Old Black Joe Flavelle: Condemning the Great War Profiteer

 Library and Archives Canada/C-23692

Joseph Wesley Flavelle was a self-made millionaire whose business interests extended far beyond the meat-packing industry.  It was his profits from interests in the William Davies Company during the Great War, however, that drew a broadside of condemnation from the Canadian press and public.

The accusations were especially pointed from a man who in late 1916 had told Toronto manufacturers to ignore profit during the war.  Flavelle harangued the businessmen:

"Profits! I have come straight from the seat of a nation where they are sweating blood to win this war, and I stand before you stripped of many ideas. Profits! Send profits to the hell where they belong."(Bliss, p, 295)

Nevertheless, it was due to profits that the country found their villain in Flavelle.  Michael Bliss' biography noted that a man that started his fortune in the pork industry lent himself to gluttonous metaphors.  Bliss notes, "there were bitter jokes about baconets and baconeers, hogging the profits and wallowing at the trough." (Bliss, A Canadian Millionaire, xi) 

The story was broke by Saturday Night, and a reprinted pamplet shows the vindictive vitriol poured out on the Canadian businessman.

From "Joseph Discovered by his Brethren", Gadsby, H. Franklin.

Cover of Saturday Night pamphlet

The scandal killed Flavelle's reputation.  Despite his role in organizing the munitions industry, cleaning up the mess of inefficiency and patronage from the Sam Hughes days, Flavelle was the war's most notorious profiteer.  As he stated after a commission had cleared his name, "Shall we close this chapter[?] It is all over except the unfortunate remembrance in every part of Canada that I am [...] a profiteer." (CBC)

Spoilt Reputations: Swine metaphors in Joseph Flavelle's profiteering scandal

The Edmonton Bulletin,

 July 13, 1917, Page 1

In 1917, Joseph Flavelle ran what was effectively the largest business in North America through his chairmanship of the Imperial Munitions Board.  Flavelle's reputation was never to fully recover from an expose of his business interests in the William Davies meat-packing industry.

On 13 July 1917, the Ottawa Journal was the first newspaper to leak news of Flavelle's profits which they headlined as "Huge Margins Shown on Bacon Trade".  Michael Bliss' biography of the capitalist takes a sympathetic approach to the scandal, noting the government report which fuelled the outrage in the press was "in a many ways...a misleading, in fact stupid, document", which showed no comprehension of the  meat-packing industry.

Bacon Export Trade examination.  Flavelle far right.  Redcliff Review, November 8, 1917, Page 3

The press couldn't resist the metaphors on a scandalous profiteering in industry whose product was synonymous with gluttony.  As Bliss writes,

Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook
Them (1918), by C. Houston Goudiss

 and Alberta M. Goudiss Gutenburg

the bacon scandal was prime fare for editorial writers.  The Globe was glad to see that the O'Connor report had generated too much heat to be put in cold storage.  The Star  thought the order of Baronets needed to be supplemented by a class for Baconets; the Ottawa Citizen accused the packers of having hogged everything but the squeal.  The Regina Leader, on of the most bitter Liberal papers, wrote of "price hogs" and the need to treat profiteers as traitors. (Bliss, p.343-44)

 

On 6 September 1917 William Henry Taylor of the Toronto World waxed poetic in a piece he titled "The Patriotic Hog".


He swallows all the food that he can hold-
When presto! change! the meal is turned to gold;
No doubt his pride will swell when he has found
That bacon sells for fifty cents a pound.

Details of the Canadian Pork Trade, 1890s

Michael Bliss' biography of Joseph Flavelle, A Canadian Millionaire (1978) offers not only an intimate perspective on an archetypal Canadian capitalist, but also explains much of the changing pork industry in Toronto where he got his start.


Bliss writes that "the pig was and is man's best friend in the animal world". (p.37)  He goes on to cite that swine store 35% of the energy they consume on their body, while sheep and cattle only convert 11% of their diet into mass.  More of the pig is usable than cattle, and the protein is also better from pork providing the greatest energy value.  Pork is also the easiest meat to preserve.  No pigs were interviewed to determine their thoughts on this "friendship".

Twelve typical bacon hogs (2,200 lbs. together).

 The Wm. Davies Co., Toronto.Topley Studio / 

Library and Archives Canada / PA-026091

Canada could never compete with the United States and Argentina in selling chilled and frozen beef overseas.  New Zealand and Australia had cornered the sheep and lamb market.  With pork left, Canadians could still not compete with the fat salt pork producers south of the border.  Bliss noted that costs were kept down in the Mississippi Valley corn belt in an unappetizing manner.  These farmers, "supplied Chicago with mountains of cheap hogs grown wonderfully fat and round from following cattle and eating the corn in their excrement." (p.39)


William Davies, the namesake owner of a meatpacking company which Flavelle would come to dominate, discovered that the peas, grains, and skim-milk refuse from dairies that Ontario farmers fed their pigs developed a superior meat.  Davies left the cheap salt pork to others and specialized in the British market for bacon and ham.

Pen of hogs. The Wm. Davies Co.  

Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-026094

Davies and Flavelle could not initially meet the supply of leaner hogs they needed.  Bliss wrote, "Not any old porker would do.  Ontario farmers had to get over their North American preconception that the ideal hog was a two- or three-hundred-pound symmetrical ball of lard." (p.39)  In the early days, Davies purchased the small number of undersize hogs that showed up in Chicago.


Animal husbandry responded to the growing demand created by this market as Davies introduced of the Improved Yorkshire into Canada.  As prices were higher for these leaner English breeds, Davies is said to have effected, "the Anglicization of the Canadian hog." (p.40)  Bliss writes, "his parentage, length, leanness, and lightness now sharply distinguished him from his corpulent American neighbour.  There were some Canadian who took a certain national pride in not raising hogs fed on cattle turds.  It was an altogether cleaner business north of the border."

Purebred Yorkshire sow purchased by William D. Albright, Beaverlodge, Alberta. NB-15-47

 The Glenbow Museum has chose an interesting placement for their archival brand in the above shot of a Yorkshire.  Perhaps with all the recent government cuts in the heritage sector, they are considering the meat packing business?