exemption from the legislation. Liberals claimed, and some historians have agreed, that the Act did remove unions' exemption from prosecution for conspiracy in restraint of trade. This was not the case. For a more detailed account of the legislative history of the bill, see Bliss, “A Living Profit,” 94–106.

22 House of Commons, Debates, July 20, 1891, 2560.

23 Reynolds, Control of Competition in Canada, 135.

24 McDiarmid, O. J., Commercial Policy in the Canadian Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ball, Canadian Anti-Trust Legislation, 13–15.

25 Ball, Canadian Anti-Trust Legislation, 14–17. The only action taken was an investigation of a combine among Canadian paper manufacturers in 1902. This eventually led to a 40 per cent reduction in the tariff on newsprint, but there was, significantly, no criminal prosecution of a combination exposed as unduly raising prices.

26 House of Commons, Debates, April 27, 1910, 7991; Toronto Star, February 27, 1909.

27 Senate, Debates, June 26, 1899, 492–94; July 17, 1899, 781. A year later the 1899 draft amendments passed both Houses without comment.

28 Ball, Canadian Anti-Trust Legislation, 24–34. Action was taken against Ontario coal dealers in 1903, drug manufacturers in 1904, master plumbers in Ontario in 1905, the Dominion Wholesale Grocers' Guild in 1906, and lumber dealers on the prairies in 1907. Only the Guild was acquitted. For judicial interpretation of the legislation, see Skeoch, ed., Restrictive Trade Practices in Canada, 31–89.

29 Canadian Manufacturers' Association, Archives, Executive Council, Minutes, January 16, 1908.

30 Canadian Annual Review, 1909, 188–89, 255–260.

31 Upon the application of any six persons a judge could, after a hearing, order the Minister of Labour to appoint an investigating commission to determine if a combine existed in violation of the Criminal Code. Reports were to be made public and penalties were provided for continuing the offence.

32 House of Commons, Debates, April 12, 1910, 6802–6861; PAC, W. L. M. King Papers, vol C3, File 25.

33 Monetary Times, November 26, 1910, 2213; Ball, Canadian Anti-Trust Legislation, 45–59.

34 Montreal Board of Trade Archives, Montreal Wholesale Grocers' Association, Minutes, July 15, 1910; September 12, November 2, 1911; Canada Lumberman, December 1, 1910; Stapells, Herbert Gordon, “The Recent Consolidation Movement in Canadian Industry” (unpublished M. A. thesis, University of Toronto, 1920)Google Scholar.

35 “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?”, in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1967), 195Google Scholar.

36 For interpretations stressing these themes in Canadian history, see, among others, Hartz, Louis, ed., The Founding of New Societies (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Horowitz, Gad, Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar; Innis, H. A., Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1956)Google Scholar.

37 House of Commons, Debates, August 4, 1904, 8394–8434; August 5, 8534-8550. This incident also demonstrated a clear tendency of Canadians to identify the trust as a particularly American phenomenon. It was common knowledge that the use of exclusive contracts was almost universal in Canadian business, and the amendment apparently covered all uses of these contracts, but the government had no intention of using its legislation against any domestic manufacturer, and did not.