A History of Canadian Wealth

by Gustavus Myers, Stanley Ryerson (Introduction)

In this pioneering work, Gustavus Myers lays bare the corruption, swindling, land deals, and bribery that are at the basis of Canadian history. This is Canada's past seen through the eyes of a muckraker, and in it the heroes of other histories appear in quite a different light. This book was first published in 1914--in the United States. It has never before been published in Canada. Canadian historians have mostly ignored, suppressed, or mocked it. But history is not the preserve of apologists for big business and the political parties, and A History of Canadian Wealth is certain to be widely read and recognized at last as a classic. A landmark revisionist history of Canada, A History of Canadian Wealt h remains as lively and startling as it was when first published.

Genres: History, Canada

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Gustavus Myers (1872–1942) was an American journalist and historian who published a series of influential studies on wealth accumulation. His name is associated with the muckraking era of U.S. literature—somewhat erroneously, since his work is not journalistic, does not aim at popular magazine publication and takes an altogether more scholarly investigative approach to its subjects.

In the decade of the 1910s, he emerged as a leading scholar of the American socialist movement when he authored a series of volumes for Charles H. Kerr & Co., the country's largest publisher of Marxist books and pamphlets.

Between 1909 and 1914, Myers published three volumes on the history of family wealth in the United States, one volume on the same topic for Canada, and a history of the Supreme Court of the United States. These publications were frequently cited and used in an academic setting for several decades, with Myers' History of the Great American Fortunes revived in a single volume format in 1936.

This classic work (History of the Great American Fortunes), by far Myers' most important and influential, details and documents at great length the corruption and criminality underlying the formation and accumulation of the great American fortunes of the 19th century that formed the foundations of the American corporate-financial economy, from Astor and Vanderbilt, Jay Gould and Marshall Field, Stanford and Harriman, to Elkins, Morgan and Hill, Whitney, Rockefeller, Dodge, Havemeyer and numerous others, and displays the permanently devastating effects on the structure of the American economy and the quality of life of the vast majority of Americans and on American society.

Myers' approach is by no means "Marxist;" his concern is with the legal and administrative enablement of financial crimes and pillage by legislation and the corruption of government bodies nominally delegated to enforce it.

Reviews

[Tommy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Political capitalism and the role of monopoly in the development of Canada. Covers native relations, feudal relations in New France, the Hudson's Bay company but the bulk of the work towards the end deals with railroad politics. You can read it online here

[Fabiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A necessary book: engrossing and sobering history of Canada. Unveils the rough beginnings of the country without trying to cover the innate cruelty of the conquest with the usual myths of nation-building.

[Eugene Plawiuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

MY BLOG POST ON MYERS AND HIS WORK
http://plawiuk.blogspot.ca/2006/04/hi...
A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.
Gustavus Myers book on the history of wealth in Canada is an amazing work that is often overlooked. Published in the US in 1914 it was not published in Canada until 1972!