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In 1907, when Cyrus Eaton was supposedly a resident of Cleveland and an employee of the Rockefeller affiliate called the East Ohio Gas Company, the Edmonton Journal published in its pages a list of the delegates to a recent Alberta Liberal Party convention held in Calgary. On that list was the name Cyrus S. Eaton. How this could have come about was partly explained in a chapter in Tony Cashman's book, The Story of Edmonton. Cashman relates, based on contemporary newspaper accounts, how Eaton, as a bold twenty-three year old entrepreneur from Nova Scotia caused a pilot plant to be built in Edmonton to demonstrate the feasibility of using waste wheat straw, available locally in plentiful supply, to fuel the generation of electric power for street lights. Shortly after a successful trial of his system so impressed city fathers that it won him the Edmonton city electricity franchise, the young Eaton learned that the worthless commodity on which he based his planned venture had unfortunately undergone a rapid escalation in value in the eyes of its producers, the district farmers. They were now demanding so much for it that the whole venture unfortunately fell through, and Eaton.was given a powerful early lesson about market forces and about doing business in the natural resource sector in Alberta. Or anywhere, for that matter.
So what was Cyrus Eaton doing in Alberta so early in his own business career, and so early in the history of this new province in the Canadian confederation? His apparent interests and whereabouts can now be speculated about more confidently because, contrary to earlier accounts, there is no evidence that Eaton spent more than one of his summer vacations from McMaster working for Rockefeller at his estate in Cleveland. (footnote) And what about the rest of those summers? It is at least possible that after he had become acquainted, through his Uncle Charlie's good graces, with John D. and his cronies by performing the duties of a summer intern at Rockefeller's Cleveland estate, Forest Hill, doing routine office work and caddying for parties of retired millionaires on Rockefeller's private golf course, that like all young men with ambition, Cy got restless. While listening to the conversation of men with ownership interests across America and around the world, perhaps while assisting John D. with the administration of those interests, he would have learned that Rockefeller owned cattle operations in western Canada. Then he could well have profitably indulged what was a common yearning at the time, the desire for frontiers, the desire to see the west. In a speech he gave in his declining years, Eaton reminisced about summer vacations spent on a ranch in the Canadian west, and about the feeling of privilege he experienced from being present, in 1905, at the ceremonial inauguration of Alberta and Saskatchewan as the latest provinces to join Canadian confederation.
If he was present at the inauguration in 1905, and by 1907 had become a member and voting convention delegate for the newly formed party of power, the Alberta Liberal Party, it argues one of two things: either Cyrus was exceptionally adept for one of his years at benefiting from political connections to forward his business interests (remember the power plant) or he was seriously considering starting a new life in Alberta. Perhaps the truth is that both held sway, and that disappointment with the Edmonton franchise discouraged him permanently from a life at the frontier.
This anecdote illustrates a few related hallmarks of what would become Eaton's business style. He would be attracted to economical use of whatever means were available for reaching any business goal; he would be open to the use of unconventional methods for finding and exploiting opportunity; and he would be extremely risk averse. One that it doesn't illustrate is his savvy in predicting what the market would do.
Eaton was a farm boy himself, and had had plenty of opportunity to observe the ways of farmers, so it is surprising he did not foresee the effect his monopoly would have and make arrangements to secure a supply at a reasonable rate. He may have thought they would be glad to be rid of it for free. He may have underestimated the power and efficiency of prairie populism and the prairie grapevine. The fact that Eaton never mentioned the Edmonton experience may be Indirect evidence that he would prefer this incident from his apprenticeship be forgotten. |
