One For All or All For One: Government Controls, Black Marketing and the Limits of Patriotism, 1939-47

Abstract

If there was, as the American oral historian Studs Terkel wrote, a "good war," certainly it was the battle against Nazism.(f.1) The popular images still reverberate: the "V" for victory sign, those wonderful swing bands and, of course, the idea that everyone pulled together to defeat an unquestioned evil. When thoughts turn to Canada's home front similar memories dominate; undoubtedly gouging and black marketing do not step to the forefront. Indeed, because of the relatively paltry privations people had to endure in Canada compared to Europe, it should have been easy for citizens to respect government entreaties to cut back. In Britain, where civilians dealt with three ounces of beef per week and where new clothes were practically unknown, the "spiv" who hung around docks and diverted goods to the underground economy was more understandable.(f.2) Thus, one cannot help but be struck, when reading Canada's wartime daily press, that side by side with all the patriotic pledges appear countless stories about a multitude unwilling to make small sacrifices, and who exploited circumstances in the most mercenary manner to garner hefty tax - free returns.IWith the scope of the war expanding tremendously after mid 1940, Canada's military expenditures grew tremendously, from $60 million in 1939 to $2.5 billion three years later. Unemployment evaporated, and total wages nearly doubled between 1938 and 1942. Increased demand, combined with the diversion of supplies from civilian to military requirements, threatened to create profiteering and destructive inflation. Indeed, from late August 1939 to October 1941, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 17.8 percent.(f.3)A Wartime Prices and Trade Board (WPTB) had been created on 3 September 1939 to control such trends. By mid 1940, it had set maximum rates for basic commodities such as wheat and had established a division to control rent. In August 1941 it passed from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Labour to that of Finance; called in to replace the low - key Hector Mackinnon as chairman was Donald Gordon, an outspoken and charismatic mandarin from the Bank of Canada. That November, he implemented a comprehensive freeze. Prices were not to exceed the highest level charged during a four - week base period between 15 September and 11 October, while wages were pegged at levels prevailing on 15 November. A cost - of - living bonus amounting to one percent of wages for each one point increase in the CPI, with a maximum of 25 cents per week, could be granted by the National War Labour Board. Statistics suggest that the program was successful: for over the next four years total inflation amounted to 2.8 percent.(f.4)Dollar - a - year men from the business community were recruited to run WPTB departments. The thinking was that such people could plan most effectively and win compliance from fellow capitalists. Citizens also helped, having remembered or heard of high inflation during the Great War, and being eager to display their patriotism. There were, for example, 2,000 women who volunteered with the consumer's branch to "list prices paid in the base period" and point out any rise in costs or deterioration in quality.(f.5)The WPTB maintained close scrutiny over public opinion. "The head office of the [Information] Branch," wrote a former employee, "subscribed to 38 dailies and 21 weeklies."(f.6) Surveys by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion were carefully studied, and the WPTB also commissioned some of its own polls. An advertising budget of $750,000 (1943) permitted the distribution of millions of pamphlets, posters and other propaganda. Assistance also came from the National Film Board (NFB) and War Information Board (WIB). As far as the WPTB was concerned, one of the WIB's more useful initiatives was the "rumour clinic," whose job was to uncover and then dispute potentially damaging scuttlebutt in general circulation.(f.7)Such efforts no doubt played an important role in maintaining support for control programs throughout the war and the peacetime reconversion process. …