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William Lyon Mackenzie King
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=== Balancing act === During his first term of office, from 1921 to 1926, King sought to lower wartime taxes and, especially, wartime ethnic and labour tensions. "The War is over", he argued, "and for a long time to come it is going to take all that the energies of man can do to bridge the chasm and heal the wounds which the War has made in our social life."{{sfn|Dawson|1958|loc=p. 294; Letter of May 5, 1919}} Despite prolonged negotiations, King was unable to attract the Progressives into his government, but once Parliament opened, he relied on their support to defeat [[non-confidence]] motions from the Conservatives. King was opposed in some policies by the Progressives, who opposed the high [[tariff]]s of the [[National Policy]]. King faced a delicate balancing act of reducing tariffs enough to please the Prairie-based Progressives, but not so much as to alienate his vital supporters in industrial Ontario and Quebec, who perceived tariffs were necessary to compete with American imports.{{sfn|Dawson|1958|loc=14, 15}}<ref name="Hutchison">[[#Hutchison|Hutchison (1952)]]</ref> Over time, the Progressives gradually weakened. Their effective and passionate leader, [[Thomas Crerar]], resigned to return to his grain business, and was replaced by the more placid [[Robert Forke]], who joined King's cabinet in 1926 as Minister of Immigration and Colonization after becoming a [[Liberal-Progressive]]. Socialist reformer [[J. S. Woodsworth]] gradually gained influence and power, and King was able to reach an accommodation with him on policy matters.<ref>[[#Hutchison|Hutchison (1952)]], pp. 76β78.</ref> In any event, the Progressive caucus lacked the party discipline that was traditionally enforced by the Liberals and Conservatives. The Progressives had campaigned on a promise that their MP's would represent their constituents first. King used this to his advantage, as he could always count on at least a handful of Progressive MPs to shore up his near-majority position for any crucial vote.
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