| Abstract: | In 1931, charges against Manitoba Pool Elevators of cheating their members on weights and grades in order to conceal losses on their grain elevators – and of concealing these activities – were proven accurate by a provincial Royal Commission. This was ironic given that these were the same practices that the Pool had condemned in the private grain trade for 30 years, and that, they had pledged, the Pool would put an end to. This paper describes these events and examines the ethical issues from the perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought. It then briefly examines more current events in the western Canadian grain business to show how they are illuminated by Niebuhr's insights and why certain problems in the grain industry have been so intractable for the last half century. Copyright © 2007 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
