Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance by Gregory P. Marchildon (review)

598 The Canadian Historical Review contexts as a: minority group but she also situates their experience within the contexts of other minorities in the world. This contextualization adds a richness to the study, moving the reader from a surface analysis to a deeper examination of the evolution and roles of minorities within society. Andrew is the first to point to a potential weakness in her book when she admits that there are two groups missing from her study: fishermen and women. Even without them, her work is extremely dense and rich with information that will delight academic specialists. However, the very details and quantitative analysis that give pleasure to the scholar may prove tedious to the more general reader. Her suggestion that the two groups left out of this book be studied more extensively at some other time is well taken. An examination of marriage patterns might also be fruitful to help understand connections with other groups as well as the dosed or opened nature ofthe elites. Andrew's thought-provoking book, which will surely shatter some of the preconceived notions that many of us have about nineteenthcentury Acadian society, is a necessary read, and will stimulate a desire for a deeper understanding of Acadian history. BARBARA LE BLANC Universite Sainte-Anne Pro.fits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance. GREGORY P. MARCHILDON. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996. Pp. xxiv, 348, illus. $39.00 At the outset, Gregory Marchildon indicates that this book is not a biography of Lord Beaverbrook, as it focuses almost exclusively on the Canadian career of Max Aitken, the future British press baron. (The anachronistic use of the title appears to be a ploy to attract British readership.) Nor is it a biography of Aitken, prior to his departure for Europe. Rather, it is a study of Aitken's role in the emerging financial community ofturn-of-the-century Canada. Within this context, Marchildon 's book is a valuable complement to other works on the country's ambitious finance adventurers of that era, most notably Chris Armstrong and H.V. Nelles's Southern Exposure (1988), Duncan MacDowall's The Light (r988), on the Canadian capitalists (including Aitken) who ventured into the Latin American utilities markets in the early 1900s, and MacDowall's Steel at the Sault (1984), which encompasses the early career of James Dunn, who, like Aitken, hailed from New Brunswick and made his name as a transatlantic venture capitalist before taking over Algoma Steel in the 1930s. Book Reviews 599 Marchildon does assess the character of his subject, who is portrayed as relentlessly ambitious, resentful at the patronizing treatment he received from the financial elite of Halifax and Montreal for which he was capable ofquite ruthless retaliation, and skilful at exploiting the outer limits of stock manipulation in an era when regulation of financial markets was almost nonexistent. At the same time, Aitken emerges as a venture capitalist with a broader vision of the potential of Canadian industry than many of his contemporaries; an entrepreneur who sought to ensure that the companies he created or merged were supplied with sound management; and an innovator of financial instruments who assembled and inspired a remarkable team ofassociates (including I.W. Killam, Arthur Nesbitt, and Ward Pitfield) who dominated the Canadian business scene for the next half-century. Marchildon compares his subject, curiously, to Michael Milken, the American 'junk-bond king' of the 1980s who, like Aitken, was a financial innovator and whose reputation was darkened - far more seriously than Aitken's - by accusations of shady dealings and conflicts of interest. The analogy is interesting, but perhaps not entirely apt; Aitken did indeed engage in bribery, deceptive practices, and stockwatering , but in Canada he left behind several enduring enterprises, most notably the Steel Company ofCanada, the byproduct ofthe last of his big mergers in 1910. Milken and his junk-bond beneficiaries left in their wake destabilized industries, overcapitalized companies, and a legacy of corporate dismemberment and downsizing. By placing Aitken's career in the broader context of Canada's financial and economic conditions, Marchildon provides a useful perspective for assessing the actual achievements of his egotistical protagonist. Aitken benefited from his entree...