Edward Wellington Backus

Edward Wellington Backus
Born	1861-12-01 Jamestown, New York
Died	1934-10-29 New York City
Occupation	Lumberman, manufacturer, industrialist
Father	Abel Backus
Mother	Anna Anderson
Partner	Elizabeth Horr

Edward Wellington Backus ((1861-12-01)1 December 1861 – 29 October 1934(1934-10-29) (aged 72)) was an American lumberman and industrialist who built an integrated forest-products empire spanning northern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario, including a newsprint mill at Fort William.

Early life

Backus was born on probably 1 December 1861 in Jamestown, New York, the son of Abel Backus, a stonemason, and Anna Anderson. When he was two years old the family relocated to Minnesota, first to Red Wing and then to Featherstone Prairie, where his father farmed. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1878 to study science but left in 1882 without completing his degree — an outcome he later described as one of his greatest disappointments.

Career

Backus entered the lumber trade in the summer of 1882, starting as a bookkeeper for Lee and McCulloch with little more than five dollars to his name. By early 1884 he had established E. W. Backus and Company. A fire in 1893 destroyed much of what he had built, but he rebuilt and expanded aggressively, acquiring timber holdings across northern Minnesota by 1894. His mills came to produce close to 100 million board feet of lumber annually.

Backus developed an integrated forest-products operation covering both Minnesota and northwestern Ontario. This included hydroelectric power infrastructure, sawmills processing softwoods, pulp and paper mills producing newsprint, and an Insulite insulation-board operation that converted waste fibre into building material. By 1907 he had extended a railway from Brainerd, Minnesota, to International Falls. Together with Senator William Frederick Brooks he formed Backus-Brooks as a holding company for a group of subsidiaries, chief among them the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company.

Ontario timber and power rights

Gaining access to Ontario's crown resources required cultivating political relationships. Liberal Premier George William Ross granted Backus water-power development rights and promised timber limits by early 1905, but the incoming Conservative government under James Pliny Whitney declined to honour those commitments. Minister George Howard Ferguson repeatedly blocked Backus's ambitions, favouring local lumbermen and settlers over large corporate concessions.

The 1919 election of the United Farmers of Ontario government under Ernest Charles Drury opened new possibilities. With support from Labour MLA Peter Heenan, whose riding was tied to Drury's minority government, Backus secured pulpwood limits and constructed newsprint mills in Kenora and Fort William during the 1920s.

When Ferguson's Conservatives returned to power in 1923, Backus's position in Ontario deteriorated markedly. Ferguson's party had campaigned in part against Backus, portraying him as a "sinister industrialist." Conservative MLA Alexander Cameron Lewis levelled accusations connecting Backus to the 1921 death of a timber contractor — charges later found to be groundless. Ferguson favoured the International Paper Company over Backus, awarding it hydroelectric contracts and prime spruce pulpwood despite International Paper operating no provincial newsprint mill. Ferguson also blocked Backus's proposal to develop hydroelectric power on Rainy Lake, aligning instead with conservation groups including the Quetico-Superior Council. An International Joint Commission ruling on Backus's Lake of the Woods proposal finally came down in his favour in 1934, but by then it was too late for him to act on it.

Backus also faced civil litigation over dam-related flooding affecting the Pithers Point Indian reserve, and Ontario newspaper publishers petitioned against his 1920 timber-limit application. The DCB notes that careful review of the record shows many such charges were self-serving or rested on limited evidence, and that no credible evidence of bribery by Backus was ever established.

Downfall and later years

The early 1930s brought financial ruin. Archibald Robertson Graustein, president of International Paper, waged sustained competitive pressure. Ferguson and Quebec Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau introduced prorationing schemes that forced newsprint production cuts and price-fixing across the industry, while International Paper operated outside those restrictions. Backus protested that the prorationing arrangements would destroy his companies while benefiting his larger rival — a prediction that proved broadly accurate.

After the October 1929 stock-market crash, Backus's commercial bankers counselled calm. He prepared to meet bond obligations maturing in 1931 but found the bond market unreceptive. In late February 1931, Albert Henry Wiggin, chairman of Chase National Bank, reversed course and declared the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company in need of receivership. Graustein and Chase officials pressured Backus to sell his mills at a fraction of their value; he refused. Chase removed him as receiver in November 1931.

Backus brought his case before the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in spring 1934, an investigation whose findings contributed to Wall Street reform legislation. He had returned to New York City exhausted from years of legal battles when he suffered a fatal heart attack at the Hotel Vanderbilt on 29 October 1934.

Personal life

Backus married Elizabeth Horr around 1888 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They had two sons, one of whom predeceased his father. His New York Times obituary noted that the bookkeeper who had earned nine dollars a week in 1882 had at his peak controlled an enterprise once valued at $100 million.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography