Premier v. Pulpster

Slim, aristocratic Louis Alexandre Taschereau, Premier of Quebec, and bluff, jovial George Howard Ferguson, Premier of Ontario, met in Montreal last week to talk about the price of paper. For Canada the occasion was vital. Of all Canadian industries, largest and most important is the manufacture of cheap, impermanent newsprint for U. S. dailies.

Trees to make this paper grow for the most part on Crown land, land technically belonging to King George, but whose administration and revenue are in the hands of the provincial governments. Greatest Canadian papermaker is the U. S.-owned International Paper & Power Co. This gargantuan corporation controls under long-term leases, or owns outright, forest land equal in area to New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. Despite the enormous consumption of newsprint in the U. S. and Canada, paper production is still greater. Prices are low. For the past year the I. P. & P. and its smaller competitors have been paying provincial governments toll for paper made from timber grown on Crown land, sold at a wholesale tonnage price of $55.

"Both Mr. Ferguson and myself, said Quebec's Taschereau last week, "consider that it is our duty in the two provinces to see that we get fair returns from our forests, and we both consider that the price of $55 is not a fair return.

"If Ontario and Quebec do not get fair returns for their forest wealth, we will have to do something. We can do almost anything, but we do not want to make the price of paper, for when a government intervenes to fix the price of merchandise it does not succeed generally. Our Canadian manufacturers believe that $60 would be a fair return."

Up to Montreal with three stenographers bustled I. P. & P.'s stocky thick-lipped president, Archibald Robertson Graustein, onetime infant prodigy, brilliant Harvard scholar (TIME, April 29). Newsprint at $60 the ton was impossible! President Graustein had columns of figures at the tip of his tongue. Speaking with the authority of a half-billion-dollar corporation, he was ready to prove his point. A spur to his arguments was the uncomfortable fact that I. P. & P. had a four-year contract to supply Publisher William Randolph Hearst with newsprint at a price range of $50 to $55 a ton, and breaking a contract with Publisher Hearst is a difficult matter.

Paperman Graustein did not realize the power of Premier Taschereau. The Hon. Louis Alexandre Taschereau is of a family superpotent in Quebec politics. His father, the Hon. Jean Thomas Taschereau, was a judge of the supreme court. Still more important was his uncle, the late great Elzear Alexandre Taschereau, dour-faced Archbishop of Quebec, first Canadian Cardinal, a founder of Laval University and for over 50 years an immense power in the life of the province. Premier Louis, cardinal's nephew, was destined from the first for a public career. Premier since 1920, he it was who framed the widely discussed, widely imitated (by other Canadian provinces) Quebec liquor law. Though he thinks and speaks habitually in French, his English is forceful and fluent. After the first conference between paperman and premiers, President Graustein spoke to reporters.

"It is not so easy to get a price as to fix it," said he somewhat ruefully. "It may not be possible to get $60. However, that is the price on which Canadian sentiment is fixed, and we will do our best to obtain it. We have recognized that the price of $55 is too low."

Montreal rumors were to the effect that Premier Taschereau, backed by Ontario's Ferguson, had strongly hinted that unless I. P. & P. was willing to raise its price, Crown land leases would be canceled, timber land reallocated to Canadian pulp mills now shut down.

In New York, quick figures announced that a raise of $5 a ton in the price of newsprint* would cost U. S. publishers $19,000,000 yearly. Since this cost must be passed on to the advertiser, it will mean an increase of .45% in all advertising rates.

Excited at the news, Vice President J. L. Fearing of International Paper Co. (I. P. & P. subsidiary) telephoned to Montreal to learn the reason for his chief's sudden reversal. By this time President Graustein had recovered somewhat from his interview with the two premiers.

"No definite agreement on newsprint prices has yet been reached," said he abruptly. "I do not know when such an agreement will be made."

Worried U. S. newspaper publishers, their budgets upset, exchanged telegrams, announced an emergency convention in New York's Hotel Pennsylvania for Dec. 9 to talk paper prices.

*The New York Times has its own forest and papermills at Kapuskasmy, Ontario.

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