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The Hudson’s Bay Company in Southwestern Alberta, 1874-1905
- Michigan State University Press
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The Hudson's Bay Company in Southwestern Alberta, 1874-1905 Henry C. Klassen The importance of the British-based Hudson's Bay Company in the economic development of southwestern Alberta between 1874 and 1905 has been insufficiently appreciated. Most historical accounts of the company have briefly noted its inability to compete for market share in the fur trade industry in this region during the 1870s and 1880s with powerful American merchant houses-primarily LG. Baker & Co. and T.C. Power & Bro. of Fort Benton, Montana. Situated at the head of navigation on the upper Missouri River, both brought capital, fur trade expertise, and entrepreneurial skills into the area as early as 1870 and helped mold the wagon transportation and marketing patterns of the southwestern Alberta country.l Arthur J. Ray and Eleanor Jean Stardom have recently provided convincing pictures of the Hudson's Bay Company's role in the fur trade and in retailing in a large part of Canada, including the entire prairie West, in the late nineteenth century.2 No one, however , has looked closely at why the company reacted hesitantly to the opportunities offered by the fur trade in southwestern Alberta during this period. Moreover, historians have paid little attention to the company's growing strength in the department store business in this region from the early 1890s onwards. Southwestern Alberta is shaped like a parallelogram, with the Rocky Mountains, the upper Bow River, the Snake Valley and the lower Little Bow River, and the American border marking its four sides. At its greatest extent, southwestern Alberta stretches about 100 miles west to east and about 150 miles north to south. This paper examines the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company in this relatively small region from 1874 to 1905, focusing on two overlapping topics: the difficulties the company faced in competing with Fort Benton merchant houses, and the decisions within the enterprise that led to the expansion of its role in the regional economy. Turn-of-the-century southwestern Alberta needed businesses such as the Hudson's Bay Company, which could learn how to operate efficiently and serve as a symbol of economic well-being, as visible signs of the strength of the region. Not surprisingly, the idea of allowing the company to build a permanent home in the region had numerous sup393 HENRY C. KLASSEN porters. Although the Hudson's Bay Company attracted some criticism from small retailers, there was no crusade against it in southwestern Alberta. The Hudson's Bay Company had established a presence on the coastline of western Hudson Bay in 1670, and during the next two centuries it had pushed west, northwest, and southwest, probing the rivers including the North Saskatchewan to set up posts among the Native peoples and reaping a large harvest in furs. The Peigan post on the upper Bow River in 1832 became the company 's first trading post in southwestern Alberta but was abandoned two years later.3 Pulling its operations back to the better hunting and trapping grounds along the North Saskatchewan, the company showed no sustained interest in the region until the mid-1870s. Although the enterprise at first had little appreciation for the capital, facilities, and skills needed to become a strong competitor in the buffalo robe and fur trades in southwestern Alberta, it gradually made investments large enough to weave ranchers, farmers, and urban people along with Indians into the fabric of its business. The transformation of the company's fur trading posts into general stores in the mid-1880s, combined with its move to create a network of small, modern department stores in the early 1890s, increased its capacity to compete for market share and profits in the region. The study of the growth of the Hudson's Bay Company as a modern business enterprise, even on the level of its evolution in a small region, is closely connected to wider trends. Conceptions of modern businesses have varied in recent years, but historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. has logically differentiated between traditional and modern enterprises. In his 1977 study of the managerial revolution that began in American business after the mid-nineteenth century, he argued that modern multi-unit firms, unlike traditional single-unit firms which were usually personally owned and managed, relied upon elaborate hierarchies of salaried managers.4 By itself, a managerial hierarchy did not ensure the continuing growth and transformation of the multi-unit enterprise. It was the managers ' decisions that determined the ability of their businesses to compete...