Social and economic programs are essential to helping the less advantaged among us.
From the book Big Ideas, edited by Michael Pieri:
Social Reform
From bitter personal experience, Joseph Atkinson believed the state had a duty to help the widowed, the orphaned, the sick, the old, the unemployed, the forsaken - all those who fell by the wayside through no fault of their own. The Star publisher's humanitarian outlook was strengthened by his strong Methodist social gospel beliefs. Year after year, he developed his arguments for cradle-to-the-grave social security. And he refuted as "scandalously untrue" suggestions that "lack of thrift and enterprise" was the root cause of the great amount of distress in the city.
In 1946, as the Ontario government moved to close daycare centres for children of working mothers, the Star appeared to sum up the paper's long struggle for social reform when it said on it's editorial page:
"The point at issue is simply this. Is it or is it not desirable that out-of-work people should have some means of subsistence? Is it or is it not desirable that people should be able to give their children a proper start in life? Is it or is it nor desirable that people should have proper medical care irrespective of their means? Should aged people be assured of at least some sort of income, or should they not? In brief, are human beings in a prosperous country like Canada entitled to some means of security in life? The Star thinks they are."
Crusading for social reform was bedrock Star editorial policy - and represents a glowing chapter in the history of the newspaper.
Redistributing wealth
The Star publisher was certain that many of Canada's ills could be resolved by a fairer redistribution of the nation's wealth. This view was to cause Joseph E. Atkinson much grief. His calls for an excess profit tax put him on a collision course with Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and helped lead to a parting of the two men. Problems rippled to the surface soon after Atkinson took over The Evening Star in December 1899. On one hand it was agreed that Atkinson would be in complete control of editorial policy. On the other hand, it was understood that the paper would solidly support Sir Wilfrid Laurier's government. The stage was set for conflict.
In time, Atkinson and Laurier seemed to have "a fundamentally different conception of what Liberalism stood for," said the publisher's biographer Ross Harness, who added that occasionally the Star had to reverse a policy it was advocating to conform with announcements from Ottawa.
A further complicating factor was Atkinson's occasionally stormy relationship with some of the paper's major stockholders who had bought the paper - and hired Atkinson - to help the Liberals breach the ramparts of Tory Toronto. These wealthy men loudly remonstrated if any editorial position adopted by Atkinson offended them or hurt their business interests.
Undeterred, Atkinson launched a bare-knuckled crusade in 1905 against price-fixers who exploited tariff laws and unfairly profited from the sale of everything from clothing and food to plumbing supplies. The crusade lasted five years and resulted in legislation aimed at breaking up secret price-fixing cartels. Excessive profits made headlines again during the Great War of 1914-18, when Canadian soldiers fought and died on Europe's battlefields. Sixty thousand Canadians never returned, and thousands of widows struggled to raise their fatherless children with little support.
Amid this misery, some businessmen made fortunes profiteering on lucrative war contracts, leading the publisher to increase his calls for an excess profits tax. His reasoning was simple: Exorbitant war profits should be taxed to help pay for social benefits that he believed were a basic right of all Canadians . . . or the excess profits should be returned to workers in the form of higher wages. To the publisher's delight, an excess profits tax was announced in 1916 by the wartime Union government of Sir Robert Borden.
Laurier - who believed free enterprise was entitled to its profits - felt such a tax was inexcusable. He opposed the publisher's strong editorial stand on the issue, and a major dispute broke out between the two men. "I am sorry to say that we are at the very antipodes on this question," the Liberal Party leader wrote Atkinson in 1916, adding: "I do not think it would be advisable further to carry on this discussion between us . . ."
Atkinson's push for a fairer redistribution of Canada's riches - and social justice for all - was a centrepiece of his newspaper's editorial policy from the beginning, and was relentlessly pushed forward by the Star publisher.