THE CANADIAN COMMONWEALTH

by

AGNES C. LAUT

Author ofLords of the North, Pathfinders of the West, Hudson's Bay Company, etc. 

IndianapolisThe Bobbs-Merrill CompanyPublishersCopyright 1915The Bobbs-Merrill Company

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 I NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS II FOUNDATION FOR HOPE III THE TIE THAT BINDS IV AMERICANIZATION V WHY RECIPROCITY WAS REJECTED VI THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH VII THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNER VIII THE COMING OF THE ORIENTAL IX THE HINDU X WHAT PANAMA MEANS XI TO EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY XII SOME INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS XIII HOW GOVERNED XIV THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE XV EMIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT XVI DEFENSE XVII THE DOMAIN OF THE NORTH XVIII FINDING HERSELF INDEX

THE CANADIAN COMMONWEALTH

CHAPTER I

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

I

An empire the size of Europe setting out on her career of world historyis a phenomenon of vast and deep enough import to stir to nationalconsciousness the slumbering spirit of any people. Yet when you cometo trace when and where national consciousness awakened, it is likefollowing a river back from the ocean to its mountain springs. Fromthe silt borne down on the flood-tide you can guess the fertile plainswatered and far above the fertile plains, regions of eternal snow andglacial torrent warring turbulently through the adamantine rocks. Youcan guess the eternal striving, the forward rush and the throwback thathave carved a way through the solid rocks; but until you have followedthe river to its source and tried to stem its current you can not know. 

So of peoples and nations. 

Fifty years ago, as far as world affairs were concerned, Japan did notexist. Came national consciousness, and Japan rose like a stardominating the Orient. A hundred years ago Germany did not exist. Came national consciousness welding chaotic principalities into unity, and the mailed fist of the empire became a menace before which Europequailed. So of China with the ferment of freedom leavening the whole. So of the United States with the Civil War blending into a union thediversities of a continent. When you come to consider the birth ofnational consciousness in Canada, you do not find the germ of anambition to dominate, as in Japan and Germany. Nor do you find a fightfor freedom. Canada has always been free--free as the birds of passagethat winged above the canoe of the first voyageur who pointed his craftup the St. Lawrence for the Pacific; but what you do find from the veryfirst is a fight for national existence; and when the fight was won, Canada arose like a wrestler with consciousness of strength for newdestiny. 

II

Go back to the beginning of Canada!

She was not settled by land-seekers. Neither was she peopled byadventurers seeking gold. The first settlers on the banks of the St. Lawrence came to plant the Cross and propagate the Faith. True, theyfound they could support their missions and extend the Faith by the furtrade; and their gay adventurers of the fur trade threaded every riverand lake from the St. Lawrence to the Columbia; but, primarily, thelure that led the French to the St. Lawrence was the lure of areligious ideal. So of Ontario and the English provinces. Ontario wasfirst peopled by United Empire Loyalists, who refused to give up theirloyalty to the Crown and left New England and the South, abandoning allearthly possessions to begin life anew in the backwoods of the GreatLakes country. The French came pursuing an ideal of religion. TheEnglish came pursuing an ideal of government. We may smile at theexcesses of both devotees--French nuns, who swooned in religiousecstasy; old English aristocrats, who referred to democracy as "theblack rot plague of the age"; but the fact remains--these colonistscame in unselfish pursuit of ideals; and they gave of their blood andtheir brawn and all earthly possessions for those ideals; and it is ofsuch stuff that the spirit of dauntless nationhood is made. Men whobuild temples of their lives for ideals do not cement national mortarwith graft. They build with integrity for eternity, not time. Theirconsciousness of an ideal gives them a poise, a concentration, astability, a steadiness of purpose, unknown to mad chasers afterwealth. Obstinate, dogged, perhaps tinged with the self-superiorspirit of "I am holier than thou"--they may be; but men who forsake allfor an ideal and pursue it consistently for a century and a halfdevelop a stamina that enters into the very blood of their race. It isa common saying even to this day that Quebec is more Catholic than thePope, and Ontario more ultra-English than England; and when theCanadian is twitted with being "colonial" and "crude, " his prompt andalmost proud answer is that he "goes in more for athletics thanesthetics. " "One makes men. The other may make sissies. "

With this germ spirit as the very beginning of national consciousnessin Canada, one begins to understand the grim, rough, doggeddetermination that became part of the race. Canada was neverintoxicated with that madness for Bigness that seemed to sweep over themodern world. What cared she whether her population stood still ornot, whether she developed fast or slow, provided she kept the Faithand preserved her national integrity? Flimsy culture had no place inher schools or her social life. A solid basis of the three R's--theneducational frills if you like; but the solid basis first. Worship ofwealth and envy of material success have almost no part in Canadianlife; for the simple reason that wealth and success are not the idealsof the nation. Laurier, who is a poor man, and Borden, who is only amoderately well-off man, command more social prestige in Canada thanany millionaire from Vancouver to Halifax. If demos be the spirit ofthe mob, then Canada has no faintest tinge of democracy in her; butinasmuch as the French colonists came in pursuit of a religious idealand the English colonists of a political ideal, if democracy stand forfreedom for the individual to pursue his own ideal--then Canada issupersaturated with that democracy. Freedom for the individual topursue his own ideal was the very atmosphere in which Canada's nationalconsciousness was born. 

In the West a something more entered into the national spirit. Frenchfur-traders, wood-runners, voyageurs had drifted North and West, men ofinfinite resources, as much at home with a frying-pan over a camp-fireas over a domestic hearth, who could wrest a living from life anywhere. English adventurers of similar caliber had drifted in from Hudson Bay. These little lords in a wilderness of savages had scattered west as faras the Rockies, south to California. They knew no law but the law of astrong right arm and kept peace among the Indians only by a dauntlesscourage and rough and ready justice. They could succeed only by a goodtrade in furs, and they could obtain a good trade in furs only bytreating the Indians with equity. Every man who plunged into the furwilderness took courage in one hand and his life in the other. If helost his courage, he lost his life. Indian fray, turbulent rapids, winter cold took toll of the weak and the feckless. Nature accepts noexcuses. The man who defaulted in manhood was wiped out--sucked downby the rapids, buried in winter storms, absorbed into the camps ofIndian degenerates. The men who stayed upon their feet had the staminaof a manhood in them that could not be extinguished. It was awilderness edition of that dauntlessness which brought the Loyalists toOntario and the French devotees to Quebec. This, too, made for adogged, strong, obstinate race. At the time of the fall of Frenchpower at Quebec in 1759 there were about two thousand of thesewilderness hunters in the West. Fifty years later by way of Hudson Baycame Lord Selkirk's Settlers--Orkneymen and Highlanders, hardy, keenand dauntless as their native rock-bound isles. 

These four classes were the primary first ingredients that went intothe making of Canada's national consciousness and each of the fourclasses was the very personification of strength, purpose, courage, freedom. 

III

But Destiny plays us strange tricks. When Quebec fell in 1759, NewFrance passed under the rule of that English and Protestant race whichshe had been fighting for two centuries; and when the American colonieswon their independence twenty years later and the ultra-EnglishLoyalists trekked in thousands across the boundary to what are nowMontreal and Toronto and Cobourg, there came under one government tworaces that had fought each other in raid and counter-raid for twocenturies--alien and antagonistic in religion and speech. It is onlyin recent years under the guiding hand of Sir Wilfred Laurier that theancient antagonism has been pushed off the boards. 

The War of 1812 probably helped Canada's national spirit more than ithurt it. It tested the French Canadian and found him loyal to thecore; loyal, to be sure, not because he loved England more but ratherbecause he loved the Americans less. He felt surer of religiousfreedom under English rule, which guaranteed it to him, than under therule of the new republic, which he had harried and which had harriedhim in border raid for two centuries. The War of 1812 left Canadacrippled financially but stronger in national spirit because she hadtested her strength and repelled invasion. 

If mountain pines strike strong roots into the eternal rocks becausethey are tempest-tossed by the wildest winds of heaven, then the nexttwenty years were destined to test the very fiber of Canada's nationalspirit. All that was weak snapped and went down. The dry rot ofpolitical theory was flung to dust. Special interests, pamperedprivileges, the claims of the few to exploit the many, the claims ofthe many to rule wisely as the few--the shibboleth of theorists, thefine spun cobwebs of the doctrinaires, governmental ideals ofbrotherhood that were mostly sawdust and governmental practices thatwere mostly theft under privilege--all went down in the smash of thenext twenty years' tempest. All that was left was what was real; whatwould hold water and work out in fact. 

It is curious how completely all records slur over the significance ofthe Rebellion of 1837. Canada is sensitive over the facts of the caseto this day. Only a few years ago a book dealing with the unvarnishedfacts of the period was suppressed by a suit in court. As a rebellion, 1837 was an insignificant fracas. The rebels both in Ontario andQuebec were hopelessly outnumbered and defeated. William LyonMacKenzie, the leader in Ontario, and Louis Papineau, the leader inQuebec, both had to flee for their lives. It is a question if ahundred people all told were killed. Probably a score in all wereexecuted; as many again were sent to penal servitude; and severalhundreds escaped punishment by fleeing across the boundary and joiningin the famous night raids of Hunters' Lodges. Within a few years boththe leaders and exiles were permitted to return to Canada, where theylived honored lives. It was not as a rebellion that 1837 wasepoch-making. It was in the clarifying of Canada's nationalconsciousness as to how she was to be governed. 

Having migrated from the revolting colonies of New England and theSouth, the ultra-patriotic United Empire Loyalists unconsciously feltthemselves more British than the French of Quebec. Canada was governeddirect from Downing Street. There were local councils in both Torontoand Quebec--or Upper and Lower Canada, as they were called--and therewere local legislatures; but the governing cliques were appointed bythe Royal Governor, which meant that whatever little clique gained theGovernor's ear had its little compact or junta of friends and relativesin power indefinitely. There were elections, but the legislature hadno control over the purse strings of the government. Such a closecorporation of special interests did the governing clique become thatthe administration was known in both provinces as a "Family Compact. "Administrative abuses flourished in a rank growth. Judges owing theirappointment to the Crown exercised the most arbitrary tyranny againstpatriots raising their voices against government by special interests. Vast land grants were voted away to favorites of the Compact. Publicmoneys were misused and neither account given nor restitution demandedfrom the culprit. Ultra-loyalty became a fashionable pose. Whenstrolling actors played American airs in a Toronto theater they werehissed; and when a Canadian stood up to those airs, he was hissed. Special interests became intrenched behind a triple rampart of fashionand administration and loyalty. Details of the revolt need not begiven here. A great love is always the best cure for a punyaffection--a Juliet for a Rosalind; and when a pure patriotism arose tooust this spurious lip-loyalty, there resulted the Rebellion of 1837. 

The point is--when the rebellion had passed, Canada had overthrown asystem of government by oligarchy. She had ousted special interestsforever from her legislative halls. In a blood and sweat of agony, onthe scaffold, in the chain gang, penniless, naked, hungry and in exile, her patriots had fought the dragon of privilege, cast out the accursedthing and founded national life on the eternal rocks of justice to all, special privileges to none. Her patriots had themselves learned on thescaffold that law must be as sacredly observed by the good as by theevil, by the great as by the small. From the death scaffolds of thesepatriots sprang that part of Canada's national consciousness thatreveres law next to God. Canada passed through the throes of purgingher national consciousness from 1815 to 1840, as the United Statespassed through the same throes in the sixties, but the process cost herhalf a century of delay in growth and development. 

While the union of Upper and Lower Canada put an end to the evils ofspecial privileges in government, events had been moving apace in thefar West, where roving traders and settlers were a law unto themselves. Red River settlers of the region now known as Manitoba were clamoringfor an end to the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company over allthat region inland from the Great Northern Sea. The discovery of goldhad brought hordes of adventurers pouring into Cariboo, or what is nowknown as British Columbia. Both Red River and British Columbiademanded self-government. Partly because England had delayed grantingOregon self-government, the settlers of the Columbia had set up theirown provisional government and turned that region over to the UnitedStates. We are surely far enough away from the episodes to statefrankly the facts that similar underground intrigue was at work in bothRed River and British Columbia, fostered, much of it, by Irishmalcontents of the old Fenian raids. Once more Canada's nationalconsciousness roused itself to a bigger problem and wider outlook. Either the far-flung Canadian provinces must be bound together in somesort of national unity or--the Canadian mind did not let itselfcontemplate that "or. " The provinces must be confederated to be held. Hence confederation in 1867 under the British North American Act, whichis to Canada what the Constitution is to the United States. Ithappened that Sir John Macdonald, the future premier of the Dominion, had been in Washington during one period of the Civil War. He notedwhat he thought was the great defect of the American system, and heattributed the Civil War to that defect--namely, that all powers notspecifically delegated to the federal government were supposed to restwith the states. Therefore, when Canada formed her federation ofisolated provinces, Sir John and the other famous Fathers ofConfederation reversed the American system. All power not specificallydelegated to the provinces was supposed to rest with the Dominion. Only strictly local affairs were left with the provinces. Trade, commerce, justice, lands, agriculture, labor, marriage laws, waterways, harbors, railways were specifically put under Dominion control. 

IV

Now, stand back and contemplate the situation confronting the newfederation:

Canada's population was less than half the present population of thestate of New York; not four million. That population was scatteredover an area the size of Europe. [1] To render the situation doublydark and doubtful the United States had just entered on her career ofhigh tariff. That high tariff barred Canadian produce out. There wasonly one intermittent and unsatisfactory steamer service across theAtlantic. There was none at all across the Pacific. BritishColumbians trusted to windjammers round the Horn. Of railroads bindingEast to West there was none. A canal system had been begun from thelakes and the Ottawa to the St. Lawrence, but this was a measure moreof national defense than commerce. Crops were abundant, but wherecould they be sold? I have heard relatives tell how wheat in thosedays sold down to forty cents, and oats to twenty cents, and potatoesto fifteen cents, and fine cattle to forty dollars, and finest horsesto fifty dollars and seventy-five dollars. Fathers of farmers whoto-day clear their three thousand dollars and four thousand dollars ayear could not clear one hundred dollars a year. Commerce wasabsolutely stagnant. Canada was a federation, but a federation ofwhat? Poverty-stricken, isolated provinces. Not in bravado, not inflamboyant self-confidence, rebuffed of all chance to trade with theUnited States, the new Dominion humbly set herself to build thefoundations of a nation. She did not know whether she could do whatshe had set herself to do; but she began with that same dogged idealismand faith in the future which had buoyed up her first settlers; andthere were dark days during her long hard task, when the whiff of anadverse wind would have thrown her into national bankruptcy--thatwinter, for instance, when the Canadian Pacific had no money to go onbuilding and the Canadian government refused to extend aid. Had theKiel Rebellion of '85 not compelled the Dominion government to extendaid so that the line would be ready for the troops every bank in Canadawould have collapsed, and national credit would have been impaired forfifty years. 

Meanwhile, a country of less than four million people set itself tolink British Columbia with Montreal, and Montreal with Halifax, andOttawa with Detroit, and the Great Lakes with the sea. The story istoo long to be related in detail, but on canals alone Canada has spenta hundred millions. Including stocks, bonds, funded debt and debenturestock, the Dominion railways have a capital of $1, 369, 992, 574; and thecountry that had not a foot of railroads, when the patriots fought theFamily Compact, to-day possesses twenty-nine thousand miles oftrackage, [2] three transcontinental systems of railroads and threescorelines touching the boundary. [3] Five times more tonnage passes throughthe Canadian Soo Canal than is expected for Panama or has passedthrough Suez; but consider the burden of this development on a peoplewhose farmers were scarcely clearing one hundred dollars a year. It isputting it mildly to say that during these dark days propertydepreciated two-thirds in value. Land companies that had loaned up totwo-thirds the value of farm property found themselves saddled withfarms which could not be sold for half they had advanced on the loan. 

Three times within the memory of the living generation Canadiandelegates sought trade concessions in Washington; and three times theycame back rebuffed, with but a grimmer determination to work outCanada's own destiny. Is it any wonder, when the fourth time came andCanada was offered reciprocity that she voted it down?

During the twenty dark years Canada lost to the United Statesone-fourth her native population. [4] During the last ten years she hasdrawn back to her home acres not only many of her expatriated nativeborn but almost two million Americans. In ten years her population hasalmost doubled. Uncle Sam has boasted his four billion yearly foreigntrade from Atlantic ports. Canada with a population only one-twelfthUncle Sam's to-day has a foreign trade of almost a billion. 

V

Take another look at Canada's area! All of Germany and Austria spreadover Eastern Canada would still leave an area uncovered in the Eastbigger than the German Empire. England spread out flat would justcover the maritime provinces. Quebec stands a third bigger thanGermany, Ontario a third bigger than France; and you still have awestern world as large again as the East. Spread the British Islesflat, they would barely cover Manitoba. France and Germany would notequal Saskatchewan and Alberta; and two Germanies would not coverBritish Columbia--leaving undefined Yukon and MacKenzie River and PeaceRiver and the hinterland of Hudson Bay, an area equal to EuropeanRussia. If areas in Canada had the same population as areas in Europe, the Dominion would be supporting four hundred million people. 

It would be assuming too much stoicism to say that Canadians are notconscious of a great destiny. For years they stuck so closely to theirnation-building that they had no time to stand back and view the sizeof the edifice of their own structure, but all that is differentto-day. When four hundred thousand people a year flock to the Dominionto cast in their lot with Canadians, there is testimony of worth. Canadians know their destiny is upon them, whatever it may be; and theyare meeting the challenge half-way with faces to the front. In thewords of Sir Wilfred Laurier, they know that "the Twentieth Century isCanada's. " What will they do with it? What are their aims and desiresas a people? Will the same ideals light the path to the fore as haveillumined the long hard way in the past? Will Canada absorb into hernational life the people who are coming to her, or will they absorb her?

[1] Canada's area is 3, 750, 000 square miles. The area of Europe is3, 797, 410 square miles. 

[2] Canada's railway mileage at the end of 1913 was 29, 303. 53. Theland grants to Canadian railroads, Dominion and provincial, stand55, 256, 429 acres. Cash subsidies to railroads in Canada up to June 30, 1913, stand thus: from the Dominion, $163, 251, 469. 42; from theprovinces, $36, 500, 015. 16; from the municipalities, $18, 078, 673. 60. 

[3] The tonnage through both Canadian and U. S. Canals at the "Soo" in1913 was 72, 472, 676, of which 39, 664, 874 went through the Canadiancanal. 

[4] The U. S. Census reports place the number of Canadians in theUnited States at one and a quarter million; but this is obviously farbelow the mark. Canada's loss of people shows that. For instance, from 1898 to 1908, Canada was receiving immigrants at a rate exceeding200, 000 a year, yet the census for this decade showed a gain of only amillion. It was not till 1914 her census showed a gain of two millionfor ten years. Her immigrants either went back or drifted over theline. Port figures show that few went back to Europe. 

CHAPTER II

FOUNDATION FOR HOPE

I

Canada at the opening of the twentieth century has the same populationas the United States at the opening of the nineteenth century. [1] Hasthe Dominion any material justification for her high hopes of a worlddestiny? Switzerland possesses national consciousness to an acutedegree. Yet Switzerland remains a little people. What ground hasCanada for measuring her strength with the nations of the world?Having remained almost stationary in her national progress from 1759 to1859, what reason has she to anticipate a progress as swift andworld-embracing as that which forced the United States to the veryforefront of world powers? It takes something more than high hopes tobuild empire. Has Canada a foundation beneath her high hopes? Nonation ever had a more passionate patriotism than Ireland. Yet Irelandhas lost her population and retrogressed. [2] Why will the same fatenot halt and impede Canada?

It may be acknowledged here that Canadians have no answers for suchquestions and short shift for the questioner. They are too busy makinghistory to talk about it. It is only the woman insecure of her socialposition who prates about it. It is only the nation uncertain ofherself that bolsters a fact with an argument. Canada is too busy withfacts for any flamboyant arguments. It is an even wager that if youask the average well-informed business man in Canada how many miles ofrailways the Dominion has, he will answer on the dot "almost thirtythousand. " But if you ask if he knows that Germany, for instance, withnine times denser population has barely twice as much trackage--no, your Canadian business man doesn't know it. He is too busy buildinghis own railroads to care much what other nations are doing withtheirs. Likewise of the country's trade increasing faster almost thanthe Dominion can handle it. He knows that imports have increased onehundred and sixty-three per cent. In ten years, and that exports haveincreased almost fifty per cent. ; but he doesn't realize in the leastthat the Dominion with seven million people has one-fourth as large aforeign trade as the United States with a hundred million people. [3]He knows that immigration has in ten years jumped from 49, 000 a year to402, 000; but does he take in what it means that his country with onlyfive million native born is being called on to absorb yearly a third asmany immigrants as the United States with eighty million nativeborn?[4] He has been so busy handling the rush of prosperity that hascome in on him like a tidal wave that he has not had time to pause overthe problems of this new destiny--the fact, for instance, that in twomore decades the newcomers will outnumber the native born. 

II

Unless the edifice be top heavy, beneath it all must be the rock bottomof fact. Beneath the tide is the pull of some eternal law. What factsis Canada building her future on? What pull is beneath the tide offour hundred thousand homeseekers a year? What has doubled populationand almost doubled foreign trade?

It is almost a truism that the farther north the land, the greater thefertility, if there be any fertility at all. There is first the supplyof unfailing moisture, with a yearly subsoiling of humus unknown toarid lands. Canada is super-sensitive about her winter climate--thedepth and intensity of the frost, the length and rigor of her winters;but she need not be. It should be cause of gratitude. Frostpenetrating the ground from five to twelve feet--as it does in theNorthwest--guarantees a subterranean root irrigation that never fails. Heavy snow--let us acknowledge frankly snow sometimes banks westernstreets the height of a man--means a heavy supply of moisture both inthaw and rain. There is second the long sunlight. An earth tilted onits axis toward the sun six months of the year gives the North asunlight that is longer the farther north you go. When the sun sets atseven to eight in New York, it sets at eight to nine in Winnipeg, andnine to ten in Athabasca, and only for a few hours at all still farthernorth. It is the long sunlight that gives the fruit of Niagara andQuebec and Annapolis its "fameuse" quality; just as it is the sunlightthat gives western fruit its finest coloring, the higher up the plateauit is grown. It is the long sunlight that gives Number One Hard Wheatits white fine quality so indispensable to the millers. So of barleyand vegetables and small fruits and all that can be grown in the shortseason of the North. What the season lacks in length it gains inintensity of sunlight. Four months of twenty-hour sunlight producebetter growth in some products than eight months of shorter sunlight. 

These two advantages of moisture and sunlight, Canada possesses. [5]What else has she? It doesn't mean much to say that Canada equalsEurope in area and that you could spread Germany and France and Austriaand Great Britain over the Dominion's map and still have an areauncovered equal to European Russia. Nor does it mean much more to saythat in Canada you can find the climate of a Switzerland in theCanadian Rockies, of Italy in British Columbia, of England in themaritime provinces and of Russia in the Northwest. Areas are so greatand diverse that you have to examine them in groups to realize whatbasis of fact Canada builds from. 

Girt almost round by the sea are the maritime provinces--Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick--in area within sixty-seven squaremiles of the same size as England, and in climate not unlike the homeland. [6] Your impression of their inhabitants is of a quiescent, romantic, pastoral and sea-faring people--sprung from the same stock asthe liberty-seekers of New England, untouched by the mad unrest ofmodern days, conservative as bed-rock, but with an eye to the frugalmain chance and a way of making good quietly. They do not talk aboutthe simple life in the maritime provinces because they have alwayslived it, and the land is famed for its diet of codfish, and its men ofbrains. Frugal, simple, reposeful living--the kind of living thattakes time to think--has sent out from the maritime provinces moreleaders of thought than any other area of Canada. It is a land thatleaves a dreamy memory with you of sunset lying gold on the Bras d' OrLakes, of cattle belly-deep in pasture, of apple farms where fragranceof fruit and blossoms seem to scent the very atmosphere, of fishermenrocking in their smacks, of great ships plowing up and down to sea. You know there are great coal mines to the east and great timber limitsto the north; you may even smell the imprisoned fragrance of theyellowing lumber being loaded for export, but it is as the land ofwinter ports and of seamen for the navy that you will remember themaritime provinces as factors in Canada's destiny. 

When gold was discovered in the Yukon and a hundred million dollars ingold came out in ten years, the world went mad. Yet Canada yearlymines from the silver quarries of the sea a harvest of thirty-fourmillion dollars, and of that amount, fifteen million dollars comes fromthe maritime provinces. [7] Conservationists have sung their song invain if the world does not know that the fisheries of the United Stateshave been ruthlessly depleted, but here is a land the area of Englandwhose fisheries have increased in value one hundred per cent. In tenyears. It is not, however, as the great resource of fisheries that themaritime provinces must play their part in Canada's destiny. It is asthe nursery of seamen for a marine power. No southern nation, with theexception of Carthage, has ever dominated the sea; partly for thesimple reason that the best fisheries are always located in temperatezones, where the glacial silt of the icebergs feeds the finny hordeswith minute infusoria; and the fisherman's smack--the dory that rocksto the waves like a cockleshell, with meal of pork and beans cookingabove a chip fire on stones in the bottom of the boat, and rough grimedfellows singing chanties to the rhythm of the sea--the fisherman'ssmack is the nursery of the world's proudest merchant marines and mostpowerful navies. Japan knows this, and encourages her fishermen bybounties and passage money to spread all over the world, and Japaneseto-day operate practically all the fisheries of the Pacific. Englandknows this and in the North Sea and off Newfoundland protects herfishermen and draws from their ranks her seamen. 

Japan dominates seventy-two per cent. Of the commerce of the Pacific, not through chance, but through her merchant marine built up from roughgrimed fellows who quarry the silver mines of the sea. Englanddominates the Seven Seas of the world, not through her superiority manto man against other races, but through her merchant marine, carryingthe commerce of the world, built up from simple fisher folk hauling inthe net or paying out the line through icy salty spray abovetempestuous seas. No power yet dominates the seas of the New World. The foreign commerce of the New World up to the time of the great warwas carried by British, German and Japanese ships. Canada has thesteel, the coal, the timber, the nursery for seamen. Will she become amarine power in the New World? It is one of her dreams. It is alsoone of England's dreams. No country subsidizes her merchant linersmore heavily than Canada[8]--in striking contrast with the parsimoniouspolicy of the United States. It is Canada's policy of ship subsidiesthat has established regular merchant liners--all liable to service asAdmiralty ships--to Australia, to China, to Japan and to every harboron the Atlantic. 

Whether heavy subsidies to large liners will effect as much for amerchant marine for Canada as numerous small subsidies to small linesremains to be seen. The development of seamen from her fisheries isone of the dreams she must work out in her destiny, and that leads oneto the one great disadvantage under which Canada rests as a marinepower. She lacks winter harbors on the Atlantic accessible to hergreat western domain, whence comes the bulk of her commerce for export. True, the maritime provinces afford those harbors--Saint John andHalifax. A dozen other points, if need were, could be utilized in themaritime provinces as winter harbors; but take a look at the map! Themaritime provinces are the longest possible spiral distance from therest of Canada. They necessitate a rail haul of from two to threethousand miles from the west. What gives Galveston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Buffalo preeminence as harbors? Their nearness to thecenters of commerce--their position far inland of the continent, cutting rail haul by half and quarter from the plains. Montreal hasthis advantage of being far inland; but from November to May Montrealis closed; and Canadian commerce must come out by way of Americanlines, or pay the long haul down to the maritime provinces. There canbe no doubt that this disadvantage is one of the factors forcing theWest to find outlet by Hudson Bay--where harbors are also closed by theice but are only four hundred miles from the wheat plains. There canalso be no doubt that the opening of Panama will draw much westerncommerce to Europe by way of the Pacific. 

III

When one comes to consider Quebec under its new boundaries, one iscontemplating an empire three times larger than Germany, supporting apopulation not so large as Berlin. [9] It is the seat of the old FrenchEmpire, the land of the idealists who came to propagate the Faith andsucceeded in exploring three-quarters of the continent, with canoespointed ever up-stream in quest of beaver. All the characteristics ofthe Old Empire are in Quebec to-day. Quebec is French to the core, notin loyalty to republican France, but in loyalty to the religious idealswhich the founders brought to the banks of the St. Lawrence threecenturies ago. Church spire, convent walls, religious foundationsoccupy the most prominent site in every city and town and hamlet ofQuebec. From Tadousac to Montreal, from Labrador to Maine or NewHampshire, you can follow the thread of every river in Quebec by theglitter of the church spires round which nestle the hamlets. No matterhow poor the hamlet, no matter how remote the hills which slope woodeddown to some blue lake, there stand the village church with its crosson the spire, the whitewashed house of the curé, the whitewashed squaredormer-windowed school. 

Outside Quebec City and Montreal, Quebec is the most reposeful regionin all America. What matter wars and rumors of wars to these habitantsliving under guidance of the curé, as their ancestors lived two hundredyears ago? They pay their tithes. They attend mass. At birth, marriage and death--the curé is their guide and friend. He teachesthem in their schools. He advises them in their family affairs. Hecounsels them in their business. At times he even dictates theirpolitics; but when you remember that French is the language spoken, that primary education is of the slimmest, though all doors are openfor a promising pupil to advance, you wonder whether constant tutelageof a benevolent church may not be a good thing in a chaotic, confusedand restless age. The habitant lives on his little long narrow stripof a farm running back from the river front. He fishes a little. Heworks on the river and in the lumber camps of the Back Country. Heraises a little tobacco, hay, a pig, a cow, a little horse and a familyof from ten to twenty. When the daughters marry--as they areencouraged to do at the earliest possible age--the farm is subdividedamong the sons; and when it will subdivide no longer, there is amigration to the Back Country, or to a French settlement in theNorthwest, where another curé will shepherd the flock; and thehabitant, blessed at his birth and blessed at his marriage, is usuallyblessed at his death at the ripe age of ninety or a hundred. It is asimple and on the whole a very happy, if not progressive, life. Someyears ago, when hard times prevailed in Canada and the manufacturingcities of New England offered what seemed big wages to habitants, whoconsidered themselves rich on one hundred dollars a year--a greatmigration took place across the border; but it was not a happy move forthese simple children of the soil. They missed the shepherding oftheir beloved curé, and the movement has almost stopped. Also you findJean Ba'tiste in the redwoods of California as lumber-jack, or plying acanoe on MacKenzie River. The best fur-traders of the North to-day arehalf-breeds with a strain of French Canadian blood. 

If you take a look at the map of Quebec under its new boundaries upinto Labrador--it seems absurd to call a region three times the area ofGermany "a province"--you will see that only the fringe of the riverfronts has been peopled. This is owing to the old system of parcelingout the land in mile strips back from the river--a system thatantedated the railroads, when every man's train was a paddle and thewaterfront. Beyond, back up from the rivers, lies literally ano-man's-land of furs plentiful as of old, of timber of which only theedge has been slashed, of water power unestimated and of mineralresources only guessed. It seems incredible at this late date that youcan count on one hand the number of men who have ascended the rivers ofQuebec and descended the rivers of Labrador to Hudson Bay. The forestarea is estimated at one hundred and twenty million acres; but that isonly a guess. The area of pulp wood is boundless. 

Along the St. Lawrence, south of the St. Lawrence and around the greatcities come touches of the modern--elaborate stock farms, greatfactories, magnificent orchards, huge sawmills. The progress ofMontreal and the City of Quebec is so intimately involved with thenavigation of the St. Lawrence route and the development of railroadsthat it must be dealt with separately; but it may be said here thatnearly all the old seigneurial tenures--Crown grants of estates to thenobility of New France--have passed to alien hands. The system itself, the last relic of feudal tenure in Canada, was abolished by Canadianlaw. What, then, is the aim of Quebec as a factor in Canada's destiny?It may be said perfectly frankly that with the exception of suchenlightened men as Laurier, Quebec does not concern herself withCanada's destiny. In a war with France, yes, she would give of hersons and her blood; in a war against France, not so sure. "Why are youloyal?" I asked a splendid scholarly churchman of the old régime--a manwhose works have been quoted by Parkman. "Because, " he answeredslowly, "because--you--English--leave us--alone to work out our hopes. ""What are those hopes?" I asked. He waved his hand toward thewindow--church spires and yet more spires far as we could see down theSt. Lawrence--another New France conserving the religious ideals thathad been crushed by the republicanism of the old land. Let it bestated without a shadow of doubt--Quebec never has had and never willhave the faintest idea of secession. Her religious freedom is too wellguaranteed under the present régime for her to risk change under anuntried order of independence or annexation. The church wants Quebecexactly as she is--to work out her destiny of a new and regenerateFrance on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 

A certain section of the French oppose Canada embroiling herself inEuropean wars. They do this conscientiously and not as a politicaltrick to attract the votes of the ultramontane French. One of the mostbrilliant supporters Sir Wilfred Laurier ever had flung his chances ofa Cabinet place to the winds in opposing Canada's participation in theBoer War. He not only flung his chances to the winds, but he ruinedhimself financially and was read out of the party. The motive behindthis opposition to Canada's participations in the Imperial wars is, perhaps, three-fold. French Canada has never forgotten that she wasconquered. True, she is better off, enjoys greater religious liberty, greater material prosperity, greater political freedom than under theold régime; but she remembers that French prestige fell before Englishprestige on the Plains of Abraham. The second motive is an unconsciousfeeling of detachment from British Imperial affairs. Why should FrenchCanada embroil herself and give of her blood and means for a race aliento herself in speech and religion? The Monroe Doctrine forever defendsCanada from seizure by European power. Why not rest under that defenseand build up a purely Canadian power? The third motive is almostsubconscious. What if a European war should involve French-CatholicCanada on the side of Protestant England against French-CatholicFrance, or even Catholic Italy? Quebec feels herself a part of Canadabut not of the British Empire; and it is a great question how muchLaurier's support of the British in the Boer War had to do with thatpartial defection of Quebec which ultimately defeated him onReciprocity; for if there is one thing the devout son of the churchfears more than embroilment in European war, it is coming under therepublicanizing influence of the United States. Under Canadian law thefavored status of the church is guaranteed. Under American law thechurch would be on the same footing as all other denominations. 

IV

When one comes to Ontario, one is dealing with the kitchen garden ofthe Dominion--in summer a land of placid sky-blue lakes, andamber-colored wooded rivers, and trim, almost garden-like farms, andheavily laden orchards, and thriving cities beginning to smoke underthe pall of the increasing and almost universal factory. Under its oldboundaries Ontario stood just eighteen thousand square miles largerthan France. Under its new boundaries extending to Hudson Bay, Ontariomeasures almost twice the area of France. France supports a populationof nearly forty millions; Ontario, of barely two and a half millions. Both Ontario and France are equally fertile and equally diversified infertility. Along the lakes and clustered round Niagara is the greatfruit region--vineyards and apple orchards that are gardens ofperfection. North of the lakes is a mixed farm region. Parallel withthe latitude skirting Georgian Bay begins the Great Clay belt, an areaof heavily forested lands about seven hundred miles north to south andalmost a thousand diagonally east to west. On its southern edge thishinterland, which forms the watershed between Hudson Bay and the St. Lawrence, seems to be rock-bound and iron-capped. For years travelersacross the continent must have looked through the car windows acrossthis landscape of windfall and fire as a picture of desolation. Surely, "here was nothing, " as some of the first explorers said whenthey viewed Canada from Labrador; but pause; not so fast! Here lay, ifnothing else, an area of timber limits seven hundred by one thousandmiles; and as the timber burned off curious mineral outcroppings wereobserved. When the railroad was graded through what is now known asSudbury, there was a report of a great find of copper. Expert afterexpert examined it, and company after company forfeited options andrefused to bond it. Finally a shipment was sent out to a smelteracross the border. The so-called "copper" was pronounced "nickel"--thegreatest deposit of the metal needed for armor plating known in theworld. In fact, only one other mine could compete against the Sudburynickel beds--the French mines of New Caledonia. Here was something, surely, in this rock-bound iron region of desolation, which passingtravelers had pronounced worthless. 

The discovery of silver at Cobalt came by an almost similar chance. Grading an extension of a North Ontario railroad projected purely forthe sake of prospective settlers, workmen came on surface deposits of"rose" silver--almost pure metal, some of it; and there resulted such amining boom and series of quick fortunes as had made Klondike famous. And Cobalt and Sudbury are at only the southern edge of the unexploredhinterland of Ontario. Old records of the French régime, dailyjournals of the Hudson's Bay Company fur-traders, repeatedly refer towell-known mines between Lake Superior and James Bay; but fur-tradersdiscouraged mining; and this region is less known to-day than whencoureur de bois and voyageur threaded river and lake and leafywilderness. Ontario, like Quebec, is only on the outer edge ofrealizing her own wealth. 

V

We sometimes speak as though Canada had had her boom and it was allover. She has had her boom, and the boom has exploded, and it is agood thing. When inflation collapses, a country gets down to reality;and the reality is that Canada has barely begun to develop theexhaustless mine of wealth which Heaven has given her. Ontario, complacent with a fringe of prosperity along lake front, is aninstance; Quebec, with only a border on each bank of her great riverspeopled, is another instance; and the prairie provinces are still morestriking illustrations of the sleeping potentialities of the Dominion. In our dark days we used to call those three prairie provinces betweenLake Superior and the Rockies "the granary of the Empire. " I am afraidit was more in bravado, hoping against hope, than in any other spirit;for we were raising little grain and exporting less and receivingprices that hardly paid for the labor. That was back in the earlynineties. To-day, what? One single year's wheat crop from one only ofthose provinces equals more gold in value than ever came out ofKlondike. If Britain were cut off from every other source of foodsupply, those three provinces could feed the British Isles with theirsurplus wheat. To be explicit, credit Great Britain with a populationof forty-five millions. Apportion to each six bushels of wheat--theper capita requirement for food, according to scientists. GreatBritain requires two hundred and eighty to three hundred millionbushels of wheat for bread only--not to be manufactured into cerealproducts, which is another and enormous demand in itself. Of the wheatrequired for bread, Great Britain herself raises only fifty to sixtymillion bushels, leaving a deficit, which must come from outsidesources, of two hundred million bushels. 

In 1912 Canada raised one hundred and ninety-nine million bushels ofwheat. In 1913, of grain products, Canada exported one hundred and tenmillion bushels; of flour products, almost twenty million dollars'worth. Under stress of need or high prices these totals could easilybe trebled. The figures are, indeed, bewildering in their bigness. Inthe three prairie provinces there were under cultivation in 1912 forall crops only sixteen and one-half million acres. [10] At twentybushels to the acre this area put under wheat would feed Great Britain. But note--only sixteen and one-half million acres were undercultivation. There have been surveyed as suitable for cultivation onehundred and fifty-eight million acres. The land area of the threeprairie provinces is four hundred and sixty-six million acres. If onlyhalf the land surveyed as suitable for cultivation were put inwheat--namely seventy-nine million acres; and if it yielded only tenbushels to the acre (it usually yields nearer twenty than ten), thethree prairie provinces of Canada would be producing crops equal to theentire spring wheat production of the United States. Grant, then, twobushels for reseeding, or one hundred and fifty-eight million bushels, and six bushels for food, or fifty million bushels, the three prairieprovinces would still have for export more than five hundred millionbushels. All this presupposes population. Granting each man onehundred and sixty acres, it presupposes 493, 750 more farmers than arein the West; but coming to Canada yearly are four hundred thousandsettlers; so that counting four out of every five settlers children, inhalf a decade at the least, Western Canada will have five hundredthousand more farmers--enough to feed Great Britain and still have asurplus of wheat for Europe. 

In connection with wheat exports from the West one factor should neverbe ignored--the influence of the Great Lakes and the Soo Canal inreducing freight to the West. Great Lakes freight tolls are to-day thecheapest in the world, and their influence in minimizing the toll onthe all-land haul must never be ignored. Freight can be carried on theGreat Lakes one thousand miles for the same rate charged on rail ratefor one hundred miles. [11]

And wheat is not the only product of the three prairie provinces. Onthe borderland between Manitoba and Saskatchewan are enormous depositsof coal which have not yet been explored. Canoeing once throughEastern Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba, I saw a piece of almostpure copper brought down from the hinterland of Churchill River by anIndian, from an unknown mine, which no white man has yet found. On theborderland between Alberta and British Columbia is a ridge of coaldeposits which such conservative experts as the late George Dawsonestimated would mine four million tons a year for five thousand years. These coal deposits seem almost nature's special provision for thetreeless plains. 

It is well known that the decrease in white fish in the Great Lakes forthe past ten years has been appalling. Northward of Churchill River isa region of chains of lakes--the Lesser Great Lakes, they have beencalled--and these are the only untouched inland fisheries in America. To the exporter they are ideal fishing ground. The climate is cool. The fish can be sent out frozen to American markets. Of Canada'sthirty-four million dollars' worth of fish in 1912, one and one-halfmillion dollars' worth came from the three prairie provinces. 

Under the old boundaries, the three prairie provinces compared in arearespectively Manitoba with Great Britain; Saskatchewan with France;Alberta, one and a half times larger than Germany. Under the newboundaries extending the province to Hudson Bay, Manitoba is fifty-twothousand square miles larger than Germany; Saskatchewan extended northis fifty thousand square miles larger than France; and Alberta extendednorth is fifty thousand square miles larger than Germany. And north ofthe three grain provinces is an area the size of European Russia. 

We talk of Canada's boom as "done, " but has it even begun? Strathconaused to say that the three prairie provinces would support a populationof one hundred million. Was he right? On the basis of Europe'spopulation the three provinces would sustain three times Germany'ssixty-five millions. 

VI

In British Columbia one reaches the province of the greatest naturalwealth, the greatest diversity in climate and the most feverishactivity in Canada. East of the mountains is a climate high, cold andbracing as Russia or Switzerland. Between the ranges of the mountainsare valleys mild as France. On the coast toward the south is a climatelike Italy; toward the north, like Scotland. Of Canada's entire timberarea--twice as great as Europe's standing timber--three-quarters lie inBritish Columbia. Fruit equal to Niagara's, fisheries richer than themaritime provinces, mines yielding more than Klondike--exist in thismost favored of provinces. While the area is a half larger thanGermany, the population is smaller than that of a suburb of Berlin. [12]Of Canada's thirty-four million dollars' worth of fish, thirteenmillion dollars' worth come from British Columbia; and of her productsof forty-six millions of precious and fifty-six millions ofnon-metallic minerals in 1911 easily half came from BritishColumbia. [13]

Instead of that repose which marks the maritime provinces, one finds aneager fronting to the future that is almost feverish. If Panama isturning the entire Pacific into a front door instead of a back door, then British Columbia knows the coign of vantage, which she holds as anoutlet for half Canada's commerce by way of the Pacific. It is inBritish Columbia that East must meet West and work out destiny. 

[1] In 1800, the United States population was 5, 308, 483; in 1901, theCanadian population was 5, 371, 315. 

[2] Ireland lost one-half her population from 1840 to 1900, Herpopulation dropped in round numbers from eight millions to fourmillions. 

[3] Total foreign trade of Canada, 1912, $1, 085, 264, 000; of UnitedStates, $4, 538, 702, 000. 

[4] This presupposes immigration to the United States at a million anda quarter, as before the war. 

[5] Speaking generally, there are few sections of the Northwest wherethe average rainfall is scanty. 

[6] The areas of all the Canadian provinces except the maritime oneshave been extended in recent years--Quebec to include Labrador--exceptthe East Shore, which is under Newfoundland; Ontario to James Bay;Manitoba and Saskatchewan to Hudson Bay; Alberta to MacKenzie River. Northern British Columbia is not yet surveyed, which explains why itsnorthern area is largely a matter of guess--closest estimates placingthe whole province including Yukon as twice Germany; without Yukon asabout one and two-thirds the area of Germany; but this is roughguesswork. 

[7] Canada's fisheries for 1912 yielded $34, 667, 872. 

[8] Canada's subsidies to steamships vary from year to year, but I donot think any year has much exceeded two millions. 

[9] This is including Labrador. 

[10] Under crop in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta 16, 478, 000 acres. Area surveyed available for cultivation 158, 516, 427 acres; land area, 466, 068, 798 acres. 

[11] The rate from the head of the Lakes to Montreal is usually four tofive cents. It has been as low as one cent, when grain was carriedalmost for ballast. 

[12] British Columbia's population in 1912 was 392, 480. 

[13] Canada, mineral production for 1911 stands thus: copper, $6, 911, 831: gold, $9, 672, 096; iron, $700, 216; lead, $818, 672; nickel, $10, 229, 623; silver, $17, 452, 128; other metal, $322, 862; total, $46, 197, 428. Non-metallic production 1911: coal $26, 378, 477; cement, $7, 571, 299; clay, $8, 317, 709; stone, $3, 680, 361; in all, $56, 094. 258. 

CHAPTER III

THE TIE THAT BINDS

I

It is easy to understand what binds the provinces into a confederation. They had to bind themselves into a unity with the British North AmericaAct or see their national existence threatened by any band of settlerswho might rush in and by a perfectly legitimate process ofnaturalization and voting set up self-government. At the time ofconfederation such eminent Imperial statesmen as Gladstone andLabouchère seriously considered whether it would not be better to cutCanada adrift, if she wanted to be cut adrift. The difference betweenthe Canadian provinces and the isolated Latin republics of SouthAmerica illustrates best what the bond of confederation did for theDominion. The _why_ and _how_ of confederation is easy to understand, but what tie binds Canada to the Mother Country? That is a pointalmost impossible for an outsider to understand. 

England contributes not a farthing to Canada. Canada contributes not adime to England. Though a tariff against alien lands and tradeconcessions to her colonies would bring such prosperity to thosecolonies as Midas could not dream, England confers no trade favor toher colonial children. There have been times, indeed, when shediscriminated against them by embargoes on cattle or boundaryconcessions to cement peace with foreign powers. Except for a slighttrade concession of twenty to twenty-five per cent. On imports fromEngland--which, of course, helps the Canadian buyer as much as it helpsthe British seller--Canada grants no favors to the Mother Country. Inspite of those trade concessions to England, in 1913 for every dollar'sworth Canada bought from England, she bought four dollars' worth fromthe United States. 

Certainly, England sends Canada a Governor-General every four years;but the Cabinet of England never appoints a Governor-General to Canadatill it has been unofficially ascertained from the Cabinet of theDominion whether he will be persona grata. Canada gives theGovernor-General fifty thousand dollars a year and some perquisites--anemolument that can barely sustain the style of living expected andexacted from the appointee, who must maintain a small viceregal court. The Governor-General has the right of veto on all bills passed by theCanadian government; and where an act might conflict with Imperialinterests, he would doubtless exercise the right; but the veto power inthe hands of the Imperial vicegerent is so rarely used as to be almostdead. Veto is avoided by the Governor-General working in closeconference with the prevailing Cabinet, or party in power; and a partyon the verge of enacting laws inimical to Imperial interests can bedisciplined by dismissal from office, in which case the party mustappeal to the country for re-election. That means time; and timeallows passion to simmer down; and an entire electorate is not likelyto perpetrate a policy inimical to Imperial interests. In practice, that represents the whole, sole and entire power of England'srepresentative in Canada--a power less than the nod of a saloon keeperor ward boss in the civic politics of the United States. Officially, yes; the signature of the Governor-General is put to commissions andappointments of first rank in the army and the Cabinet and the courts. In reality, it is a question if any Governor in Canada sinceconfederation has as much as suggested the name of an applicant foroffice. 

On the other hand, Canada's dependence on England is even more tenuous. Does a question come up as to the "twilight zone" of provincial andfederal rights, it is settled by an appeal to the Privy Council. Suitsfrom lower courts reversed by the Supreme Court of Canada can beappealed to England for decision; and in religious disputes as toschools--as in the famous Manitoba School Case--this right of appeal toImperial decision has really been the door out of dilemma for bothparties in Canada. It is a shifting of the burden of a decision thatmust certainly alienate one section of votes--from the shoulders of theCanadian parties to an impartial Imperial tribunal. 

If there be any other evidence of bonds in the tangible holding Canadato England and England to Canada--I do not know it. 

II

What, then, is the tie that binds colony to Mother Country?Tangible--it is not; but real as life or death, who can doubt, when aself-governing colony voluntarily equips and despatches sixty thousandmen--the choice sons of the land--to be pounded into pulp in anImperial war? Who can doubt the tie is real, when bishops' sons, bankers', lawyers', doctors', farmers', carpenters', teachers' andpreachers'--the young and picked heritors of the land--clamor a hundredthousand strong to enlist in defense of England and to face howitzer, lyddite and shell? Why not rest secure under the Monroe Doctrine thatforever forefends European conquest? It is something the outsider cannot understand. President Taft could not understand it when hisreciprocity pact was defeated in Canada partly because of his ownill-advised words about Canada drifting from United States interests. Canada was not drifting from American interests. In trade and intransportation her interests are interlinking with the United Statesevery day; but the point--which President Taft failed tounderstand--is: Canada is _not_ drifting because she is sheet-anchoredand gripped to the Mother Country. We may like it or dislike it. Wemay dispute and argue round about. The fact remains, without anyscreaming or flag waving, or postprandial loyalty expansions of rotundoratory and a rotunder waist line--Canada is sheet-anchored to Englandby an invisible, intangible, almost indescribable tie. That is onereason why she rejected reciprocity. That is why at a colossal cost inland and subsidies and loans and guarantees of almost two billions, shehas built up a transportation system east and west, instead of northand south. That is why for a century she has hewn her way throughmountains of difficulty to a destiny of her own, when it would havebeen easier and more profitable to have cast in her lot with the UnitedStates. 

What is the tie that binds? Is it the hope of an Imperial Federation, which shall bind the whole British Empire into such a world federationas now holds the provinces of the Dominion? Twenty years ago, if youhad asked that, the answer might have been "Yes. " Canada was in thedark financially and did not see her way out. If only the Chamberlainscheme of a tariff against the world, free trade within the empire, could have evolved into practical politics, Canada for purely practicalreasons would have welcomed Imperial Federation. It would have givenher exports a wonderful outlet. But to-day Imperial Federation is adeader issue in Canada than reciprocity with the United States. Nomore books are written about it. No one speaks of it. No one wantsit. No one has time for it. The changed attitude of mind is wellillustrated by an incident on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, one day. 

A Cabinet Minister was walking along the terrace above the rivertalking to a prominent public man of England. 

"How about Imperial Federation?" asked the Englishman. "Do you wantit?"

The Canadian statesman did not answer at once. He pointed across theOttawa, where the blue shimmering Laurentians seem to recede and meltinto a domain of infinitude. "Why _should_ we want ImperialFederation?" he answered. "We have an empire the size of Europe, whoseproblems we must work out. Why should Canadians go to Westminster tolegislate on a deceased wife's sister's bills and Welshdisestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit toplunder the fit?"

It will be noticed that his answer had none of that flunkeyism to whichGoldwin Smith used to ascribe much of Canadian pro-loyalty. Rather wasthere a grave recognition of the colossal burden of helping a nationthe area of Europe to work out her destiny in wisdom and in integrityand in the certainty that is built up only from rock bottom basis offact. 

Has flunkeyism any part in the pro-loyalty of Canada? Goldwin Smiththought it had, and we all know Canadians whose swelling lip-loyalty isa sort of Gargantuan thunder. It may be observed, parenthetically, those Canadians are not the personages who receive recognition fromEngland. 

"Sorry, Your Royal Highness, sorry; but Canada is becoming horriblycontaminated by Americanizing influences, " apologized a pro-loyalist ofthe lip-flunkey variety to the Duke of Connaught shortly after thatscion of royalty came to Canada as Governor. 

The Duke of Connaught turned and looked the fussy lip-loyalist over. "What's good enough for Americans is good enough for me, " he said. 

An instance of the absence of flunkeyism from the Dominion's loyalty tothe Mother Country occurred during the visit of the present King asPrince of Wales to the Canadian Northwest a few years ago. The royaltrain had arrived at some little western place, where a contingent ofthe Mounted Police was to act as escort for the Prince's entourage. The train had barely pulled in when a fussy little long-coat-tailedsecretary flew John-Gilpin fashion across the station platform to akhaki trooper of the Mounted Police. 

"His Royal Highness has arrived! His Royal Highness has arrived, "gasped the little secretary, almost apoplectic with self-importance. "Come and help to get the baggage off--"

"You go to ----, " answered the khaki-uniformed trooper, aiming atobacco wad that flew past the little secretary's ear. "Get thebaggage off yourself! We're not here as porters. We're here toexecute orders and we don't take 'em from little damphool fussies likeyou. "

Yet that trooper was of the company that made the Strathcona Horsefamous in South Africa--famous for such daring abandon in their chargesthat the men could hardly be held within bounds of official orders. Heis of the very class of men who have forsaken gainful occupations inthe West to clamor a hundred-thousand strong for the privilege offighting to the last ditch for the empire under the rain of death fromGerman fire. 

"How can Canadians be loyal to a system of government that acknowledgessome fat king sitting on a throne chair like a mummy as ruler?"demanded an American woman of a Canadian man. 

"Well, " answered the Canadian, "I don't know that any 'fat king' wasever quite so fat as a gentleman named Mammon who plays a pretty bigpart in the government of all republics. " He drew a five-dollar billfrom his pocket. "As a piece of paper that is utterly worthless, " heexplained. "It isn't even good wrapping paper. It's a promise topay--to deliver the goods, that gives it value. It's what the systemof government stands for, that rouses support--not this, that, or theother man--"

"But what does it stand for?" interrupted the American; and theCanadian couldn't answer. It roused and held his loyalty as if offamily ties. Yet he could not define it. 

He might have explained that Canada has had a system of justice since1837 never truckled to nor trafficked in, but he knew in his heart thatthe loyalty was to a something deeper than that. He knew that manyrepublics--Switzerland, for instance--have as impartial a system ofjustice. He might have descanted on the British North America Actbeing to Canada what the Constitution is to the United States, onlymore elastic, more susceptible to growth and changing conditions; buthe knew that the Constitution was what it was owing to this otherprinciple of which law and justice were but the visible formula. Hemight easily have dilated on excellent features of the Canadianparliamentary system different from the United States or Germany. Forinstance, no party can hold office one day after it lacks the supportof a majority vote. It must resign reins to the other party, or go tothe country for re-election. Or he might have pointed to the veryexcellent feature of Cabinet Ministers sitting in the House and beingdirectly responsible to Commons and Senate for the management of theirdepartments to the expenditure of a farthing. A Cabinet member who maybe quizzed to-day, to-morrow, every day in the week except Sunday, onthe management of affairs under him can never take refuge in ambiguoussilence or behind the skirts of his chief, as secretaries delinquenthave frequently taken refuge behind the spotless reputation of atoo-confiding President. But the Canadian explained none of thesethings. He knew that these things were only the outward and visibleformula of the principle to which he was loyal. 

III

A few years ago the mistake would have been impossible; for there was, up to 1900, practically no movement of settlers from the British Islesto Canada; but to-day with an enormous in-rush of British colonists tothe Dominion, a superficial observer might ascribe the loyalty to theties of blood--to the fact that between 1900 and 1911, 685, 067 Britishcolonists flocked to Canada. Not counting colossal investments ofBritish capital, there are to-day easily a million Britishers living onand drawing their sustenance from the soil of Canada. And yet, howeverunpalatable and ungracious the fact may be to Englishmen, the ties ofblood have little to do with the bond that holds Canada to England. This statement will arouse protest from a certain section of Canadians;but those same Canadians know there are hundreds--yes, thousands--ofmercantile houses in the Dominion where employers practically put upthe sign--"No Englishman need apply. "

"I've come to the point, " said a wholesale hardware man of a Canadiancity, "where I won't employ a man if he has a cockney accent. I'vetried it hundreds of times, and it has always ended the same way. Ihave to break a cockney's neck before I can convince him that I knowthe way I want things done, and they have to be done that way. He isso sure I am 'ownley a demmed ke-lo-neal' that he is lecturing me onhow I should do things before he is in my establishment ten minutes. Idon't know what it is. It may be that coming suddenly to a land whereall men are treated on an equality and not kicked and expected to doffcaps in thanks for the insolence, they can't stand the free rein andnot go locoed. All I know is--where I'll employ an Irishman, or aScotchman, or a Yorkshireman, on the jump, I will not employ a cockney. I don't want to commit murder. "

And that business man voiced the sentiment of multitudes from farm, factory and shop. I'll not forget, myself, the semi-comic episode ofrescuing an English woman from destitution and having her correct myCanadian expressions five minutes after I had given her a roof. Shehad referred to her experience as "jolly rotten"; and I had remarkedthat strangers sometimes had hard luck because "we Canadians couldn'tplace them, " when I was roundly called to order by a tongue that neverin its life audibly articulated an "h. "

IV

Before digging down to the subterranean springs of Canadian loyalty, wemust take emphatic cognizance of several facts. Canada, while not arepublic, is one of the most democratic nations in the world. Practically every man of political, financial or industrial prominencein Canada to-day came up by the shirt-sleeve route in one generation. If there is an exception to this statement--and I know every part ofCanada almost as well as I know my own home--I do not know it. Sifton, Van Horne, MacKenzie, Mann, Laurier, Borden, Foster, the late Sir JohnMacdonald--all came up from penniless boyhood through their own effortsto what Canadians rate as success. I said "what Canadians rate assuccess. " I did not say to affluence, for Canadians do not rateaffluence by itself as success. Laurier, Foster, Sir JohnMacdonald--each began as a poor man. Sifton began life as a pennilesslawyer. Van Horne got his foot on the first rung of the ladderhustling cars for troops in the Civil War. MacKenzie of CanadaNorthern fame began with a trowel; Dan Mann with an ax in the lumberwoods at a period when wages were a dollar and twenty-five cents a day;Laurier with a lawyer's parchment and not a thing else in the world. Foster, the wizard of finance, taught his first finance in aschoolroom. And so one might go on down the list of Canada's great. Unless I am gravely mistaken the richest industrial leader of Ontariobegan life in a little bake shop, where his wife cooked and he sold thewares; and the richest man in the Canadian West began with a pick in amine. I doubt if there is a single instance in Canada of a public manwhose family's security from want traces back prior to 1867. 

But the richest are not rated the most successful in Canada. There isan untold and untellable tragedy here. There is many a city in Canadawhich has a Mr. Rich-Man's-Folly in the shape of a palatial house orcastellated residence which failed to force open the portals of respectand recognition for himself. Folly Castle has been occupied in anisolation that was almost quarantine. Why? Because its foundationswere laid in some financial mud, which Canada never forgets and neverforgives. Instances could be multiplied of brilliant politiciansretired to private life, of moneyed men who spent fortunes to buy aknighthood, a baronetcy, an earldom--and died disappointed because inearly life they had used fiduciary funds or trafficked in politics. Itmay impart a seeming snobbery to Canadian life, an almost crudeinsolence; but it keeps a title from becoming the insignia of an envieddollar bill. It keeps men from buying what their conduct failed towin. It does more than anything else to keep down that envy of truesuccess which is the curse of many lands. Canadian papers rarelytrouble to chronicle whether a rich man wears the hair shirt of atroubled conscience, or the paper vest of a tight purse. They are notinterested in him simply because he is rich. If he loots a franchiseand unloads rotten stocks on widows and orphans and teachers andpreachers, they call him a thief and send him to jail a convict. Threedecades ago the premier's own nephew misused public funds. It couldhave been hushed by the drop of a hat or the wave of a hand. The partyin power was absolutely dominant. The culprit was arrested at nine inthe morning and sentenced to seven years in the penitentiary by sixthat day; and he served the term, too, without any political wash toclear him. Instances are not lacking of titled adventurers ostracizedin Winnipeg and Montreal going to Newport and capturing the richestheiresses of the land. These instances are not mentioned in invidiousself-righteousness. They are mentioned purely to illustrate theunderlying, unspoken difference in essential values. 

V

Set down, then, two or three premises! Canada is under a monarchy, butin practice is a democratic country. Canada is absolutely impartial inher justice to rich and poor. Have we dug down to the fountain springof Canadian loyalty? Not at all. These are not springs. They arenational states of mind. These characteristics are psychology. Whatis the rock bottom spring? One sometimes finds the presence of ahidden spring by signs--green grass among parched; the twist of a peachor hazel twig in answer to the presence of water; the direction of thebrook below. What are the signs of Canada's springs? Signs, remember;not proofs. Of proofs, there is no need. 

Perfectly impartially, whether we like it or dislike it, without anyargument for or against, let us set down Canadian likes and dislikes asto government. These are not my likes and dislikes. They are not yourlikes and dislikes. They are facts as to the Canadian people. 

Canadians have no faith in a system of government, whether under aTurkish Khan or a Lloyd George Chancellor, which delegates the rule ofa nation to butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers and "the dearpeople" fakers. They do not believe that a man who can not rule hisown affairs well can rule the nation well. They regard government as agrave and sacred function, not as a grab bag for spoils. If a partymakes good in power, they have no fear of leaving that party in powerfor term after term. The longer their premier is in office the moreefficient they think he will become. They have no fear of the premierbecoming a "fat" tyrannical king. Long as the party makes good, theyconsider it has a right to power; and that experience adds tocompetency. Instantly the party fails to make good, they throw it outindependent of the length of its tenure of office. 

Canadians do not believe that"I-am-as-good-as-you-are-and-a-little-better. " They will accept thefact that "I-am-as-good-as-you-are" only when I prove it in brain, inbrawn, in courtesy, in mental agility, in business acumen, inservice--in a word, _in fact_. They are comparatively untouched by thetheoretical radicalism of the French Revolution, by the socialism of aLloyd George, by the war of labor and capital. They are untouched bytheory because they are so intent on fact. The "liberty, equality andfraternity" cry of the French Revolution--they regard as so much hotair. Canadians since 1837 have had "liberty, equality, fraternity. "Why rant about it? And when they didn't have it, they fought for itand went to the scaffold for it, and got it. The day's work--that'sall. Why posturize and theorize about platitudes? Canadians are notinterested in the Lloyd George theory of the poor plundering theprosperous, because every man or woman who tries in Canada can succeed. He may hoe some long hard rows. Let him hoe! It will harden flabbymuscle and give backbone in place of jawbone! Help the innocentchildren--yes! There is a child saving organization in every province. But if the adult will not try, let him die! If he will not struggle tosurvive, let him die! The sooner the better! No theoretical parasitesfor Canada, nor parlor socialism! "Take off your coat! Roll up yourshirt-sleeves! Stop blathering! Go to work!" says Canada. 

"But I think--" protests the theorist. 

"_Thinks_ don't pass currency as coin. _Go to work, and pass upfacts_, " says Canada. 

VI

It may be objected that all this means the survival of the fit, therule of the many by the few. That is exactly what it means. That isthe fountain spring of Canada's national idea, whether we like it orhate it. That is the belief that binds Canada's loyalty to themonarchical idea--though Canada would as soon call it the presidentialidea as the monarchical idea. She does not care what name you tag itby so long as she delegates to the selected and elected few the powerto rule. She believes the selected few are better than the unwinnowedmany as rulers. She would sooner have a mathematical school-teacher asfinance minister than a saloon keeper or ward heeler. She believesthat the rule of the select few is better than the rule of thethoughtless many. She delegates the right and power to rule to thosefew, lets them make the laws and bows to the laws as to the laws ofGod, as the best possible for the nation because they have been enactedby the best of her nation. If that best be bad, it is at least not sobad as the worst. She never says--"Pah! What is law! I made the law!If it doesn't suit me, I'll break it. I am the law. "

Canadians acknowledge they have delegated power to make law to men whomthey believe superior to the general run. Therefore, they obey thatlaw as above change by the individual. In other words, Canadiansbelieve in the rule of the many delegated to the superior few. Thosefew do what they deem wise; not what the electorate tell them. Theyexceed instructions. They lead. They do not obey. But if they fail, they are thrown to the dogs without mercy, whether the tenure of officebe complete or incomplete. It is the old Saxon idea of theWitenagemot--the council of a few wise men ruling the clan. 

There is the fountain spring of Canadian loyalty to the monarchicalidea. It is not the fat king. It is not any king. It is what theinsignificant personality called "king" stands for, like thefive-dollar bill worthless as wrapping paper but of value as a promiseto deliver the goods. 

CHAPTER IV

AMERICANIZATION

I

"The Americanizing of Canada" is a phrase which has been much in voguewith a section of the British press ever since the attempt to establishreciprocity between the United States and the Dominion. It is aquestion if the glib users of the phrase have the faintest idea whatthey mean by it. It is a catchword. It sounds ominously deep as theowl's wise but meaningless "too-whoo. " English publicists who havenever been nearer Canada than a Dominion postage stamp wisely warnCanada against the siren seductions of Columbia's republicanism. 

If the phrase means that reciprocity might lead to annexation, Canada'srepudiation of reciprocity is sufficient disproof of the imputation. If it means increased and increasing trade weaving a warp and woof ofinternational commerce--then--yes--there is an "Americanizing ofCanada" as there is a Canadianizing of the United States throughinternational traffic; but the users of the phrase should remember thatthe country doing the largest trade of all countries with the UnitedStates is Great Britain; and does one speak of the "Americanizing" ofGreat Britain? If it means that in ten years two-fifths as manyAmericans have settled in Western Canada as there are native-bornCanadians in the West--then--yes--Canada pleads guilty. She has spentmoney like water and is spending it yet to attract these Americansettlers; and they, on their part, have brought with them an average offifteen hundred dollars a settler, not counting money invested bycapitalists. If in the era between 1900 and 1911, 650, 719 Americansettlers came to Western Canada, and from 1911 to 1914, six hundredthousand more--or say, with natural increase, a million and a quarterin fifteen years; to counterpoise that consideration remember that inthe era from 1885 to 1895 one-fifth of Canada's native population movedto the United States. 

There is not the slightest doubt that within ten years the balance ofpolitical power in Canada has shifted from the solidarity of FrenchQuebec to the progressive West; but that can hardly be considered as ofpolitical import when two out of four western provinces rejectedreciprocity. 

What, then, is meant by the phrase "Americanizing of Canada"?

Consider for a moment what is happening!

Twenty years ago the number of American and Canadian railroads meetingat the boundary and crossing the boundary numbered some six. Ten yearsago in the West alone there were sixteen branch lines feeding trafficinto one another's territory across the border. To-day, if you countall the American railroads reaching up from trunk lines north toCanada, and all the Canadian spurs reaching south from trunk lines intothe United States, and all the great trunk lines having subsidiarieslike the South Shore and "Soo" crossing the border, and all the lineshaving international running rights over one another's roadbed, thereare more than sixty railroads feeding Canadian traffic into the UnitedStates and American traffic into Canada. This explains why of all theexport grain traffic from the Northwest forty-four per cent. Only goesfrom Canada by all-Canadian routing, while fifty-six per cent. Comes toseaboard over American lines; and all this is independent of theenormous American traffic through the Canadian "Soo" by the GreatLakes, in some years, reaching a total five times as large as thetraffic expected through Panama. One can not contemplate this constantinterchange of traffic without recalling the metaphor of the warp andthe woof, of the shuttle weaving a fabric of international commercethat ignores dead reciprocity pacts and an invisible boundary. YetEngland does three-fourths of the carrying trade for the United Statesacross the Atlantic. Spite of high tariff on one side of the ocean andno tariff on the other side, spite of eagle and lion rampant, Britishships weave like busy shuttles across the silver lanes of the sea aninvisible warp and woof that are stronger than cables of steel, orpolitical treaty. 

So much for lines of traffic between Canada and the United States!What of the traffic carried?

American imports to Canada have doubled in three years; or increasedfrom two hundred sixteen million dollars' worth in 1910 to four hundredfifteen million dollars' worth in 1913; and instead of the war causinga falling off, it is likely to cause an increase; for Canada'spurchases from Europe have been cut off and must be supplied by theUnited States. Of the imports to Canada, two-thirds are manufacturedarticles--motors, locomotives, cars, coffee, cotton, iron, steel, implements, coal. At time of writing exports from the United Statesnow rank the United Kingdom first, Canada second, Germany third. Whenyou consider that Canada's purchasing power is that of seven millionpeople, where the United Kingdom's is forty-five and Germany'ssixty-five million, the significance of these comparative ranks isapparent. 

From Canada to the United States, exports increased from $95, 000, 000 in1910 to $120, 000, 000 in 1913, not because Canada's producing power isso much smaller than her buying power, but because she is growing sofast that she consumes much of what she produces. To put it anotherway, of all Canada exports, the United States takes four-fifths of thecoal, nine-tenths of the copper, four-fifths of the nickel, ten-elevenths of the gold, two-fifths of the silver, four-fifths ofother minerals, one-third of the fish, one-third of the lumber, one-fourth of the animals and meat, one-tenth of the grain. It neednot be told here that the other portions of Canada's farm, mine andlumber exports go almost entirely to Great Britain. 

II

It has been estimated that half a billion of American capital isinvested in Canada. A moment's thought reveals how ridiculously belowthe mark are these figures. Between 1900 and 1911 by actual countthere entered Canada 650, 719 American settlers. Averaging up one yearwith another by actual estimate of settlers' possessions at point ofentry, these settlers were possessed of fifteen hundred dollars each incash. This represents almost a billion, and almost as many moreAmerican settlers have entered Canada since 1911. This represents notthe investments of the capital class but of small savings. It takes noaccount of the nickel mines, the copper mines, the smelters, the silvermines, the coal lands, the timber limits, the fisheries, the vastholdings of agricultural lands in the West held for speculativepurposes--for all of which spot cash was paid down in large proportion. 

The largest steel plant in the East, the largest coal areas in theWest, the only nickel mines in America, three-quarters of all thecopper and gold reduction works of the West are financed by Americancapital. To be more explicit, when the MacKenzie-Mann interests boughtone large coal area in British Columbia, the Hill interests of St. Paulbought the other large coal area. This does not mean there are notlarge coal areas owned by Canadian capital. There are--colossal areas;but for every big area being worked by Canadian capital there are twosuch being worked by American. 

Before a single Canadian railroad had wakened up to the fact there wereany mines in East and West Kootenay and the Slocan, American lines hadpushed up little narrow-gauge lines to feed the copper and gold oresinto Butte and Helena smelters. By the time Canadian and Britishcapital came on the scene in Kootenay the cream had been skimmed fromthe profits, and the mines had reached the wildcat stage of beautifullygilded and engraved stock certificates taking the place of realprofits--of almost worth-nothing shares in worthless holes in theground selling on a face value of a next-door profit-yielding neighbor. The American is without a peer as pioneer on land, in mine, in forest;but the boomster, who invariably follows on the heels of that pioneer, is also the most expert "houn' dawg" to rouse the wildcatter. Canadians have too often wakened up only at the wildcat stage, andBritish capital has come in to reorganize inflated and collapsedproperties on a purely investment basis. The American pioneer doesnothing on an investment basis. He goes in on a wild and rampantdare-devil gamble. If he loses--as lose he often does--he takes hismedicine and never whines. If he wins, the welkin rings. 

What happened in Kootenay was largely repeated ten years later inKlondike and ten years yet later in Cobalt, and it must not beforgotten that when Canadian capital refused to bond the nickel minesof Sudbury, it was American capital that dared the risk. 

What happened in the mining booms was only a faint foreshadowing of thefurore that broke to a madness in real estate when American settlersbegan crossing the boundary in tens and hundreds of thousands a year. Canadians knew they had wonderfully fertile farming land. Hadn't theybeen telling themselves so since confederation, when they pledged thecredit of Canada to build a transcontinental? They knew they had themost fertile wheat lands on earth, but what was the use of knowing thatwhen you could not sell those lands for fifty cents an acre? What wasthe use of raising forty bushels of wheat to the acre, when you burnedit in the stack or fed it to cattle worth only ten dollars a head, because you could get neither wheat nor cattle to market? You reallybelieved you had the best land on earth, but what good did the beliefdo you? Sons and daughters forsook the Canadian farmstead for theUnited States. Between the early eighties and the early nineties, ofCanada's population of five millions, over a million--some estimatesplace it at a million and a half--Canadians left the Dominion for theUnited States. You find the place names of Ontario all throughMichigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota and the two Dakotas; and you findJean Ba'tiste drifting from the lumber woods of Quebec to the UpperPeninsula of Michigan and to the redwoods of California and to theyellow pine uplands of the Southwestern Desert. I have met men whoworked for my brothers in the lumber woods of Wisconsin down among theyellow pines of the Arizona Desert. All that was back in the decrepitand languid and hopesick nineties. It was then you could see the skiesof Southern Manitoba luridly aflame at night with wheat stacks itdidn't pay to thresh. 

Came a turn of the wheel! Was it Destiny or Providence? We talkmistily of Cause and Effect, but who drops the Cause that turns theWheel? Who of us that witnessed the crazy gold stampede to Kootenayand the crazier stampede to Klondike could guess that the backwash ofthose foolish tidal waves of gold-mad humanity would people theNorthwest? Why, we were mad with alarm over the gold stampede! Menpitched their homesteads to the winds and trekked penniless for themines. Women bought mining shares for a dollar that were not worth tencents. Clerks, railroad hands, seamstresses, waitresses--all wereinfected by the mania. In vain the wheat provinces pointed out thatone single year's wheat crop would exceed in value all the gold minedin the North in fifty years. Nothing could stem the madness. Youcould pave Kootenay with the fortunes lost there or go to Klondike bythe bones of the dead bleaching the trail. 

But behold the unexpected Effect! Adventurers from all the earthrushing to the gold mines passed over unpeopled plains of seemingboundlessness. Land in the western states was selling at this time atfrom seventeen dollars in the remote sections to seventy-five dollarsan acre near markets. Here was land in these Canadian plains to be hadfor nothing but the preemption fee of ten dollars and three years'residence. 

"I didn't take up a homestead meaning to farm it, " said a disappointedfortune seeker to me on the banks of the Saskatchewan. "I did itbecause I was dead broke, and it seemed to me the easiest way to makethree thousand dollars. I could earn three dollars a day well-driving, and then at the end of my homestead term sell this one hundred andsixty acres for three thousand dollars. "

Do you appreciate the amazing optimistic confidence of this bankruptargonaut? We could not sell that land for fifty cents an acre. To usethe words of a former Minister of the Interior, "We could not bringsettlers in by the scruff of the neck and dump them on the land. "(There had been fewer than two thousand immigrants the year thatminister made that apology for hard times to an audience in Winnipeg. )But this penniless settler had seen it happen in his own home state ofIowa. He had seen land increase in value from nothing an acre to tendollars and twenty dollars and seventy-five dollars and one hundreddollars, and he sat him down on the bare prairie in a tar-paperedshanty to help the same process along in Canada. He never had thefaintest shadow of a doubt of his hopes materializing. He had gambledon the gold and he had lost; and behold him casting another throw ofthe dice in the face of Fate, and gambling on the land; and pleasenote--he won out. He was one of the multitude who won out of the landwhat they had lost on gold--who plowed out of the prairie what they hadsunk in a hole in the ground in a mine!

Another twist of the capricious Wheel of Fate! We didn't send CliffordSifton down from the West to boom Canada. We didn't know a boom wascoming. Nobody saw it. Clifford Sifton was one of the youngestCabinet Ministers ever appointed in Canada. There was a fight onbetween the Province of Manitoba and the Dominion government as to theright of the province to abolish separate schools. Had the provinceexceeded its rights? The dispute was non-religious at first, butfinally developed into a bitter Catholic versus Protestant controversy. Not all Protestants wanted non-religious schools; but when CatholicQuebec said that Protestant Manitoba should not have non-religiousschools, a furious little tempest waxed in a furious little teapot. The entrenched government of Sir John Macdonald, who had died some fewyears previously, went down in defeat before Laurier, the Liberal, thechampion of Quebec and at the same time the defender of Manitobarights. Cardinal Merry del Val came from Rome, and the dispute wasliterally squelched. It was never settled and comes up again to thisday; but the point was the champion of Manitoba, Clifford Sifton, entered the Dominion Cabinet just as the Klondike boom broke. 

He saw the backwash of disappointed gold seekers. He realized theenormous possibilities of free advertising for Canada, and he launchedsuch a campaign of colonization for Canada as the most daring optimisthardly dreamed. Agents were appointed in every hamlet and city andtown in the western states--especially those states like Iowa andIllinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, where land was becoming highpriced. The personal testimony of successful farmers was bill-postedfrom station platform to remotest barb-wire fence. The country wasliterally combed by Sifton agents. Big land companies which hadalready exploited colonization schemes in the western states pricked uptheir ears and sent agents to spy out the land. Those agents may havedeluded themselves that they went to Canada secretly; it is a safewager that Sifton's agents prodded them to activity at one end andSifton's agents caught and piloted and plied them with facts at theother end. I know of land that English colonization companies hadfailed to sell at fifty cents an acre that was sold at this time tothese American companies at five dollars and resold by them at fourteendollars to thirty dollars. 

Such profits are the best advertisement for a propaganda. Therefollowed a land boom compared to which the gold boom had been mild. American settlers came in special cars, in special trains, in relays ofspecial trains. Before Canada had wakened up to it fifty thousandAmerican settlers had trekked across the border. You met them in PeaceRiver. You met them at Athabasca. You met them on far reaches of theSaskatchewan. And land jumped in value from five dollars to fifteendollars, from fifteen dollars to thirty dollars an acre. When Canada'syearly immigration reached the proportions of four hundredthousand--half Americans--it is not exaggerating to say the prairietook fire. Villages grew into cities overnight. Edmonton and Calgaryand Moose Jaw and Regina--formerly jumping-off places into ano-man's-land--became metropolitan cities of twenty-five to fiftythousand people. If every American settler averaged fifteen hundreddollars on his person at this period--as customs entries prove--it maybe confidently set down that his value as a producer and worker wasanother fifteen hundred dollars. Wheat exports jumped to over onehundred million dollars a year. Flour mills and elevators financed bywestern American capital strung across the prairie like beads on astring. 

If this was an "Americanizing of Canada, " it was not a bad thing. Every part of Canada felt the quickened pulse. Two moretranscontinental railroads had to be built. All-red routes ofround-the-globe steam ships were established; all-red round-the-worldcables were laid. The quickened pulse was Canada's passing fromhobble-de-hoy adolescence with a chip on the shoulder and a tremor inthe throat to big strong, silent, self-confident manhood. 

John Bull is a curious and dour foster father in some of his moods. Henever really wakened up to Canada as a desirable place for his numerousfamily to settle till he saw Jonathan's coat tails going over the fenceof the border--till somebody began to howl about "the Americanizing ofCanada. " Then, in the words of the illustrious Governor-General, "whatwas good enough for Americans was good enough" for him. CliffordSifton's agents had been combing the United Kingdom as they had combedthe western states. British immigration jumped from almost nothing toa total of 687, 067 in ten years--with accelerating totals every yearsince. 

If this was "the Americanizing of Canada, " it was a good thing for theDominion. 

III

There was another feature to the tidal wave of four hundred thousandimmigrants a year. The American is a born pioneer, a born gambler, aborn adventurer. The Englishman is a steady-going, dogged-as-does-itplodder. The American will risk two dollars on the chance of makingten dollars; he often loses the two dollars, and he often makes the tendollars; from his general prosperity, I should say the latter resultsoftener than the former; but the American never in the least mindsblazing the trail and stumping his toe and coming a hard fall. JohnBull does. He takes himself horribly seriously. He will never risktwo dollars to gain ten dollars. He will not, in fact, spend the twodollars till he is sure of four per cent. On it. Four per cent. On twodollars and ten dollars on two dollars do not belong to the samecategory of investment. Jonathan makes the ideal pioneer; John Bull, the ideal permanent settler who comes in and buys from the pioneer. 

If this, too, be "the Americanizing of Canada, " it has been a goodthing for the country. 

To be sure, there have been hideous horrible abuses. The real estateboom reached the proportions of a fevered madness before it collapsed. Americans bought r_an_ches for five dollars an acre and resold them asr_awn_ches for fifty dollars to young Englishmen who will never make acent on their investment; chiefly because fruit trees take from five toten years to come to maturity, and because fruit must be near a market, and because only an expert can succeed at fruit. 

If ever wildcat flourished in a gold camp or gambling joint, and thatwildcat did not hie to Canada when the real estate boom broke loose, the wildcat species not in evidence was too rare to be classified. Property in small cities sold at New York and Chicago values. Suburbanlots were staked out round small towns in areas for a London or aParis, and the lots were sold on instalment plan to small investors, many of whom bought in hope of resale before payments could accrue. City taxes for these suburban improvements increased to a great burden. Fortunes were made and lost overnight. Railroad bonds were guaranteedplentifully enough to pave the prairie. All this applies chiefly tocity real estate. Inflation beyond investment basis never touched farmlands; but as a prominent editor remarked, "No fool thing that everfailed was half as improbable as the fool things that have succeeded. Men have literally been kicked into fortunes; and the carefulest manhas often been the biggest fool by not biting till the last. "

The boom, of course, burst of its own inflation; but it is worthy ofnote that the year the boom collapsed immigration reached its highestfigure--four hundred thousand. Whether the boom was good or bad forCanada is hard to determine. It left a great many fortunes in its wakeand a great many wrecks; but naturally it did for the country whatyears of hope, years of dogged silent work, years of self-confidencecould not do--it jolted Canada and the world into a consciousness ofthe Dominion's possibilities. It is like the true story of the findingof coal on Vancouver Island--a miner stubbed his toe and lo, a clod ofearth split into a seam of shining worth!

Practically the very same story of the advent of American energy anddaring and optimism into the lumber industry of Canada could be told;but it is the same story as of the mines and the land, except that theCanadians on the ground first reaped larger profits. A few years agoscarcely an acre in British Columbia was owned by interests outside theprovince. To-day as far north as Prince Rupert the great lumbermen ofthe United States own the timber limits. Canadians bought these landsround four dollars and five dollars an acre. They sold at from onehundred dollars to one thousand dollars. One understands why Americanlumbermen to-day demand low tariff on Canadian lumber. East of theRockies from Edmonton to Port Arthur the fringe of timber along thegreat rivers and lakes is owned by operators of Wisconsin andLouisiana. In Quebec the most valuable pulp wood limits--the last ofthe great pulp wood limits on the continent--are owned by New Yorkinterests. Undoubtedly all this means "the Americanizing of Canada"industrially. Will it result in the entrance of Big Business intopolitics? That is hard to answer. The door is not wide open to BigBusiness in politics for reasons that will appear in an account of howCanada is governed. If Americans have entered so powerfully intoCanadian industrial life, why was reciprocity rejected? That, too, isan interesting story by itself. 

There is one subject on which Canada's inconsistency regarding"Americanizing influences" is almost laughable. It is the subject ofthe influence of periodical literature. Canadians are greatlip-loyalists, but in all the history of Canada they have neveraccorded support to a national magazine that enabled that magazine tobecome worthy of the name. Facts are very damning testimony here. Very well--then--let us have the facts! There is one American weeklywhich has a larger circulation in every city in Canada than any dailyin any city in Canada. Of the American monthlies of first rank, thereis hardly one that has not a larger circulation in Canada than anyCanadian magazine has ever enjoyed. Even Canadian newspapers areserved by American syndicates and press associations. The influence ofthis flood of American thought in the currents of Canadian thought cannot be exaggerated. It is subtle. It is intangible. It isirresistible. What Americans are thinking about, Canadiansunconsciously are thinking, too. The influence makes for a communityof sentiment that political differences can never disrupt, and it is agood thing for the race that this is so. It helps to explain why thereis no fort between the two nations for three thousand miles. 

It may also be added that no Canadian writer can get access to thepublic in book form except through an American publisher. Unless theauthor assumes the cost or risk of publication, the Canadian publisherwill rarely issue a book on his own responsibility. He sends the bookto New York or to London, and from New York or London buys plates orsheets. This compels the Canadian book to have an Imperial or anAmerican appeal. In literature, the modus operandi works; for theappeal is universal; but one might conceive of conditions demanding apurely national Canadian treatment, which New York or London publisherswould not issue, when Canada would literally be damming the springs ofher national literature. Canada considers her population too small tosupport a purely national literature. Not so reasons Belgium ofsmaller population; nor Ireland; nor Scotland. The fault here isprimarily in the copyright law. A book published first in the UnitedStates gains international copyright. A book published first in Canadamay be pirated in the United States or England; and on such printededitions no payment can be collected by the author. The profits inEngland and the United States were lost to authors on two of the mostpopular books ever published by Canadians. [1]

[1] Charles Gordon's _Black Rock_, pirated from his own publisher, salehalf a million; Kirby's _Chien d'Or_, sale one million. 

CHAPTER V

WHY RECIPROCITY WAS REJECTED

I

If American capital and American enterprise dominate Canadian mines, Canadian timber interests, Canadian fisheries; if American elevatorsare strung across the grain provinces and American flour mills havebranches established from Winnipeg to Calgary; if American implementcompanies and packing interests now universally control subsidiaries inCanada--why was reciprocity rejected? If it is good for Canada thatAmerican capital establish big paper mills in Quebec, why is it notgood for Canada to have free ingress for her paper-mill products toAmerican markets? The same of the British Columbia shingle industry, of copper ores, of wheat and flour products? If it is good for theCanadian producer to buy in the cheapest market and to sell in thehighest, why was reciprocity rejected? Implements for the farm southof the border are twenty-five per cent. Cheaper than in the CanadianNorthwest. Canadian wheat milled in Minneapolis enjoys a lower freightrate and consequently a higher market than Canadian wheat milled inEurope, as sixteen and twenty-two are to forty and fifty cents--theformer being the freight cost to a Minneapolis mill; the latter, thefreight cost to a European mill. Why, then, was reciprocity rejected?

From 1867, Canada had been intermittently seeking reciprocity with theUnited States. Now, at last, the offer of it came to her unsolicited. Why did she reject it by a vote that would have been unanimous but forthe prairie provinces? Though the desire for reciprocity with theUnited States was exploited politically more by the Liberals--orlow-tariff party--than by the Conservatives--the high-tariffparty--both had repeatedly sent official and unofficial emissaries toWashington seeking tariff concessions. Tariff concessions were a plankin the Liberal platform from the days of Alexander MacKenzie. Theywere not a plank in the platform of the Conservative party for the solereason that the high tariff on the American side forced a high tariffin self-defense on the Canadian side. Close readers of Sir JohnMacdonald's life must have been amazed to learn that one of his veryfirst visits to Washington--contemporaneous with the Civil War period, when the United States were just launching out on a high-tariffpolicy--was for the purpose of seeking tariff favors for Canada. Failing to obtain even a favorable hearing, he observed the high-tarifftrend at Washington, took a leaf out of his rival's book and returnedto Canada to launch the high-tariff policy that dominated the Dominionfor thirty years. Alexander MacKenzie, Blake, Mowat, George Brown, Laurier, Cartwright, Fielding--all the dyed-in-the-wool ultra Whigs ofthe Liberal party--practically held their party together for the thirtylean years out-of-office by promises and repeated promises ofreciprocity with the United States the instant they came into office. They never seemed to doubt that the instant they did come into officeand proffered reciprocity to the United States the offer would beaccepted and reciprocated. It may be explained that all these old-lineLiberals from MacKenzie to Laurier were free-traders of theCobden-Bright school. They believed in free trade not only as aneconomic policy but as a religion to prevent the plundering of the poorby the rich, of the many by the few. One has only to turn to the backfiles of the _Montreal Witness_ and _Toronto Globe_ from 1871 to1895--the two Liberal organs that voiced the extreme free-tradepropaganda--to find this political note emphasized almost as afanatical religion. The high-tariff party were not only morally wrong;they were predestinedly damned. I remember that in my own home bothorgans were revered next to the Bible, and this free-trade doctrine wasaccepted as unquestionably as the Shorter Catechism. 

II

Well--Laurier came to power; and he gathered into his Cabinet all thegrand old guard free-traders still alive. As soon as the ManitobaSchool Question was settled Laurier put his Manchester school ofpolitics into active practice by granting tariff concessions on Britishimports. The act was hailed by free-trade England as a tribute ofstatesmanship. Laurier and Fielding were recognized as men of thehour. The next step was to carry out the promises of reciprocity withthe United States. One can imagine Sir John Macdonald, the oldchieftain of the high-tariff Conservatives, turning over in his gravewith a sardonic grin--"Not so fast, my Little Sirs!" When twitted onthe floor of the House over a high tariff oppressing farmers andfavoring factories, Sir John had always disclaimed being a high-tariffman. He would have a low tariff for the United States, if the UnitedStates would grant Canada a low tariff--he had answered; but the UnitedStates would not grant Canada any tariff concessions. And the grandold guard of Whigs had jeered back that he was "a compromiser" and "atrimmer, " who tacked to every breeze and never met an issue squarely inhis life. 

If the Liberals had not been absolutely sincere men, they would nothave ridden to such a hard and unexpected fall. They would, like SirJohn, have trimmed to the wind; but they believed in free trade as theybelieved in righteousness; and they furthermore believed all they hadto do was to ask for it to get it. Blake had retired from Canadianpolitics. George Brown of the _Globe_ was dead; Alexander MacKenziehad long since passed away; but the old guard rallied to thereciprocity cry. International negotiations opened at Quebec. Theywere not a failure. They were worse than a failure. They were a joke. High tariff was at its zenith in the United States. Every one of theAmerican commissioners was a dyed-in-the-wool high-tariff man. Itwould be an even wager that not one man among them had ever heard ofthe Cobden-Bright Manchester School of Free Trade, by which the Lauriergovernment swore as by an unerring Gospel. They had heard of McKinleyand of Mark Hanna, but who and what were Cobden and Bright? Whatrelation were Cobden and Bright to the G. O. P. ? The negotiations werea joke to the United States and a humiliation to Canada. They wereadjourned from Quebec to Washington; and from Washington, Fielding andCartwright returned puzzled and sick at heart. They could obtain notone single solitary tariff concession. They found it was not a case oftheoretical politics. It was a case of quid pro quo for a trade. Whathad Canada to offer from 1893 to 1900 that the United States had notwithin her own borders? Canada wanted to buy cheaper boots and cheaperimplements and cheaper factory products generally. She wanted a highermarket for her wheat and her meat and her fish and her crude metals andher lumber. She would knock off her tariff on American factoryproducts, if the United States would knock off her tariff againstCanadian farm products. One can scarcely imagine Republicanpoliticians going to American farmers for votes on that platform. Whathad Canada to offer? She had meat and wheat and fish and timber andcrude metals. Yes; but from 1893 to 1900 Uncle Sam had more meat andwheat and fish and timber and crude metals than he could digestindustrially himself. Look at the exact figures of the case! Youcould buy pulp timber lands in the Adirondacks at from fifty cents tofour dollars an acre. You could buy timber limits that were almostlimitless in the northwestern states for a homesteader's relinquishmentfee. Kansas farmers fed their wheat to hogs because it did not pay toship it. Texas steers sold low as five dollars on the hoof. Crudemetals were such a drug on the market that the coinage of free silverwas suggested as a panacea. Canada hadn't anything that the UnitedStates wanted badly enough for any quid pro quo in tariff concessions. 

This was the time that Uncle Sam rejected reciprocity. 

Fielding, Laurier and Cartwright came home profoundly disappointed men;and--as stated before--old Sir John may have turned over in his gravewith a sardonic grin. 

When Sir John had launched the Canadian Pacific Railroad to link NovaScotia with British Columbia, when his government to huge land grantshad added cash loans, when he had offered bonuses for factories andsubsidies for steamships--no one had sent home such bitter shafts ofcriticism as these old-guard Liberals hungry for office. Why give awaypublic lands? Why push railroads in advance of settlement? Why buildrailroads when there were no terminals, and terminals when there wereno steamships? Why subsidize steamships, when there were no markets?Was it not more natural to trade with neighbors a handshake across theway than with strange nations across the ocean? I have heard thesebarbed interrogations launched by Liberals at Conservatives with suchbitterness that the wives of Conservative members would not bow to thewives of Liberal members met in the corridors of Parliament. 

Now mark what happened when the free-trade Liberals found they couldobtain no tariff concessions from the United States! They had gibedSir John for committing the country to one transcontinental railroad. They now launched two more transcontinental railroads--east and west, not north and south. Subsidies were poured into the lap of steamshipcompanies to attract them to Canadian ports; and thirty-eight millionsin all were spent improving navigation in the St. Lawrence. WhereverClifford Sifton sent agents to drum up settlers trade agents were sentto drum up markets. Then--as Sir Richard Cartwright acknowledged--theLiberals were traveling in the most tremendous luck. An era of almostopulent prosperity seemed to come over the whole world. Gold wasdiscovered in Klondike. Germany opened unexpected markets for copperores. Number One Hard Wheat became famous in Europe. Canadian apples, Canadian butter, Canadian meats began to gather a fame of their own. Canada was no longer dependent on American markets. There was moredemand for Canadian products in European markets than could be filled. Then came the tidal wave of colonists. This created an exhaustlessmarket for farm produce within Canada's borders, and within threeyears--in spite of the tariff--imports of manufacturers from the UnitedStates doubled. American factories and flour mills and lumber millssprang up on the Canadian side by magic. In this era Canada wasactually importing ten million dollars' worth of food a year for onewestern province, and the cost of living in ten years increasedfifty-one per cent. 

III

Came a turn in the wheel! The wheel has a tricky way of turning up theunexpected between nations. A new era had come to the United States. Kansas was no longer feeding wheat to hogs. In fact, the decrease inwheat exports had become so alarming that men like Hill of GreatNorthern fame and James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, actuallypredicted that there would come a day of bread famine in the UnitedStates. The population of the United States had grown faster than thecountry's production of food. There was an appalling decrease of meatanimals. American packers were establishing branch houses all throughCanada. As for metals, with the superabundance of gold from Yukon andNevada, there did not seem any limit to the world's power to absorbwhat was produced. The almost limitless timber lands of thenorthwestern states passed into the hands of the great trusts. Buyersof print paper in the United States became alarmed at the impendingshortage of wood pulp. 

It was not unnatural that the same thought came to many minds in theUnited States at once. "If we had free trade, we could bring Canada'sraw products in and build up our factories here instead of in Canada, "was the gist of the manufacturer's argument. "If we had free trade, itwould reduce the cost of living, " was the gist of the city consumer'sargument. Canadian lumber, Canadian meat, Canadian wheat could bebrought across and manufactured on the American side. For the firsttime the American manufacturer became a free trader. Practically therewas only one section in the United States opposed to reciprocity withCanada; that was the American farmer, and his opposition was morenegative than positive. 

It is hard to say who voiced the desire for reciprocity first. Possibly the buyers of print paper. At all events, there was at Ottawaa Governor-General of the Manchester School of Free Trade. There wasediting the _Toronto Globe_--the main Liberal organ--a worthy successorof George Brown as an exponent of the Manchester School of Free Trade. Shortly after this editor--a man of brilliant forceful character--hadmet President Taft and Joe Cannon in Washington, the Governor-Generalof Canada was the guest of Governor Hughes at Albany and there metPresident Taft. Of the old guard of free traders, there were still afew in Laurier's Cabinet, and Laurier himself was as profoundly andsincerely a free trader in power as he had been out of office. Enemiesaver that the Laurier government now launched reciprocity to divertpublic attention from criticism of the railroad policy, in which therehad undoubtedly been great incompetency and gross extravagance--anextravagance more of a recklessly prosperous era than ofdishonesty--but this motive can hardly be accepted. If Laurier hadlaunched reciprocity as a political dodge, he would have sounded publicopinion and learned that it was no longer with him on tariffconcessions; but because he was absolutely sincere in his belief in theCobden-Bright Gospel of Free Trade, he rode for a second time to ahumiliating fall. A trimmer would have sounded public opinion andpretended to lead it while really following. Laurier believed he wasright and launched out on that belief. 

IV

There was probably never at any time a more conspicuous example ofpoliticians mistaking a rear lantern for a headlight. I had come Eastfrom a six months' tour of the northwestern states and NorthwesternCanada. I chanced to meet a magazine editor who for twenty years hadbeen the closest exponent of Republican politics in New York. TheCanadian elections were to be held that very day. In Canada a partydoes not launch a new policy like reciprocity without going to thecountry for the electorate's approval or condemnation. The editorasked me if I would mind reading over a ten-page advance editorialcongratulating both countries on the endorsation of reciprocity. I wasparalyzed. I was a free trader and had been trained to love and revereLaurier from childhood; but I knew from cursory observation in the Westthat there was not a chance, nor the shadow of a chance, forreciprocity to be endorsed by the Canadian people. The editor wouldnot believe me. He was in close touch with Taft. He sat up overnightto get returns from Canada, and the next night I left for Ottawa to getthe views of Robert Borden, Canada's new Conservative Premier, as towhy it had happened. 

It had happened because it could not have happened otherwise, thoughneither President Taft nor Premier Laurier, neither the editor of the_Globe_ nor the free-trade Governor-General seemed to have the faintestidea what was happening. Canada rejected reciprocity now for preciselythe same reason that Uncle Sam had rejected reciprocity ten yearsbefore--because Uncle Sam had no quid pro quo, no equivalent in valuesto offer, which Canada wanted badly enough to make trade concessions. Said Canada: you have exhausted your own lumber; you want our lumber;pay for it. You want it so badly that you will ultimately put lumberon the free list without any concession from us. Meanwhile, for us toremove the tariff would simply lead to our lumber going across the lineto be manufactured. It would build up your mills instead of ours. Thehigher you keep the tariff against our lumber the better pleased we'llbe; for you will have to build more and more mills on our side of theline. We are even prepared to put an export duty on logs to compel youto keep on building mills on our side of the line. This was theargument that swayed and won the vote in British Columbia and Quebec. A similar argument as to wheat and meat swayed the prairie provincesand Ontario. 

From Montreal to Vancouver there is hardly a hamlet that has not someAmerican industry, packing house, lumber mill, flour mill, elevator, machine shop, motor factory, which operates on the Canadian side of theborder because the tariff wall compels it to do so. These industrieshave doubled and trebled the populations of cities like Montreal, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary, Moose Jaw. Would removal ofthe tariff bring more industries to these cities or move them south ofthe border? The cities voted almost to a man against reciprocity. 

Allied with the cities were the great transportation systems runningeast and west. Reciprocity to divert traffic north and south seemed amenace to their receipts. To a man these systems were againstreciprocity. 

You have forced us to work out our own Destiny, said Canada. Verywell--now that we are at the winning post, don't divert us from thegoal! We love you as neighbors; we welcome you as settlers; we embraceyou as investors; but when we came to you, you rejected us. Now youmust come to us!

Deep beneath all the jingoism these were the economic factors thatrejected reciprocity. It is all a curious illustration of thedifference between practical and theoretical politics. Theoreticallyboth parties have been free traders in Canada. Practically free tradehad thrown them both down. Theoretically Canada rejects reciprocity. Practically trade across the boundary has increased one hundred percent. Since she rejected reciprocity. Theoretically Canada wasprotecting her three transcontinental systems when she rejectedreciprocity. Practically the growth of lines with running rightsacross the boundary has increased from _sixteen_ to _sixty-four_ in tenyears. 

When American industries have become rooted in Canadian soil beyondpossibility of transplanting, no doubt the fear will be removed; and atthe present rate of the increase of trade between the two countries thetariff wall must become an anachronism, if it be not worn down by sheerforce of trade attrition. 

Comical incidents are related of the Canadian fear in individual cases. There was a Scotch school trustee in Calgary. He had votedWhig-Liberal-dyed-in-the-wool free trade for forty years--from thetraditions of reciprocity under Alexander Mackenzie. A Canadian flagwas flying above the fine new Calgary school. The Scotchman was goingto the polls by street-car. An excursion of American home seekers hadjust come in, and one of the variety to essay placing an American flagon the pyramids had taken a glass too much. He began haranguing thestreet-car. "So that's the old Can-a-dáy flag, " said he. "You jus'wait till to-morrow and, boys, you'll see another flag above that tharschool 'ouse!"

Now a Scotchman is vera' serious. The Scotch trustee gave oneglowering look at that drunken prophet; and he rang the street-carbell; and he went at the patter of a dead run to the polling place; andfor the first time in his life he voted, not Whig, not free trade, notreciprocity and Laurier, but Tory and high tariff. [1]

It should be added here that the tariff reductions on food underPresident Wilson have justified Canada's rejection of reciprocity. Canadian farm products have gained freer access to the American marketwithout a quid pro quo. 

[1] Opponents of reciprocity in the United States made skilful use ofCanadian touchiness on such matters, and not all such expressions asthat quoted above were spontaneous. --THE EDITOR. 

CHAPTER VI

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH

For a hundred years England's colonies have been distinctivelydependencies--self-governing dependencies, if you will, in the case ofCanada and Australia--but distinctively dependent on the Mother Countryfor protection from attack by land and sea. Has the day come whenthese colonies, are to be, not lesser, but greater nations--offshootsof the parent stock but transcending in power and wealth the parentstock--a United Kingdom of the Outer Meres, becoming to America andAustralasia what Great Britain has been to Europe?

Ten years ago this question would have been considered the bumptiouspresumption of flamboyant fancy. It isn't so considered to-day. Rather than a flight of fancy, the question is forced on thinking mindsby the hard facts of the multiplication table. Between 1897 and 1911there came to Canada 723, 424 British colonists; and since 1911 therehave come half a million more. At the outbreak of the war settlers ofpurely British birth were pouring into Canada at the rate of twohundred thousand a year. A continuation of this immigration means thatin half a century, not counting natural increase, there will be as manycolonists of purely British birth in Canada as there are Americans westof the Mississippi, or as there were Englishmen in England in the daysof Queen Elizabeth. It means more--one-fourth of the United Kingdomwill have been transplanted overseas. If there be any doubt as towhether the transplanting be permanent, it should be settled byhomestead entries. In one era of something less than three years outof 351, 530 men, women and children who came, sixty thousand entered forhomesteads. In other words, if each householder were married and had afamily of four, almost the entire immigration of 351, 530 was absorbedin permanent tenure by the land. The drifters, the floaters, thedisinherited of their share of earth became landowners, proprietors ofCanada to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres. From 1897 to 1911the Canadian government spent $2, 419, 957 advertising Canada in Englandand paying a bonus of one pound per capita to steamship agents for eachimmigrant; so that each colonist cost the Dominion something over threedollars. I have heard immigration officials figure how each colonistwas worth to the country as a producer fifteen hundred dollars a year. This is an excessive estimate, but the bargain was a good one forCanada. In 1901, when Canada's population was five millions, therewere seven hundred thousand people of British birth in the Dominion; sothat of Canada's present population of 7, 800, 000, there are in theDominion a million and a half people of British birth. [1] Averagingwinter with summer for ten years, colonists of British birth have beenlanding on Canada's shores at the rate of three hundred a day. Canada's natural increase is under one hundred thousand a year. British colonists are to-day yearly outnumbering Canada's naturalincrease. 

Only two other such migrations of Saxon blood have taken place inhistory: when the Angles and Jutes and Saxons came in plunder raids toEnglish shores at the dawn of the Christian Era; when in theseventeenth century Englishmen came to America; and both these tides ofmigration were as a drop in an ocean wave compared to the numbers ofEnglish born now flooding to the shores of Canada. 

Knowing the Viking spirit that rode out to conquer the very elements inthe teeth of death, it is easy to look back and realize that theseAngles and Jutes and Saxons were bound to found a great sea empire. So, too, of the New England Puritans! Men who sacrificed their all fora political and religious belief were bound to build of such belieffoundation for a sturdy nation of the future. It is easy to look backand realize. It is hard to look forward with eyes that see; but onemust be a very opaque thinker, indeed, not to wonder what this latestvast migration of Saxon blood portends for future empire. The Jutesand Angles and Saxons poured into ancient Albion for just onereason--to acquire each for his own freehold of land. Look at theancient words! Freehold of land! For what else have a million and ahalf British born come to the free homesteads of Canada? For freeholdof land--land unoppressed by taxes for war lords; land unoppressed bytithes for landlord; land absolutely free to the worker. That such amigration should break in waves over Canadian life and leave ituntouched, uninfluenced, unswerved, is as inconceivable as that theJutes and Angles and Saxons could have settled in ancient Albion andnot made it their own. 

II

For years Canada was regarded chiefly in England as a dumping groundfor slums. "You have broken your mother's heart, " thundered an Englishmagistrate to a young culprit. "You have sent your father in sorrow tothe grave. Why--I ask you--do you not go to Canada?" That suchmaterial did not offer the best fiber for the making of a nation inCanada did not dawn on this insular magisterial dignitary; and thesentiments uttered were reflected in the activities of countlessphilanthropies that seemed to think the porcine could be transmogrifiedinto the human by a simple transfer from the pig-sty of their own vicesand failure to the free untrammeled life of a colony. FortunatelyCanada has a climate that kills men who won't work. Men must stand ontheir own feet in Canada, and keep those feet hustling in winter--ordie. It is not a land for people who think; the world owes them aliving. They have to earn the living and earn it hard, and if theydon't earn it, there are neither free soup kitchens nor maudlincharities to fill idle stomachs with some other man's earnings. 

"Why do you think so many young Englishmen fail to make good inCanada?" I asked a young Yorkshire mill hand who had come to Canadawith his five brothers and homesteaded nearly a thousand acres on thenorth bank of the Saskatchewan. The house was built of logs and clay. There was not a piece of store furniture in it except the stove. Thebeds were berths extemporized ship-fashion, with cowhides andbear-skins for covering. The seats were benches. The table was arough-hewn plank. These young factory hands had things reduced to thesimplicity of a Robinson Crusoe. They had come out each with less thanone hundred dollars, but they had their nine hundred and sixty acresproved up and wintered some ten horses and thirty head of cattle in asod and log stable. They had acquired what small ready cash they couldby selling oats and hay to newcomers. The hay they sold at fourdollars a ton, the oats at thirty cents a bushel. The boy I questionedhad all the characteristics of the overworked factory hand--abnormallylarge forehead, cramped chest, half-developed limbs. Yet the health ofoutdoor life glowed from his face, and he looked as if his muscles hadbecome knotted whipcords. 

"Why do I think so many young Englishmen fail to make good settlers?"he repeated, changing my question a little. "Because, up to a fewyears ago, the wrong kind of people came. The only young Englishmenwho came up to a few years ago were no-goods, who had failed at home. They were the kind of city scrubs who give up a job when it is hard andthen run for free meals at the soup kitchen. There aren't any soupkitchens out here, and when they found they had to work before theycould eat, they cleared out and gave the country the blame. Men whoare out of work half the time at home get into the habit of dependingon charity keeping them. When you are a hundred miles from a railroadtown, there isn't any charity to keep you out here; you have to hustlefor yourself. But there is a different class of Englishmen coming now. The men coming now have worked and want to work. "

And yet--at another point a hundred miles from settlement I came on awoman who belonged to that very type that ought never to emigrate. Shewas a woman picked out of the slums by a charity organization. She hadpresumably been scrubbed and curried and taught household duties beforebeing shipped in a famous colony to Canada. The colony went to piecesin a deplorable failure on facing its first year of difficulties, butshe had married a Canadian frontiersman and remained. She wore all theslum marks--bad teeth, loose-feeble-will in the mouth, furtive whiningeyes. She was clean personally and paraded her religion in unctuousphrase; but I need only to tell a Canadian that she had lived in hershanty three years and it was still bare of comfort as a biscuit box, to explain why the Dominion regards this type as unsuitable forpioneering. The American or Canadian wife of a frontiersman would havehad skin robes for rugs, biscuit boxes painted for bureaus, and chairshand-hewn out of rough timber upholstered in cheap prints. But thereally amazing thing was the condition of her children. They were fat, rosy, exuberant in health and energy. They were Canadians. In adecade they would begin to fill their place as nation makers. Back inEngland they would have gone to the human scrap heap in hunger andrags. Ten years of slums would have made them into what their motherwas--an unfit; but ten years of Canada was making them into robusthumans capable of battling with life and mastering it. 

The line is a fine one and needs to be drawn with distinction. Canadadoes not begrudge the down-and-outs, the failures, the disinherited, the dispossessed, a chance to begin over again. She realizes that shehas room, boundless room, for such as they are to succeed--and manymore; but what she can not and will not do is assume the burden ofthese people when they come to Canada and will not try and fail. Whatshe can not and will not do is permit Europe to clean her pig-sties ofvice and send the human offal to Canadian shores. Children, strays, waifs, reforms--who have been taken and tested and tried and taught tosupport themselves--she welcomes by the thousands. In fact, she haswelcomed 12, 260 of them in ten years, and the cases of lapses back tofailure have been so small a proportion as to be inconsiderable. 

In the early days, "the remittance man"--or young Englishman livinground saloons in idleness on a small monthly allowance from home--fellinto bad repute in Canada; and it didn't help his repute in the leastto have a title appended to his remittance. Unless he were efficient, the title stood in his way when he applied for a job, whether as horsejockey or bank clerk. Canadians do not ask--"_Who_ are you?" or"_What_ have you?" but "_What can you do?_" "What can you do to add tothe nation's yearly output of things done--of a solid plus on the rightside of the yearly balance?" It is a brutal way of putting things. Itdoes not make for poetry and art. It may be sordid. I believe as apeople we Canadians, perhaps, do err on the sordid side of thepractical, but it also makes for solidity and national strength. 

Ten years have witnessed a complete change in the class of Englishmencoming to Canada. The drifter, the floater, the make-shift, rarelycomes. The men now coming are the land-seekers--of the blood and typethat settled England and New England and Virginia--of the blood andtype, in a word, that make nations. Hard on the heels of theland-seekers have come yet another type--the type that binds country tocountry in bonds tighter than any international treaty--the investorsof surplus capital. 

III

It is possible to keep a record of American investments in Canada;because possessions are registered more or less approximately at portsof entry and in bills of incorporation; but the English investor hasacted through agents, through trust and loan companies, through banks. He is the buyer of Canada's railway stocks, of her municipal, streetrailway, irrigation and public works bonds. Of Canadian railroad bondsand stocks, there are $395, 000, 000 definitely known to be held inEngland. Municipal and civic bonds must represent many times thattotal, and the private investments in land have been simplyincalculable. The Lloyd George system of taxation was at once followedby enormous investments by the English aristocracy in Canada. Theseinvestments included large holdings of city property in Montreal andWinnipeg and Vancouver, of ranch lands in Alberta, town sites along thenew railroads, timber limits in British Columbia and copper and coalmines in both Alberta and British Columbia. The Portland, Essex, Sutherland and Beresford families have been among the investors. Itdoes not precisely mean the coming of an English aristocracy to Canada, but it does mean the implanting of an enormous total of the Britisharistocracy's capital in Canada for long-time investment. 

It would be untrue to say that these investments have all been wiselymade. One wonders, indeed, at what the purchasing agents were aimingin some cases. I know of small blocks in insignificant railroad townsbought for sixty thousand dollars, for no other reason, apparently, than that they cost ten thousand dollars and had been sold for twentythousand dollars. The block, which would yield twenty per cent. On tenthousand dollars, yields only three per cent. On sixty thousanddollars. Held long enough, doubtless, it will repay the investor; orif the investor is satisfied with three per cent. , where Canadians earntwenty per cent. --it may be all right; but Canadians expect theirinvestments to repay capital cost in ten years, and they do not buy forprofits to posterity but for profits in a lifetime. 

Similarly of many of the r_an_ches bought at five dollars an acre byAmericans and resold as r_awn_ches at twenty-five dollars to fortydollars to Englishmen. If the Englishmen will be satisfied with twoand three per cent. , where the American demands and makes twelve totwenty per cent. --the investment may make satisfactory returns; but itis hard to conceive of enormous tracts two and three hundred miles froma railroad bought for fruit lands at twenty-five dollars an acre. Fruit without a market is worse than waste. It is loss. Whenquestioned, these English investors explain how raw fruit lands thatsold at twenty-five dollars an acre a few years ago in the UnitedStates to-day sell for five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars anacre. The point they miss is--that these top values are the result ofexceptional conditions; of millionaires turning a region into aplayground as in the walnut and citrus groves of California; or ofnearness to market and water transportation; or of peculiarly finelyorganized marketing unions. If the rich estates of England like totake these risks, it is their affair; but they must not blame Canada iftheir investment does not give them the same returns as more carefulbuying gives the Canadian and American. 

Not all investments are of this extravagant character. Hundreds ofthousands of acres and city properties untold have been bought byEnglish investors who will multiply their capital a hundredfold in tenyears. I know properties bought along the lines of the new railroadsfor a few hundred dollars that have resold at twenty thousand andthirty thousand and fifty thousand. It is such profits as these thatlure to wrong investment. 

Horse and cattle ranching has appealed to the Englishman from thefirst, and as great fortunes have been realized from it in Canada as inArgentina. However, the day of unfenced pasture ground is past; and inreselling ranches for farms, many English investors have multipliedtheir fortunes. In the outdoor life and freedom from conventionalcares--there has been a peculiar charm in ranch life. In no life arethe grit and efficiency of the well-bred in such marked contrast withthe puling whine and shiftlessness of the settler from the cesspool ofthe city slums. I have gone into a prairie shanty where anEnglishwoman sat in filth and rags and idleness, cursing the country towhich she had come and bewailing in cockney English that she had cometo this; and I have gone on to an English ranch where there presidedsome young Englishman's sister, who had literally never done a strokein her life till she came to Canada, when in emergency of prairie fire, or blizzard, or absent ranch hands, she has saddled her horse androunded to shelter herds of cattle and droves of ponies. She didn'tboast about it. She probably didn't mention it, and when winter came, she would go off for her holiday to England or California. Having comeof blood that had proved itself fit in England, she proved the samestrain of blood in Canada; and to this class of English Canada givesmore than a welcome. She confers charter rights. 

Lack of domestic help will long be the great drawback for Englishpeople on the prairie. You may bring your help with you if you like. If they are single, they will marry. If they are married, they willtake up land of their own and begin farming for themselves. It is thiswhich forces efficiency or exterminates--on the prairie. Let no womancome to the prairie with dolce far niente dreams of opalescent peaks, of fenceless fields and rides to a horizon that forever recedes, with awind that sings a jubilate of freedom. All these she will have; butthey are not ends in themselves; they are incidental. Days there willbe when the fat squaw who is doing the washing will put all the laundryin soap suds, then roll down her sleeves and demand double pay beforeshe goes on. Prairie fires will come when men are absent, and womenmust know how to set a back fire; and whether the ranch hands are nearor far, stock must never be allowed to drive before a blizzard. Thewoman with iron in her blood will meet all fate's challenges halfwayand master every emergency. The kind that has a rabbit heart and sitsdown to weep and wail should not essay adventures in the Canadian West. 

IV

I said that England's colonies depended on the Mother Country forprotection from attack by land and sea. Of the vessels calling atCanadian ports, three-fifths are British, one-fifth foreign, andone-fifth Canadian. Whore England is the great sea carrier for Europe, Canada has not wakened up to establish enough sea carriers for her ownneeds. 

Canada's exports to the whole British Empire are almost two hundredmillions a year. [2] Her aggregate trade with the British Empire hasincreased three hundred per cent. Since confederation, or from onehundred and seven to three hundred and sixteen millions. With theUnited States, her aggregate trade has increased from eighty-nine tosix hundred and eight millions. For one dollar's worth she buys inEngland, she buys four dollars' worth in the United States. Here tradeis not following the flag, and the flag is not following trade. Tradeis following its own channels independent of the flag. 

V

What is the future portent of the great migration of Englishmen of thebest blood and traditions to Canada? There can be only one portent--aGreater Britain Overseas, and Canada herself has not in the slightestdegree wakened to what this implies. She knows that her railroads area safe and shorter path to the Orient than by Suez; and in a cursoryway she may also know that the nations of the world are maneuvering forplace and power on the Pacific; but that she may be drawn into thecontest and have to fight for her life in it--she hardly grasps. Ifyou told Canada that within the life of men and women now living herPacific Coast may bristle with as many forts and ports as the NorthSea--you would be greeted with an amused smile. Yet all this may bepart of the destiny of a Greater Britain Overseas. 

With men such as Sir John Macdonald and Laurier and Borden on theroster roll of Canada's great, one dislikes to charge that Canadianstatesmen have not grown big enough for their job. The Aztec Indiansused to cement their tribal houses with human blood. Canada's part inthe Great War may be the blood-sign above the lintel of her newnationality. 

[1] I have variously referred to Canada's population as five million, seven million, and over seven million. Five million was Canada'spopulation before the great influx of colonists began. The censusfigures of 1911 give Canada's population as 7, 204, 838. Add to this theimmigration for 1912, and you get the Department of Laborfigures--7, 758, 000. If you add the immigration for 1913 the total mustbe close on 8, 000, 000. 

[2] The figures are from the official _Trade and Commerce Report_, PartI, 1914: They tabulate the trade of 1913 thus: Imports from UnitedKingdom, $138, 741, 736; imports from United States, $435, 770, 081. Average duty imports United Kingdom, 25. 1. Average duty imports UnitedStates, 24. 1. Per cent. Of goods from U. K. , 20. 1; per cent. Of goodsfrom U. S. , 65. 1. 

Exports to United Kingdom, $177, 982, 002; exports to United States, $150, 961, 675. Percentage goods exported U. K. , 47. 1; percentage goodsexported U. S. , 40. 1. 

CHAPTER VII

THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNER

So far scarcely a cloud appears on the horizon of Canada's nationaldestiny. Like a ship launched roughly from her stays to tempests inshallow water, she seems to have left tempests and shallow water behindand to have sailed proudly out to the great deeps. In '37 she settledwhether she would be ruled by special interests, by a plutocracy, by anoligarchy. In '67 she settled forever what in the United States wouldbe called "states' rights. " That is--she gathered the scatteredmembers of her fold into one confederation and bound them together notonly with the constitution of the British North America Act, but withbands of iron and steel in railways that linked Nova Scotia withBritish Columbia. By '77 she had met the menace of the American hightariff, which barred her from markets, and entered on a fiscal systemof her own. By '87 her system of transportation east and west was inworking order and she had begun the subsidizing of steamships and thesearch for world markets which have since resulted in a total foreigntrade equal to one-fourth that of the United States. By '97 she wasalmost ready for the preferential tariff reduction of from twenty-fiveto thirty-three per cent. On British goods which the Laurier governmentlater introduced, and she had established her right to negotiatecommercial treaties with foreign powers independent of the MotherCountry. By 1907 she was in the very maelstrom of the maddest realestate boom and immigration flood tide that a sane country couldweather. 

In a word, Canada's greatest dangers and difficulties seem to have beenpassed. The sea seems calm and the sky fair. In reality, she is closeto the greatest dangers that can threaten a nation--dangers within, notwithout; dangers, not physical, but psychological, which are harder toovercome; dangers of dilution and contamination of national blood, national grit, national government, national ideals. 

These are strong statements! Let us see if facts substantiate them!

Canada's natural increase of population is only one-fourth her incomingtide of colonists. In a word, put her natural increase at eighty toone hundred thousand a year, and it is nearer eighty than one hundredthousand. Her immigration exceeds four hundred thousand. If thatimmigration were all British and all American there would be noproblem; for though there are differences in government, both peoplehave the same national ideal--utter freedom of opportunity for each manto work out the best in him. It is an even wager that the averageCanadian coming to the United States is unaware of any difference inhis freedom, and the average American coming to Canada is unaware ofany difference in his freedom. Both people have fought and bled forfreedom and treasure it as the most sacred thing in life. 

But this is not so of thirty-three per cent. Of Canada's immigrants whodo not speak English, much less understand the institutions of freedomto which they have come. If they had been worthy of freedom, orcapable of making right use of it, they would have fought for it in theland from which they came, or died fighting for it--as Scotchmen andIrishmen and Englishmen and Americans have fought and bled for freedomwherever they have lived. A people unused to freedom suddenly plungedin freedom need not surprise us if they run amuck. 

II

"This is mos' won'erful country, " writes Tony to his brother in Italy. "They let us vote and they pay us two dollars to do it. "

"Yah, yah, " answered a foreign mother in North Winnipeg to aschool-teacher, trying to recall why her young hopeful had playedtruant. "Dat vas eelection--my boy, he not go--because Jacob--myman--he vote seven time and make seven dollar. " (The whole family hadbeen on a glorious seven-dollar drunk. )

"Does this man understand for what he is voting?" demanded the electionclerk of a Galician interpreter who had brought in a naturalizedforeigner to vote. 

"Oh, yaas; I eexplain heem. "

"Can he write?"

An indeterminate nod of the head; so the voter marks his ballot, andhis vote counts for as much as that of the premier or president of arailroad. 

For years Canadians have pointed the finger of scorn at the notoriousmisgovernment of American cities, at the manner in which foreignerswere herded to the polls by party bosses to vote as they were paid. The cases of a Louisiana judge impeached for issuing bogus certificatesof citizenship to four hundred aliens and of New York courts that havenaturalized ignorant foreigners in batches of twenty-five thousand in afew months have all pointed a moral or adorned a tale in Canada. 

Yet what is happening in Canada since the coming of hordes of ignorantimmigrants? I quote what I have stated elsewhere, an episode typicalof similar episodes, wherever the foreign vote herds in colonies. Anelection was coming on in one of the western provinces, where residetwenty thousand foreigners almost en bloc. The contest was going to bevery close. Offices were opened in a certain block. Legally itrequires three years to transform a foreigner into a voting Canadiansubject. He must have resided in Canada three years before he can takeout his papers. The process is simple to a fault. The newcomer goesbefore a county judge with proof of residence and two Canadianwitnesses. He must not be a criminal, and he must be of age. That isall that is required to change a Pole or a Sicilian or a Slav into afree and independent Canadian fully competent to apprehend that votingimplies duties and fitness as well as rights. The contest was going tobe very close. A few of the party leaders could not bear to have thosenewcomers wait a long three years for naturalization. They gottogether and they forged in the same hand, the same manipulation, thesignatures of three hundred foreigners, who did not know in the leastwhat they were doing, to applications for naturalizationpapers--foreigners who had not been three months in Canada. If forgerydid not matter, why should perjury? The perpetrators of this fraudhappened to be provincial and of a stripe different politically fromthe federal government then in power at Ottawa. The other party hadnot been asleep while this little game was going on. The party heelerneither slumbers nor sleeps. The papers with those three hundredforged signatures--names in the writing of foreigners, who couldneither read, write, nor speak a word of English--were sent down to theDepartment of Justice in Ottawa; and everybody waited for theexplosion. The explosion did not come. Those perjuries and forgeriesslumber yet, secure in the Department of Justice. For when theprovincial politicians heard what had been done to trap them, they sentdown a little message to the heelers of the party in power: If you goafter us for _this_, we'll go after you for _that_; and perhaps the pothad better not call the kettle black. The chiefs of each party werepowerless to act because the heelers of both parties had been alikeguilty. 

It may be said that the fault here was not in the poor ignorantforeigner but in the corrupt Canadian politicians. That is true ofCanada, as it is of similar practices in the United States; but thepresence of the ignorant, irresponsible foreigner in hordes made thecorruption possible, where it is neither possible nor safe with men ofSaxon blood, with German, Scandinavian or Danish immigrants, forinstance. 

III

It is futile to talk of the poor and ignorant foreigner as a Goth or aVandal--to talk of excluding the ignorant and the lowly. The floating"he-camps"--as these floating immigrants are called in laborcircles--are to-day doing much of the manual work of the world. Canadian railways could not be built without them. Canadian industrialand farm life could not go on without them. They are needed fromHalifax to Vancouver, and their labor is one of the wealth producersfor the nation. 

And do not think for a moment that the wealth they produce is forcapital--for the lords of finance and not for themselves. WhenMontenegrins, who earn thirty cents a day in their own land, earneleven dollars a day on dynamite work constructing Canadian railroads, it is not surprising that they retire rich, and that the railroad forwhich they worked would have gone bankrupt if the Dominion had not cometo its aid with a loan of millions. Likewise of Poles and Galicians inthe coal mines. When Charles Gordon--Ralph Connor--was sent toinvestigate the strike in these mines he found foreigners earningseventeen dollars a day on piecework who had never earned fifty cents aday in their own land. I have in mind one Galician settler who hasaccumulated a fortune of $150, 000 in perfectly legitimate ways in tenyears. Even the Doukhobors--the eccentric Russian religioussect--hooted for their oddities of manner and frenzies of religion--areaccumulating wealth in the Elbow of the Saskatchewan, where they aresettled. 

From the national point of view Canada needs these foreign settlers. She needs their labor. Every man to her is worth fifteen hundreddollars in productive work. The higher wages he earns on piecework themore Canada is pleased; for the more work he has done. But at thepresent rate of peopling Canada these foreign born will in twenty yearsoutnumber the native born. What will become of Canada's nationalideals then? In one foreign section of the Northwest I once traveled ahundred miles through new settlements without hearing one word ofEnglish spoken; and these Doukhobors and Galicians and Roumanians andSlavs were making good. They were prospering exceedingly. Men who hadcome with less than one hundred dollars each and lived for the firstyears in crowded tenements of Winnipeg or under thatch-roof huts on theprairie now had good frame houses, stables, stock, modern implements. The story is told of one poor Russian who, when informed of the factthat the land would be his very own, fell to the earth and kissed thesoil and wept. Such settlers make good on soil, whatever ill they workin a polling booth. Except for his religious vagaries, the DoukhoborRussian is law abiding. The same can not be said of the other Slavimmigrants. Crime in the Northwest, according to the report of theMounted Police, has increased appallingly. The crimes are against liferather than against property--the crimes of a people formerly kept inorder by the constant presence of a soldier's bayonet run amuck inCanada with too much freedom. And the votes of these people will intwenty years out-vote the Canadian. These poverty-stricken Jews andPolacks and Galicians will be the wealth and power of Canada to-morrow. If you doubt what will happen, stroll down Fifth Avenue, New York, andnote the nationality of the names. A Chicago professor carefully notedthe nationality of all the names submitted in Chicago's elections for aterm of years. Three-quarters of the names were of nationalities onlyone generation away from the Ghetto. 

Man to man on the prairie farm, in the lumber woods, your Canadian canout-do the Russian or Galician or Hebrew. The Canadian uses morebrains and his aggregate returns are bigger; but boned down to a basisof _who_ can save the most and become rich fastest, your foreigner hasthe native-born Canadian beaten at the start. Where the Canadian earnsten dollars and spends eighty per cent. Of it, your foreigner earnsfive dollars, and saves almost all of it. How does he do this? Hespends next to nothing. Let me be perfectly specific on how he doesit: I have known Russian, Hebrew, Italian families in the Northwest whosewed their children into their clothes for the winter and neverpermitted a change till spring. Your Canadian would buy half a dozensuits for his children in the interval. Your foreigner buys offurniture and furnishings and comforts practically nothing for thefirst few years. He sleeps on the floor, with straw for a bed, and heoccupies houses twenty-four to a room--which is the actual report inforeign quarters in the north end of Winnipeg. Your Canadian requiresa house of six rooms for a family of six. When your foreigner hasaccumulated a little capital he buys land or a city tenement. YourCanadian educates his children, clothes them a little better, movesinto a better house. When the foreigner buys a block, he moves hiswhole family into one room in the basement and does the janitor andscrubbing and heating work himself or forces his women to do it forhim. When the Canadian buys a block, he hires a janitor, an engineer, a scrub woman, and if he moves into the block, he takes one of the bestapartments. It does not take any guessing to know which of these twowill buy a second block first--especially if the foreigner lives onpeanuts and beer, and the Canadian on beefsteak and fresh fruit. Nordoes it take any guessing to know which type stands for the highercitizenship--which will make toward the better nation. 

IV

The question is--will Canada remain Canada when these new races come upto power? And Canada need not hoot that question; or gather her skirtsself-righteously and exclusively about her and pass by on the otherside. The United States did that, and to-day certain sections of theforeign vote are powerful enough to dictate to the President. 

Take a little closer look at facts!

Foreigners have never been rushed into Canada as cheap labor todisplace the native born, so they have not, as in great Americanindustrial centers, lowered the standard of living for Canadians. Theyhave come attracted by two magnets that give them great power: (1)wages so high they can save; (2) land absolutely free but for theten-dollar preemption fee. 

In 1881 there were six hundred and sixty-seven Jews in Canada. 

In 1901 there were sixteen thousand. To-day it is estimated there aretwenty thousand each in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg. These Jews havenot gone out to the land. They have crowded into the industrialcenters reproducing the housing evils from which they fled the EuropeanGhetto. There are sections of Winnipeg and Montreal and Toronto wherethe very streets reek of Bowery smells. When they go to the woods orthe land, these people have not the stamina to stand up to hard work. Yet in the cities, by hook or crook, by push-cart and trade, theyacquire wealth. On the charity organization of the cities they imposeterrible burdens during Canada's long cold winter. 

In one section of the western prairie are 150, 000 Galicians. OfAustrians and Germans--the Germans chiefly from Austria andRussia--there are 800, 000 in Canada, or a population equal to the cityof Montreal. Of Italians at last report there were fully 60, 000 inCanada. In one era of seven years there took up permanent abode inCanada 121, 000 Austrians, 50, 000 Jews, 60, 000 Italians, 60, 000 Polesand Russians, 40, 000 Scandinavians. When you consider that by actualcount in the United States in 1900, 1, 000 foreign-born immigrants had612 children, compared to 1, 000 Americans having 296 children, it issimply inconceivable but that this vast influx of alien life should notwork tremendous and portentous changes in Canada's life, as a similarinflux has completely changed the face of some American institutions intwenty years. Immigration to Canada has jumped from 54, 000 in1851-1861 to 142, 000 in 1881-1891, and to 2, 000, 000 in 1901-1911. Ithas not come in feeble rivulets that lost their identity in the maincurrent--as in the United States up to 1840. It has come to Canada ininundating floods. 

Chief mention has been made of the races from the south of Europebecause the races from the north of Europe assimilate so quickly thattheir identity is lost. Of Scandinavians there are in Canada somefifty thousand; of Icelanders, easily twenty thousand; and so quicklydo they merge with Canadian life that you forget they are foreigners. I was a child in Winnipeg when the first Icelanders arrived, and theirrise has been a national epic. I do not believe the first few hundredshad fifty dollars among them. They slept under high board sidewalksfor the first nights and erected tar-paper shanties on vacant lots thenext day. In these they housed the first winter. Though weWinnipeggers did not realize it, it must have been a dreadful winter tothem. Their clothing was of the scantest. Many were withoutunderwear. They lived ten and twenty to a house. The men sawed woodat a dollar and a half a day. The women worked out at one dollar aday. In a few weeks each family had bought a cow and rudiments ofwinter clothes. By spring they had money to go out on theirhomesteads. During winter some of the grown men attended school tolearn English. Teachers declared they never witnessed such swiftmastery of learning. To-day the Icelanders are the most prosperoussettlers in Manitoba. The same story could be told of GermanMennonites driven from Russia by religious persecution and ofScandinavians driven abroad by poverty. Of course, the weak went tothe wall and died, and didn't whine about the dying, though somemother's heart must have broken in silence. I recall one splendidyoung fellow who walked through every grade the public schoolsafforded, and then through the high school, and was on the point ofgraduating in medicine when he died from sheer mental and physicalexhaustion. This type of settler will build up Canada's nationalideals. It is the other type that gives one pause. 

V

Well--what is Canada going to do about it? Bar them out! Never! Sheneeds these raw brawny Vandals and Goths of alien lands as much as theyneed Canada. She needs their hardy virility. They are the crudematerial of which she must manufacture a manhood that is not sissified, and one must never forget that some of the most honored names in theUnited States are from these very races. One of the greatestmathematicians in the United States, the greatest copper miners, therichest store keepers, one of the most powerful manufacturers--thesesprang from the very races that give Canada pause to-day. 

It is on the school rather than on the church that Canada must dependfor the nationalizing of these alien races. Nearly all the colonistsfrom the south of Europe have brought their church with them. In oneforeign church of North Winnipeg is a congregation of four thousand, and certainly, in the case of the Doukhobors, the influence of theforeign priest has not been for the good of Canada. But none of theseraces has brought with them a school system, and that throws on thepublic school system of Canada the burden of preserving national idealsfor the future. Will the schools prove equal to it? I wish I couldanswer unequivocally "yes"; for I recall some beautiful episodes ofboys and girls--too immature to realize the importance of theirwork--"baching" it in prairie shanties, teaching at forty dollars amonth; amid the isolation of Doukhobor and Galician and Rutheniansettlement preserving Canada's national ideals for the future; littleclasses of foreigners in the schools of North Winnipeg reading lessonsin perfect English with flower gardens below the window kept bythemselves--the little girls learning sewing and housekeeping in upperrooms, the boys learning technical trades in the basement. All this isgood and well; but how about the recognition Canada gives theseteachers who manufacture men and women out of mud, who do more in a dayfor the ideals of the nation than all the eloquence that has beenspouted in Houses of Parliament? In Germany, they say--once an armyman always an army man; for though the pay is ridiculously small, social prestige and recognition are so great that the army is the mostdesirable vocation. Canada's teachers in the schools among foreignersare doing for the Dominion what the German army has aimed to do for theempire. Do the Canadian teachers receive the same recognition? Thequestion needs no answer. They receive so little recognition that themajority throw aside the work at their twenty-first year and crowd intoother over-crowded professions. Meanwhile time moves on, and in twentyyears the foreign vote will outnumber that of the native born. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMING OF THE ORIENTAL

I

If the coming of the foreigner has been Canada's greatest danger fromwithin, the coming of the Oriental has been one of her most perplexingproblems from without. It is not only a perplexity to herself. It isa perplexity in which Canada involves the empire. 

Take the three great Oriental peoples! With China, Great Britain is infriendly agreement. With Japan, Great Britain is in closestinternational pact. To India, Great Britain is a Mother. Yet Canadarefuses free admission to peoples from all three countries. Why? Forthe same reason as do South Africa and Australia. It is onlysecondarily a question of labor. The thing goes deeper than that. 

Consider Japan first: Panama is turning every port facing west into afront door instead of a back door. Within twenty years, the combinedpopulations of American ports on the Pacific have jumped from a fewhundreds of thousands at San Francisco and nothing elsewhere to almosttwo million, with growth continuing at an accelerated rate promisingwithin another quarter of a century as many great harbors of almost asgreat population on the Pacific as on the Atlantic. The Orient hassuddenly awakened. It is importing something besides missionaries. Itis buying American and Canadian steel, American and Canadian wool, American and Canadian wheat, American and Canadian machinery, Americanand Canadian dressed lumber. Ship owners on the Pacific report thatthe docks of through traffic are literally jammed with goods outwardbound--"more goods than we have ships, " as the president of one linetestified. 

When the reason for building Panama has been shorn of highfalutinmetaphors, it concentrates down to the simple bald fact that the UnitedStates possessions on the Pacific had grown too valuable to be guardedby a navy ten thousand miles away around the Horn. True, Rooseveltsent the fleet around the world to show what it could do, and thecountry howled its jubilation over the fact. But the Little BrownBrother only smiled; for the fleet hadn't coal to steam five hundredmiles without hiring foreign colliers to follow around with supply offuel. "Fine fleet! To be sure we have the ships, " exploded a rearadmiral in San Diego Bay a few years ago; "but look here!" He pointedthrough the port at an insignificant coaling dock such as third-ratebarges use. "See any coal?" he asked. "If trouble should come"--itwas just after the flight of Diaz--"we haven't coal enough to gohalf-way up or down the coast. "

II

Sometimes we can guess the game from the moves of the chess players. With facts for chessmen, what are the moves?

It was up in Atlin, British Columbia, a few years after the Klondikerush. Five hundred Japs had come tumbling into the mining camp, seemingly from nowhere, in reality from Japanese colonies in Hawaii. The white miners warned the Japs that "it wouldn't be a healthy camp, "but mine owners were desperate for workers. Wages ran at from five toten dollars a day. The Japs were located in a camp by themselves andput to work. On dynamite work, for which the white man was paid fiveto ten dollars, the Jap was paid three and five dollars. Still he heldon with his teeth, "dogged as does it, " as he always does. Suddenlythe provincial board of health was notified. There was a lot ofsickness in the Jap camp--"filthy conditions, " the mine ownersreported. The board of health found traces of arsenical poisoning inall the Jap maladies. The Japs decamped as if by magic. 

Simultaneously there broke out from Alaska to Monterey the anti-Jap, anti-Chinese, anti-Hindu agitation. California's exclusion and landlaws became party planks. British Columbia got round it by asubterfuge. She had the Ottawa government rush through anorder-in-council known as "the direct passage" law. All Orientals atthat time were coming in by way of Hawaii. Ships direct from Indiawere not sailing. They stopped at Hong Kong and Hawaii. Theorder-in-council was to forbid the entrance of Brown Brothers unless indirect passage from their own land. That effectually barred the Hinduout, till recently when a Japanese line, to test the Direct PassageAct, brought a shipload of Hindus direct from India to Vancouver. Vancouverites patrolled docks and would not let them land. A head taxof five hundred dollars was leveled at John Chinaman. That didn't keepJohn Chinaman out. It simply raised his wages; for the Chinese bossadded to the new hand's wages what was needed to pay the money loanedfor entrance fee. A special arrangement was made with the Mikado'sgovernment to limit Japanese emigration to a few hundreds givenpassports, but California went the whole length of demanding the totalexclusion of Brown Brothers. 

Why? What was the Pacific Coast afraid of? When the State Departmentsof the United States and Canada met the State Department of the Mikado, practically what was said was this. Only in very diplomatic language:

Whiteman: "We don't object to your students and merchants andtravelers, but what we do object to is the coolies. We are apopulation of a few hundred thousands in British Columbia, of less thanthree million in the states of the Pacific. What with Chink and Japand Hindu, you are hundreds of millions of people. If we admit yourcoolies at the present rate (eleven thousand had tumbled into one cityin a few months), we shall presently have a coolie population ofmillions. We don't like your coolies any better than you do yourself!Keep them at home!"

This conversation is paraphrased, but it is practically the substanceof what the representative of the Ottawa government said to arepresentative of the Mikado. 

Brown Brother: "We don't care any more for our coolies than you do. Wedon't in fact, care a hoot what becomes of the spawn and dregs ofno-goods in our population. We are not individualists, as you whitemen are! We don't aim to keep the unfit cumbering the earth! We don'tcare a hoot for these coolies; but what we do care for is this--weOrientals refuse to be branded any longer as an inferior race. We'llrestrain the emigration of these coolies by a passport system; butdon't you forget it, just as soon as we are strong enough, in thefriendliest, kindest, suavest, politest, most diplomatic way in theworld, we intend not to be branded any longer as an inferior race. Weintend to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the management of theworld's affairs. If we don't stand up to the job, throw us down! Ifwe stand up to the job--and we stood up moderately in China and Russiaand Belgium--we don't intend to ask you for the sop of that Christianbrotherhood preached by white men. We intend to force recognition ofwhat we are by what we do. We ask no favors, but we now serve younotice we are in to play the game. "

Neither is this conversation a free translation. Shorn of diplomatickotowing and compliments and circumlocutions, it is exactly what theMikado's representative served to the representatives of three greatgovernments--Uncle Sam's, John Bull's, Miss Canada's. If you ask how Iknow, I answer--direct from one of the three men sent to Japan. 

Can you see the white men's eyes pop out of their heads withastonishment? They thought they were up against a case of labor unionjealousy, and they found themselves involved in a complex race problem, dealing with three aggressive applicants for places at the councils ofrulers governing the world. California was ordered to turn on the softpedal and do it quick, and officially, at least, she did for a time. Canada was ordered to lay both hands across her mouth and never tospeak above a whisper of the whole Brown Brother problem; andEngland--well--England openly took the Jappy-Chappy at hisword--recognized him as a world brother and entered into the famousalliance. And the coming of coolies suddenly stopped to the UnitedStates and Canada. It didn't stop to South America and Mexico, butthat is another play of the game with facts for chessmen. 

Chinese exclusion, Japanese exclusion, Hindu exclusion suddenly becameparty shibboleths--always for the party _out_ of power, never for theparty _in_ power. The party in power kept a special Maxim silencer onthe subject of Oriental immigration. The politician in office kept onefinger on his lip and wore rubber-soled shoes whenever an almond-eyedwas mentioned. With that beautiful consistency which only a politicianhas, a good British Columbia member, who rode Oriental exclusion as hisspecial hobbyhorse, employed a Jap cook. In the midst of his stumpcampaign against Orientals he found in the room of his cook originaldrawings of Fort Esquimalt, of Vancouver Harbor and of Victoria backcountry. I was in British Columbia at the time. The funny thing to mewas--all British Columbia was so deadly in earnest it didn't see thefunny side of the inconsistency. 

III

I was up and down the Pacific the year the Mikado died, and chanced tobe in San Diego the month that a Japanese warship put into port becauseits commander had suicided of grief over the Emperor's death. The shiphad to lie in port till a new commander came out from Japan. Japanesecoolies were no longer coming; but the Japanese middies had the run andfreedom of the harbor; and they sketched all the whereabouts of PointLoma--purely out of interest for Mrs. Tingley's Theosophy, of course. 

Diaz's ministry had been very hard pressed financially before beingousted by Madero. Some Boston and Pacific Coast men had secured anoption from the Diaz faction of the sandy reaches known as MagdalenaBay in Lower California. The Pacific Coast is a land of few goodnatural harbors; especially harbors for a naval station and targetpractice. Suddenly an unseen hand blocked negotiations. Within a yearJapan had almost leased Magdalena Bay, when Uncle Sam wakened up andordered "hands off. "

Nicaragua has never been famous as a great fishing country. YetJapanese fishermen tried to lease fishing rights there and may have, for all the world knows. In spite of exclusion acts, they alreadydominate the salmon fishing of the Pacific. 

Coaling facilities will be provided for the merchantmen of the world atboth ends of Panama. Yet when England and France began furbishing upcolonial stations in the Caribbean, Japan forthwith made offers for asite for a coaling station in the Gulf of Mexico. 

But it was in South America and Mexico that the most activecolonization proceeded. There is not an American diplomat in SouthAmerica who does not know this and who has not reported it--reported itwith one finger on both lips and then has seen his report discreetlysmothered in departmental pigeon-holes. Up to a few years ago Mexicoand South America were enjoying marvelous prosperity. Coffee had notcollapsed in Brazil. Banks had not blown up from self-inflation inArgentina. Revolution at home and war abroad had not closed mines inMexico. All hands were stretched out for colonists. Japan launchedvast trans-Pacific colonization schemes. Ships were sent scoutingcommercial possibilities in South America. To colonists in Chile andPeru, fare was in many cases prepaid. Money was loaned to help thecolonists establish themselves, and an American representative to oneof these countries told me that free passage was given colonists onfurlough home if they would go back to the colony. There is no knownrecord outside Japan of the numbers of these colonists. And Japanasks--why not? Does not England colonize; does not Germany colonize;does not France colonize? We are taking our place at the world boardof trade. If we fail to make good, throw us out. If we make good, wedo not ask "by your leave. "

IV

When a shipping investigation was on in Washington a year ago, manymembers of the committee were amazed to learn that Japan alreadycontrols seventy-two per cent. Of the shipping on the Pacific. Ask aChilean or Peruvian whether he prefers to travel on an American or aJapanese ship. He laughs and answers that American ships to thewestern coast of South America would be as tubs are to titanics--onlyuntil the new registry bill passed there were hardly any ships underthe United States flag on the Southern Pacific. Each of these Japaneseships is so heavily subsidized it could run without a passenger or acargo; high as one hundred thousand dollars a voyage for many ships. Its crews are paid eight to ten dollars a month, where American andCanadian crews demand and get forty to fifty dollars. In cheapness oflabor, in efficiency of service, in government aid and style ofbuilding no American nor Canadian ships can stand up against them. Andagain Japan asks--why not? Atlantic commerce is a prize worth fourbillions a year. When the Orient fully awakens, will Pacific commercetotal four billions a year? Who rules the sea rules the world. Japan's ships dominate seventy-two per cent. Of the Pacific's commercenow. 

So when the war broke out, Japan shouldered not the white man's burdenbut the Brown Brother's and plunged in to police Asia. Again--why not?As Uncle Sam polices the two Americas, and John Bull the seas of theworld, so the Mikado undertakes to police the sea lanes of the Orient. The Jappy said when he met the diplomats on the subject of coolieimmigration that he would prove himself the partner of the white man atthe world's council boards--or step back. 

Is it a menace or a portent? Certainly not a menace, when accepted asa matter of fact. Only the fact must be faced and realized, and thenew chessman's moves recognized. Uncle Sam has the police job of oneworld, South America; Great Britain of another--Europe. Will thelittle Jappy-Chappy take the job for that other world, where the Starof the Orient seems to be swinging into new orbits? The Jappy-Chappyisn't saying much; but he is essentially on the job for all he isworth; and Canada hasn't wakened up to what that may mean to herPacific Coast. 

CHAPTER IX

THE HINDU

I

Is it, then, that Canada fears the growth of Japan as a great worldpower? No, the thing is deeper than that. We have come to the placewhere we must go deeper than surface signs and use neither rose water norkid gloves. The question of the Chinese and the Japanese is entirelydistinct from the Hindu. 

If you think that shutting your eyes to what you don't want to know andstopping your nostrils to the stench and gathering your garments up andpassing by on the other side ever settled a difficult question, then thePacific Coast wishes you joy to your system of moral sanitation; butdon't offer the people of the Pacific Coast any platitudinous adviceabout admitting Asiatics. They know what they are doing. You don't!Theoretically the Asiatic should have the same liberty to come and gowith Canada as Canadians have to come and go with the Orient. Theoretically, also, the colored man should be as clean and upright andfree-and-equal and dependable as the white man; but practically--in ananguish that has cost the South blood and tears--practically he isn't. The theory does not work out. Neither does it with the Asiatic. Thatis, it does not work out at close range on the spot, instead of the widthof half a continent away. 

Canada is being asked to decide and legislate on one of the most vitalrace problems that ever confronted a nation. She is also being asked tobe very lily-handed and ladylike and dainty about it all. You must notexplore facts that are not--"nice. " You must not ask what the Westernermeans when he says that "the Asiatic will not affiliate with ourcivilization. " Is it more than white teeth and pigments of the skin? Isit more than skin deep? Had the Old Book some deep economic reason whenit warned the children of Israel against mixing their blood with aliens?Has it all anything to do with the centuries' cesspools of unbridledvice? Is that the reason that women's clubs--knowing less of suchthings--rather than men's clubs--are begged to pass fool resolutionsabout admitting races of whose living practices they know absolutelynothing?

If it isn't the labor unions and it isn't the fear of new national powerthat prejudice against the Oriental--what is it? Why has almost everywoman's club on the Pacific passed resolutions against the admission ofthe Oriental, and almost every woman's club in the East passedresolutions for the admission? Why did the former Minister of Labor inCanada say that "a minimum of publicity is desired upon this subject"?What did he mean when he declared "that the native of India is not aperson suited to this country"? If the native Hindu is "not a personsuited to Canada"--climate, soil, moisture, what not?--why isn't thatfact sufficient to exclude the Oriental without any legislation?Italians never go to live at the North Pole. Nor do Eskimos come to livein the tropics. 

You may ask questions about Hindu immigration till you are black in theface. Unless you go out on the spot to the Pacific Coast, the most youwill get for an answer is a "hush. " And it would not be such animpossible situation if the other side were also going around with afinger to the lip and a "hush"; but the Oriental isn't. The Hindu andhis advocates go from one end of Canada to the other clamoring at thetops of their voices, not for the privilege, but for the right, ofadmission to Canada, the right to vote, the right to colonize. At thetime the first five or six thousand were dumped on the Pacific Coast, twenty thousand more were waiting to take passage; and one hundredthousand more were waiting to take passage after them, clamoring for theright of admission, the right to vote, the right to colonize. Canadawelcomes all other colonists. Why not these? The minute you ask, youare told to "hush. "

South Africa and Australia "hushed" so very hard and were so very carefulthat after a very extensive experience--150, 000 Hindus settled in onecolony--both colonies legislated to shut them out altogether. At leastSouth Africa's educational test amounted to that, and South Africa andAustralia are quite as imperial as Canada. Why did they do it? Thelabor unions were no more behind the exclusion in those countries than inBritish Columbia. The labor unions chuckled with glee over theembarrassment of the whole question. 

II

Each side of the question must be stated plainly, not as my personalopinions or the opinions of any one, but as the arguments of thoseadvocating the free admission of the Hindu, and of those furiouslyopposing the free admission. 

A few years ago British Columbia was at her wit's ends for laborers--menfor the mills, the mines, the railroads. India was at her wit's endsbecause of surplus of labor--labor for which her people were glad toreceive three, ten, twenty cents a day. Her people were literallystarving for the right to live. It does not matter much who acted as theconnecting link, --the sawmill owners, the canneries, the railroads, orthe steamships. The steamship lines and the sawmill men seem to havebeen the combined sinners. The mills wanted labor. The steamship linessaw a chance to transport laborers at the rate of twenty thousand a yearto and from India. The Hindus came tumbling in at the rate of sixthousand in a single year, when, suddenly, British Columbia, inert atfirst, awakened and threatened to secede or throw the newcomers into thesea. By intervention of the Imperial government and the authorities ofIndia a sort of subterfuge was rigged up in the immigration laws. TheHindus had been booked to British Columbia via Hong Kong and Hawaii. Themost of the Japs had come by way of Hawaii. To kill two birds with onestone, by order-in-council in Ottawa, the regulation was enactedforbidding the admission of immigrants except on continuous passage fromthe land of birth. Canada's immigration law also permits great latitudein interpretation as to the amount of money that must be possessed by theincoming settlers. Ordinarily it is fifty dollars for winter, twenty-five dollars for summer, with a five hundred dollar poll taxagainst the Chinaman. The Hindus were required to have two hundred andfifty dollars on their person. 

One wonders at the simplicity of a nation that hopes to fence itself insafety behind laws that are pure subterfuge. The subterfuge has butadded irritation to friction. What was to hinder a direct line ofsteamships going into operation any day? As a matter of fact, to forcethe issue, to force the Dominion to declare the status of the Oriental, aJapanese ship early in 1914 did come direct from India with a cargo ofangry armed Hindus demanding entrance. Canada refused to relent. Theship lay in harbor for months unable to land its colonists, and aDominion cruiser patrolled Vancouver water to prevent actual armedconflict. When the final decision ordered the colonists on boarddeported, knives and rifles were brandished; and Hopkinson, the secretservice man employed by British authorities, was openly shot to death afew weeks later in a Vancouver court room by a band of Hindu assassins. "We are glad we did it, " declared the murderers when arrested. Hopkinsonhimself had come from India and was hated and feared owing to his secretknowledge of revolutionary propaganda among the Vancouver Hindus, whowere posing as patriots and British subjects. The fact that manythousands of Sikhs and Hindus had just been hurried across Canada intrains with blinds down to fight for the empire in Europe added tragiccomplexity to an already impossible situation. 

The leaders of the Hindu party in Canada had already realized that moreimmigration was not advisable till they had stronger backing of publicopinion in Canada, and a campaign of publicity was begun from Nova Scotiato the Pacific Coast. Churches, women's missionary societies, women'sclubs, men's clubs were addressed by Hindu leaders from one end of Canadato the other. It did not improve the temper of some of these leadersposing in flowing garments of white as mystic saints before audiences ofwomen to know that Hopkinson, the secret agent, was on their trail in theshadow with proofs of criminal records on the part of these same leaders. These criminal records Hopkinson would willingly have exposed had theImperial government not held his hand. When I was in Vancouver he calledto see me and promised me a full exposure of the facts, but beforespeaking cabled for permission to speak. Permission was flatly refused, and I was told that I was investigating things altogether too deeply. Ican see the secret agent's face yet--as he sat bursting with factsrepressed by Imperial order--a solemn, strong, relentless man, sad andsavage with the knowledge he could not use. Without Hopkinson's aid, itwas not difficult to get the facts. Canada is a country of partygovernment. One party had just been ousted from power, and another partyhad just come in. While I was waiting for permission from Ottawa toobtain facts in the open, information came to me voluntarily with proofsthrough the wife of a former secret agent. 

It did not make things easier for Hopkinson that the whole dispute as toHindu immigration was relegated into that doubtful resort of allambiguous politics--"the twilight zone"--or the doubtful borderland whereprovincial powers end and federal powers begin and Imperial powersintervene. England was shoving the burden of decision on the Dominion, and the Dominion was shoving the burden on the Province of BritishColumbia, and to evade responsibility each government was shuttling thething back and forward, weaving a tangle of hate and misunderstandingwhich culminated in Hopkinson's assassination in 1914. 

As "the twilight zone" between provincial and federal rights comes uphere, it should be considered and emphasized; for it is the one greatweakness of every federation. _Who_ is to do _what_--when neithergovernment wants to assume responsibility? Who is to enforce laws, whenneither government wants to father them? It was this gave such passionto Vancouver's resentment in Hindu immigration. Indeed this veryquestion of "a twilight zone" gives pause to many an ImperialFederationist. In a dispute of this sort, involving the parts of theempire, could England give force to an exclusion act without losing theallegiance to her British Empire?

Every conceivable argument has been used in this Hindu dispute. I wantto emphasize--they are _arguments_, used for argument's sake--notreasons. The plain brutal bald reasons on each side of the dispute areBritish Columbia does _not_ want the Hindus. The Hindus want BritishColumbia. Simultaneously with the campaign for publicity action wastaken: (1) to force the resident Hindu on the voters' list; (2) to breakdown the immigration laws by demanding the entrance of wives andfamilies; (3) to force recognition of the status of the Oriental bybringing them in the ships of Japan--England's ally. 

If the resident Hindu had a vote--and as a British subject, why not?--andif he could break down the immigration exclusion act, he could out-votethe native-born Canadian in ten years. In Canada are five and one-halfmillion native born, two million aliens. In India are hundreds ofmillions breaking the dykes of their own national barriers and ready toflood any open land. Take down the barriers on the Pacific Coast, andthere would be ten million Hindus in Canada in ten years. The drawing ofJapan into the quarrel by chartering a Japanese ship was a crafty move. Japan is the empire's ally. Offense to Japan means war. 

III

The arguments from both sides I set down in utter disinterest personally. Here they are:

We need room for colonization--says the Hindu. Let England lose India, and she loses five-sixths of the British Empire. By refusing admissionto the Hindu, Canada is endangering British dominion in India. Moralconditions there are appalling, of course; but say the missionaries--givethese people a chance, and they will become as good as any of us. Are wenot sprung from the same Aryan stock?

British Columbia has immense tracts of arable land. Why not give India'smillions a chance on it as colonizers?

There is not so much sedition among the Hindus of British Columbia asamong Canadian-born Socialists, who rant of the flag as "the bloody rag. "

The vices of the Hindu are no worse than the vices of the low whites. 

They are British subjects and have a right to admission. Admission isnot a privilege but a right. 

How can we expect good morals among three to five thousand men who areforcibly separated from wives and children? Admit their wives to preventdeterioration. This argument was used by a Hindu addressing audiences inToronto. 

What right have Canadians to point the finger of scorn at the reproach ofthe child wife when the age of marriage in one province is twelve years?

In the days of the mutiny the Sikh proved his loyalty. To-day the Indiantroops are proving their loyalty by fighting for the empire in Europe. 

Many of the Canadians now denouncing the Hindu made money selling themreal estate in Vancouver, and expropriation is behind the idea ofexclusion. 

The admission of the Hindu would relieve British Columbia's great needfor manual laborers. 

Canadian missionaries to India are received as friends. Why are theHindus not received as friends in Canada?

Why should a Sikh not marry a white woman as one did in Vancouver? Thisquestion was asked by the official publication of the Sikhs in Vancouver. 

If Canada shuts her doors to the Hindus, let the Hindus shut doors toCanadians. 

These are not my arguments. They are the arguments of the peopleadvocating the free admission of people from India to Canada. 

To these arguments the Pacific Coast makes answer. Likewise, the answeris not mine:

We know that you as a people need room for colonization; but if we admityou as colonists, will your presence drive out other colonists, as it hasdone in Australia and South Africa; as the presence of colored peopleprevents the coming of other colonists to the southern states? If wehave to decide between having you and excluding Canadians, or excludingyou and having Canadians, we can not afford to hesitate in our decision. We must keep our own land for our own people. 

Australia and South Africa have excluded the Hindu--South Africa'seducational test amounts to that--and that has not imperiled Britishdominion in India. Why should it in Canada? The very fact there aremillions ready to come is what alarms us. Morals are low--youacknowledge--and your people would be better if they had a chance; butwould the chance not cost us too dearly, as the improvement of the blackshas cost the South in crime and contaminated blood? We are sorry foryou, just as we are sorry for any plague-stricken region; but we do notwelcome you among us because of that pity. 

There may not be so much sedition among the Hindus of British Columbia asamong Canadian-born Socialists, who rant of the flag as "a bloody rag";but our Socialistic seditionists have never yet been accused ofcollecting two million dollars to send home to India to buy rifles forthe revolution. Canadian Socialists have never yet collected one dime tobuy rifles. These are not my accusations. They are accusations thathave been in the very air of Vancouver and San Francisco. If they aretrue, they ought to be proved true. If they are untrue, they ought to beproved untrue; but in view of the shoutings over patriotism and ofHopkinson's assassination, they come with a rude jar to claims groundedon loyalty. Could Hindus who landed in British Columbia destitute a fewyears ago possibly have that amount of money among them? At last censusthey had property in Vancouver alone to the amount of six milliondollars, held collectively for the whole community. 

Their vices may be no worse than the vices of the low whites, but ifimmigration officials find that whites low or high have vices, thosewhites are excluded, be they English, Irish, Scotch, or Greek. 

The Hindus are British subjects, but Canada does not admit Britishsubjects unless she wants them--unless they can give a clean bill ofhealth and morals. 

Canada does not regard admission as a right to any race, European, Asian, African. She considers her citizenship a privilege and reserves toherself the right to extend or not to extend that privilege to whom shewill. 

That separation from families will excuse base and lewd morals is a viewthat Canada will never admit. Her sons go forth unaccompanied by wivesor sisters to lumber camps and mines and pioneer shacks, and inninety-nine cases out of a hundred come back clean as they went forth, and manlier. That women should be victims on an altar of lust is anargument that may appeal to the Asiatic--the sentiment all draped inwisteria and lilies, of course; but it isn't an argument that will proveanything in Canada but the advocate's unfitness for citizenship. 

What reason have Canadians to point the finger of reproach at theinstitution of the child wife, when the age of marriage in one provinceis low as twelve? And that brings up the whole question of the childwife. Because one province has the marriage age criminally low does notprove that that province approves of marriages at twelve. In the wholehistory of that province marriages at that age have been as rare as thepastime of skinning a man alive, and that province has no specific lawagainst skinning a man alive. It has no such law because that type ofcrime is unknown. But can it be said that the institution of childmarriage is an unknown or even a rare crime in India? The Hindu wivesfor whom loud outcry is being made are little girls barely eight years ofage, whom before marriage the husbands have never seen, men ofthirty-five and forty and forty-eight. Does Canada desire the system ofthe child wife embodied in her national life? Suppose one hundredthousand Hindu colonists came to the vacant arable lands of BritishColumbia. As the inalienable right of a British subject, the colonistmust be allowed to bring in his wife. What if she is a child to whom hewas married in her infancy? The colonist being a British subject is tobe given a vote. How would Canada abolish the child wife system if Hinduvotes outnumbered Canadian votes? Forget all about the rifle fund--thediscovery of which was paid for in Hopkinson's life! Forget all aboutlabor and mill owner and color of pigments! You know now why theOriental question is more than skin-deep. Go a little deeper in thischild-wife thing! Don't balk at the horror of it! The Pacific Coastwants you to know a few medical facts. Hundreds of thousands of childrenin India, age from nine to twelve, are wives actually living withhusbands; and the husbands are in many cases from thirty to eighty yearsof age. Anglo-Saxons regard these unions as criminal. One-third of allchildren born of mothers under sixteen years of age die in infancybecause of the tortures to the mother's body, compared to which thetortures of the Inquisition were merciful. Does Canada want that systemembodied in her national life? Under Canadian law such crimes aretreated to thirty-nine lashes: under American law to Judge Lynch. Twenty-five per cent. Of the women of India die prematurely because ofthe crimes perpetrated through child marriage. Twenty-five per cent. Become invalids from the same cause. Nine million girl wives in Indiaare under fifteen years of age; two million are under eleven. 

I asked a British Columbia sawmill owner why the Hindu could not speed upwith a Pole or Swede. 

"No stamina, " he answered. "Too many generations of vice! Too manygenerations of birth from immature mothers; no dower of strength frombirth. "

The advocates of Hindu colonization in Canada glibly advise "prohibitingchild wives. " To bar out child wives sounds easy. How are you to knowthey are child wives and not daughters? If one thing more than anotherhas been established in Vancouver about Hindus, not excepting theleaders, it is that you can not believe a Hindu under oath. Also Britishlaw does not allow you to bar out a subject's wife unless she be diseasedor vicious. If you let down the bar to any section of the Hindu, teemingmillions will come--with a demand to vote. 

That Canada's continuous passage law is immoral and intolerable no onedenies. It is a subterfuge and a joke. The day the Japanese steamshiptested the law by bringing passengers direct from land of birth the lawfell down and Canada had to face squarely the question of exclusion. Asthe world knows, the shipload of human cargo after lying for months inVancouver Harbor was sent back, and Hindu leaders proved their claims ofa right to citizenship by assassinating Hopkinson. 

To the claim that the Sikhs are loyal, Canada answers--"for their ownsake. " If British protection were withdrawn from India to-morrow, athousand petty chiefs would fly at one another's throats. The idea thatexpropriation is behind exclusion could be entertained only by anOriental mind. Expropriation is possible under Canadian law only fortreason. Imperial unity is no more threatened in Canada by exclusionthan it was threatened in South Africa and Australia. The Hindus areadapted to the cultivation of the soil, but if they come in millions, will any white race sit down beside them? Why does immigrationpersistently refuse to go to the southern states? Because of a blackshadow over the land. Does Canada want such a shadow?

The missionary argument can hardly be taken seriously. Missionaries donot go to India to colonize. They do not introduce white vices. They goat Canada's expense to give free medical and social service to India. 

"Why should a Sikh not marry a white woman?" There, again, you are upagainst a side of the subject that is neither violet water nor pink tea;but--it is a vital side of the subject. For the same reason that theSouth objects to and passes laws against mixed unions of the races. These laws are not the registration of prejudice. They are theregistration of terrible lessons in experience. It is not a matter ofopinion. It is a matter of fact. What is feared is not the marriage ofa Sikh who is refined to a white woman who knows what she is doing. Whatis feared is the effect of that union on the lewd Hindu; the effect onthe safety of the uncultured white woman and white girl. Any one on theCoast who has lived next to Asiatics, any one in India or the Philippinesknows what this means in terms of hideous terrible fact that can not beset down here. Vancouver knows. "I'll see, " said an officer in thePhilippines of his native valet, "that the--dog turns up missing;" andevery man present knew why; and when the officer set out on an unnamedexpedition with his valet, the valet did "turn up missing. " There arevices for which a white man kills. "Have not the English carried vicesto India?" a Hindu protagonist asked me. Yes, answered British Columbia, but we do not purpose poisoning the new young life of Canada tocompensate the vices of English soldiers who have gone to pieces morallyin India. 

As to shutting Canadians out of India, Canada would accept that challengegladly. When Canadians carry vices to India--says Canada--shut them out. 

These are the reasons given for the Pacific Coast's aversion to theHindu, and even with the arguments stated explicitly, there is a greatdeal untold and untellable. 

For instance, some of the leaders talking loudest in Eastern Canada inthe name of the Sikh are not Sikhs at all, and one at least has acriminal record in San Francisco. 

For instance again, when the coronation festivities were on in England, there was a very peculiar guard kept round the Hindu quarters. It wouldbe well for some of the eastern women's clubs to inquire why that was;also why the fact was hushed up that two white women of bad characterwere carried out of that compound dead. 

Said a mill owner, one who employs many Hindus, "If the East couldunderstand how some of these penniless leaders grow rich, they wouldrealize that the Hindu has our employment sharks beaten to a frazzle. Itake in a new man from one of these leaders. The leader gets two dollarsor five dollars for finding this fellow a job. I have barely got the manbroken in when the leader yanks him off to another job and sends me a newman, getting, of course, the employment agent fee for both changes. "

"But why not let them come out here and work and go back?" asks the East. 

Because that is just what the Hindu will not do. When he comes, hefights for the franchise to stay. That is the real meaning behind thefight over cases now in the courts. 

"They are curious fellows, poor beggars, " said a police court official tome. "They have no more conception of what truth means than a dogstealing a bone. We had a Hindu come in here as complainant againstanother man, with his back hacked to beef steak. We had very nearly sentthe defendant up for a long term in the 'pen, ' when we got wind thatthese two fellows had been bitter enemies--old spites--and that there wassomething queer about the complainant's shanty. We sent out to examine. The fellow had stuck bits of glass all over the inside of his shack wallsand then cut his own back to pay an old grudge against the other man. Another fellow rushed in here gesticulating complaint, who was literallysoaked in blood. We had had our experience and so sending for aninterpreter, we soused this fellow into a bathtub. Every dab came offand there was not a scratch under. "

"You say the Hindu is the negro problem multiplied by ten, plus craft, "said a life-long resident of India to me. "That is hardly correct. TheHindu is different from the negro. He is intellectual and spiritual aswell as crafty and sensuous. You will never have trouble with the Hindu, if you keep him in his place--"

"But do you think a democratic country can what you call 'keep a race inits place'? The very genius of our democracy is that we want eachindividual to come up out of his place to a higher place. "

"Then you will learn a hard lesson here in Canada. "

What kind of a lesson? Again, let us take facts, not opinions!

A clergyman's wife in Vancouver, full of missionary zeal for India, thought it her duty to accord the Hindu exactly the same treatment as toan American or English immigrant. She took a man as general houseservant and treated him with the same genial courtesy she had treated allother help in her home. You know what is coming--don't you? The manmistook it for evil or else failed to subdue the crimes of the centuriesin his own blood. Had he not come from a land where a woman more or lessdid not matter, and hundreds of thousands of little girls are yearlysacrificed on the altars of Moloch? I need not give details. As amatter of fact, there are none. Asiatic ideas about women collidedviolently with facts which any Canadian takes for granted and does nottalk about! No Anglo-Saxon (thank God) is too ladylike not to have a bitof the warrior woman left in her blood. The Hindu was thrown out of thathouse. Then the woman reasoned with the blind persistence peculiar toany conscientious good woman, who always puts theory in place of fact!There are blackguards in every race. There are scoundrels amongEnglishmen in India. Why should she allow one criminal among the Hindusto prejudice her against this whole people? And she at once took anotherHindu man servant in the house. This time she kept him in the kitchenand garden. Within a month the same thing happened with a littledaughter. This Hindu also went out on his head. No more were employedin that house. That woman's husband was one of the Pacific Coastclergymen who passed the resolution, "that the Hindus would not affiliatewith our Canadian civilization. "

Personally I think that resolution would have been a great deal moreenlightening to the average Easterner if the ministerial association hadplainly called a spade a spade. 

IV

With the Chinaman conditions are different. In the first place, sinceChina obtained freedom from the old cast-iron dynasty, Chinamen have notwanted to colonize in Canada. The leaders of the young China party laidtheir plots and published their liberty journals from presses in thebasement of Vancouver and Victoria shops, but having gained theirliberty, they went back to China. The Chinaman does not want tocolonize. He does not want a vote. He wants only to earn his money onthe Pacific Coast and hoard it and go home to China with it. The factthat he does not want to remain in the country but comes only to work andgo back has always been used as an argument against him. Neither does heconsider himself your equal. Nor does he want to marry your daughter, nor have you consider him a prince of the royal blood in disguise--a posein which the little Jap is as great an adept as the English cockney whodrops enough "h's" to build a monument, all the while he is telling youof his royal blue blood. If you mistake the Chinaman for a prince indisguise, the results will be just what they were with a poor girl In NewYork four or five years ago. The results will be just what they alwaysare when you mistake a mongrel for a thoroughbred. 

All the same, dismiss the idea from your mind that labor is behind theopposition to Chinese immigration! A few years ago, when Oriental laborcame tumbling into British Columbia at the rate of twelve thousand in asingle year--when the Chinese alone had come to number fifteen or sixteenthousand--labor was alarmed; but a twofold change has taken place sincethat time. First, labor has found that it can better control theChinaman by letting him enter Canada, than by keeping him in China andletting the product of cheap labor come in. Second, the Chinaman hasdemonstrated his solidarity as a unit in the labor war. If he comes, hewill not foregather with capital. That is certain! He will affiliatewith the unions for higher wages. 

"If the Chinaman comes in here lowering the price of goods and the priceof labor, " said the agitator a few years ago, "we'll put a poll tax offive hundred dollars on and make him pay for his profit. " The poll taxwas put on every Chinaman coming into Canada, but do you think JohnChinaman pays it? It is a way that unjust laws have of coming back in aboomerang. The Chinaman doesn't pay it! Mr. Canadian Householder paidit; for no sooner was the poll tax imposed than up went wages forhousehold servant and laundryman and gardener, from ten to fifteendollars a month to forty and forty-five and fifty dollars a month. TheItalian boss system came in vogue, when the rich Chinaman who paid theentrance tax for his "slaves" farmed out the labor at a profit tohimself. The system was really one of indentured slavery till theimmigration authorities went after it. Then Chinese benevolentassociations were formed. Up went wages automatically. The cook wouldno longer do the work of the gardener. When the boy you hired attwenty-five dollars had learned his job, he suddenly disappeared onemorning. His substitute explains he has had to go away; "he is sick;"any excuse; with delightful lapses of English when you ask questions. You find out that your John has taken a job at forty dollars a month, andyou are breaking in a new green hand for the Chinese benevolentassociation to send up to a higher job. If you kick against the trick, you may kick! There are more jobs than men. That's the way you pay thefive hundred dollars poll tax; comical, isn't it; or it would be comicalif the average white householder did not find it five hundred dollarsmore than the average income can spare? So the labor leaders chuckle atthis subterfuge, as they chuckle at the "continuous" passage law. 

For a time the indentured slavery system worked almost criminally; for ifthe newcomer, ignorant of the law and the language, got wise to the factthat his boss was doing what was illegal under Canadian law, andattempted to jump his serfdom, he was liable--as one of them expressedit--"to be found missing. " It would be reported that he had suicided. Among people who did not speak English, naturally, no details would begiven. It seems almost unbelievable that in a country wrestling with thewhole Asiatic problem the fact has to be set down that the government hasno interpreter among the Chinese who is not a Chinaman, no interpreteramong the Japanese who is not a Jap. As it chances, the governmenthappens to have two reliable foreigners as interpreters; but they areforeigners. 

Said Doctor Munro, one of the medical staff of the ImmigrationDepartment: "Even in complicated international negotiations, where eachcountry is jockeying to protect its rights, Canada has to depend onrepresentatives of China or Japan to translate state documents andtransmit state messages. Here we are on the verge of great commercialintercourse with two of the richest countries in Asia, countries that arejust awakening from the century's sleep, countries that will need ourflour and our wheat and our lumber and our machinery; and we literallyhave not a diplomatic body in Canada to speak either Chinese or Japanese. I'll tell you what a lot of us would like to see done--what the southernstates are doing with the Latin-Spanish of South America--have a staff oftranslators for our chambers of commerce and boards of trade, or pricefiles and lists of markets, etc. How could this be brought about? LetJapan and China send yearly, say twenty students to study internationallaw and English with us. Let us send to China and Japan yearly twenty ofour postgraduate students to be trained up into a diplomatic body for ourvarious boards of trade, to forward international trade and help the twocountries to understand each other. 

"When trouble arose over Oriental immigration a few years ago, " continuedDoctor Munro, "I can tell you that it was a serious matter that we had tohave the translating of our state documents done at that time byrepresentatives of the very nations we were contesting. "

Unless I am misinformed, one of the men who did the translating at thattime is one of the Orientals who has since "suicided, " and the reason forthat suicide you might as well try to fathom as to follow the windings ofa ferret in the dark. Certain royal clans of Japan will suicide on orderfrom their government for the good of their country. 

"The trouble with these foolish raids on Chinatown for gambling, " said aneducated Chinaman in Vancouver to me, "is that the city police have nosecret service among the Chinese, and they never raid the resorts thatneed most to be cleaned out. They raid some little joint where theChinese boys are playing fan-tan for ten cents, when they do not raidup-town gambling hells where white men play for hundreds of dollars. Ifthe police employed Chinese secret service, they could clean out everyvice resort in a week. Except in the segregated district, which iswhite, there would not be any vice. They need Chinese police or men whospeak Chinese, and there would be no Chinese vice left in this town. "

To go back to the matter of the poll tax and the system of indenturedslavery, the bosses mapped out every part of the city and province inwage areas. Here, no wages under twenty-five dollars, to which greenhands were sent; here, a better quarter, no wages under forty dollars;and so on up as high as sixty dollars for mill work and camp cooking. About this time riots turned the searchlight on all matters Oriental; andthe boss system merged in straight industrial unionism. You still go toa boss to get your gangs of workmen; but the boss is secretary of abenevolent association; and if he takes any higher toll than anemployment agent's commission, the immigration department has never beenable to detect it. "I have no hesitation in saying, " declared animmigration official, "that for four years there has not been a case ofboss slavery that could be proved in the courts. There has not been acase that could be proved in the courts of women and children beingbrought in for evil purposes. Only merchants' wives, students, and thatclass can come in. The other day an old fellow tried to bring a youngwoman in. We suspected he had left an old wife in China; but we couldnot prove it; so we charged him five hundred dollars for the entrance ofthis one and had them married on the spot. Whenever there is theslightest doubt about their being married, we take no chances, chargethem five hundred dollars and have the knot tied right here and now. Then the man has to treat the woman as a wife and support her; or she cansue him; and we can punish and deport him. There is no more of littlegirls being brought in to be sold for slavery and worse. "

All the same, some evils of the boss system still exist. The boss systemtaught the Chinaman organization, and to-day, even with higher wages, your forty-five dollars a month cook will do no gardening. You ask himwhy. "They will cut my throat, " he tells you; and if he goes out to mowthe lawn, he is soon surrounded by fellow countrymen who hoot and jeerhim. 

"Would they cut his throat?" I asked a Chinaman. 

"No; but maybe, the benevolent association or his tong fine him. "

So you see why labor no longer fears the Chinaman and welcomes him toindustrial unionism, a revolution in the attitude of labor which hastaken place in the last year. Make a note of these facts:

The poll tax has trebled expenses for the householder. 

The poll tax has created industrial unionism among the Chinese. 

The poll tax has not kept the Chinaman out. 

How about the Chinese vices? Are they a stench to Heaven as the Hindu's?I can testify that they certainly are not open, and they certainly arenot aggressive, and they certainly do not claim vice as a right; for Iwent through Vancouver's Chinatown with only a Chinaman as an escort (notthrough "underground dens, " as one paper reported it) after ten at night;and the vices that I saw were innocent, mild, pallid, compared to thewhite-man vices of Little Italy, New York, or Upper Broadway. We musthave visited in all a dozen gambling joints, two or three midnightrestaurants, half a dozen opium places and two theaters; and the onlything that could be remotely constructed into disrespect was theamazement on one drunken white face on the street that a white womancould be going through Chinatown with a Chinaman. Instead of playing forten and one hundred dollars, as white men and women gamble up-town, theChinese boys were huddling intently over dice boxes, or playing fan-tanwith fevered zeal for ten cents. Instead of drinking absinthe, one ortwo sat smoking heavily, with the abstracted stare of the opium victim. In the midnight restaurants some drunken sailors sat tipsily, eating chopsuey. Goldsmiths were plying their fine craftsmanship. Presses wereturning out dailies with the news of the Chinese revolution. Grocerystores, theaters, markets, all were open; for Chinatown never sleeps. 

CHAPTER X

WHAT PANAMA MEANS

I

It now becomes apparent why British Columbia was described as theprovince where East meets West and works out Destiny. 

On the other side of the Pacific lies Japan come to the manhood ofnationality, demanding recognition as the equal of the white race androom to expand. Behind Japan lies China, an awakened giant, potent forgood or ill, of half a billion people, whose commerce under a few yearsof modern science and mechanics is bound to equal the commerce of halfEurope. It may in a decade bring to the ports that have hitherto beenthe back doors of America an aggregate yearly traffic exceeding thefour billion dollars' worth that yearly leave Atlantic ports forEurope. Canada is now the shortest route to "Cathay"; the railroadsacross Canada offer shorter route from China to Europe than Suez orHorn, by from two to ten thousand miles. Then there is India, anotherawakened giant, potent for good or ill, of three hundred millionpeople--two hundred to the square mile--clamoring for recognition asBritish subjects, clamoring for room to expand. 

The question is sometimes asked by Americans: Why does Canada concernherself about foreign problems and dangers? Why does she not restsecure under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine, which forever forfendsforeign conquest of America by an alien power? And Canadaanswers--because the Monroe Doctrine is not worth the ink in which itwas penned without the bayonet to enforce the pen. Belgium'sneutrality did not protect her. The peace that is not a victory isonly an armed truce--a let-live by some other nation's permission. Without power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, that doctrine is toCanada but a tissue-paper rampart. 

To add to the complication involving British Columbia comes the openingof Panama, turning the Pacific Ocean into a parade ground for theworld's fleets both merchantmen and war. Commercially Panama simplyturns British Columbia into a front door, instead of a back door. Whatdoes this mean?

The Atlantic has hitherto been the Dominion's front door, and theCanadian section of the Atlantic has four harbors of first rank with anaggregate population of nearly a million. Canada has, besides, threelake harbors subsidiary to ocean traffic with an aggregate populationof half a million. One may infer when the Pacific becomes a frontdoor, that Vancouver and Victoria and Port Mann and Westminster andPrince Rupert will soon have an aggregate population of a million. 

Behind the Atlantic ports, supplied by them with traffic, supplyingthem with traffic, is a provincial population of five millions. Behindthe Pacific ports in British Columbia and Alberta, one would bejustified in expecting to find--Strathcona said a hundred millionpeople, but for this generation put it at twelve million. 

Through the Atlantic ports annually come two hundred and fifty thousandor more immigrants, not counting the one hundred and fifty thousandfrom the United States. What if something happened to bring as many tothe Pacific, as well as those now coming to the Atlantic?

Then a century of peace has a sleeping-powder effect on a nation. Weforget that the guns of four nations once boomed and roared round oldQuebec and down Bay of Fundy way. If the Pacific becomes a front door, the guns of the great nations may yet boom there. In fact, if Canadahad not been a part of Greater Britain four or five years ago when thetrouble arose over Japanese immigration, guns might easily have boomedround Vancouver long before the Pacific Coast had become a front door. Front door status entails bolt and strong bar. Front door means navy. Navy means shipbuilding plants, and the shipyards of the United Stateson the Atlantic support fifty thousand skilled artisans, or what wouldmake a city of two hundred and fifty thousand people. The shipyards ofEngland support a population equal to Boston. In the United Statesthose shipyards exist almost wholly by virtue of government contractsto build war vessels, and in Great Britain largely by virtue ofadmiralty subsidies. Though they also do an enormous amount of work onriver and coastal steamers, the manager of the largest and oldest plantin the United States told me personally that with the high price oflabor and material in America, his shipyard could not last a daywithout government contracts for war vessels, torpedoes, dredges, etc. Front door on the Pacific means that to Canada, and it means more; forCanada belongs to an empire that has vaster dominions to defend in Asiathan in Europe. 

But isn't all this stretching one's fancy a bit too far in the future?How far is _too_ far? The Panama Canal is open for traffic, and thereis not a harbor of first rank in the United States, Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico, that does not bank on, that is not spending millionson, the expectation of Panama changing the Pacific from a back into afront door. Either these harbors are all wrong or Canada is soundasleep as a tombstone to the progress round her. Boston has spent ninemillion dollars acquiring terminals and water-front, and is nowguaranteeing the bonds of steamships to the extent of twenty-fivemillion dollars. New York has built five new piers to take care of thecommerce coming--and the Federal government has spent fifty milliondollars improving the approaches to her harbor. Baltimore is so surethat Panama is going to revive shore-front interests that she hasreclaimed almost two hundred acres of swamp land for manufacturingsites, which she is leasing out at merely nominal figures to bring themanufacturers from inland down to the sea. In both Baltimore andPhiladelphia, railroads are spending millions increasing their trackagefor the traffic they expect to feed down to the coast cities for Panamasteamers. 

Among the Gulf ports, New Orleans has spent fifteen million dollarsputting in a belt line system of railroads and docks with steel andcement sheds, purely to keep her harbor front free of corporatecontrol. This is not out of enmity to corporations, but because theprosperity of a harbor depends on all steamers and all railroadsreceiving the same treatment. This is not possible under private andrival control. Yet more, New Orleans is putting on a line of her owncivic steamships to South America. Up at St. Louis and Kansas City, they are putting on civic barge lines down the rivers to ocean front. 

At Los Angeles twenty million dollars have been spent in making aharbor out of a duck pond. San Francisco and Oakland have improveddocks to the extent of twenty-four million dollars. Seattle attestsher expectation of what Panama is going to do on the Pacific bysecuring the expenditure of fifteen million dollars on her harbor forher own traffic and all the traffic she can capture from Canada; and itmay be said here that the Grand Trunk Pacific of Canada--a nationalroad on which the Dominion is spending hundreds of millions--has thefinest docks in Seattle. Portland has gone farther than any of thePacific ports. Portland is Scotch--full of descendants of the oldScotch folk who used to serve in the Hudson's Bay Company. If there isa chance to capture world traffic, Portland is out with both hands andboth feet after that flying opportunity. Portland has not onlyimproved the entrance to the Columbia to the extent of fifteen milliondollars--this was done by the Federal government--but she has had acanal cut past bad water in the Columbia, costing nearly sevenmillions, and has put on the big river a system of civic boats to bringthe wheat down from an inland empire. There is no aim to make thisriver line a dividend payer. The sole object is to bring the Pacificgrain trade to Portland. Portland is already a great wheat port. Willshe get a share of Canada's traffic in bond to Liverpool? Candidly, she hopes to. How? By having Canadian barges bring Alberta wheat downthe Columbia. 

II

And now, what is Canada doing? Canada is doing absolutely nothing. Canada is saying, with a little note of belligerency in hervoice--What's Panama to us? Either every harbor in the United Statesis Panama fool-mad; either every harbor in the United States isspending money like water on fool-schemes; or Canada needs a wakeningblast of dynamite 'neath her dreams. If Panama brings the trafficwhich every harbor in the United States expects, then Canada's share ofthat traffic will go through Seattle and Portland. Either Canada mustwake up or miss the chance that is coming. 

Two American transcontinentals have not come wooing traffic inVancouver for nothing. The Canadian Pacific is not double tracking itsroadbed to the Coast for nothing. The Grand Trunk has not boughtterminals in Seattle for nothing. Yet, having jockeyed for traffic inVancouver, the two American roads have recently evinced a cooling. They are playing up interests In Seattle and marking time in Vancouver. Grand Trunk terminals in Seattle don't help Vancouver; but if Canadadoesn't want the traffic from the world commerce of the seas, thenPortland and Seattle do. 

One recalls how a person feels who is wakened a bit sooner than suitshis slumbers. He passes some crusty comments and asks some criss-crossquestions. The same with Canada regarding Panama. What's Panama tous? How in the world can a cut through a neck of swamp and hills threethousand miles from the back of beyond, have the slightest effect oncommerce in Canada? And if it has, won't it be to hurt our railroads?And if Panama does divert traffic from land to water, won't that diverta share of shipping away from Montreal and St. John and Halifax?

There is no use ever arguing with a cross questioner. Mr. Hill oncesaid there was no use ever going into frenzies about the rights of thepublic. The public would just get exactly what was coming to it. Ifit worked for prosperity, it would get it. If it were not sufficientlyalert to see opportunity, it certainly would not be sufficiently alertto grasp opportunity after you had pointed it out. Your opinion ormine does not count with the churlish questioner. You have to hurlfacts back so hard they waken your questioner up. Here are the facts. 

How can Panama turn the Pacific Coast into a front door instead of aback door?

Almost every big steamship line of England and Germany, also a greatmany of the small lines from Norway and Belgium and Holland and Spainand Italy, have announced their intention of putting on ships to go byway of Panama to the Orient and to Pacific Coast ports. Three of thoselines have explicitly said that they would call at Pacific ports inCanada if there were traffic and terminals for them. 

The steamers coming from the Mediterranean have announced theirintention of charging for steerage only five to ten dollars more to thePacific Coast ports than to the Atlantic ports. It costs the immigrantfrom sixteen to twenty-five dollars to go west from Atlantic ports. Itcan hardly be doubted that a great many immigrants will save fare bybooking directly to Pacific ports. Of South-of-Europe immigrants, almost seven hundred thousand a year come to United States Atlanticports, of whom two-thirds remain, one-third, owing to the rigor ofwinter, going back. Of those who will come to Pacific ports, they willnot be driven back by the rigor of winter. They will find a regionalmost similar in climate to their own land and very similar inagriculture. Hitherto Canada has not made a bid for South-of-Europeimmigrants, but, with Panama open, they will come whether Canada bidsfor them or not. They are the quickest, cheapest and most competentfruit farmers in the world. They are also the most turbulent of allEuropean immigrants. We may like or dislike them. They are coming toCanada's shores when the war is over, coming in leaderless hordes. 

The East has awakened and is moving west. The West has always beenawake and is moving east. The East is sending her teas and her silksto the West, and the West is sending her wheat and her lumber to theEast. When these two currents meet, what? If two currents meet and donot blend, what? Exactly what has happened before in the world, impact, collision, struggle; and the fittest survives. This was thereal reason for the building of the Panama Canal--to give the Americannavy command of her own shores on the Pacific. Now that Panama isbuilt it means the war fleets of the whole world on the Pacific. Canada can no more grow into a strong nation and keep out of the worldconclave assembling on the Pacific than a boy can grow into strongmanhood and keep out of the rough and tumble of life, or a girl grow toefficient womanhood and play the hothouse parasite all her life. Fleets, naval stations, coaling stations, dry docks, whole citiessupported by shipyards are bound to grow on the Pacific just as surelyas the years come and go. The growth has begun already. Nothing worthhaving can be left undefended and be kept. Poor old China tried that. So did Korea. We may talk ourselves black in the face over peace andpass up enough platitudes to pave the way to a universal brotherhood ofheaven on earth, but in the past good intentions and platitudes havepaved the way to an altogether different sort of place. In the wholeworld history of the past (however much we might wish this earth adifferent place) the nation most secure against war has been the nationmost prepared against war. Canada can't dodge that fact. With Panamaopen come the armaments of the world to the Pacific!

How about a merchant marine for Canada? This question was important tothe maritime provinces, but the maritime provinces are well served byBritish liners. On the Pacific seventy-two per cent. Of the carryingtrade is already controlled by Japan. Now Canada can buy her ships inthe cheapest market, Norway or England. 

She can herself build ships as cheaply as any country in the world. She can operate her ships as cheaply as any country in the world. 

She has no restrictions as to the manning of her crews and, as far as Iknow, has never had a case of abuse arising from this freedom which herlaws permit. 

Except for the St. Lawrence after October, there is no foreigndiscrimination in the insurance of her ships. 

Canada can go into the race for world-carrying trade unhampered. 

She has yet another advantage. With only two or three exceptions--afishing bounty, one or two mail contracts--the United States has notgiven and may never give government aid to ships. The Canadiangovernment does and does wisely! Ocean traffic may be as requisite toprosperity as rail traffic, and you can't give land subsidies to thesea. 

III

It is when one comes to consider Panama's influence on rail trafficthat it becomes apparent the Canal may divert half the Dominion'straffic to seaboard by Pacific routes. Why do you suppose that the biggrain companies of the Northwest want to reverse their former policy?Formerly the biggest elevators were built east, the medium-sized at thebig gathering centers, the smaller scattered out along the lineanywhere convenient to the grower. To-day, as far as Alberta isconcerned, the biggest elevators are going up farthest west. Why? Whydo you suppose that the big traction companies of Birmingham, Alabama, the big wire companies of Cleveland and Pittsburgh are looking over theCanadian West for sites? One Birmingham firm has just bought the sitefor a big plant in Calgary. Why do you suppose that the CanadianPacific Railway is building big repair shops at Coquitlam, and theCanada Northern at Port Mann? Why are both these roads also stationingbig repair plants at inland points, one at Calgary, the other supposedto be for Kamloops? It is not to help along the townsite lot booms inthese places. No one deprecates these town lots running out the areaof Chicago more than the railroads do. "Wild oats" hurt trade morethan they advertise the legitimate opportunities of a new country. 

Take a look at them!

From Fort William to Alberta is one thousand two hundred miles, toCalgary one thousand two hundred eighty, to Edmonton one thousand fourhundred fifty-one miles. From Alberta to Vancouver is slightly oversix hundred miles. Port William navigation is open only half the year. The Pacific harbors are open all the year. Manitoba and Saskatchewanwheat may be rushed forward in time for shipment before the close ofnavigation. Because Alberta is farther west and must wait longest forcars, very little of her wheat can be rushed forward in time; soAlberta wheat must go on down to St. John, another one thousand twohundred miles. Look at the figures--six hundred and fifty miles fromAlberta to the seaboard at Vancouver, two thousand four hundred milesfrom Alberta to sea-board at St. John! In other words, while a car ismaking one trip to St. John and back with wheat, it could make fourtrips to Vancouver. 

One year the crop so far exceeded the rolling stock of all therailroads in America that millions of dollars were lost in depreciationand waste waiting for shipment. This state of affairs does not applyto wheat alone nor to Canada alone. It was the condition with everycrop in every section of America. I saw twenty-nine miles of cottonstanding along the tracks of a southern port exposed to wet weatherbecause the southern railroads had neither steamers nor cars to rushshipments forward for Liverpool. In New York State and the belt ofmiddle west states thousands of barrels of fruit lay and rotted on theground because the railroads could not handle it. In an orchard nearmy own I saw two thousand barrels lie and go to waste because therewere no shipping facilities cheap enough to make it worth while to sendthe apples to market. Hill has said that if all the fruit orchards setout in western states come to maturity, it will require twenty timesthe rolling stock that exists today to ship the fruit out in time toreach the market in a salable condition. The same of wheat, especiallyin the West, where wheat is raised in quantities too great for anyindividual granary. A few years ago, when the northwestern states hadtheir banner crop, piles of wheat the size of a miniature town layexposed to weather for weeks on Washington and Idaho and Montanarailroads because the railroads had not sufficient cars to haul it away. 

The same thing almost happened in Canada one fall, though conditionswere aggravated by the coal strike. 

Now, then, where does Panama come into this story? What if therailroads did not carry the crop two thousand four hundred miles toseaboard in order to ship forward to Liverpool? What if they carriedsome of the big crops only six hundred miles west to sea-board on thePacific? They would have four times as many cars available to handlethe crop, or they could make just four times as many trips to Vancouverwith the same cars as to the Atlantic seaboard after the close ofnavigation in the East. It is apparent now why the Pacific ports havegone mad over the possibilities from Panama and are preparing forenormous traffic. Of course there are features of this diversion oftraffic to new channels which the lay mind will miss and only thetraffic specialist appreciate. For instance, there is the question ofgrade over the mountains. The Canadian Pacific Railroad meets thisdifficulty with its long tunnel through Mount Stephen. The Grand Trunkdeclares that it has the lowest mountain grade of all thetranscontinentals. The Great Northern uses electric power for itstunnels, and Los Angeles will tell you how its new diagonal San Pedroroad up through Nevada puts it in touch with the inland empire of themountain states by running up parallel with the mountains and notcrossing a divide at all. 

IV

Take a look at the subject from another angle! At the present rate ofhomesteading in the West, within twenty years the three prairieprovinces will be producing seven to nine hundred million bushels ofwheat a year. Possibly they will not do so well as that, but supposethey do; the three grain provinces of Canada will be producing as muchas the wheat produced in all the United States. Now, the United Statesto take care of its crop has practically seven transcontinentals and ahost of allied trunk lines like the Illinois Central, the New YorkCentral and the Pennsylvania; but when a big crop comes, the UnitedStates roads are paralyzed from a shortage of cars. Canada has onlythree big transcontinentals and no big trunk lines to take care of acrop that may be as large as the whole United States crop. Panamapromises, not a menace, but the one possible avenue of relief to therailroads. 

Of course eastern cities may fight a diversion of traffic to theseaboard of the West, but they can not stop it. Portland is alreadyone of the big grain shippers and will bid for a share of Canada'swest-bound grain, if Vancouver and Prince Rupert do not prepare for thenew conditions. 

Not only terminals but elevators must be prepared on the Pacific. Terminals mean more than railroad company tracks. They mean city-ownedtrackage, so that the tramp steamer seeking cargo at cheap rates shallhave every inducement and facility for getting cargo. They mean freesites for manufacturers, not sky-rocket boom prices that keep newindustries out of a city. Elevators and terminals have been announcedtime and again for Vancouver, but up to the present the announcementshave not materialized. Regular grain steamers must be put on, steamersgood for cargo of three hundred thousand and four hundred thousandbushels, as on the lakes, and with devices for such swift handling ashave made Montreal one of the best grain ports in the world, in spiteof high insurance rates and half-season. As long as there are noelevators at Vancouver, grain must be sacked. Sacking costs from fiveto six cents extra a bushel, and more extra in handling. The remedyfor this is for the Pacific ports to build elevators; and even whenthey haven't elevators, the saving in rates over and above the extrasacking has already been from eight to fourteen cents a bushel on grainbilled for Liverpool via the one hundred ninety miles of rail overTehuantepec, or via the Panama railroad, where bulk need not be brokentwice. 

An objection is that in the humid Pacific Coast winter climate there isdanger of grain heating. This has been overcome at Portland, andagainst this must be set the incalculable advantage that Pacific Coastports are open all the year round. One year, of 65, 000, 000 bushels ofgrain from the prairie provinces that passed over the Great Lakesforty-three per cent. Went out by way of Buffalo to American ports. Why? Because the glut was so great, the facilities so inadequate forthe enormous crop, the insurance so high, that the grain could not berushed seaward fast enough before close of navigation. ThroughVancouver during this very period there passed only 750, 000 bushels ofwheat. Why not more? No facilities. 

"We could have shipped millions of bushels of wheat to Liverpool by wayof Vancouver, " said the head of one of the largest grain companies inCalgary, "but there were simply no facilities to take care of it. On16, 000 bushels, which we shipped by way of Vancouver and Tehuantepec, we saved eight cents a bushel, as against Atlantic rates. You know howmuch handling the Tehuantepec route requires. Well, you can figurewhat we should save the farmer when Panama opens and the cargo neverbreaks bulk to Liverpool from our shore. "

Rates, not heating nor sacking, are the real cloud in the Canadian mindregarding Panama; and if Canada continues to stand twiddling her handsover rates when she should be hustling preparations, the inevitablewill happen--Portland, which sends millions of bushels of her own wheatto Liverpool, is ready to take care of Canada's traffic; so is Seattle. There is nothing these cities hope more than that Canada will continueto shun the question of rates. 

V

Let us look at this question of rates!

Ordinarily the rate on wheat from Chicago to New York is about ten totwelve cents a bushel; from New York to Liverpool about three to sevencents. That is, for one thousand miles (roughly) the rate by rail isten cents. For three thousand miles the rate by water is three cents. That is, one cent buys the shipper one hundred miles by rail. One centbuys him one thousand miles by water. Get out a chart and figure outfor yourself what the saving means on wheat via Panama to Liverpool ona crop--we'll say--of one hundred million bushels, Alberta's futureshare alone, leaving Saskatchewan and Manitoba crops to continue goingto Liverpool by Fort William and Montreal. You can figure the distanceto Liverpool via Panama twice or even three times as far as viaAtlantic ports, long as water rates are to rail, as one to ten, thesaving on a one-hundred-million-bushel crop for a single year is enoughto buy terminals, build elevators and run civic ships as Boston and NewOrleans and St. Louis and Kansas City and Portland are doing. ViaTehuantepec the saving was eight cents a bushel. At that rate yoursaving in a year would be eight million dollars for Alberta wheatalone, not counting dairy products, which are bound to become largereach year, and coal, which will yet bring the same wealth to Alberta asto Pennsylvania, and lumber, on which the saving is as one to four. 

Please note one point! It is a point usually ignored in allcomparisons of water and rail rates. While sea and lake are thecheapest method of transportation in the world, canals (unless someother nation builds them as the United States built Panama) are not socheap as sea and lake. When you add to the cost of canals, theinterest on cost, the maintenance, and charge that up againsttraffic--for it doesn't matter, though the government does maintaincanals; you pay the bill in the end--canal rates come higher than railrates. But in Canada's use of Panama, Canada is not paying for thebuilding of the canal; and the Lord pays the upkeep of the canal of thesea. 

Take this question of Vancouver rates, from which Canada is standingback so inertly! Take the latest rates issued! These are subject tochange and correction, but that does not affect final conclusions. Itcosts Manitoba and Saskatchewan from twelve to nineteen cents a hundredweight to send grain to Fort William, then during open navigation fromfour to five cents to reach seaboard at Montreal. It costs Alberta, being farther west, twenty-five cents to reach Fort William; but, as amatter of fact, her wheat can seldom reach Fort William before theclose of navigation; so she must pay twenty-five cents more to send herwheat on down to St. John, and five to six cents from St. John toLiverpool, or in all fifty-five cents. The Alberta rate is twenty-twocents plus a fraction to Vancouver, or forty-five cents to Liverpool. Now, Alberta wants to know: Why is she charged twenty-two and afraction cents for six hundred fifty miles west, and only twenty-fivecents for one thousand two hundred miles east?

There is the nub and the rub and the hub of the whole thing, and thediscrimination bears just as vitally on fruit and dairy products andlumber and coal as on wheat. It is a question that has to be settledin Canada within the next few years, or her west-bound traffic willbuild up Portland and Seattle instead of Vancouver and Prince Rupert. 

The whole problem of the effect of Panama is so new in Canada that datado not exist to make comparisons; but details have been carefullygathered by American ports, and the cases are a close enough parallelto illustrate what Panama means in the world of traffic to-day. Freight on a car of Washington lumber to New York is from three hundredninety-five to four hundred eleven dollars; by water, the freight isfrom one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. To bring acar of Washington fir diagonally across the continent to Norfolk costseighty-five cents a hundred weight. To bring it round by Panama coststwenty cents, or to ship the very same cargo from Norfolk toEngland--which many southern dealers are now doing--costs twelve tofifteen cents, including the handling at both ends. Dry goods from NewYork to Texas by water cost eighty-nine cents; by rail, one dollar andeighty-two cents. Oranges by rail from the Pacific to the Atlanticcost twenty-three dollars a ton; by water before the canal opened, breaking bulk twice, ten dollars, and through the canal, when bulk isnot broken, will cost only five to eight dollars. On oranges aloneCalifornia will save twenty million dollars a year shipping via Panama. The Balfour-Guthrie firm of Antwerp can ship a ton of groceries fromEurope to Los Angeles round the Horn for the same amount the SouthernPacific ships that ton from Los Angeles to San Francisco--namely, sixdollars plus. The rail rate on salt in Washington is eight dollarsseventy cents for eighty-eight miles; the river rate one dollar fiftycents. I could give instances in the South where cotton by rail coststwo dollars a bale; by water, twenty-five cents. 

If Panama works this great reduction, this revolution, in freights, will that not hurt the railroads? Ask the railroads whether they maketheir profit on the long or the short haul. Ask them whether highrates and sparse population or dense population and low rates pay thebetter dividends! Compare New York Central traffic receipts andSouthern Pacific on the average per mile! Now ships that are to usePanama plan pouring twenty million people into the Pacific Coast intwenty years. 

Will Canada share the coming tide of benefits? Only two things canprevent her: first, lack of preparation--too much "hot air" and notenough hustle; too much after-dinner aviating in the empyrean and notenough muddy mess out on the harbor dredge with "sand hogs" and "shovelstiffs"; then, second, lack of adequate labor to prepare. After-dinnerspeeches don't make the dirt fly. Canada wants fewer platitudes and agreat deal more of good old-fashioned hard hoeing. 

CHAPTER XI

TO EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY

I

It must have become apparent to the most casual observer thattransportation has been to Canada more than a system of exploitation bycapital. Transportation has been to Canada an integral part of hervery national life--which, perhaps, explains how with the exception ofextravagance incident to a period of great prosperity her railroadsystems have been founded on sound finance from bed-rock up. In spiteof huge land grants--in all fifty-five million acres--and in the caseof one railroad wild stock fluctuations from forty-eight to threehundred dollars--it is a question if a dollar of public money has everbeen diverted from roadbed to promoters' pockets. Certainly, in thecase of the strongest road financially in Canada, no director of theroad has ever juggled with underground wires to unload worthlesssecurities on widows and orphans. Railroad stocks have never been madethe football of speculators. Charters in the old days were juggledthrough legislatures with land grants of eight and twelve thousandacres per mile; but at that time these acres were worthless; and thesystem of land grants has for the last ten years been discontinued. Because railroads are a necessary part of Canada's nationaldevelopment, state aid of late has taken the form of loans, cash grantsand guarantee of bonds by provincial and federal governments. This hasgiven Canada's Railway Commission a whip handle over rates andmanagement, which perhaps explains why railroads in Canada have neverbeen regarded as lawful game by the financial powers that prey. Including municipal, provincial and federal grants, stocks and bonds, Canada has spent on her railroads a billion and a half. Includingcapital cost and maintenance, Canada has spent on her canals$138, 000, 000. On steamship subsidies, Canada's yearly grants havegradually risen from a few hundred thousands to as high as two millionsin some years. Nor does this cover all the national expenditure ontransportation; for besides the thirty-eight millions spent on dredgingand improving navigation on the St. Lawrence, twelve millions have beenappropriated for improving Halifax Harbor; and only recently federalguarantee for bonds to the extent of forty-three millions was accordedone transcontinental. This road was so heavily guaranteed byprovincial governments that if it had failed it would have involvedfour western provinces. Its plight arose from two causes--theextravagant cost of labor and material in an inflated era, and thedepression in the world money markets curtailing all extension. Workmen on this road were paid three to seventeen dollars a day, whowould have received a dollar and a half to four dollars ten years ago. In fact, the owners of the road themselves received those wages thirtyyears ago. Sections cost one hundred thousand dollars a mile whichwould formerly have been built for thirty thousand; and prairie gradingformerly estimated at six to eight thousand dollars a mile jumped totwenty and thirty thousand dollars. In coming to the aid of the CanadaNorthern, the government did no more than Sir John Macdonald'sgovernment did for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885, and theprosperity of the Canadian Pacific Railroad has amply justified thataid. 

Canada's transportation system has been a national policy from thefirst. Her first transcontinental she built to unify and bindconfederation. Her second two transcontinentals she launched to carrycommerce east and west, because the United States had built a tariffwall which prevented Canada moving her commerce north and south. Hercanal system to cut the distance from the Great Lakes to the seaboardand to overcome the rapids at "the Soo, " at Niagara and on the St. Lawrence--has simply resolved itself into an effort to move seaboardinland, on the principle that the farther inland the port the shorterthe land haul and the lower the traffic toll. Owing to the enormousincrease in the cargo capacity of lake freighters in recent years, grain ships reach Buffalo carrying three hundred thousand bushels ofwestern wheat, and Canada's Welland Canal has worked at a handicap. Until the Canal is widened, the big cargo carriers can not pass throughit, and the necessity to break bulk here is one explanation of morethan half Canada's western traffic going to seaboard by way of Buffaloinstead of Montreal. 

For years the proposal has been under consideration to connect theGreat Lakes with the St. Lawrence by way of a canal from Georgian Baythrough Ottawa River. This would be a colossal undertaking; for theregion up Mattawa River toward Georgian Bay is of iron rock, and tobuild a canal wide enough for the big cargo carriers would out-distanceanything in the way of canal construction in the world. Both partiesin Canada have endorsed what is known as the Georgian Bay Ship Canal;and estimates place the cost at one hundred and twenty-five millions;but traffic men of the Lakes declare if the big cargo carriers are tohave cheap insurance on this route, the canal will have to be wideenough to guarantee safe passage; and the cost would be twice thisestimate. 

On no section of her national transportation has Canada expended morethought and effort than improving navigation on the St. Lawrence. This, in its way, has been as difficult a problem for a people of sevenmillions as the construction of Panama for a people of ninety millions. Consider the geographical position of the St. Lawrence route! Itpenetrates the continent from eight hundred to nine hundred sixtymiles. Montreal, the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence, is thefarthest inland harbor of America with the exception of twoports--Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico and Port Nelson on Hudson Bay. Galveston is seven hundred miles from the wheat fields of Kansas. PortNelson is four hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba. Montreal is--roughly--a thousand miles from the head of the Lakes, onethousand five hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba, twothousand two hundred miles from the wheat fields of Alberta. Montreal's great advantage is in being situated so far inland. Herdisadvantages are from the nature of the St. Lawrence. First, the portis closed by ice from November to April. Second, the St. Lawrence isthe drainage bed of inland oceans--the Great Lakes. Third, it passesinto the Atlantic at one of the most difficult sections of the coast. South of Newfoundland are the fogs of the Grand Banks. North ofNewfoundland the tidal current beats upon an iron coast in storm andfog. To save detour, St. Lawrence vessels, of course, follow the routenorth of Newfoundland through the Straits of Belle Isle. 

When Canada began dredging the St. Lawrence in 1850, the channelaveraged a depth of ten feet. By 1888, the channel averagedtwenty-seven and one-half feet at low water. To-day a depth of thirtyto thirty-one feet has been attained. At its narrowest points the St. Lawrence has a steamship channel four hundred and fifty feet wide andthirty feet deep from side to side. In the days when high insurancerates were established against the St. Lawrence route, there waspractically not a lighthouse nor channel buoy from Tadousac to theStraits of Belle Isle. To-day between Montreal and Quebec areninety-nine lighted buoys, one hundred and ninety-five can buoys;between Quebec and the Straits, three light ships, eighty gas buoys, one whistling buoy, seventy-five can buoys, four submarine bell ships, and a line of lighthouses. Telegraph lines extend to the outer side ofBelle Isle, and hydrographic survey has charted every foot of theriver. In spite of these improvements, insurance rates are four to sixper cent. For lines to Canada, where they are one and one-half to twoand one-half to American ports. 

II

What with three transcontinentals, a complete canal system fromseaboard to the Great Lakes and an outlet for western traffic throughPanama, one would think that Canada had made ample provision fortransportation; but she has only begun. If she is to be the shortestroute to the Orient, she must keep traffic in Canadian channels and notdivide it with Panama and Suez. If she is to feed the British Empire, she must establish the shortest route from her wheat fields to theUnited Kingdom; and if she is to overcome the disadvantage of harborsopen only half the year, she must secure to herself some otheradvantage--such as access to the harbor having the shortest land hauland therefore the lowest freight rates in America. There is anotherconsideration. If when Canada is raising less than three hundredmillion bushels of wheat her transcontinentals are glutted with trafficand her harbors gorged, what will happen when her wheat fields raiseeight hundred million bushels of wheat? So Canada has cast about for ashorter route to Europe by Hudson Bay, and both parties in Dominionpolitics have backed the project. 

At a time when the food supply of Great Britain must be drawn almostsolely from her colonial possessions and the United States andArgentina, when her very national existence depends on the sea lanes tothat food supply being kept open--a route which shortens the distanceto that food supply by from one thousand five hundred to three thousandmiles becomes doubly interesting. 

Take a mental look at the contour of North America! All the big exportharbors of the Atlantic Coast are situated at the broadest bulge of thecontinent--Halifax, St. John, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimoreare all where the distance across the continent from the grain fieldsis widest. That means a long land haul. 

Take another look at the map--this time at a revolving globe! Anyschoolboy knows that a circle round a top is shorter at the ends thanaround its middle. The same of the earth. East and west distances areshorter the nearer you are to the Pole, the farther you are from theEquator. 

To England from Eastern Asia by Suez is fourteen to eighteen thousandmiles. To England from Asia by San Francisco is eleven thousand miles, by Seattle ten thousand miles, by Prince Rupert and Hudson Bay seven toeight thousand miles--representing a saving by the northern route ofalmost half round the world. 

Another point--take a compass! Stick the needle on Hudson Bay andswing the leg down round New York and up through the wheat plains ofthe Northwest. Draw lines to the center of your circle--to youramazement, you find the lines from the wheat plains to New York aretwice and thrice as long as the lines from the wheat plains to HudsonBay. In other words, Mr. Hill's wheat empire is one thousand milesnearer tidewater to Hudson Bay than to New York. The three prairieprovinces of Northwestern Canada are from four hundred (for Manitoba)to eight hundred miles (for Alberta) distant from ocean front on HudsonBay. They are from one thousand two hundred to two thousand fourhundred miles distant from tidewater at Montreal and New York andPhiladelphia. 

That is--if land rates were the same as water rates--the Hudson Bayroute to Europe would cut rates to England from the Orient by half, andfrom the wheat plains by the difference between one thousand twohundred miles and four hundred, and two thousand four hundred miles andeight hundred. But land rates are not water rates. From Alberta tothe Great Lakes is roughly one thousand two hundred miles. From theGreat Lakes to tidewater is roughly another one thousand two hundredmiles--either by way of Chicago-Buffalo, or Lake Superior-Montreal. For the one thousand two hundred miles from Alberta to the Great Lakes, grain shippers at time of writing pay a rate of twenty-two totwenty-five cents a bushel. For the one thousand two hundred milesfrom the head of the Lakes to Buffalo, the rate is three cents, fromthe head of the Lakes to Montreal five to six cents. In other words, the rate by land is just five to eight times higher than the rate bywater. 

To the argument--shorter distances by half by the northern route--isadded the argument cheaper rates as eight to one. 

That is why for twenty years Canada has gone sheer mad over a HudsonBay route to Europe. For obvious reasons the ports in Eastern Canadahave fought the idea and ridiculed the whole project as "an iron tonicfrom rusting rails" for the cows. That has not stopped the West. Grading is under way for the railroad to Hudson Bay from the grainplains. The Canadian government is the backer and the builder. Construction engines, dredges, steamers now whistle over the silencesof the northern inland sea; and Port Nelson, which for three centurieshas been the great fur entrepôt of the wintry wastes, now echoes topick and hammer and blowing locomotive intent on the construction ofwhat is known as the Hudson Bay Railroad. Should the war last foryears as wars of old, and Port Nelson become a great grain port as forthree centuries it has been the greatest fur port of the world, thenavies of Europe may yet thunder at one another along Hudson Bay'sshallow shores, as French and English fought there all through theseventeenth century. 

III

The Hudson Bay railroad hung in mid-air for almost a quarter century. It was regarded by the East as one of the West's mad impossible "boom"projects. Hadn't Canada, a country of seven million population, arailroad system of 29, 000 miles? Hadn't the Dominion spent$138, 000, 000 on canals heading traffic to the St. Lawrence? Why diverthalf that traffic north to Hudson Bay? Surely three greattranscontinental systems for a country with a population not largerthan New York State were enough. So argued the East, and a great manyconservative people in the West. Better make haste slowly, especiallyas it was becoming more and more evident that Canada would have to cometo the aid of two of the transcontinentals or see them go bankrupt. 

Then something happened. In fact, two or three things happened. 

The population, which had remained almost stationary for half acentury, jumped two million in less than ten years. Immigrants beganpouring in at the rate of four hundred thousand a year--they werecoming literally faster than the railroads could carry them. 

It sometimes takes an outsider's view of us to make us realizeourselves. Do you realize--they asked--that your three grain provincesalone are three times the area of the German Empire? Here is a grainfield as long as from Petrograd to Paris and of unknown width north andsouth. You have 480, 000, 000 acres of wheat lands. (The United Statesplants only 50, 000, 000 acres a year to wheat. ) You are cultivatingonly 16, 000, 000 acres. If there is a grain blockade now, what willthere be when you cultivate 100, 000, 000 acres? Yes--we know--you maysend Alberta grain west by Panama to Liverpool; but even with halfgoing by Panama, can the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence route take care ofthe rest? We hear about a constant shortage of cars; of elevatorsbulging with grain every September; of miles of lake cargo carrierswaiting to get in and out of their berths every October beforenavigation closes. Do you know--they asked--that you have five timesmore traffic--seventy-two million tons--going through your canals thanis expected for Panama? Do you know your rail traffic has jumped from36, 000, 000 tons in 1900 to 90, 000, 000 tons in 1912? If you sent200, 000, 000 bushels of wheat abroad in 1912 and 158, 000, 000 bushels in1914--a poor year--what will you send in 1920 with twice as much landunder wheat?

Two other comparatively unpondered facts were the hammers that drovethe argument for a Hudson Bay route home and forced the Canadiangovernment, irrespective of party, to back the project. The two factswere these--of Canada's agricultural exports eighty per cent. Went toGreat Britain. In spite of Canada spending a billion on hertransportation system, look at the fact well--it is a poser--only fromthirty-two to forty per cent. Of her export trade went out by Canadianrouting. Why was that? The Department of Railroads and Canals in itsannual report explains elaborately that sixty per cent. Of WesternCanadian grain went out by the Duluth-Buffalo route instead of Ft. William-Montreal because the lake rate of the former was cheaper asthree to six cents a bushel; but there is nothing in this argumentbecause Montreal is tidewater. Buffalo is not. To the cheaper Buffalorate you must add five cents to New York, proving the American routingreally two cents a bushel higher. Yet sixty per cent. Of WesternCanadian wheat went out by the costlier routing. Why? For the samereason that if you jam a bag too full it bursts. Because the Canadiantrans-continentals simply could not take care of the traffic blockadingtracks and ports and elevators. 

So in spite of the funny man's jokes about a Hudson Bay route being"iron tonic for the cows, " Canada launched on another all-red, to-the-sea railroad project. 

IV

What of the road itself?

I camped in the region a few years ago when the venture was still inair. The wheat plains terminate just west of Lake Winnipeg in aninterminable swamp region that has been the home of small furs from thebeginning of time. Saskatchewan River here literally widens to seventymiles of swamp, where you can barely find foot room dry soled except inwinter, when the marsh turns to iron ice twelve feet thick. Throughthis swamp country runs a ridge of rock northeasterly to Hudson Bay. Down this ridge run Nelson and Hayes and Churchill Rivers in asuccession of rapids and lakes, wild rough barren country, where youcan paddle in summer or course by dog-train in winter for four hundredmiles without sight of arable land or human dwelling. Along this ridgethe railroad runs from the wheat plains. It is a route destined forthe present to be barren of local traffic, but that also is true of thestretches along Lake Superior, or across the desert of the Southwest. Back from the ridge coal deposits have been found, and traces ofcopper, the mines of which have not yet been located. I myself sawchunks of pure copper from the Churchill River region the size of one'shand, but the veins from which the Indians brought it have not yet beenlocated. In time these great deposits may be worked as oil and coaland gold and silver have been taken from the American Desert, but forthe near future the Hudson Bay Railroad will carry little traffic butthat received at its terminals. 

The western terminal connecting with the wheat railroads is the Pas, anold, very old fur post of the French wood-runner days, on theSaskatchewan west of Lake Winnipeg. Here the railroad touches theCanada Northern and will doubtless later connect with the CanadianPacific Railroad and Grand Trunk. To any one who knows the region wellit seems almost a pity that the western terminus could not have beenGrand Rapids just northwest of Lake Winnipeg. Here is a fine woodedhigh park country with the unlimited water power of nine miles of acontinental river walled into a canyon half a mile wide. But thecountry west of Lake Winnipeg is as yet untouched by a railroad, thoughone can hardly conceive of a city not some day springing up at this thehead of Manitoba navigation. Eastward from the Pas to Hudson Bay it isfour hundred miles plus. Construction presents no great difficultiesexcept bridging, and that can hardly be compared to the difficulties ofcanyons in the Rockies and drouth in the desert. 

For years there was sharp contest whether the terminus on the Bayshould be Nelson or Churchill. Churchill is one of the best harbors inthe world, land locked, rock protected and fathomless; and Nelson isprobably one of the worst--shallow, with sand bars caused by theconfluence of the two great rivers emptying here, exposed to open sea. But the balance of favor on the Bay is how long can navigation be keptopen. Navigation is open a month earlier and a month later at Nelsonthan at Churchill; so the Dominion dredges have gone to work to makeNelson a fit harbor. 

How long is navigation open on the Bay? The Dominion government hassent three expeditions to ascertain this, though data might have beenobtained from the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company covering therecord of over two hundred years. Both the Archives and the officialexpeditions record the same--navigation opens between the middle of Mayand the first of June, and closes about the end of October. Seasonshave been known when navigation remained open till New Year's, but thiswas unusual. So as far as the opening and closing of navigation isconsidered, the Hudson Bay route is not far different from the GreatLakes. 

Hudson Bay itself is in area about the size of the Mediterranean. Because it is so far north the impression prevails that it is afloatwith ice. This is a false impression. Hudson Bay lies in the samelatitude as the North Sea and the Baltic, which are freighted withRussian and German commerce, but the climate, of course, is colder. The ice, which has given the great inland sea its ill repute, comesfrom the Pole and goes out through the Straits, seldom coming down theBay in the season of navigation. 

The Straits are the real crux of the Hudson Bay route to Europe, andthere is no narrow neck of land to cut a way of escape through to opensea as at Kiel and Cape Cod. The Straits have been navigated byfur-traders since 1670, but the fur-traders could take a week or amonth to the four hundred and fifty miles of Straits. They couldafford the time to float back and forward with the ice packs for sixweeks, and as many as seven vessels have been wrecked in ten years. Tothis tale of wreckage in the Straits, friends of the Hudson Bay routeanswer as follows:

First, the fur-traders' vessels were little discarded admiralty vesselsof small tonnage and rickety construction. Give us ice jammers such asthe Russians use on the Baltic, built narrow and high of oak, notsteel, to ride and crush down through the ice; and we can take care ofhigh insurance rates. Second, the Straits are still an utterlyuncharted sea four hundred and fifty miles long and from seventy to onehundred and fifty wide. This is not so long as the passage up the St. Lawrence. In such an inland sea as these Straits there must exist safeas well as unsafe channels, shelters, smooth reaches. Let us get theStraits charted and marked with buoys, with telegraph and cable points, and we shall navigate these four hundred and fifty miles. Thequestions of lighthouses need not bother the Straits, for the season ofnavigation is also the season of long daylight. 

V

Three advantages must be put on the credit side of the Hudson Bay route:

Distances to tidewater cut by half. 

Distances to Europe cut by a third. 

Rates reduced on grain as eight to one. 

Against these advantages must be placed three handicaps:

The danger of an uncharted sea in the Straits. 

High insurance. 

Necessity for enormous elevator and storage room. 

Mr. Hill's wheat country may begin wheat cutting in July. The CanadianNorthwest is lucky if it cuts before the eighth of August. Considerthe area of the big wheat farms! The whole of August is taken up withcutting and threshing. It is September or October, before the wheat ishauled to market, and it is November before it reaches seaboard. InNovember navigation on the Bay closes, and one hundred, perhaps twohundred million bushels of wheat must be held by the farmers, or theelevators, till May. This means interest on money out of the farmer'spocket for six months, or storage charges. On the other hand, therewill be no danger of stored wheat "heating" on the Bay. The cold thereis of too sharp a type, but this is a danger in many of theall-the-year-round open harbors. 

For twenty years the Hudson Bay railroad has been a project up in air. It is now a project on graded roadbed. Before these words are in printHudson Bay Railroad will be on wheels and tracks. Then the realdifficulty of the Straits will be faced, and probably--as Russia hasovercome the difficulties of the Baltic--so will the Canadian Northwestovercome the difficulties of this hyperborean sea. 

CHAPTER XII

SOME INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS

I

The contest between capital and labor in Canada has never become thatarmed camp divided by a chasm of hatred known in other lands. This fortwo reasons: First, the labor of yesterday is the capital of to-day, and the labor of to-day is the capital of to-morrow. Second, from thevery nature of Canada's greatest wealth--agricultural lands--thesubstantial proportion of the population consists of land owners, vested righters, respecters of property interests because theythemselves are property holders. The city dweller in Canada has beenfrom the very nature of things the anachronism, the anomaly, theparasite, the extraneous outgrowth on the main body of production. 

To take the first reason why capital and labor has not been divided inhostile camps in Canada, because the labor of yesterday is the capitalof to-day--I am not dealing with speculative arguments and opinions. Iam trying to set down facts. The owner of the largest fortune west ofthe Rocky Mountains in Canada began life with a pick and shovel. Theowner of the richest timber limits in British Columbia began at adollar and twenty-five cents a day piling slabs. The wealthiest meatpacker east of the Rocky Mountains was "bucking" and "breaking"bronchoes thirty years ago at twenty-five dollars a month. The packerwho comes next to him in wealth began life in Pt. Douglas, Winnipeg, loading frozen hogs. The richest newspaper man in Canada began life sopoor that he and his father hauled the first editions of their paper tocustomers on a hand sled. The four men who are to-day the greatestpowers in the railroad world of the Dominion began life, one as a stonemason, another as a lumber-jack, a third as a store keeper, a fourth asa telegraph operator. I do not think I am wrong in saying that therichest wholesaler in Canada reached the scene of his presentactivities with his entire earthly possessions in a pocket handkerchiefand a tin lunch pail. Of two of the most powerful men who ever cameout of the maritime provinces, one swept a village store for his livingat a dollar and fifty cents a week; another reached St. John, NewBrunswick, from his home in the backwoods, dressed in a home-made suit, which his mother had spun and carded from their own wool. The factthat the door of opportunity is open to the talented tends to preventthe opening of a chasm of hatred between capital and labor, though itmust be admitted that the warfare of capital and labor in the Stateswas developing in the era when Rockefeller and Carnegie were liftingthemselves from penury to the heights of financial power. 

Infinitely more important is the second reason. For a long time atleast the stanchest, strongest and stablest part of Canada's peoplemust be rooted to the soil. Up to the present half her population hasbeen rural, and less than three per cent. Absorbed by the factory, therailway, the labor union. Of her population of 7, 800, 000, only 176, 000workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety per cent. Of thesehave never been on strike. These figures alone explain why classhatred has never widened into a chasm dividing society in Canada. 

Why Big Business has never dominated government in Canada will be dealtwith in a later chapter, but if Big Business can not violate law withimpunity at one end of the social scale, it may be safely said thatanarchy will never violate law at the other end of the scale. 

At the same time there are symptoms appearing in the industrialconditions of Canada as gravely dangerous as anything in herimmigration problems. These need only be stated to be apparent. Wherewages have increased only ten per cent. In a decade, the cost of livinghas increased fifty-one per cent. --according to an official commissionappointed by the Ottawa government to report. Though Canada is anagricultural country, in food products alone, she pays ten milliondollars duty yearly. In one farming province ten million dollars'worth of food is yearly imported. Why is this? Why is Canada notproducing all the food she consumes? Because in certain sections onlyone settler goes out to the farm for four that live in the town. 

In the West, if you add up the population of all the cities, you willfind that one-fourth as many people live in the cities as in thecountry. In one province you will find that out of half a millionpopulation, three hundred thousand are living in cities and towns. This is the province that imports such quantities of food. It is alsothe province that has more labor trouble than all the other sections ofthe Dominion put together. Demagogues harangue the city squares for"the right to work, " "the right to live;" and mill owners, farmers, ranchers, railway builders go bankrupt for lack of men to work. It isthe province where the highest wages in the world are paid for everyform of labor. It is also the province where the greatest number ofpeople are idle, and neither you nor I nor anybody else, can convincethe idle stone mason who demands eight dollars a day that he keepshimself idle by not accepting half that figure. He is not dealing with"the robber baron" capitalistic class. He is dealing with the humblehouseholder who wants to build but can not afford workmen at eightdollars to five dollars a day, when he could afford workmen at fourdollars to a dollar and fifty cents a day. 

In 1800 only four per cent. Of the United States population was urban, and ninety-six per cent. Was rural. By 1910 only fifty-three per cent. Of the population was rural. Similarly of France and Great Britain. Sixty-five per cent. Of France's population is rural, and France isprosperous, and her people are the thriftiest and most saving in theworld. They with their tiny savings are the world's bankers. In theUnited Kingdom, the rural population has decreased from twenty-eightper cent. To twenty-three per cent. Of the total population. How aboutCanada? In 1891 thirty-two per cent. Of Canada's people lived in townsand cities. By 1901 thirty-eight per cent. Were town dwellers. By1914 the proportion in towns and cities is almost fifty per cent. 

The entire movement of population from country to city is reflected inthe astounding growth of the cities. In 1800 Montreal had a populationof seven thousand; in 1850, sixty thousand; by 1914, almost half amillion. Similarly of Toronto, of Winnipeg, of Vancouver. Fromnothing in 1800, these cities have grown to metropolitan centers ofthree hundred thousand, and their growth is the subject of feveredcivic pride. It ought to be cause of gravest alarm. In the history ofthe world, when men began to hive in a crowded cave life, those nationsbegan to decline. The results are always the same--an extortionaterise in the cost of food, the long bread line, charity where thereought to be labor and thrift, food riots, terrible tragic contrasts ofthe very rich and the very poor, all the vices that go with crowdedhousing. When charity workers investigated in Toronto and Montreal andWinnipeg, they found foreigners living forty-three in five rooms, twenty-four and fifteen and ten in one. Wherever such proportionsexist as to rural and urban population, ground rentals and valuesascend in price like overheated mercury. Men begin to buildperpendicularly instead of latitudinally. The cave life of theskyscraper takes the place of the trim home garden, and so greed ofgain--interest on extortionate real estate values--takes its toll ofhuman life and virtue, clean living and clean thinking. In one sectionof Canada during ten years, where there had been an increase of 574, 878in the country population, there was an increase of 1, 258, 645 in thecity population. Between 1901 and 1911, where 39, 951 newcomers settledin the country districts of Quebec, 313, 863 settled in the cities. Forone who chose life in the open, eight chose the tenement and thesweatshop. In 1901 Canada had 3, 349, 516 people living in the country, and 2, 021, 799 living in the cities. By 1911 there were 3, 924, 394living in the country, and 3, 280, 440 living in the cities. 

All this signifies but one thing to Canada--a swift transition fromagricultural status to industrial life; and whether such an artificialtransition bodes good or ill for a land whose greatest wealth lies inforest and mine and farm remains to be seen. For the time it hasresulted in a cost of living almost prohibitive to the very poor. Thesweatshop, the tenement, the Ghetto, the cave life hovel of Europe havebeen reproduced in the crowded foreign quarters of Canadian cities. Itmeans more than physical deterioration and moral contamination anddegeneration of national stamina. It means if Canada is to become agreat manufacturing country, feeding the human into the hopper of themachine that dividends may pour out, then she, the youngest of thenations, must compete against the oldest and the strongest--Germany, England, France, the United States; but if she is to be a greatagricultural country, then she has few peers in the whole world. Neither need she have any fear. The nations of the world must come toher, as they went down to Egypt, for bread. The man on his own land, be his work good or ill owns his own labor and takes profit or lossfrom it and can blame no one but himself for that profit or loss. Withthe renting out of a man's labor to some other man for that other man'sprofit or loss come all the discontent and class strife of industrialwarfare. Of industrial strife, of labor riots, of syndicalism, ofsocial revolution, of the few plundering the many, and the manythreatening reprisal in the form of legislation for the many to plunderthe few--of this dog-eat-dog, internecine industrial strife--Canada hashitherto known next to nothing; but she is at the parting of the ways. The day that a preponderance of her population becomes urban instead ofrural, that day a preponderance of her population must ask leave tolive from some other man--must ask leave to work for some other man, must ask leave to put the collar of the industrial serf on the neck asthe sign of labor owned by some other man. That day the preponderanceof Canada's population will cease owning their own vested rights andwill begin attacking the vested rights of other men. That dayplutocracy will begin plundering democracy, and the unfit will beginplundering the fit, and the many will demand the same rewards as thefew, not by winning those rewards and rising to the plane of the few, but by expropriating those rewards and pulling the few down to thelevel of the many. To me it means the sickling over a robustnationhood with the yellowing hue of a dollar democracy, the yellowinghue of gnashing social jealousy, the yellowing hue of moral putridityand decadence and rot. Hitherto every man has stood on his own legs inCanada. There has been no weak-kneed, puling greedy mob bellowing forpap from the breasts of a state treasury--demanding the rewards ofindustry and thrift which they have been too weak and shiftless anduseless to earn. But Canada is at the parting of the ways. The daymore men live in the cities demanding food than live on the soilproducing it--which God forfend--that day Canada goes down in thewelter of industrial war and social upheaval. 

Hitherto no statesman has arisen in Canada who remotely sensed theimpending evil, much less made an effort to avert the doom that hascome like a cloud above the well-being of every modern country. Theman who makes it a national policy in Canada to attract the settler tothe soil rather than to the city hovel will in the future annals ofthis great nation be rated above a Napoleon or a Bismarck. [1] This tome is the crux of the very greatest and most acute problem confrontingthe Dominion's future destiny. 

II

In a country where organized labor numbers only 176, 000 out of7, 800, 000, labor problems can hardly be set down as acute. They do notsplit society asunder as they do elsewhere. I am glad of it. I amglad that in Canada up to the present labor is only capital in theinchoate. I should be sorry if the day ever came when labor was theserf, and capital the robber baron, as--let us frankly acknowledge--itis elsewhere. 

In this connection three points should be emphasized. Whether theyshould be praised or blamed I do not know; but the points are these:

The Senate in Canada being appointed for life has acted as a breakwaterof adamant and reinforced concrete against all labor or capitallegislation that has arisen from the passions of the moment. More thanonce when labor or capital, holding the whip handle in the Commons, would have forced through hasty legislation as to compensation, as toliability, as to non-liability--the leaders in the Commons have saidfrankly in caucus to the Senate: We are dependent on the vote for ourplaces here. You are not. We are letting this fool bill through, butwe are letting it through because we know you will kill it. Kill it!

In the next place, "the twilight zone" between federal and provincialpower in matters of labor has proved an unmitigated curse. When thesyndicalists of Europe, known in America as the Industrial Workers ofthe World, succeeded in tying up railroad construction and almostruining the contractors of two transcontinental systems in BritishColumbia a few years ago, endless delay in terminating an impossiblesituation occurred through the province trying to throw the burden ofdealing with the matter on the Dominion, and the Dominion trying tothrow the burden on the province. Both province and Dominion wereafraid of the labor vote. The losses caused during that three months'strike in the construction camps indirectly afterward fell on theCanadian people; for the embarrassed transcontinentals had to come tothe Dominion government for aid; and the Dominion government is, afterall, the people. 

"I pray God, " said a Cabinet Minister in Ottawa to me at the time, "that Imperial Federation may never come; if it adds to our woesanother 'twilight zone' as to Dominion and Imperial powers. "

III

It seems almost ungracious in this connection to say that Canada'sfar-famed Arbitration Act has been overrated. That it has accomplishedsome good and settled many controversies no reasonable person willdeny, but it is not a panacea for all ills. 

Here is the difficulty as to arbitration. It is not unlike thesituation of Belgium regarding Germany in the great war. Arbitrationdepends on "a scrap of paper. " What if some one tears up "the scrap ofpaper"? What if one side says there is nothing to arbitrate? Twentyyears ago--yes--wages, hours, conditions of labor--could have beenarbitrated; but to-day the contest in the industrial world is often notfor wages and hours of labor. 

"Demand three dollars a day for an eight-hour day, to-day, " I heard anIndustrial Worker of the World shout in a Vancouver strike. "Demandfour dollars a day to-morrow, till you secure four dollars a day for afour-hour day--till your ascending wages expropriate capital--take overcapital and all industry to be operated for labor. "

In the great struggle between the railroads and the I. W. W. 's inBritish Columbia, Canada's Arbitration Act fell down hopelessly simplybecause there was nothing to arbitrate. Labor said: We shall paralyzeall industry, or operate all industry for labor's profit solely. Capital said--you shall not. There the two tied in deadlock formonths, and there all arbitration acts must often tie in deadlock inindustrial warfare. That is why I hope industrial warfare will neverbecome a part of Canada's national life. That is why I hope and prayevery Canadian settler will become a vested righter by owning andoperating his own acres till Death lays him in God's Acre. 

IV

In a country where the public debt is only $350, 000, 000 or forty-fivedollars per head, and the national income is $1, 500, 000, 000 from farm, factory, forest and mine--or two hundred dollars per head and thatfairly well distributed--for the present there is little to fear ofsocial revolution. It is not the social revolution that I fear forCanada. It is the canker of social hate and jealousy precedingrevolution. If fifty per cent. Of the population can be kept owningand operating their own land, that social canker will never infectCanada's national life as a whole. 

[1] Thomas Jefferson desired such a rural future for the United Statesand deplored the day of cities and industrialism. It came, nevertheless. --THE EDITOR. 

CHAPTER XIII

HOW GOVERNED

I

Reference has been made to the facts that Big Business has up to thepresent been unable to get control of the reins of government in Canada, that the courts have been kept comparatively free of political influenceand that the doors of underground politics are not easily pried open bycorruption. Why is this? Canadians would fain take unction tothemselves that it is owing to their superior national integrity, butthis is nonsense. 

Exuberant forest growth is always characterized by some fungus and dryrot. How has Canada escaped so much of this fungus excrescence ofrepresentative government? To get at the reason for this it is necessaryto trace back for a little space the historic growth of Canada's form ofgovernment. We speak of Canada's constitution being the British NorthAmerica Act. As a matter of fact, Canada's constitution is more than anact--more than a dry and hard and inflexible formula to which growth mustconform. Rather than plaster cast into which growing life must fititself, Canada's constitution is a living organism evolved from her ownmistakes and struggles of the past and her own needs as to the present. Canada's constitution is not some pocket formula which somedoctrinaire--with apologies to France--has whipped out of his pocket toremedy all ills. Canada's constitution is like the scientific data ofempirical medicine; it is the result of centuries' experiments, none theless scientific because unconscious. 

One need not trace the growth of government to the days prior to Englishrule. When England took over Canada by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, themain thing to remember is that the French-Canadian was guaranteed thefree exercise of his religion. This--and not innate loyalty to an aliengovernment--was the real reason for Quebec refusing to cast in her lotwith the revolting American colonies. This was the reason for Quebecremaining stanch in the War of 1812, and this is the reason for Quebecto-day standing a solid unit against annexation. We must not forget whata high emissary from Rome once jocularly said of a religious quarrel inCanada--Quebec was more Catholic than the Pope. 

Following the military régime of the Conquest came the Quebec Act of1774. --Please note, contemporaneous with the uprising of the Americancolonies, Canada is given her first constitution. The Governor andlegislative council are to be appointed by the Crown, and full freedom ofworship is guaranteed. French civil law and English criminal law areestablished; and the Church is confirmed in its title to ecclesiasticalproperty--which was right when you consider that the foundations of theChurch in Quebec are laid in the blood of martyrs. Just here intervenesthe element which compelled the reshaping of Canada's destiny. When theAmerican colonies gained their independence, there came across the borderto what are now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and Ontario some fortythousand Loyalists mainly from New England and the South. TheseLoyalists, of course, refused to be dominated by French rule; so theConstitutional Act was passed in 1791 by the Imperial Parliament. Thepeople of Canada were represented for the first time in an assemblyelected by themselves, The Governor-General for Quebec--Lower Canada--andthe Lieutenant-Governor for Ontario--Upper Canada--were both appointed bythe Crown. The Executive, or Cabinet, was chosen by the Governor. Theweakness of the new system was glaringly apparent on the surface. Whilethe assembly was elected in each province by the people, the assembly hadno direct control over the Executive. Downing Street, England, chose theGovernors; and the Governors chose their own junta of advisers; and allthe abuses of the Family Compact arose, which led to the Rebellion of '37under William Lyon MacKenzie in Ontario and Louis Papineau in Quebec. Judges at this time sat in both Houses, and Canada learned the bitterlesson of keeping her judiciary out of politics. As the power ofappointment rested exclusively with the Governor and his circle, it canbe believed that the French of Quebec suffered disabilities and prejudice. 

Hopelessly at sea as to the cause of the continual unrest in her coloniesand undoubtedly sad from the loss of her American possessions, Englandnow sent out a commissioner to investigate the trouble; and it is to thefindings of this commissioner that the United Kingdom has since owed herworld-wide success in governing people by letting them govern themselves. People sometimes ask why England has been so successful in governingone-fifth of the habitable globe. She does not govern one-fifth thehabitable globe. She lets much of it govern itself; and it was LordDurham, coming out as Governor-General and high commissioner at thistime, who laid the foundations of England's success in colonizing. Hisreport has been the Magna Charta and Declaration of Independence of theself-governing colonies of the British Empire. 

First of all, government must be entrusted to the house representing thepeople. Second, the granting of moneys must be controlled by thosepaying the taxes. Third, the Executive must be responsible not only tothe Crown but to the representatives of the people. It is here theCanadian system differs from the American. The Secretary, or CabinetMinister, can not hold office one day under the disapproval of the House, no matter what his tenure of office. 

The Act of 1840 resulted from Durham's report. Upper and Lower Canadawere united under one government--which was really the forerunner ofconfederation in '67. The House was given exclusive control of taxationand expenditure. Nothing awakened Canada so acutely to the necessity offederating all British North America as the Civil War in the UnitedStates, when the States Right party fought to secede. Red River andBritish Columbia had become peopled. The maritime provinces settled byFrench from Quebec and New England Loyalists were alien in thought fromUpper and Lower Canada. The cry "54-40 or fight, " the setting up of aprovisional government by Oregon, the Riel Rebellion in Manitoba, therush of California gold miners to Cariboo--all were straws in a restlesswind blowing Canada's destiny hither and whither. Confederation was nota pocket theory. It was a result born of necessity, and the mainprinciples of confederation embodied in the British North America Act hadbeen foreshadowed in Durham's report. Durham himself suffered the fateof too many of the world's great. He had come out to Canada to settle abitter dispute between the little oligarchy round the royal Governor andthe people. He sided with neither and was abjured by both. Thesentences against the patriots he had set aside or softened. Theroyalists he condemned but did not punish. Both sides poured chargesagainst Durham into the office of the Colonial Secretary in England, Durham died of a broken heart, but his report laid the foundation ofEngland's future colonial policy. 

II

By the British North America Act of 1867, passed by the ImperialParliament, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick came into theUnion. Later Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, the Northwest Territoriesand British Columbia joined. Up to the present Newfoundland has stoodaside. Under the British North America Act, Canada is ruled to-day. 

There is first the Imperial government represented by a Governor-General. The commandant of Canada's regular militia is also an Imperial officer. 

There is second the federal government with executive, legislative andjudicial powers; or a cabinet, a parliament, a supreme court. 

There are third the provincial governments with executive, legislativeand judicial powers. 

Details of each section of government can not be given here; but severalfacts should be noted; for they explain the practical workings ofCanada's system. 

The Witenagemot--or Saxon council of wise men--stands for Canada's idealof a parliament. It is not so much a question of spoils. It is not somuch a case of "the outs" ejecting "the ins. " I have never heard of anyparty in Canada taking the ground, "Here--you have been in long enough;it's our turn. " I have never heard a suggestion as to tenure of officebeing confined to "one term" for fear of a leader becoming a Napoleon. If a leader be efficient--and it is thought the more experienced he is, the more efficient he will be--he can hold office as long as he lives ifthe people keep on electing him. 

The Cabinet--or inner council of advisers to the Governor-General--mustbe elected by the people and directly responsible to the House. At itshead stands the Premier. 

Within her own jurisdiction Canada's legislature has absolute power. Ifher treaties or acts should conflict with Imperial interests, they wouldbe disallowed by the Imperial Privy Council as unconstitutional, or ultravires. Likewise of the provinces, if any of their acts conflicted withfederal interests, they would be disallowed as ultra vires. 

Should the Governor-General differ from the Cabinet in office, he musteither recede from his own position or dismiss his advisers and send themto the country for the verdict of the people. Should the people endorsethe Ministry, the Governor-General must either resign or recede from hisstand. I know of no case where such a contingency has arisen. AGovernor-General is careful never to conflict with a Ministry endorsed bythe electorate. 

Once a man has received an appointment to a position in the civil serviceof Canada he must keep absolutely aloof from politics. This is not a lawbut it is a custom, the violation of which would cost a man his position. 

The Parliament in the Dominion consists of the Commons and the Senate. The Commons are elected by the people. The Senators are appointed by theGovernor-General, strictly under advice of the party in office, for life. Senators must be thirty years of age and possess property over fourthousand dollars in value above their liabilities. The Senator residesin the district which he represents. The Commoner may represent adistrict in which he does not reside, and, on the whole, this is more ofan advantage than a disadvantage. It permits a district that has specialneeds to choose a man of great character and power resident in anotherdistrict. If he fails to meet the peculiar needs of that district, hewill not be reelected. If he meets the needs of the district which herepresents he has the additional prestige of his influence in anotherelectoral district. A Senator can be removed for only four reasons:bankruptcy, absence, change of citizenship, conviction of crime. 

At a time when the United States is so generally in favor of the electionof Senators by direct vote, when England is trending so preponderately infavor of curbing the veto power of the House of Lords, it seemsremarkable that Canada never questions the power of the Senator appointedfor life. 

Though officially supposed to be appointed by the Governor-General, theSenator is in reality never appointed except on recommendation of theprevailing Cabinet which means--the party in power. The appointmentsbeing for life and the emolument sufficient to guarantee a good livingconformable with the style required by the official position, the Senatorappointed for life--like the judge appointed for life--soon shows himselfindependent of purely party behests. He is depended upon by theCommoners to veto and arrest popular movements, which would be inimicalto public good, but which the Commoner dare not defeat for fear of defeatin reelection. For instance, a few years ago a labor bill was introducedin the Commons as to compensation for injuries. In theory, it was allright. In practice, it was a blackmail levy against employers. TheCommoners did not dare reject it for fear of the vote in one particularprovince. What they did was meet the Senate in unofficial caucuses. They said: We shall pass this bill all three readings; but we depend onyou--the Senate--to reject it. We can go to the province and say wepassed the bill and ask for the support of that province; but because thebill would be inimical to the best interests of other provinces, wedepend on you, the Senate, to defeat it. And the Senate defeated it. 

When older democracies are curtailing the strength of veto power in upperhouses, it is curious to find this dependence of a young democracy onveto power. Instead of the life privileges leading to an abuse ofinsolence and Big Business, up to the present in Canada, life tenureindependent of politics has led to independence. The appointments beingfor life guarantees that many of the incumbents are not young, and thisimparts to the Upper House that quality of the Witenagemot most valued bythe ancient Saxons--the council of the aged and the experienced and thewise. 

Active, aggressive power, of course, resides chiefly with the Commons. Representation here is arranged according to the population and must bereadjusted after every census. "Rep. By Pop. " was the rallying cry thateffected this arrangement. No property qualification is required fromthe member of the House of Commons, but he must be a British subject. Hemust not have been convicted of any crime, minor or major. 

Franchise in Canada is practically universal suffrage. At least itamounts to that. Voters must be registered. They must be Britishsubjects. They must be twenty-one years of age. They must not beinsane, idiots or convicts. They must own real property to the value ofthree hundred dollars in cities, two hundred dollars in towns, onehundred and fifty dollars in the country; or they must have a yearlyincome of three hundred dollars. A farmer's son has the right to votewithout these qualifications, evidently on the ancient Saxon presumptionthat a free-holder represents more vitally the interests of a countrythan the penniless floater, who neither works nor earns. In other words, the carpet-bag voter does not yet play any part in Canadian politics. Bad as the corruption is in some cases among the foreigners, when votesare bought at two dollars to five dollars, the point has not yet beenreached when a carpet-bag gang of boarding-house floaters and saloonheelers can be transferred from a secure ward to a doubtful ward and sosubmerge the political rights of permanent residents. 

Judges can not vote in Canada. In fact, they can take no part, direct orindirect, by influence or speech, in politics. This was one of thethings fought out in the '37 Rebellion and forever settled. Canada couldnot conceive of a man who had been a judge being nominated for thepremiership or as Governor. Of course, when Liberals are in power, asadvisers of the Governor-General, they recommend more Liberals forjudgeships than Conservatives; and when Conservatives are in power, theyrecommend for judgeships more Conservatives than Liberals. I think ofattorneys who were penniless strugglers in the Liberal ranks of mychildhood days in Winnipeg who are to-day dignified judges; and I thinkof other attorneys, who were penniless strugglers in Conservative rankswho have been advanced under the Borden regime to judgeships; but thepoint is, having been so advanced, they pass a chasm which they can neverretrace without impeachment--the chasm is party politics. They areindependent of popular favor. They can be impeached and displaced. Theyare forever disgraced by defalcation in office. By observing the dutiesof office, they are secure for life and held in an esteem second only tothat of the Governor-General. 

You will notice that it is all more a matter of public sentiment than alaw; of custom than of court. That is what I mean when I say thatCanada's constitution is a vital, living, growing thing, not a deadformula by which the Past binds and impedes the Present and the Future. 

There must be a session of the Dominion Parliament once every year. Fiveyears is the limit of any tenure of office by the Commons. Every fiveyears the Commoners must go to the country for reelection. Usually thegovernment in power goes to the country for reendorsement before the termof Parliament expires. 

Laws on corrupt practices are very strict and what is more--they aregenerally enforced. The slightest profit, direct or indirect of amember, vacates his seat. Corruption on the part of underlings, of whichthey have known nothing, vacates an election. A member of Parliament cannot participate directly or indirectly in any public work benefiting hisdistrict. He is not in it for what he can get out of it. He is in itfor what he can give to it. Expenses of election to a postage stamp mustbe published after election. 

The methods of conducting business in Parliament need not be discussedhere, except to say that any member can introduce a bill, any member canpresent a petition from the humblest inhabitant of the commonwealth, andany member can speak on a motion provided he gains the floor first. 

Judges are appointed and paid by the Dominion government, not by theprovincial. Decisions by provincial judges--appointed by the Dominiongovernment--can be appealed to a Supreme Court of Canada. Judges can beremoved only on petition to the Governor-General for misbehavior. 

Dominion taxes in Canada are indirect--on imports. As stated elsewhere, the main power in Canada is vested in federal authorities. Only localaffairs--education, excise, municipal matters, drainage, local railroads, etc. --are left to the provinces. 

Every man in Canada is supposed to be liable for military training ifcalled on, but the number of men annually drilled is about fiftythousand. Hitherto a man appointed from the Imperial Forces has been thecommanding general in Canada. It need scarcely be said that if Canada isto hold her own in Imperial plans, if she is to become a power in thestruggle for ascendency on the Pacific, her equipment both as to landforces and marine are ridiculously inadequate. They are the equipment ofa member in Imperial plans who is skulking his share. 

Provincial courts are, of course, administered by provincial officers;but these are appointed by the Governor-General advised by the Cabinet ofthe federal party in power. The Lieutenant-Governor of the province isappointed by the Governor-General advised by the party in power. He ispaid by the Dominion. Judges of superior courts must be barristers often years' good standing at the bar of their provinces. All judges andjustices of the peace must have some property qualification. Rascalswith criminal records are not railroaded into judgeships in Canada. Iknow of a judge in San Francisco who until the advent of the woman voteliterally held his position by reason of his alliance with the whiteslavers. I know of another judge in New York who held his position inspite of a criminal record by reason of the fact he could get himselfelected by the disreputable gangs. These things are virtually impossibleunder the Canadian system. In the future the system may prove too rigid. At the present time it works and keeps the courts clear of politicalinfluence. 

Juries are not so universal in Canada as in the United States. In civilcases, where the points of law are complicated, the tendency is to letthe judge guide the verdict of the court. 

III

There is one feature of Canadian justice which sentimentalists deplore. It is that the lash is still used for crimes of violence against theperson and for bestiality. This is not a relic of barbarism. It is theresult of careful thought on the part of the Department of Justice--thethought being that it is useless to speak to a man capable of bestialityin terms not articulate to his nature; and the fact remains thatcriminals of this class seldom come back for second terms of punishmentfor the same sort of crimes. 

If you ask why few homicides are punished in the United States, and fewescape in Canada--I can not answer. Political expediency, party heelers, technicalities--the dotting of an i, the crossing of a t, the omission ofa comma--have no effect whatsoever on Canadian justice. The courts arenever defied, and the law takes its course. 

The law not only takes its course relentlessly but the pursuit of crimeliterally never desists. This feature of Canadian justice is a rudesharp shock to the unruly element pouring in with the new colonists. AMontana gunman blew into a Canadian frontier town and in accordance withcustom began "to shoot up" the bar rooms. In twenty-four hours heawakened from his spree under sentence of sixty days' hard labor. "Letme out of this blamed Can-a-day, " he cursed. "Who'd 'a' thought oftakin' any offense from touchin' up this blamed dead town?"

A Texas outlaw succeeded in inducing a young Englishman of the verdantlybumptious and moneyed sort to go homestead hunting with him. The Indianssaw the two ride into the back country. In spring only the Texan cameout. I forget what his explanation of the Englishman's disappearancewas. In any other country under the sun, who would have ridden twohundred miles beyond nowhere to investigate the story of an outlaw abouta young fool, who had plainly been a candidate for trouble? But an oldIndian chief meandered into the barracks of the nearest Mounted Policestation, sat him down on the floor and after smoking countless pipes letdrop the fact that two settlers had "gone in" and only "one man--he comeout. " That was enough. Two policemen were detailed on the case. Theyrode to the abandoned homesteads. In the deserted log cabin nothingseemed amiss, but some distance away on a bluff a stained ax was found;yet farther away a mound not a year old. Beneath it the remains of theEnglishman were found with ax hacks in the skull. It was now a yearsince the commission of the crime and the murderer was by this far enoughaway. Why put the country to the expense of trailing down a criminal whohad decamped? Those two young Mounted Policemen were told to find thecriminal and not come back till they had found him. They trailed himfrom Alberta to Montana, from Montana to the Orient, from China back toTexas, where he was found on a homestead of his own. Now the proof ofmurder was of the most tenuous sort. One of the Mounted Policemendisguised himself as a laborer and obtained work on an adjoininghomestead. It took two years to gain the criminal's confidence andconfession. The man was arrested and extradited to Canada. If Iremember rightly, the trial did not last a week, and the murderer washanged forthwith. 

Instances of this kind could be retailed without number, but this onecase is typical. It is something more than relentlessness. It is morethan keeping politics out of the courts. It is a tacit nationalrecognition of two basic truths: that the protection of innocence is thebusiness of the courts more than the protection of guilt; that havingdelegated to the Department of Justice the enforcement of criminal law, Canada holds that Department of Justice responsible for every infractionof law. The enforcement is greatly aided by the fact that criminal lawin Canada is under federal jurisdiction. An embezzler can not defalcatein Nova Scotia, lightly skip into Manitoba and put both provinces toexpense and technical trouble apprehending him. In the States I once wasannoyed by a semi-demented blackmailer. When I sent for thesheriff--whose deputy, by the way, hid when summoned--the lunatic steppedacross the state border, and it would have cost me two hundred dollars tohave apprehended him. As the culprit was a menace more to the communitythan to me, I went on west on a trip to a remote part of Alberta. I hadnot been in Alberta twenty-four hours before the chief constable calledto know if this blackmailer of whom he had read in the press, could beapprehended in Canada. The why of this vigilance on one side of the lineand remissness on the other, I can no more explain than why Americanindustrial progress is so amazingly swift and Canadian industrialprogress is so amazingly slow. 

There is very little wish-washy coddling of the criminal in Canada. While in the penitentiary he is cared for physically, mentally andspiritually. When released, he is helped to start life afresh; but if hekeeps falling and falling, he is put where he will not propagate hisspecies and hurt others in his back-sliding. 

"I regret, " said a judge in a Winnipeg court, "to sentence such ayouthful offender. " The prisoner was a young foreigner who attackedanother man viciously in a drunken brawl. "But foreigners must learnthat Canadian law can not be broken with impunity, " and he sent the youngman to what was practically a life sentence. 

"Hard on the poor devil, " said a court attendant. 

"Yes, " retorted a westerner who lived in the foreign settlement, "butit's an all-fired good thing for Canada. "

The case of a judge in British Columbia is famous on the Pacific Coast. It was in the old days of murder and robbery on the trail to the golddiggings of Cariboo. In the face of the plainest evidence the jury hadrefused to convict. The astounded judge turned amid tense silence infury on the prisoner. 

"The jury pronounces the prisoner not guilty, " he said, "and I stronglyrecommend him to go out and cut their throats. "

Reference has been made to an Imperial court official assassinated by anangry Hindu conspirator in a Vancouver court room. The assassin wassentenced to death nine days from the commission of the crime, and if anynewspaper had attempted to make a head-line affair out of it, or "to trythe jury" for trying the prisoner, the editors and owners of that paperwould have been sent to jail for contempt. 

IV

The gradual rise of the two political parties dates from the adoption ofa high tariff by the Conservatives after confederation. Prior to 1837Canadian parties consisted simply of the Outs and the Ins. The advancedRadicals, who formed themselves into a party to oust the Family Compact, called themselves Liberals. The entrenched oligarchy called themselvesConservatives. After confederation, by force of circumstances, namelythe refusal of tariff concessions from the United States, theConservatives, who were in power, became the high tariff party. TheLiberals, when out of power, advocated tariff for revenue only. Also byforce of circumstances until the transfer of the balance of power fromQuebec to the New West, the party in office had a tendency to play forthe French Catholic vote of Quebec; the party out of office coquettedwith the ultra-Protestant vote of Ontario. This naturally worked towardthe provincial governments being Liberal, when the federal government wasConservative; and vice versa. The Liberal in provincial politics wasLiberal in federal politics, and the Conservative in federal politics wasConservative in provincial politics; but the policy has always been forthe Outs first to attack the Ins provincially--to win the outposts beforeattacking the entrenched power of the federal government. Before SirJohn Macdonald's Conservative administration was defeated there was along series of victories by the Liberals in the provinces, and before SirWilfred Laurier's Liberal government was defeated the Conservatives hadcaptured the most of the provincial governments. With the Conservativesprofessing high tariff as economic salvation and the Liberals regardinghigh tariff as economic damnation, it seems almost heresy to set downthat the line of demarkation between the two great parties in practice isreally one of Outs and Ins. The only tariff reductions made by theLiberals were on British imports, and this did not lower the average onBritish imports to the level of the average duty on American imports;when the high tariff Conservatives came back to power, the duties werenot shoved to higher levels. This, too, has all been by force ofcircumstances. When both parties would have grasped eagerly at tariffreductions from the United States, those concessions could not beobtained. When the tariff concessions were offered, Canada had alreadybuilt up such intrenched interests of her own in factory, mill andtransportation that she was not in a position to accept the offer. Laurier did not see this, but many of his party did and refused tosupport him in reciprocity. 

At time of writing, to an outsider, there is in practice no differencebetween the two parties; but this can hardly remain a permanentcondition. As long as the war lasts both parties will be a unit insupport of Imperial defense. The day the war is over Canada may have toconsider, not Imperial, but Dominion defense; and this is bound to splitthe parties up on entirely new lines. The French Nationalists are forstanding aside from all European entanglements and resting secure underthe Monroe Doctrine. The two million Americans in the West may beexpected to advocate the same policy. The British and the Canadians ofBritish descent in Canada may be expected to take an aggressive stand foractive self-defense; for defense may be one of Canada's next big problems. 

Up to the present, Canadians have considered it a superiority that theirconstitution--the British North America Act--could be so easily amended. As long as Canada is peopled by Canadians, it is an advantage to workunder a constitution that may be modified to suit the growing need of agrowing nation, but one is constrained to ask what if Galicians andGermans ever acquired the balance of voting power in Canada? There arehalf as many German-born Germans in the United States as there arenative-born Canadians in Canada. What if such a tide of Germanimmigration came to Canada? Would it be an advantage or a disadvantagethat the country's constitution could be so easily amended by theImperial Parliament? Or more striking still, suppose the Hindu, aBritish subject, began peopling Western Canada by the million. Supposethe Hindu, a British subject, voted in Canada for a change in theconstitution! Can one conceive for one minute of the Imperial governmentrefusing to amend the British North American Act? Canadians sometimesrefer to the American Constitution as too fixed and inelastic for modernconditions. They sometimes wonder how certain famous constitutionallawyers could make a living without the American Constitution tointerpret and argue before the Supreme Court, but Americans and Canadiansare to-day working out from different angles a great world experiment inself-government. It remains to be seen which experiment will stand thestress of world-convulsing changes. We need not theorize. Time willarbitrate. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

I

Some one has said that the life of a nation is but the shadow of theunits composing it; or the life of a nation is but the replica of thelife of the individuals in it. Massed figures on gross exports are butthe total thrift of a multitude of toiling men. Wheat production tofeed a hungry empire is but one farmer's tireless vigilance multipliedby hundreds of thousands of other farmers. What manner of man is theCanadian behind all these figures attesting material prosperity? Whatmanner of being is the Canadian woman, his partner? Is the Canadian aSocialist, or an Individualist? Does he believe that each man shouldstand upon his own feet or lean upon a state crutch? There is no statechurch in Canada. Then, what part does religion play? Is it a shadow, or a substance? Is it a refuge for the unfit and the weak to shift theresponsibility for their own failure to the fatalism of the will ofGod; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right forright's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live inhis home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in willpower; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Whyhasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature neverwas more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quietrural scenery of the maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to thefar-flung epic of the fenceless prairies and the Homeric grandeur ofthe mountains. Why are quiet rural beauty and illimitable freedom andlofty splendor not reflected in poem and novel and ballad and picture?The Canadian may answer--We go in more for athletics than aesthetics:we are living literature, not writing it. In our snow-covered prairiesedged by the violet mist, lined in silver and pricked at night by thediamond light of a million stars, we are living art, not painting it. That our mountains are dumb and inarticulate, that our forests chantthe litany of the pines untranslated to the winds of heaven, and thatour cataracts thunder their diapasons inimitable to art--is no proofthat though we are dumb and inarticulate, we are not lifted andtransported and inspired by the wondrous beauties of the heritage Godhas given us. The Canadian may say this theoretically, but is hestrengthened in body and made greater in soul by the mystic splendorsof his country? In a word, has the Canadian found himself? He is notself-conscious, if that be what is meant by finding self; and that maybe a good thing; for self-consciousness is of one of two things--thevanity of femininity in its adolescence, or the picayune peckingintrospection of natures thrown in on self instead of exuberantlyspending energy in effort outside of self. Self-consciousness is toomuch ego, whether it be old or young; and the devil must be cast outinto the swine over the cliff into the sea, before there can enter intomen, or nations, that Spirit of God which makes for great service inDestiny. 

Has Canada found herself?

II

Without any brief for or against Socialism as a system, it may be saidthat for many years Socialism will play little part in Canadianaffairs. In areas like Germany, where the population is three hundredand ten per square mile; or France, where the population is one hundredand eighty-nine per square mile; or England, where the population isover five hundred per square mile; or Saxony, where the population iseight hundred and thirty per square mile--one can understand the claimof the most rabid and extreme Socialist that the great proportion ofthe people can never by any chance own their own freehold; that thegreat proportion of the toilers are not having a fair chance in an openfield; but in Canada where there are millions of acres untaken, wherethe population is not quite two to the square mile, it is impossible toraise the cry that every man, and any man, can not have all thefreehold he is manly enough to go out and take. The grievance becomespreposterous and a joke. There is more land uninhabited and open topreemption in Canada than is owned in freehold. There are more forestsstanding in Canada than have been cut. There are more mines than thereare workmen, and only the edge of Canada's mineral lands have beenexplored. There are more fish uncaught than have ever been hooked. Ihave heard soap-box orators in Canada rant about the plutocratsgobbling the resources of the country; and I have gone to their officesand shown them on the map that any man could become a plutocrat bygoing out and gobbling some more, provided he had brains and brawn andgobbled hard enough instead of gabbled; and I have been answered thesevery words: "But we don't want that. We want to inflame the masseswith hatred for the classes so that the laborer will take over allindustry. " When I have pointed out that there are "no masses" nor"classes" in Canada--that all are laborers, I have been met with ablank stare. 

The case is a standing joke in one province of a man who as an agitatorused to rave at "the British flag as a bloody rag. " The police werenever quite sure whether to arrest him for treason or let him blow offsteam and exhaust. They wisely chose the latter course. Prosperitycame to the town. The man sold his small bit of real estate forsomething under a hundred thousand. He didn't stay to divide hisunearned increment among his fellow agitators. He hied him to retireto the land where "the flag was a bloody rag. " This, of course, provesnothing for or against Socialism as a system. There was a Judas amongthe apostles; but it illustrates the point that Canada is still at thestage where every man may become a capitalist, a vested righter, theowner of his own freehold. When every man may have a vested propertyright in a country--not as a gift but as the reward of his own effortin a fair field with no favors--it is a fairly safe prophecy that thevested rights earned and held by the fit and the strong will never behanded over as a gift to the unfit and the weak and the don't-trys. The savings of the man who has not squandered his earnings on saloonsand reckless living will never be taxed to support in idleness--even anidle old age--the feckless who have spent on stomach and lust whatother men save. Sounds hard; doesn't it, in the face of almostuniversal nostrums for the salvation and propagation of the useless?But it is like Canada's climate. Perhaps the climate has a good dealto do with it. Hard it may be; but the issue is clean-cut and crystalclear--work, or starve; be fit, or die; make good, or drop out; here isa fair field and no favors! Gird yourself as a man to it, and nopuling puny whining for pity!

Can Canada keep a fair field and no favors? Her destiny as a powerdepends on the answer to that question. In every city in Canada to-dayare growing up crowded foreign quarters peopled by men and women whohave never had a fair field--with class hate in their hearts forinherited social wrongs; derelicts, no-goods, unfits, born unfitthrough no fault of their own. Have they no claim? Can Canada as afoster mother redeem such as these? Her destiny as a power depends onthe answer to this question, too. These people are coming to her. Inevery city are tens of thousands of them. She needs these people. They need her. Will it be a leveling down process for Canada or aleveling up process for them? Before the nineties the average numberof inhabitants per house in urban Canada was three. By 1901 theaverage was up to four. By 1911 it was up to five. In the crowdedcenters as many as twenty a room have been found. If this sort ofthing continue and increase, Socialism will become a factor in Canada. It will become a factor because every man or woman who has not had afair chance has a right to demand a change to a system that will give afair chance. Canada's economic stability and freedom from socialunrest will depend on getting her foreign denizens out to the land. Unfortunately high tariff fosters factory; and factory fosters cheapforeign labor; and cheap foreign labor as inevitably leads to socialferment as heat sours milk. 

III

What part does religion play in Canada? In marked distinction to theUnited Kingdom and the United States, Canada is a church-going nation. You hear a great deal of the orthodoxy of the Britisher; but if you goto England and go to his church, even to a festal service such asChristmas, you will find that he leaves the orthodoxy mostly to theclergy and the women. I have again and again seen the pews of the mostfamous churches in England with barely a scattering of auditors inthem. Of churches where the hard-working manual toiler may be foundside by side with the cultured and the idle and the leisured--there isnone. You also hear a great deal about the heterodoxy of the American;but if you go to his church--with the exception of the Catholic--youfind that he, too, is leaving his heterodoxy to the clergy and thewomen. A few years ago it was almost impossible to gain entrance to ametropolitan church in the United States, where the preacher happenedto be a man of ability or fame. Try it to-day! Though church musichas been improved almost to the excellence of oratorios or grand opera, unless it be a festal service like Easter or Christmas, the pews areonly sparsely filled. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say thisis as true of the country districts as of the city. All through NewEngland are countless country churches that have had to be permanentlyclosed for lack of attendance. But between the churches of the UnitedKingdom and the United States is a marked difference--it is the air ofthe preacher. The Englishman is positively sublime in hisunconsciousness of the fact that he had lost a grip of his people. TheAmerican knows and does not blink the fact and is franticallyendeavoring by social service, by popular lectures, by music, bycurrent topics, by vehement eloquence to regain the grip of his people;and it must cut a live manly man to the quick to know that his bestefforts on salvation are too often expended on dear old saintly ladies, who could not be damned if they tried. 

Now the curious thing about Canada, which I don't attempt in the leastto explain, is this: whether the preacher pules, or whines, or moons, or shouts to the rafters, or is gifted with the eloquence to touch "thequick and the dead"; whether the music be a symphony or a doloroushorror of discords; whether there be social service or old-fashionedtheology; whether, in fact, the preacher be some raw ignorant striplingfrom the theological seminary, or a man of divine inspiration andpower--whatever is or is not, if the church is a church, from Halifaxto Vancouver, you find it full. I have no explanation of this fact. Iset it down. Canadians are a vigorously virile people in theirchurch-going. They do it with all their might. I sometimes think thatthe church does for Canada what music does for continental nations, what dollar-chasing and amusement do for the American nation--opensthat great emotional outlet for the play of spiritual powers andidealization, which we must all have if we would rise above thegin-horse haltered to the wheel of toil. "The Happy Warrior" in Watts'picture dreamed of the spirit face above him in his sleep. So mayCanada dream in her tireless urgent business of nation-making; andreligion may visualize that dream through the church. 

Understand--the Canadian is no more religious than the American or theBritisher. He drinks as much whisky as they do light wines and beer. He "cusses" in the same unholy vernacular, only more vigorously. Hestrikes back as quickly. He hits as hard. He gives his enemy onecheek and then the other, and then both feet and fists; but theCanadian goes to church. One of the most amazing sights of the newfrontier cities is to see a church debouching of a Sunday night. Thepeople come out in black floods. In one foreign church in Winnipeg isa membership of four thousand. I think of a little industrial city ofOntario where there is a church--one of three--with a larger membershipthan any single church in the city of New York. 

Canadians not only go to church but they dig down in their pockets forthe church. In little frontier cities of the West more is being spenton magnificent temples of worship than has been spent on some Europeancathedrals. Granted the effects are sometimes garish and squarish anddollar-loud. This is not an age when artisans spend a lifetime carvinga single door or a single facade; but when a little place--of sayseventeen thousand people--spends one hundred thousand dollars on achurch, somebody has laid down the cash; and the Canadian is not a manwho spends his cash for no worth. That cash represents something forwhich he cares almightily in Canadian life. What is it? Frankly I donot know, but I think it is that the church visualizes Canada's idealin a vision. We love and lose and reach forward to the last. Where?We toil and strive and attain. To what end? Our successes fail, andour failures succeed. Why? And love lights the daily path. But whereto? Religion helps to visualize the answers to those questions forCanada. 

Another characteristic about religion in Canada, which is veryremarkable in an era of decadence in belief, is that the church is aman's job. Unless in some of the little semi-deserted hamlets in thefar East, you will find in Canada churches as many men as women. Inthe West you will find more men than women. The church is notrelegated to "the dear sisters. " Shoulder to shoulder men and womencarry the burden joyfully together, which, perhaps, accounts for thesupport the church receives from young men. An episode concerning "thedear sisters" will long be remembered of one synod in Montreal. A poorlittle English curate had come out as a missionary to the Indians ofthe Northwest. Such misfits are pitiable, as well as laughable. Whenyou consider that in some of these northern parishes a man can reachhis different missions only by canoe or dog-train, that the missionsare forty miles apart, that the canoe must run rapids and the dog-traindare blizzards--an effeminate type of man is more of a tragedy than acomedy. I think of one mission where the circuit is four hundred milesand the distance to railroad, doctor, post-office, fifty-five miles. This little curate had had a hard time, though his mission was an easyone. When his turn came to report, his face resembled the reflectionon an inverted teaspoon. Hardship had taken all the bounce and laughand joy and rebound out of him. The other frontier missionaries grewrestless as he spoke. One magnificent specimen, who had been a gamblerin his unregenerate days, began to shuffle uneasily. When the littlecurate whined about the vices of the Indians, this big frontiermissionary pulled off his coat. (He explained to me that it was "a hotnight"; besides it "made him mad to hear the poor Indians damned fortheir vices, when white men, who passed as gentlemen, had more. ")Finally, when the little curate appealed to "the dear sisters to raisemoney to build a fence, " the big man could stand it no longer. Heripped his collar loose and sprang to his feet. "Man, " he thundered, "pull off your coat and build your own fence and don't trouble the Lordabout such trifles. I'm rich on thirty dollars a year. When I needmore, I sell a steer. Don't let us bother God-Almighty with suchunmanly puling and whining, " and much more, he said--which I have toldelsewhere--which brought that audience to life with the shocks of agalvanic battery. One of the most successful Indian missionaries inCanada is a full blood Cree. It does not detract from his services inthe least that if in the middle of his prayers he hears the wild geesecoming in spring, he bangs the Holy Book shut and shouts for thecongregation to grab their guns and get a shot. 

The virile note in religious life is one of the chief reasons for itssupport in Canada; and I have been amused to watch English and Americanfriends who have gone to Canada first indifferent to the church-goinghabit, then touched and finally caught in the current. Does the habitreact on public life? Undoubtedly and most strongly! Catholic Quebecand Protestant Ontario for years literally dictated provincial andfederal policies; but, with the shift of the balance of power from Eastto West, that shuffling of Catholic against Protestant and vice versahas ceased in Canadian politics; and those newspapers that gained theirsupport playing on religious prejudice have had to sell and begin witha new sheet. At the same time no policy could be put forward inCanada, no man could stay in public life against the voice of thedifferent churches. If it were not invidious, examples could be givenof public men relegated to private life because they violated theprinciples for which the church stands. The church in Canada is not adead issue. It is not the city of refuge for the failures and themisfits. It voices the ideals of Canadian men and women busynation-building. It has been cynically said that the church inEngland, as far as public men are concerned, lays all its emphasis onthe Eighth Commandment, and none at all on the Seventh; and that thechurch in the United States lays all its emphasis on the SeventhCommandment and none at all on the Eighth. I do not think a politiciancould be a special acrobat with either of these Commandments and stayin public life in Canada. The clergy would "peel off" those coats androll up their sleeves and get into the fight. There would be a lot ofmud-slinging; but the culprit would go--as not a few have gone inrecent years. 

IV

Deeply grounded, then, so deeply that the Canadian is unconscious ofit, put the belief in the economic principle of vested rights! Stillmore deeply grounded, put a belief in religious ideals as a workinghypothesis! Does any other factor enter deeply in Canadians' every-dayliving? Yes--next to economic beliefs and religious beliefs, I shouldput love of outdoor sport as a prime factor in determining Canadiancharacter. 

Professional sport has comparatively little place in Canada, thoughprofessional baseball has gained a firm foothold in the Northwest, where the American influence is strong, while the International Leaguereaches over the boundary in the East. But it is the amateur whoenjoys most favor. If a picked team of bank clerks and office handsand young mechanics in Winnipeg practises up in hockey and comes downfrom Winnipeg and licks the life out of a team in Montreal or Ottawa, or gets licked, the whole population goes hockey mad. This churchlynation will gamble itself blue in the face with bets and run up gatereceipts to send a professional home sick to bed, and I have known ofemployers forgiving youngsters who bet and lost six months' salary inadvance. Montreal will cheer Winnipeg just as wildly when Winnipegwins in Montreal, as Winnipeg will cheer Montreal when Montreal wins inWinnipeg. It is not the winning. It is the playing of clean goodsport that elicits the applause. The same of curling, of football, ofcricket, of rowing, of canoeing, of snowshoeing, of yachting, ofskeeing, of running. When an Indian won the Marathon, he was lionizedalmost to his undoing. When hardest frost used to come, I knew a dearold university professor, who would have considered it sin to touch theace of spades, who used to hie him down to the rink with "bessom" and"stane" and there curl on the ice till his toes almost froze on hisfeet; and one Episcopal clergyman used to have hard work holding backhot words of youthful habit on the golf links; and his people loved himboth because he golfed and because he almost said things, when hegolfed. They would rather have a clergyman who golfed and knew "a cussword" when he saw it, than a saint who couldn't wield a club and mightfaint at such words as golf elicits. 

In one of Canada's best rowing crews, a millionaire merchant was theacting captain of the crew and among his men were a printer, aninsurance canvasser, a bank clerk, a clerk in a dry goods store. Inone of the most famous hockey teams was a bicycle repairer. Sport inCanada, as in the United States, is the most absolute democracy. I canthink of no man in Canada who has attained a permanently good place insocial life through catering to women's favor with dandifiedmannerisms, though not a few have got a leg up to come most terriblecroppers; but I do think of many men to whom all doors are permanentlyopen because they are such clean first-rate sportsmen. Until the lastten years of opulent fevered prosperity came to the Dominion, Canadamight have been described as a nation of athletes. This does not meanthat Canada neglected work for play. It means that she worked sorobustly because she had developed strength on the field of play. Three truths are almost axiomatic about nations and sport. It is saidthat a nation is as it spends its leisure; that nations only winbattles as their boys have played in their youth; that man's work isonly boy's sport full grown. The religious little catechist may winprizes in the parochial school; but if he doesn't learn to take kicksand give them good and hard, in play, he will not win life's prizes. Fair play, nerve, poise, agility, act that jumps with thought, therobust fronting of life's challenge--these are learned far more on thetoboggan slide where you may break your neck, in a snowshoe scamper, than poring over books, or in a parlor. I do not know that Canada hasanalyzed it out, but she lives it. Young Canada may be bumptious, raw, crude. Time tones these things down; but she is not tired before shehas begun the race. She is not nerve-collapsed and peeved andinsincere. 

V

As to why Canada has no distinctive and great literature--I confessfrankly I do not know. England had only Canada's population when aShakespeare and a Milton rose like stars above the world. Scotland andIreland both have a smaller population than Canada, and their balladsare sung all over the world. Canada has had a multitude of sweetsingers pipe the joys of youth, but as life broadened and deepenedtheir songs did not reach to the deeps and the heights. Somethingarrested development. They did not go on. Why? It may be thatliterature rises only as high as its fountain springs--the people; andthat the people of Canada have not yet realized themselves clearlyenough to recognize or give articulation to a national literature. Itmay be that Canada is living her literature rather than writing it. IfScott had not found appreciation for his articulation of Scottish lifeand history in poems and novels, he would not have gone on. In fact, when Byron eclipsed Scott in public favor as a poet, Scott stoppedwriting poetry. It may be that Canada has not become sufficientlyunified--cemented in blood and suffering--to appreciate a literaturethat distinctively interprets her life and history. It may be that shehas been swamped by the alien literature of alien lands, for thewriters of English to-day are legion. Or it may be the deeper causebeneath the dearth of world literature just now--lack of that peace, that joyous calm, that repose of soul and freedom from distraction, that permits a creator to give of his best. 

One sometimes hears Canadians--particularly in England--accused ofcrudity in speech. I confess I like the crudities, the rawness, thecolloquialisms. They smack of the new life in a new land. I should besorry if Canadians ever began to Latinize their sentences, to "can"their speech and pickle it in the vinegar pedantry of the peevedstudy-chair critic. Because it is a land of mountain pines andcataracts and wild winds, I would have their speech smack always oftheir soil; and I would bewail the day that Canadians began to measuretheir phrases to suit the yard stick of some starveling pedant in awriter's attic, who had never been nearer reality than his ownstarvation. I can see no superiority in the Englishman'scolloquialisms of "runnin', " "playin', " "goin', " to the Canadian's "cutit out, " "get out, " "beat it. " One is the slovenliness of languor. The other is the rawness of vigor. 

VI

When one comes to consider woman in a nation's life, it is always alittle provoking to find "woman" and "divorce" coupled together; forthere never was a divorce without a man involved as well as a woman. The marriage tie is not easily dissolved in Canada. Divorce pleas mustgo before a committee of the Federal Senate. Without legal fees, itcosts five hundred dollars to obtain a divorce in Canada; with fees, one thousand dollars; so that Canada's divorce record is 1, 530 for7, 800, 000 of population in 1913; or one divorce for every 5, 000 people. This seems a laudably low record, and Canada takes great credit toherself for it. I am not sure she should, for her system makes divorcea luxury available only to the rich. Divorce is not a cause. It is aresult. I am not sure that people ill-mated do not do more harm totheir children staying together than separating; and marriage is notfor the man or the woman, but for the race. This opinion, however, would be considered heresy in Canada, and a great many factors conspireto help woman's status in the Dominion. To begin with, there are halfa million more men than women. A woman need never give herself socheaply as to spend her life paying for her precipitancy. She is not asuperfluous. Another point in which some other countries could emulateCanada is in the protection of women and children. A woman ill-matedhas the same protection under the law as though she were single. Infringement of her rights is punishable with penalties varying fromseven years and the lash to death. A man living on a woman's illicitearnings is not coddled by ward heelers and let off with light bail, asin certain notorious California cases. He is given the lash and sevenyears. Such offenders seldom come up for sentence twice. 

On the other hand, compared to punishments for property violations, theprotection of women and children is ridiculously inadequate. A manabducting a girl is liable to sentence of five years; a man stealing acow, to sentence of fourteen years. Counterfeiting coin is punished bylife imprisonment. Misusing a ward or employee is punished by twoyears' imprisonment. This remissness is no index to a subordinateposition by women in Canada. It is rather simple testimony to the factthat before the influx of alien peoples certain types of crime wereunknown. 

There is little of sex unrest in Canada. In fact, sex as sex is not inevidence, which is a symptom of wholesome relationships. Perhaps Ishould say there is little of that feminine discontent and revolt sostrident in older lands. This I attribute to two facts: an overplus ofmen, and boundless opportunity and freedom for the expenditure ofunused energies. In certain sections of England, women over-balancedmen before the war as ten to one. What the over-balance will be afterthe war, one can only guess. When women who want to marry are notmarried, or married to types different from themselves--which musthappen when the sexes are in disproportion--unhappiness must result. Woman is at war, she knows not with what. When women who are full ofenergy and ability have nothing to do, there is bound to beunhappiness. In Canada a woman has perfect freedom to do anything shechooses. Her opportunity is limited only by her own personality. Whatshe wills, she may, if she can. If she can't, then her quarrel must bewith self, not with life. Children can not choose their parents; but awoman can choose the parent of her child; and when her choice is highand wide and happy, it bodes better for the race than when conditionshave forced her into an alliance that must be more or less of an armedtruce on a low plane. 

As an example of the fairness of marriage laws in Canada, if afur-trader marry an Indian woman--according to the custom of the tribe, simply taking her to wife without ceremony, she is his legal heir, andher children are his legal heirs. This was established in a famoustrial in the courts of Quebec. A trader became contractor andpolitician. When prosperity came, he discarded his Indian wife andmarried an English girl. On his death the Indian wife and childrensued for his estate. It was awarded to them by the courts andestablished a precedent that guaranteed social status to the childrenof such unions. This is one of the things that easterners can notcomprehend. I have never heard the opprobrious phrase "squaw man" usedon the Canadian frontier; and descendants of the MacKenzies, theIsbisters, the Hardistys, the Strathconas, the Macleans, theMacLeods--blush, not with shame but pride, in acknowledging the Indianstrain of blood. 

The fact that some of the western provinces notoriously ignore awoman's property rights in her husband's estate--is sometimes quoted toprove the unfairness of Canada's laws to women. I am no defender ofthose lax property laws. They ought to, and will soon, be changed; butlet us give even the devil his dues; and the devil in this case was themad real estate speculation. When thousands of adventurers poured infrom everywhere and began buying and selling and reselling property, itimpeded quick turn overs to reserve the absent wife's third. Sometimes, as in the case of a famous actor, the wives numbered four. Ordinarily in Canada--certainly in eastern provinces--a third is thewife's reserve unless she sign it away. How four wives could each havea third was a poser for the speculator and the knot was cut by ignoringthe wife's claims. Now that the fevered mad mania of speculation isover this remissness of the law in two provinces will doubtless beremedied. 

CHAPTER XV

EMIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

I

You can ascribe the different characteristics of different nations tothe topography of their native land--up to a certain point only. Beyond that the difference becomes one of psychology and soul ratherthan geography, and that is why nations hold to a large extent theirdestiny in their own hands. Undoubtedly the unfenced illimitablereaches of the prairie have reacted on the human soul, unshackling itfrom the discouragements of failure in the past and have given a senseof freedom that explains the dauntless optimism of the West; but if thepeople who went to the West had not had the courage to face thehardships of the pioneer, their optimism could not have triumphed overdifficulties. The very qualities that sent pioneers forth on the trailto the setting sun guaranteed their success as empire builders. 

Japan was long an island empire, but it was only when the soul of thatempire awakened to the Western Renaissance that Japan became a worldpower. The German people existed on the map many centuries before theycame into existence as a nation. It was only when the national ideacame that Germany became a power. Likewise of England as mistress ofthe seas--the source of her commerce and wealth. England had been aseagirt nation from the beginning of time. It was only when by thedefeat of the Armada England learned what mastery of the sea meant thatshe shot into front rank as a great world power. 

How does all this bear on Canada? It is a puzzling question. Ask theaverage Canadian why the development of Canada has been slow; and hedenies that it has been slow; or he proves that it is a good thing ithas been slow; or he compares Canada's progress with that of some othercountry which has gone too fast, or too slow. All this is a mereclever dodging of fact. Blinking one's eyes to a fact doesn'teliminate the fact. 

II

What are the facts?

De Monts' first charter to Arcadia dates 1605. The first charter forVirginia plantations comes in 1606, and the first New England charterdates the same year. The United States and Canada are both fertile. They have almost the same area in square miles. One has a populationof over ninety millions and a foreign commerce of four billions. Theother has a population of about eight millions and a foreign commerceof one billion. One raises from seven hundred to nine hundred millionbushels of wheat; the other, from two hundred to three hundredmillions. One produces thirty million metric tons of steel a year; theother, less than a million tons; one is worth a hundred and fiftybillion dollars, the other perhaps ten billions. 

It is explained that the northern belt of Canada lying in a semi-arcticzone should hardly be included in comparisons with the area of theUnited States lying altogether in a temperate zone; but if cultivationis proving one thing more than another, it is that Canada's arcticregion recedes a little every year, and her isothermal lines run alittle farther north every year. To put it differently, it is beingyearly more and more proved that the degree of northern latitudematters less in vegetable growth than heretofore thought, if the arableland be there; for the simple reason that twenty hours of sunlight fromMay to September force as rapid a growth as twelve to fifteen hours'sunlight from March to September, and the product grown in the Northmay be superior to that grown farther south. Wheat from Manitoba isbetter than wheat from Georgia. Apples from Niagara have a quality notfound in apples--say from the Gulf states. All things will not grow innorthern latitudes. You can't raise corn. You can't raise peaches. Idoubt if any apple will ever be found suitable for the northwesternprairie. At any rate, it has not yet been found. 

Half a century ago the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company inperfectly good faith testified before a committee of the ImperialCommons that farming could never be carried on in Rupert's Land, orwhat are now known as Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. He provedthat grain could not be grown there. I recall the day when the idea offall wheat west of Lake Superior elicited a hoot of derision. I havelived to wander through fields of six hundred acres north of theSaskatchewan. Thirty years ago any one suggesting settlement on PeaceRiver, or at Athabasca, would have been regarded as a visionary fool. Yet wheat is ground into flour on Peace River, and the settler is atAthabasca; and soft Kansas fall wheat sent to Peace River has by a fewyears' transplanting been transformed into Number One Hard springwheat. Canada's arctic belt has shrunk a little each year, and herisothermal lines gone a little farther north. The only limit to growthin the North Country is the nature of the soil. I am not, of course, speaking of the Arctic slope, but I am of the great belt of wild landnorth of Saskatchewan River. And where the arable land stops, thegreat fur farm of the world begins---a fur farm which may change butcan never be exhausted. Of course, Canada has a great northern belt ofland that is not arable, but in that belt are such precious minerals aswere discovered in the Yukon. Land that can't be plowed isn'tnecessarily waste land, and Canada's great northern belt is partlybalanced by the desert belt of the Southwest in the United States--theperpetual Indian land of Uncle Sam. 

III

With this argument--you come back just where you began. The twocountries were first settled almost contemporaneously. Their area isnot far different. They are both fertile. Each has greatbelts--having spent months in each belt, I hesitate to call thembarren--of land that can not be plowed. Why has one country progressedwith such marvelous rapidity; and the other progressed in fits andstarts and stops? Why did a million and a half Canadians--orone-fourth the native population--leave Canada for the United States?The Canadian retort always is--for the same reason that two millionAmericans have left the United States for Canada--to better theirposition. But the point is--why was it these million and a halfCanadians found better opportunities in the United States than inCanada? Opportunities knock at every man's door if he has ears tohear, but they are usually supposed to knock loudest and oftenest inthe new land. It is a truism that there are ten chances on thefrontier for a man to rise compared to one in the city. One canunderstand American settlers thronging to Canada. They have used andmade good the opportunities in their own land. Now they are sendingtheir sons to a land of more opportunities. The Iowa farmer who hassucceeded on his three hundred and twenty acres sends forth his sonseach to succeed on his one hundred and sixty acres in Canada; or hesells his own land for one hundred dollars an acre and forthwith buys athousand acres in Canada. When the farmers of Ontario flocked toWisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota and the two Dakotas, their landwas worth thirty per cent. Less than when they bought it. To-day thatsame land is worth one hundred per cent. More than for what they soldit. 

It is easy to look over another land and diagnose its ills. AnyCanadian will acknowledge that Ireland's population dropped from8, 500, 000 in 1850 to 4, 400, 000 in 1908 solely owing to mismanagement, if not gross misgovernment; but he will not acknowledge that his owncountry lost a million and a half people from the same cause. Irelandlost her population at the rate of one hundred thousand a year forforty years, and that lost population helped to build up some of thegreatest cities in the United States. The Irish vote is to-day adominant power solely owing to that population lost to Ireland. It isno exaggeration to say that from 1880 to 1890 Canada lost herpopulation to the United States at a higher rate than one hundredthousand a year. Why?

Go back a little in history! The most pugnacious United EmpireLoyalist that ever trekked from the American colonies to Ontario andNova Scotia and New Brunswick would hardly deny that Canada was grosslymisgoverned under the French régime. Laborers were forced to workunpaid on fortifications, on roads, on governors' palaces. The farmerwas taxed to death in tithes to the seignior. Shipping was confined toFrench vessels owned by royal favorites. Fishing was permitted onlyunder a license. The fur trade was a corrupt monopoly held by a closedring round the Royal Intendant. New France was so mis-governed thatthe sons of the best families took to the woods and the _Pays d'enHaut_--to which fact we owe the exploration of three-quarters of thecontinent. 

And the most pugnacious Loyalist will hardly deny that under theBritish régime from 1759 to Durham's Report in 1840 the mismanagementwas almost as gross as the misgovernment under the French. If any oneentertain doubts on that score, let him look up the record on grants ofthousands of acres to favorites of the Family Compact; on peculationsof public funds in Quebec by irresponsible executives; on mistrials ofdisorders in the Fur Country, when North-Wester and Hudson's Baytraders cut each other's throats; on the constant bicker and barkbetween Protestant Ontario and Catholic Quebec, which kept the countryrent by religious dissensions when men should have been empire-building. 

Set down the cause of Canada's slow progress up to 1840 tomisgovernment. Durham's Report remedied all that; and confederationfollowed in 1867. Was Canada's progress as swift after 1867 as itought to have been? Examine a few figures:

In 1790 the United States population was four millions. 

In 1800 the United States population was five millions. 

In 1914 the United States population was ninety-eight millions. 

In 1891 Canada's population was five millions. 

In 1900 Canada's population was five million three hundred thousand. 

In 1914 Canada's population was seven million eight hundred thousand. 

In point of population Canada is just one hundred years behind theUnited States. Why? Granted her foreign trade is one-fourth as greatas that of the United States. How is it that a people with such agenius for success in foreign trade have been so dilatory in their workof nation-building? Slow progress can no longer be ascribed tomisgovernment. Her system of justice is one of the most perfect in theworld. Her parliamentary representation could hardly be more complete. No people has stricter bit and rein on executive ministers. Through ananguish of travail Canada has worked out an excellent system ofself-government. Why is her progress still slow?

Of course one reason for her slow progress in the past was theimpression that long prevailed regarding Canada's climate andagricultural possibilities. The officials of the Hudson's Bay Companycontended that the Northwest was unfit for settlement, and it was onlywithin recent times that the contrary view gained a hearing and provedto be true. With vast tracts of unoccupied land in the milder climateof the United States still open to settlement and with Canadiansthemselves denying that the great Northwest could be cultivated, it isnot strange that most immigrants passed Canada by. Furthermore inthose days the glamour of democracy fascinated dissatisfied Europeanswho swarmed to the New World. Canada was practically as free as theUnited States, but she was a possession of the British Crown, and manyemigrants, especially from the Emerald Isle, preferred to try theexperiment of living in a republic. 

But there are other reasons. It was after the Civil War that theAmerican high tariff struck Canada an unintended but neverthelessstaggering blow. She had no market. She had to build uptransportation system and trade routes, but this was well under way by1890. Has her progress since 1890 kept pace with the United States?One has but to compare the population between the Mississippi andSeattle with the population between Red River and Vancouver to have theanswer to this question. 

Is it something in the soul; a habit of discouragement; of markingtime; of fighting shy on the defensive instead of jumping into theaggressive; of self-derogation; of criticism instead of construction;of foreshortened vision? A diagnosis can be made from symptoms. I setdown a few of the symptoms. There may be many more, and the thinkermust trace up--a surgeon would "guess"--his own diagnosis. 

IV

If it were not such a tiresome task, it could be shown from actualquotations that there is not a paper published in Canada that at sometime during the year does not deliver itself of sentiments regardingthe United States which may be paraphrased thus: "We thank God we arenot as Thou art!" Now the point may be well taken; and Canada shouldbe thankful to God (and keep her powder dry) that crimes are punished, that innocence is protected, that vice is not a factor in civicgovernment; but it is a dangerous attitude for any people to assumetoward another nation. It does not turn the soul-searchings in onself. It does not get down beneath the skin of things; down, forinstance, beneath a hide of self-righteousness to meanness or nobilityof motive. A big ship always has barnacles; the United States is a bigship, and she keeps her engine going and her speed up and in the mainher prow headed to a big destiny. It ill becomes a little ship to barkout--but let it be left unsaid!

While this curious assumption of superiority exists internationally, there is the most contradictory depreciation nationally. "We, " theysay, "are only a little people. " So was Switzerland. So was Greece. So was Belgium. So, indeed, were the Jews. 

You never mention a Jim Hill, a Doctor Osler, a Schurman, a GrahamBell--or a host of similar famous expatriates--in a Canadian gatheringbut some one utters with a pride of gratulation that fairly beams fromthe face: "They are Canadians. " Canada is proud these famous men areCanadians. It has always struck me as curious that she wasn'tashamed--ashamed that she lost their services from her ownnation-building. To my personal knowledge three of these men had toborrow the money to leave Canada. Their services were worth untoldwealth to other lands. Their services did not give them a living inCanada. 

At time of writing--with only three exceptions--Canada imports thepresidents of her great universities; though she exports some of thegreatest presidents and deans who have ever graced Princeton, Cornell, Oxford. She thinks she can not afford to keep these men. Is it amatter of money, at all; or of appreciative intelligence? No matterwhat the cost, can Canada afford to lose them from her young nationals?

It is a truism that to my knowledge has not a single exception thatCanada has never given the imprimatur of her approval to a writer, toan inventor, to a scholar, to an artist, till he has gone abroad andreceived the stamp of approval outside his own land. By the time PaulPeel was acclaimed in Paris and Horatio Walker in New York each waslost to his own land. It is an even wager nine Canadians out of ten donot know who these men were or for what they were acclaimed. Try it asan experiment on your first train acquaintance. 

You can not read early records of Congress without the most astoundingrealization that Washington, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams, big statesmenand little politicians, voicing solemn convictions or playing to thegallery--all were deadly in earnest and serious about the business ofbuilding up a nation. They never lost sight of the idea of conserving, up-building, protecting, extending their country. The national idea isin Canada so recent that most men have not grasped it. "Build a navy?"Canada hooted and made the vote a party football. "Canada should haveher own shipyards?" Men look at you! What for? "Panama will reversethe world conduits of trade. " Bah! Hot-air! I have heard these andsimilar comments not once but a thousand times. 

Americans say of opportunity--"How much can we make of it?" Canadianssay--"How little can we pay for it?" And each takes out of opportunityexactly the amount of optimism put into it. 

So one could go down the list enumerating symptoms, but beneath themall, it is plain, lies a cause psychological, not physical. It may bea psychology of discouragement and disparagement from long years ofhardship, but whatever it is, if Canada is to be as big nationally asshe is latitudinally, as great in soul as in area, she must get rid ofthis negative thing in her attitude to herself and life. It makes forsolidity, but it also makes for stolidity. Nations do not grow greatby what they leave undone. Psychologists say all mentality dividesitself into two great classes: those giving off negative response tostimulus; those giving off positive. One class of people stands forcarping criticism; the other, for constructive attempts. One is safe, to be sure, and sane; and the other is distinctively rash anddangerous; but of rashness and danger is valor made. "I know thyworks, " said the Voice to the Laodiceans, "that thou art neither hotnor cold: I would thou wert hot or cold . . . Because thou artlukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth. "

And the Voice is the verdict of destiny to every nation that has takenits place at the world's council board. 

CHAPTER XVI

DEFENSE

Having spent a hundred years working out a system of government almostperfect in its democracy, and having spent fifty more years working outa system of trade and transportation that gives Canada sixth rank inthe gross foreign trade of the world nations--one would think theDominion entitled to lie back resting on her laurels reaping the rewardthat is undoubtedly hers. 

But nations can no more rest in their development than men. To stopmeans to go back. To rest means to rust, and Canada to-day must faceone of the most serious problems in her national history. What isworth having is worth holding, and what is worth holding must always bedefended. The strong man does not go out challenging a fight. Thevery fact that he is strong prevents other men challenging him to afight, and Canada must face the need of national defense. 

So remote did the need of national defense seem to Canada that as lateas May of 1913 the Senate rejected Premier Borden's plan for Canada tocontribute her quota in cost to the British navy. The Lauriergovernment had proposed building a small navy for the Dominion. Thiswas hooted by the French Nationalists, and when the Borden governmentcame into power, the policy was modified from building a small navy tobearing a quota of the cost of a navy built and equipped by Imperialpower. In the rejection of this policy, the composition of the Senateand Commons should be observed. The Commons were Conservative, orsupporters of Premier Borden, and the Government Navy Bill passed theCommons by one hundred and one to sixty-eight. The Nationalists votedwith the opposition or the Liberals. The Nationalists are the smallFrench party pledged against Canada's intervention in European affairs. Laurier having been in power for almost two decades, the Senate was, ofcourse, tinged with the Liberal policy. They could not completelyreject a naval policy without repudiating Laurier's former policy; sothey rejected the Borden Naval Bill on the ground that it ought to havebeen submitted to the electorate. The vote in the Senate was fifty-oneto twenty-seven. In the Senate were fifty-four Liberals--or supportersof Laurier--and thirty-two Conservatives, or supporters of Borden. Inother words, so remote did the possible need of defense seem that bothparties played politics with it. 

For a hundred years Canada had been at peace. The Rebellion of 1837can hardly be called a war. In 1870 the Indian unrest known as theFirst Riel Rebellion had occurred, but this amounted to little morethan a joy jaunt for the troops under Lord Wolseley to Red River. TheRiel Uprising of 1885 was more serious; but every Canadian who gave thematter any thought at all knew there had been genuine cause forgrievance among the half-breeds; and fewer lives were lost in thisrebellion than in many a train or mine accident. Canada sent to theSouth African War troops who distinguished themselves to such an extentas to give a feeling of almost false security to the Dominion. Onevery frontier are men born to the rifle and the saddle--ready-madetroopers; but as the frontier shrinks, this class deteriorates andsoftens. 

For a hundred years Canada has been at peace with the outside world. For three thousand miles along her southern border dwells a neighborwho has often been a rival in trade and with whom Canada has had many adispute as to fisheries and boundaries and tariff, but along thisborderland of three thousand miles exists not a single fort, points nota single gun, watches not a single soldier. It is a question ifanother such example of international friendship without internationalpact exists in the history of the world. Where internationalboundaries in Europe bristle with forts and cannon, internationalboundaries in America are a shuttle of traffic back and forth of greatmigrations of population, of great waves of friendship and good feelingwhich all the trade rivalries and hostile tariffs of a half centuryhave failed to stem. The pot shot of some fishery patrol across thenets of a poacher on the wrong side of the international line fails toexcite anybody. Even if some flag lunatic full of whisky climbs aflagstaff and tears down the other country's national emblem--theboundary does not go on fire. The authorities cool such alcoholicpatriotism with a water hose, or ten days in the lock-up. The papersrun a half column, and that is all there is about it. 

So why should Canada become excited over national defense? On thesouth is a boundary without a fort, without a gun, guarded by apowerful nation with a Monroe Doctrine challenging the world neither toseize nor colonize in the Western Hemisphere. On the east for threethousand miles washes the Atlantic, on the west for five thousand milesthe Pacific--what has Canada to fear? "Why, " asked the Conservatives, "should we support the Laurier policy of building a tin-pot navy?""Why, " retorted the Liberals when Laurier went out and Borden went in, "should we support the Borden Navy Bill to contribute good Canadiancash to a British navy?"

Besides, in the back of Canada's collective head--as it were--in a sortof unspoken consciousness was the almost religious conviction that theDominion had contributed her share toward Imperial defense in hertransportation system. Had she not granted fifty-five million acres ofland for the different transcontinentals and spent far over a billionin loans and subsidies and guarantees? Value that land at ten dollarsan acre. That was tantamount to an expenditure of two hundred dollarsper capita for a transportation system of use to the empire in Imperialdefense. Seventy trainloads of Hindu troops were rushed across Canadain cars with drawn blinds and transported to Europe before the enemyknew such a movement was contemplated. Should Turkey ever cut offSuez, Canada and Panama would be England's route to India. Inaddition, Canada considers herself the granary of the empire. ShouldSuez ever cut off the path to India and Australia, what colony couldfeed England but Canada?

You will note that Canada's thought concerned the empire, not herself. The reason for the navy bills proposed by both parties has beenImperial defense. That Canada might some day be compelled to fight forher own existence--and fight to the death for it--never dawned on herlegislators; and their unconsciousness of national peril is theprofoundest testimony to the pacific intentions of the United Statesthat could be given. It seems almost treason at this era of world warto call Canada's attention to the fact that the greatest danger is notto Imperial defense. It is to Canada's national defense. Uncle Samhas been Canada's big brother, but what if when the danger came, hisarms were tied in a conflict of his own? Whatever comes to menace theUnited States will menace the safety of Canada; and with swiftcruisers, Europe and Asia are nearer Canada to-day than Halifax is nearVancouver. Either city could be attacked by foreign powers beforemilitary aid could be transported across the width of Canada. We arenearer Europe to-day than the North was near the South in the CivilWar. It takes a shorter time to transport troops across Atlantic orPacific than it formerly took to send a Minnesota regiment to Maryland. Including Quebec, Montreal, old Port Royal, Annapolis, Louisburg andthe forts on Hudson Bay, Canada's chief strongholds of defense havebeen taken and retaken seven times by European enemies in one hundredand sixty years--between 1629 and 1789. Day was when Quebecfortifications cost so much that the King of France wanted to know ifthey were laid in gold. Before the fall of Quebec in 1759, Louisburg--a forgotten fortress of Cape Breton--was considered one ofFrance's strongholds. Have Canadians forgotten the frightful wreck ofthe British fleet in the St. Lawrence in 1711 under Sir HavenderWalker; or the defeat of the admiralty ships manned by the Hudson's Bayfur-traders up off Port Nelson in 1697 by Lemoyne d' Iberville? BeforeLa Pérouse reduced Churchill it was regarded as a second Gibraltar. Yet Churchill and Nelson and Quebec and Louisburg all fell before aforeign foe, and Europe is nearer to-day than she was in those eras ofterrible defeat. What additional fortifications or defenses has Canadato be so cocksure that history can never repeat itself? She is notresting under the Monroe Doctrine. It is a safe wager that manyCanadians have never heard of the Monroe Doctrine. Besides, the minuteCanada voluntarily enters a European war, does she forfeit American"protection" under that Monroe Doctrine? The idea of being "protected"by any power but her own--and Britain's--right arm Canada would scoutto derision. Yet what are her own national defenses?

Her regular forces ordinarily consist of less than three thousand men;her volunteer forces of forty-five to sixty thousand. By law it isprovided that the Dominion militia consist of all male inhabitants ofthe age of eighteen and under sixty, divided into four classes: fromeighteen to thirty years of age unmarried or widowers; from thirty toforty-five unmarried or widowers; from eighteen to forty-five marriedor widowers; men of all classes between forty-five and sixty. Inemergency, those liable to service would be called in this order. Theperiod of service is three years. Up to the present service has beenvoluntary, and the period of drill lasts sixteen days. Except forfishing patrols and insignificant cruisers, Canada has no marine force, absolutely none, though she can requisition the big merchant linerswhich she subsidizes. Canada has an excellent military school inKingston and a course of instruction at Quebec, but the majority ofgraduates from these centers go into service in the British army simplybecause there is no scope for them in their own land. At Esquimalt offVictoria, British Columbia, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia, before theoutbreak of the present war, were Imperial naval stations; but thesewere being reduced to a minimum. Perhaps to these defenders should beadded some thirty thousand juvenile cadets trained in the publicschools, but if one is to set down facts not fictions, much of thetraining of the volunteers resolves itself into a yearly picnic. Onewonders on what Canada is pinning her faith in security from attack incase disaster should come to the British navy. Whether Canada isconscious of it or not, her greatest defense is in the virility of hermanhood. Her men are neither professorial nor an office type. Theyare big outdoor men who shoot well because they have shot from boyhoodand lived a life in the open. All this, however, is not nationaldefense. It is unused but splendid material for national defense. 

Up to the outbreak of the present war Canada has not spent ten milliona year on national defense. That is--for the security of peace for acentury, she has spent less than one dollar and fifty cents per head ayear. A year ago naval bills were rejected. To-day there are fewpeople in Canada who would not acknowledge that Canada is spending toolittle on defense. Stirred profoundly but, as is the British way, saying little, the Dominion is setting herself in earnest to the bignew problem. To the European War, Canada has sent sixty thousand men;and she has promised one hundred thousand more. A nation that canunpreparedly deliver on such promises to the drop of the hat can takecare of her defense, and that may be Canada's next national job. 

Would any power have an object in crippling Canada? The question isanswered best by another. If Suez were cut off and Canada were cutoff, where would England look for her food supply? And if it were tothe advantage of a hostile power to cripple Canada, could she beconquered? Any one familiar with Canada will answer without a moment'shesitation. She could be attacked. Her coastal cities could be laidwaste as the cities of Belgium. To reach the interior of Canada, anenemy must do one of three things, all next to impossible: penetratethe St. Lawrence--a treacherous current--for a thousand miles exposedto submarine and mine and attack from each side; cross the UnitedStates and so violate American sovereignty, cross the Rockies to reachinland. Any one of these feats is as impossible as the conquest ofSwitzerland or the Scottish Highlands. Canada could be attacked andlaid waste; she could be financially ruined by attack and set backfifty years in her progress; but she could no more be conquered thanNapoleon conquered Russia. The conquest would be at a cost to destroythe conqueror, and the conqueror could no more stay than Napoleonstayed in Moscow. Canada has a vast, an illimitable back country--thearea of all Russia; and to the lakes and wild rivers and mountainpasses of that country her people are born and bred. To her climateher people are born and bred. The climate would take care of the rest. You can't exactly despatch motors and motor guns down swamps for ahundred miles and over cataracts and through mountain passes on theperpendicular. Canada's back country is her perpetual city of refuge. Nevertheless, the day of dependence on false security is past. National status implies national defense, and at time of writing theindications are that the whole military system of the Dominion will beput on a new basis, training to patriotism and defense and service fromthe public school up through the university. 

"Then what becomes of your co-eds and woman movement?" a militaristasked. 

The question can be answered in the words of a great doctor--more mendie on the field of battle from lack of women nurses than ever die fromthe bullet of the enemy. The time seems to have come for woman's placeon the firing line. That womanhood which gives of life to create lifenow claims the right to go out on the field of danger to conserve andprotect life; and in the embodiment of military training in publiceducation that, too, may be part of Canada's new national defense. 

When an admiral's fleet is sunk within ten days' sail of Victoria andVancouver, Laurier's naval policy to build war vessels, and Borden's tocontribute to their purchase for service in the British Navy take ondifferent aspect to Canada; and the Dominion enters a new era in herdevelopment, as one of the dominant powers in the North Atlantic andthe North Pacific. That is--she must prepare to enter; or sit back thehelpless Korea of America. A country with a billion dollars ofcommerce a year to defend cuts economy down to the danger line when shespends not one per cent. Of the value of her foreign commerce toprotect it. Like the United States, Canada has been inclined to sitback detached from world entanglements and perplexities. That day haspassed for Canada. She must take her place and defend her place orlose her identity as a nation. The awakening has gone over Canada in awave. One awaits to see what will come of it. 

Much, of course, depends upon the outcome of the great war. If Britainand her allies triumph--and particularly if peace brings partialdisarmament--the urgency of preparation on Canada's part will belessened. But should Germany win or the duel be a draw, then mayCanada well gird up her loins and look to her safety. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE DOMAIN OF THE NORTH

I

Canada does not like any reference to her fur trade as a nationaloccupation. Of course, it is no longer a national occupation. Itoccupies, perhaps, two thousand whites and it may be twenty or thirtythousand Indians. More Indians in Canada earn their living farming thereserves than catching fur, but the Indians north of Athabasca andChurchill and in Labrador must always earn their living fur hunting. Of them there is no census, but they hardly exceed thirty thousand alltold. The treaty Indians on reserves now number a hundred thousand. Yet, though only two thousand whites are fur-trading in Canada, nointerpretation of Canadian life is complete without reference to thatfar domain of the North, where the hunter roams in loneliness, and thenight lights whip unearthly through still frosty air, and no soundbreaks leagueless silence but the rifle shot, crackle of frost or thecall of the wolf pack. It will be recalled that Canada's firstsettlers came in two main currents from two idealistic motives. TheFrench came to convert the Indians, not to found empire, and theEnglish Loyalists came from the promptings of their convictions. Bothstreams of settlers came from idealistic motives, but both had to live, and they did it at first by fur hunting. Jean Ba'tiste, the Frenchman, who might have been a courtier when he came, promptly doffed courttrappings and donned moccasins and exchanged a soldier's saber for acamp frying-pan and kept pointing his canoe up the St. Lawrence till hehad threaded every river and lake from Tadousac to Hudson Bay and theRockies. It was the pursuit of the little beaver that paid the piperfor all the discovering and exploring of Canada. When John Bullcame--also in pursuit of ideals--he, too, in a more prosperous waypromptly exchanged the pursuit of ideals for the pursuit of the littlebeaver. It was the little beaver that led the way for Radisson, for LaSalle, for La Verandryé, for MacKenzie, for Fraser, for Peter SkeneOgden, from the St. Lawrence to the Columbia, from the Athabasca to theSacramento. 

While all this is of the past, the heritage of a fur-hunting ancestryhas entered into the very blood and brawn and brain of Canada in a kindof iron dauntlessness that makes for manhood. Some of her greatestleaders--like Strathcona and MacKenzie--have been known as "Men of theNorth"; and whether they have fur-traded or not, nearly all those "Menof the North" who have made their mark have had the iron dauntlessnessof the hunter in their blood. It is a sort of tonic from theout-of-doors, like the ozone you breathe, which fills body and soulwith zest. Canada is sensitive to any reference to her fur trade forfear the world regard her as a perpetual fur domain. Her northernzones are a perpetual fur domain--we may as well acknowledge that--theycan never be anything else; and Canada should serve notice on thesofter races of the world that she does not want them. They can standup neither to her climate nor to her measure of a man, but far fromcause of regret, this is a thing for gratulation. Canada can never bean overcrowded land, where soft races crowd for room, like slugs undera board. She will always have her spacious domain of the North--aperpetual fur preserve, a perpetual hunting ground, where dauntlessspirits will venture to match themselves against the powers of death;and from that North will ever emerge the type of man who masters life. 

II

The last chapter of the fur trade has not been written--as many assert. The oldest industry of mankind, the most heroic and protective againstthe elements--against Fenris and Loki and all those Spirits of Evilwith which northern myth has personified Cold--fur hunting, fur-trading, will last long as man lasts. We are entering, not on theextermination of fur, but on a new cycle of smaller furs. In the dayswhen mink went begging at eighty cents, mink was not fashionable. Minkis fashionable to-day; hence the absurd and fabulous prices. Long ago, when ermine as miniver--the garb of nobility--was fashionable andexclusive, it commanded fabulous prices. Radicalism abolished theexclusive garb of royalty, and ermine fell to four cents a pelt, advanced to twenty-five cents and has sold at one dollar. To-day, minkis the fashion, and the little mink is pursued; but to-morrow fashionwill veer with the caprices of the wind. Some other fur will come intofavor, and the little mink will have a chance to multiply as the erminehas multiplied. 

In spite of the cry of the end of fur, more furs are marketed in theworld than ever before in the history of the race--forty milliondollars' worth; twenty millions of which are handled in New York andChicago and St. Louis and St. Paul; some five millions passing throughEdmonton and Winnipeg and Montreal and Quebec; three millions for homeconsumption, two millions plus for export. Some years ago I wentthrough all the Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company in London from 1670to 1824 and have transcripts of those Minutes now in my library. Innot a single year did the fur record exceed half a million dollars'worth. Compare that to the American traffic to-day of twenty millions, or to the three and four hundred thousand dollar cargoes that each ofthe Hudson's Bay Company and Revillons' ships bears to Europe fromCanada yearly. 

"How much can a good Indian hunter make in a season?" I asked afur-trader of the Northwest, because in nearly all accounts writtenabout furs, you read a wail of reproach at milady for wearing furs whentrapping entails such hardship and poverty on the part of the hunter. 

"A good hunter easily earns six hundred dollars or seven hundreddollars a winter if he will go out and not hang around the minute hegets a little ahead. It takes from three thousand dollars to fourthousand dollars to outfit a small free-trader to go up North on hisown account. This stock he will turn over three or four times at aprofit of one hundred per cent. On the supplies. For example, tendollars cash will buy a good black otter up North. In trade, it willcost from twelve dollars to fifteen dollars. On the articles of trade, the profit will be fifty per cent. The otter will sell down atEdmonton for from twenty dollars to thirty dollars. It's the same ofmuskrat. At the beginning of the season when the kits are plentifuland small, the trader pays nine cents for them up North. Down at thefur market he will get from twenty-five to sixty cents for them, according to size. There were one hundred and thirty-two thousandmuskrat came to one firm of traders alone in Edmonton one year, whichthey will sell at an advance of fifty per cent. "

"How much fur comes yearly to Edmonton?" I asked an Edmonton trader. If you look at the map you will see that Edmonton is the jumping offplace to three of the greatest fur fields of North America--downMacKenzie River to the Arctic, up Peace River to the mountainhinterland between the Columbia and the Yukon, east through AthabascaLake to the wild barren land inland from Churchill and Hudson Bay. 

"Well, we can easily calculate that. I know about how much is broughtin to each of the traders there. "

I took pencil while he gave me the names. It totaled up to six hundredthousand dollars' worth for 1908. When you consider that in itspalmiest old days of exclusive monopoly the Hudson's Bay Company neversold more than half a million dollars' worth of furs a year, this totalfor Edmonton alone does not sound like a scarcity of furs. 

III

The question may be asked, do not these large figures presage thehunting to extinction of fur-bearing animals? I do not think so. 

Take a map of the northern fur country. Take a good look at it--notjust a Pullman car glance. The Canadian government has again and againadvertised thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of square milesof free land. Latitudinally, that is perfectly true. Wheat-wise, itisn't. When you go one hundred miles north of Saskatchewan River(barring Peace River in sections) you are in a climate that will growwheat all right--splendid wheat, the hardest and finest in the world. That is, twenty hours of sunlight--not daylight but sunlight--forcegrowth rapidly enough to escape late spring and early fall frosts; butthe plain fact of the matter is, wheat land does not exist far north ofthe Saskatchewan except in sections along Peace River. What doesexist? Cataracts countless--Churchill River is one succession ofcataracts; vast rivers; lakes unmapped, links and chains of lakes bywhich you can go from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic without oncelifting your canoe; quaking muskegs--areas of amber stagnant water fullof what the Indians call mermaid's hair, lined by ridges of moss andsand overgrown with coarse goose grass and "the reed that grows like atree, " muskrat reed, a tasseled corn-like tufted growth sixteen feethigh--areas of such muskeg mile upon mile. I traversed one such regionabove Cumberland Lake seventy miles wide by three hundred long whereyou could not find solid camping ground the size of your foot. Whatdid we do? That is where the uses of a really expert guide came in; wemoored our canoe among the willows, cut willows enough to keep feetfrom sinking, spread oilcloth and rugs over this, erected the tentsover all, tying the guy ropes to the canoe thwarts and willows, as theground would not hold the tent pegs. 

It doesn't sound as if such regions would ever be overrun bysettlement--does it? Now look at your map, seventy miles north ofSaskatchewan! From the northwest corner up by Klondike to thesoutheast corner down in Labrador is a distance of more than threethousand miles. From the south to north is a distance of almost twothousand miles. I once asked a guide with a truly city air--it mightalmost have been a Harvard air--if these distances were "as the crowflies. " He gave me a look that I would not like to have a guide give metoo often--he might maroon a fool on one of those swamp areas. 

"There ain't no distances as the crow flies in this country, " heanswered. "You got to travel 'cording as the waters collect or the icegoes out. "

Well, here is your country, three thousand by two thousand miles, agreat fur preserve. What exists in it? Very little wood, and thatsmall. Undoubtedly some minerals. What else exists? A very sparsepopulation of Indians, whose census no man knows, for it has never beentaken; but it is a pretty safe guess to say there are not thirtythousand Indians all told in the north fur country. I put this guesstentatively and should be glad of information from any one in aposition to guess closer. I have asked the Hudson's Bay Company and Ihave asked Revillons how many white hunters and traders they think arein the fur country of the North. I have never met any one who placedthe number in the North at more than two thousand. Spread two thousandwhite hunters with ten thousand Indians--for of the total Indianpopulation two-thirds are women and children--over an area the size oftwo-thirds of Europe--I ask you frankly, do you think they are going toexterminate the game very fast? Remember the climate of the Northtakes care of her own. White men can stand only so many years of thatlonely cold, and then they have "to come out" or they dwarf mentallyand degenerate. 

Take a single section of this great northern fur preserve--Labrador, which I visited some years ago. In area Labrador is 530, 000 squaremiles, two and a half times the size of France, twice the size ofGermany, twice the size of Austria-Hungary. Statistical books set thepopulation down at four thousand; but the Moravian missionaries theretold me that including the Eskimo who come down the coast in summer andthe fishermen who come up the coast in summer the total population wasprobably seventeen thousand. Now Labrador is one of the finest gamepreserves in the world. On its rocky hills and watery upper barrenswhere settlement can never come are to be found silver fox--the finestin the world, so fine that the Revillons have established afur-breeding post for silver fox on one of the islands--cross foxalmost as fine as silver, black and red fox, the best otter in theworld, the finest marten in America, bear, very fine Norway lynx, fineermine, rabbit or hare galore, very fine wolverine, fisher, muskrat, coarse harp seal, wolf, caribou, beaver, a few mink. Is it commonsense to think the population of a few thousands can hunt out a furempire here the size of two Germanies? Remember it was not the hunterwho exterminated the buffalo and the beaver and the seal and the otter!The poacher destroyed one group of sea furs; the railway and the farmsupplanted the other. West of Mackenzie River and north of BritishColumbia is a game region almost similar to Labrador in its furredhabitat, with the exception that the western preserve is warmer andmore wooded. Northward from Ontario is another hinterland which fromits very nature must always be a great hunting ground. Mineralsexist--as the old French traders well knew and the latter-daydiscoveries of Cobalt prove--and there is also heavy timber; but northof the Great Clay Belt, between the Clay Belt and the Bay, lies theimpenetrable and--I think--indestructible game ground. Swamp and rockwill prevent agricultural settlement but will provide an ideal furpreserve similar in climate to Labrador. 

Traveling with Indian guides, it is always a matter of marvel andadmiration to me how the fur companies have bred into the very bloodfor generations the careful nurture of all game. At one place canoeingon Saskatchewan we heard of a huge black bear that had been molestingsome new ranches. "No take now, " said the Indian. "Him fur no goodnow. " Though we might camp on bare rocks and the fire lay dead ash, itwas the extra Indian paddler who invariably went back to spatter itout. You know the white's innate love for a roaring log fire in frontof the camp at night? The Indian calls that"a-no-good-whitemen-fire-scare-away-game. "

Now take another look at the map. Where the Saskatchewan makes a greatbend three hundred miles northeast of Prince Albert, it is no longer ariver--it is a vast muskeg of countless still amber water channels nottwice the width of your canoe and quaking silt islands of sand andgoose grass--ideal, hidden and almost impenetrable for small game. Always muskeg marks the limit of big game and the beginning of theground of the little fellows--waupoos, the rabbit; and musquash, themuskrat; and sakwasew, the mink; and nukik, the otter; and wuchak orpekan, the fisher. It is a safe wager that the profits on the millionsupon millions of little pelts--hundreds of thousands of muskrat aretaken out of this muskeg alone--exceed by a hundredfold the profits onthe larger furs of beaver and silver fox and bear and wolf and crossfox and marten. 

Look at the map again! North of Cumberland Lake to the next fur postis a trifling run of two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles bydog-train to Lac du Brochet or Reindeer Lake--more muskeg cut bylimestone and granite ridges. Here you can measure four hundred mileseast or west and not get out of the muskeg till you reach Athabasca onthe west and Hudson's Bay on the east. North of Lac du Brochet is astraight stretch of one thousand miles--nothing but rocks and cataractsand stunted woods, "little sticks" the Indians call them--andsky-colored waters in links and chains and lakes with the quakingmuskeg goose grass and muskrat reed, cut and chiseled and trenched bythe amber water ways. 

IV

If you think there is any danger of settlement ever encroaching on themuskegs and barrens, come with me on a trip of some weeks to the southend of this field. 

We had been pulling against slack water all day, water so slack youcould dip your hand down and fail to tell which way the current ran. Where the high banks dropped suddenly to such a dank tangle of reeds, brush wood, windfall and timbers drifted fifteen hundred miles downfrom the forests of the Rocky Mountains--such a tangle as I have neverseen in any swamp of the South--the skeleton of a moose, come to itsdeath by a jump among the windfall, marked the eastern limit of biggame; and presently the river was lost--not in a lake--but in a swamp. A red fox came scurrying through the goose grass, sniffed the air, looked at us and ran along abreast of our canoe for about a mile, evidently scenting the bacon of the tin "grub box. " Muskrats feed onthe bulb of the tufted "reed like a tree, " sixteen feet high on eachside, and again and again little kits came out and swam in the rippleof our canoe. Once an old duck performed the acrobatic feat over whichthe nature and anti-nature writers have been giving each other the lie. We had come out of one long amber channel to be confronted by threeopenings exactly alike, not much wider than the length of our Klondikecanoe, all lined by the high tufted reed. MacKenzie, the half-breedrapids man, had been telling us the endless Cree legends ofWa-sa-kee-chaulk, the Cree Hiawatha, and his Indian lore of stagnantwaters now lured him into steering us to one of the side channels. Wewere not expected. An old mother duck was directly across our pathteaching some twenty-two little black hobbling downy babies how toswim. With a cry that shrieked "Leg it--leg it" plain as a quack couldspeak and which sent the little fellows scuttling, half swim, half run, the old mother flung herself over on her back not a paddle's lengthahead of us, dipped, dived, came up again just at our bow and floppedbroken-winged over the water ahead of us near enough almost to becaught by hand; but when you stretched out your hand, the crafty ladydipped and dived and came up broken-winged again. 

"You old fool, " said our head man, "your wing is no more broken thanmine is. We're not going to hurt your babies. Shut up there and stopthat lying. "

Spite of which the old duck kept up her pantomime of deceit for morethan a mile; when she suddenly sailed up over our heads back to herhidden babies, a very Boadicea of an old duck girl. When we drew infor nooning, wild geese honked over our heads near enough to be hit bythe butt of a gun. Drift chips, lodged in the goose grass, kindledfire for kettle, but oilcloth had to be spread before you could getfooting ashore. I began to wonder what happened as to repairs whencanoes ripped over a snag in this kind of region, and that brought upthe story of a furtrader's wife in another muskeg region north of LacLa Ronge up toward Churchill River, who was in a canoe that ripped ahole clean the size of a man's fist. Quick as a flash, the head manwas into the tin grub box and had planked on a cake of butter. Thecold water hardened it, and that repair carried them along to the firstbirch tree affording a new strip of bark. 

Where an occasional ridge of limestone cut the swamp we could hear thelaughter and the glee of the Indian children playing "wild goose" amongthe trembling black poplars and whispering birches, and where we landedat the Indian camps we found the missionaries out with the hunters. Infact, even the nuns go haying and moose hunting with the Indianfamilies to prevent lapses to barbarism. 

Again and again we passed cached canoes, provisions stuck up on sticksabove the reach of animal marauders--testimony to the honesty of thepassing Indian hunters, which the best policed civilized eastern citycan not boast of its denizens. 

"I've gone to the Rockies by way of Peace River dozens of times, "declared the head of one of the big fur companies, "and left fivehundred dollars' worth of provisions cached in trees to feed us on ourway out, and when we came that same way six months afterward we neverfound one pound stolen, though I remember one winter when the Indianswho were passing and repassing under the food in those trees werestarving owing to the rabbit famine. "

In winter this region is traversed by dog-train along the ice--a matterof five hundred miles to Lac du Brochet and back, or six hundred toPrince Albert and back. "Oh, no, we're not far, " said a lonely-facedCambridge graduate fur-trader to me. "When my little boy took sicklast winter, I had to go only fifty-five miles. There happened to be adoctor in the lumber camp back on the Ridge. "

But even winter travel is not all easy in a fifty-below-zero climatewhere you can't find sticks any larger than your finger to kindle nightfire, I know the story of one fur-trader who was running along behindhis dog sleigh in this section. He had become overheated running andhad thrown his coat and cap across the sleigh, wearing only flannelshirt, fur gauntlets, corduroy trousers and moccasins. At a bend inthe iced channel he came on a pack of mangy coyotes. Before he hadthought he had sicked the dogs on them. With a yell they were off outof sight amid the goose grass and reeds with the sleigh and hisgarments. Those reeds, remember, are sixteen feet high, stiff as broomcorn and hard on moccasins as stubble would be on bare feet. To makematters worse, a heavy snowstorm came on. The wind was against thedirection the dogs had taken and the man hallooed himself hoarsewithout an answering sound. It was two o'clock in the morning beforethe wind sank and the trader found his dogs, and by that time betweensweat and cold his shirt had frozen to a board. 

Such a thing as an out and out pagan hardly exists among the Indians ofthe North. They are all more or less Christian with a curious minglingof pagan superstition with the new faith. The Indian voyageurs maylaugh but they all do it--make offerings of tobacco to the GrannyGoddess of the River before setting out. In vain we threw biscuit andorange peel and nuts to the perverse-tempered deity supposed to presideat the bottom of those amber waters. The winds were contrary, thewaters slack, sluggish, dead, no responsive gurgle and flap of laughterand life to the slow keel. 

One channel but opened on another. Even the limestone ridges hadvanished far to rear, and the stillness of night fell with such a floodof sunset light as Turner never dreamed in his wildest colorintoxications. There would be the wedge-shaped line of the wild geeseagainst a flaming sky--a far honk--then stillness. Then the flackeringquacking call of a covey of ducks with a hum of wings right over ourshoulders; then no sound but the dip of our paddles and the drip andripple of the dead waters among the reeds. Suddenly there liftedagainst the lonely red sunset sky--a lob stick--a dark evergreenstripped below the tip to mark some Indian camping place, or vow, orsacred memory. We steered for it. A little flutter of leaves like aclapping of hands marked land enough to support black poplars, and werounded a crumbly sand bank just in time to see the seven-banded birchcanoe of a little old hunter, Sam Ba'tiste Buck--eighty years old hewas--squatting in the bottom of the birch canoe, ragged almost tonakedness, bare of feet, gray-headed, nearly toothless but happier thanan emperor--the first living being we had seen for a week in themuskegs. We camped together that night on the sandbars--trading SamBa'tiste flour and matches for a couple of ducks. He had beenstorm-stead camping in the goose grass for three days. Do you think hewas to be pitied? Don't! Three days' hunting will lay up enough meatfor Sam for the winter. In the winter he will snare some small game, while mink and otter and muskrat skins will provide him flour andclothes from the fur-trader. Each of Sam's sons is earning sevenhundred dollars a year hunting big game on the rock ridge farthernorth--more than illiterate, unskilled men earn in eastern lands. Thenin spring Sam will emerge from his cabin, build another birch canoe andbe off to the duck and wild geese haunts. When we paddled away in themorning, Sam still camped on the sand bank. He sat squat whittlingaway at kin-a-kin-ic, or the bark of the red willow, the hunter's freetobacco. In town Sam would be poverty-stricken, hungry, a beggar. Here he is a lord of his lonely watery domain, more independent andcare-free than you are--peace to his aged bones!

Another night coming through the muskegs we lost ourselves. We hadleft our Indian at the fur post and trusted to follow southwest twohundred miles to the next fur post by the sun, but there was no sun, only heavy lead-colored clouds with a rolling wind that whipped theamber waters to froth and flooded the sand banks. If there was anycurrent, it was reversed by the wind. We should have thwarted the mainmuskeg by a long narrow channel, but mistook our way thinking to followthe main river by taking the broadest opening. It led us into a lakeseven miles across; not deep, for every paddle stroke tangled into thelong water weed known as mermaid's hair but deep enough for troublewhen you consider the width of the lake, the lack of dry footing thewidth of one's hand, and the fact that you can't offer the gun'l of acanoe to the broadside of a big wave. We scattered our dunnage and allthree squatted in the bottom to prevent the rocking of the big canoe. Then we thwarted and tacked and quartered to the billows for a half day. 

Nightfall found us back in the channel again scudding before thunderand a hurricane wind looking for a camping place. It had been aback-breaking pace all day. We had tried to find relief by theIndian's choppy strokes changing every third dip from side to side; wehad tried the white man's deep long pulling strokes; and by seven inthe evening with the thunder rolling behind and not a spot of dry landvisible the size of one's foot, backs began to feel as if they mightbreak in the middle. Our canoe and dunnage weighed close on sevenhundred pounds. Suddenly we shot out of the amber channel into ashallow lagoon lined on each side by the high tufted reeds, but thereeds were so thin we could see through them to lakes on each side. Awhirr above our heads and a flock of teal almost touched us with theirwings. Simultaneously all three dropped paddles--all three werespeechless. The air was full of voices. You could not hear yourselfthink. We lapped the canoe close in hiding to the thin lining ofreeds. I asked, "Have those little sticks drifted down fifteen hundredmiles to this lagoon of dead water?"

"Sticks, " my guide repeated, "it isn't sticks--it isn't drift--it'sbirds--it's duck and geese--I have never seen anything like it--I havelived west more than twenty years and I never heard tell ofanything--of anything like it. "

Anything like it? I had lived all my life in the West and I had neverheard or dreamed any oldest timer tell anything like it! For sevenmiles, you could not have laid your paddle on the water withoutdisturbing coveys of geese and duck, geese and duck of such variety asI have never seen classified or named in any book on birds. We satvery still behind the hiding of reed and watched and watched. Wecouldn't talk. We had lost ourselves in one of the secluded breedingplaces of wild fowl in the North. I counted dozens and dozens of moultnests where the duck had congregated before their long flight south. That was the night we could find camping ground only by building afoundation of reeds and willows, then spreading oilcloth on top; andall night our big tent rocked to the wind; for we had roped it to thethwarts of the canoe. Next day when we reached the fur post, the chieftrader told us any good hunter could fill his canoe--the big, whitebanded, gray canoe of the company, not the little, seven banded, birchcraft--with birds to the gun'l in two hours' shooting on that lake. 

That muskeg is only one of thousands, when you go seventy miles northof the Saskatchewan, sixty miles east of Athabasca Lake. That muskegand its like, covering an area two-thirds of all Europe, is the home ofall the little furs, mink and muskrat and fisher and otter and rabbitand ermine, the furs that clothe--not princes and millionaire, who buysilver fox and sea otter--but you and me and the rest of us whoseobject is to keep warm, not to show how much we can spend. Out of thatone muskeg hundreds of thousands of little pelts have been taken since1754 when Anthony Hendry, the smuggler, came the first of thefur-traders inland from the Bay. And the game--save in the year of theunexplained rabbit pest--shows no sign of diminishing. 

Does it sound very much to you like a region where the settler wouldultimately drive out the fur trade? What would he settle on? That isthe point. Nature has taken good care that climate and swamp shallerect an everlasting barrier to encroachment on her game preserves. 

To be sure, if you ask a fur-trader, "How are furs?" he will answer, "Poor--poorer every year. " So would you if you were a fur-trader andwanted to keep out rivals. I have never known a fur-trader who did notmake that answer. 

To be sure, seal and sea otter, beaver and buffalo have been almostexterminated; but even to-day if the governments of the world, especially Canada and the United States, would pass and enforce lawsprohibiting the killing of a single buffalo or beaver, seal or seaotter for fifty years, these species would replenish themselves. 

"The last chapter of the fur trade has been written?" Never! Theoldest industry of mankind will last as long as mankind lasts. 

V

I read also that "the last chapter of the fur romance has beenwritten. " That is the point of view of the man who spends fifty weeksin town and two weeks in the wilds. It is not the point of view of theman who spends two weeks in town and fifty in the wilds; of the man whogoes out beyond the reach of law into strange realms the size of Russiawith no law but his own right arm, no defense but his own wit. ThoughI have written history of the Hudson's Bay Company straight from theirown Minutes in Hudson's Bay House, London, I could write more of theromance of the fur trade right in the present year than has ever beenpenned of the company since it was established away back in the year1670. 

Space permits only two examples. You recall the Cambridge man whothought it a short distance to go only fifty-five miles by dog-trainfor a doctor. A more cultured, scholarly, perfect gentleman I havenever met in London or New York. Yet when I met his wife, I found hera shy little, part-Indian girl, who had almost to be dragged in to meetus. That spiritual face--such a face as you might see among thepreachers of Westminster or Oxford--and the little shy Indian girl-wifeand the children, plainly a throw-back to their red-skin ancestors, notto the Cambridge paternity! What was the explanation? Where was thestory of heartache and tragedy--I asked myself, as we stood in our tentdoor watching the York boat come in with provisions for the year undera sky of such diaphanous northern lights as leave you dumb before theirbeauty and their splendor? How often he must have stood beneath thosenorthern lights thinking out the heartbreak that has no end. 

I did not learn the story till I had come on down to civilization andtown again. That Cambridge man had come out from England flush withthe zeal of the saint to work among the Indians. In the Indian schoolwhere he taught he had met his Fate--the thing he probablyscouted--that fragile type of Indian beauty almost fawn-like in itselusiveness, pure spirit from the very prosaic fact that the seeds ofmortal disease are already snapping the ties to life. It is a type younever see near the fur posts. You have to go to the far outerencampments, where white vices have not polluted the very air. He fellin love. What was he to do? If he left her to her fate, she would goback to the inclement roughness of tepee life mated to some Indianhunter, or fall victim to the brutal admiration of some of those whitesots who ever seek hiding in the very wilderness. He married her andhad of course to resign his position as teacher in the school. He tooka position with the company and lived no doubt in such happiness asonly such a spiritual nature could know; but the seeds of the diseasewhich gave her such unearthly beauty ripened. She died. What was tobecome of the children? If he sent them back to England, they would bewretched and their presence would be misunderstood. If he left themwith her relatives, they would grow up Indians. If he kept them hemust have a mother for them, so he married another trader'sdaughter--the little half-breed girl--and chained himself to his rockof Fate as fast as ever martyr was bound in Grecian myth; and there helives to-day. The mail comes in only once in three months in summer;only once in six in winter. He is the only white man on a wateryisland two hundred miles from anywhere except when the lumbermen cometo the Ridge, or the Indian agent arrives with the treaty money once ayear. 

And "the last chapter of the fur romance has been written"?

"The last chapter of the fur romance" will not have been written aslong as frost and muskeg provide a habitat for furtive game, and strongmen set forth to traverse lone places with no defense but their ownvaliant spirit. 

The other example is of a man known to every fur buyer of St. Louis andChicago and St. Paul--Mr. Hall, the chief commissioner of furs for theHudson's Bay Company. I wish I could give it in Mr. Hall's ownwords--in the slow quiet recital of the man who has spent his life amidthe great silent verities, up next to primordial facts, not theorizingand professionalizing and discretionizing and generally darkeningcounsel by words without knowledge. He was a youth somewhere aroundhis early twenties, and he was serving the company at Stuart Lake inBritish Columbia--a sort of American Trossachs on a colossal scale. Hehad been sent eastward with a party to bring some furs across fromMacLeod Lake in the most heavily wooded mountains. It was mid-winter. Fort MacLeod was short of provisions. On their way back travel provedvery heavy and slow. Snow buried the beaten trail, and travel off itplunged men and horses through snow crust into a criss-cross tangle ofunderbrush and windfall. The party ran out of food. It was thought ifHall, the youngest and lightest, could push ahead on snowshoes toStuart Lake, he could bring out a rescue party with food. 

He set off without horse or gun and with only a lump of tallow in hispocket as food. The distance was seventy-five miles. At first he ranon winged feet--feet winged with hunger; but it began to snow heavilywith a wind that beat in his face and blew great gusts of snow packdown from the evergreen branches overhead; and even feet winged withhunger and snowshoes clog from soft snow and catch derelict branchessticking up through the drifts. By the time you have run half a daybeating against the wind, reversing your own tracks to find the chippedmark on the bark of the trees to keep you on the blazed trail--you arehungry. Hall began to nibble at his tallow as he ran and to snatchhandfuls of snow to quench his thirst. At night he kindled a roaringbig white-man fire against the wolves, dried out the thawed snow fromhis back and front, dozed between times, sang to keep the lonelinessoff, heard the muffled echo come back to him in smothered voice, and atfirst streak of dawn ran on, and on, and on. 

By the second night Hall had eaten all his tallow. He had also reefedin his belt so that his stomach and spine seemed to be campingtogether. The snow continued to fall. The trees swam past him as heran. And the snowdrifts lifted and fell as he jogged heavily forward. Of course, he declared to himself, he was not dizzy. It was the snowblindness or the drifts. He was well aware the second night that if hewould have let himself he would have dug a sleeping hole in the snowand wrapped himself in a snow blanket and slept and slept; but hethrashed himself awake, and set out again, dead heavy with sleep, weakfrom fatigue, staggering from hunger; and the wings on his feet hadbecome weighted with lead. 

He knew it was all up with him when he fell. He knew if he could getonly a half hour's sleep, it would freshen him up so he could go on. Lots of winter travelers have known that in the North; and they havetaken the half hour's sleep; and another half hour's; and have neverwakened. Anyway, something wakened Hall. He heard the crackle of abranch. That was nothing. Branches break to every storm, but this waslike branches breaking under a moccasin. It was unbelievable; therewas not the slightest odor of smoke, unless the dream odor of his owndelirious hunger; but not twenty paces ahead crackled an Indian fire, surrounded by buckskin tepees, Indians warming themselves by the fire. 

With an unspeakable revulsion of hope and hunger, Hall flung to hisfeet and dashed into the middle of the encampment. Then a tinglingwent over his body like the wakening from death, of frost tolife--blind stabbing terror obsessed his body and soul; for the firewas smokeless, the figures were speechless, transparent, unaware of hispresence, very terribly still. His first thought was that he had comeon some camp hopeless from the disaster of massacre or starvation. Then he knew this was no earthly camp. He could not tell how thefigures were clothed or what they were. Only he knew they were notmen. He did not even think of ghosts. All he knew was it was a deathfire, a death silence, death tepees, death figures. He fled throughthe woods knowing only death was behind him--running and running, andnever stopping till he dropped exhausted across the fort doorstep attwo in the morning. He blurted out why he had come. Then he lapsedunconscious. They filled him with rum. It was twenty-four hoursbefore he could speak. 

"I don't know these modern theories about hallucination and delusionsand things, " concluded Mr. Hall, gazing reflectively on the memories ofthat night. "I'm not much on romance and that kind of thing! I don'tbelieve in ghosts. I don't know what it was. All I know is it scaredme so it saved my life, and it saved the lives of the rest, too; forthe relief party got out in time, though they didn't see a sign of anyIndian camp. I don't know what to make of it, unless years ago someIndian camp had been starved or massacred there, and owing to myunusual condition I got into some clairvoyant connection with thatpast. However, there it is; and it would take a pretty strong argumentto persuade me I didn't see anything. All the other things I thought Isaw on that trip certainly existed, and it would be a queer thing ifthe one thing which saved my life did not exist. That's all I know, and you can make anything you like of it. "

So while Canada resents being regarded as a fur land, her domain of theNorth sends down something more than roaring winds--though winds aregood things to shake dead leaves off the soul as well as off trees. Her domain of the North rears more than fur-bearing animals. It rearsa race with hardihood, with dauntlessness, with quiet dogged unspeakingcourage; and that is something to go into the blood of a nation. A manwho will run on snowshoes eighteen hundred miles behind a dog-train asa Senator I know did in his youth, and a woman of middle life, who will"come out"--as they say in the North--and study medicine at her ownexpense that she may minister to the Indians where she lives--are nottypes of a race to lie down whipped under Fate. Canada will do thingsin the world of nations shortly. She may do them rough-handed; butwhat she does will depend on the national ideals she nurtures to-day;and into those ideals has entered the spirit of the Domain of the North. 

CHAPTER XVIII

FINDING HERSELF

I

One of the questions which an outsider always asks of Canada and ofwhich the Canadian never thinks is--Why is Newfoundland not a part ofCanada? Why has the lonely little Island never entered confederation?On the map Newfoundland looks no larger than the area of Manitobabefore the provincial boundaries were extended to Hudson Bay. Inreality, area has little to do with Newfoundland's importance toEngland's possessions in North America. It is that part of Americanearest to Europe. If you measure it north to south and east to westit seems about two hundred and fifty by three hundred and fifty miles;but distance north and south, east and west, has little to do withNewfoundland's importance to the empire. Newfoundland's importance tothe empire consists in three fundamental facts: Newfoundland is theradiating center for the fisheries on the Grand Banks, that submarineplateau of six hundred by one hundred and fifty miles, where are therichest deep-sea fisheries in the world; Newfoundland lies gardant atthe very entrance to Canada's great waterways; and Newfoundland's coastline is the most broken coast line in the whole world affordingcountless land-locked, rock-ribbed deep-sea harbors to shelter all thefighting ships of the world. 

What have the deep-sea fisheries of the Grand Banks to do with aGreater Britain Overseas? You would not ask that question if you couldsee the sealing fleets set out in spring; or the whaling crews driveafter a great fin-back up north of Tilt Cove; or the schooners go outwith their dories in tow for the Grand Banks fisheries. Asked whatimpressed him most in the royal tour of the present King of Englandacross Canada and Newfoundland several years ago, a prominent officialwith the Prince answered: "Newfoundland and the prairie provinces. ""Why?" he was asked. "Men for the navy and food for the Empire. " Thatanswer tells in a line why Newfoundland is absolutely essential to aGreater Britain Overseas. You can't take landlubbers, put them on aboat and have seamen. Sailors are bred to the sea, cradled in it, salted with it for generations before they become such mariners as holdEngland's ascendency on the seas of the world. They love the sea andits roll and its dangers more than all the rewards of the land. Ofsuch men, and of such only, are navies made that win battles. Come outto Kitty Vitty, a rock-ribbed cove behind St. John's, and listen tosome old mother in Israel, with the bloom of the sea still in herwilted cheeks, tell of losing her sons in the seal fisheries of thespring, when men go out in crews of two and three hundred hunting thehairy seal over the ice floes, and the floes break loose, and theblizzard comes down! It isn't the twenty or thirty or fifty dollarbonus a head in the seal hunt that lures them to death, in darkness andstorm. It is the call, the dare, the risk, the romance of the sea bornin their own blood. Or else watch the fishing fleets up off the NorthShore, down on the Grand Banks! The schooner rocks to the silver swellof the sea with bare mast poles. A furtive woman comes up the hatchwayand gazes with shaded eyes at passing steamers; but the men are out inthe clumsy black dories that rock like a cradle to the swell of thesea, drawing in--drawing in--the line; or singing their sailorchanties--"Come all ye Newfoundlanders"--as meal of pork and codsimmers in a pot above a chip fire cooking on stones in the bottom ofthe boat. It isn't the one or two hundred dollars these fishermenclear in a year--and it may be said that one hundred dollars cleared ina year is opulence--that holds them to the wild, free, perilous life. It is the call of the sea in their blood. Of such men are victoriousnavies made, and if Canada is to be anything more than the hanger-on tothe tail of the kite of the British Empire, she, too, must have hernavy, her men of the sea, born and cradled and crooned and nursed bythe sea. That is Newfoundland's first importance to a Greater BritainOverseas. 

Perhaps, if the present war had not broken out, Canada would never haverealized Newfoundland's second importance to a Greater Britain Overseasas the outpost sentinel guarding entrance to her waterways. It wouldrequire shorter time to transport troops to Newfoundland than to Suez. Should Canada ever be attacked, Newfoundland would be a more importantbasis than Suez. Two centuries ago, in fact, for two whole centuries, St. John's Harbor rang to the conflict of warring nations. If ever wardemanded the bottling up and blockading of Canada, the basis for thatembargo would be Newfoundland. 

It may as well be acknowledged that Canada's east coast affords fewgood land-locked harbors. Newfoundland's deep-sea land-locked harborsare so numerous you can not count them. Your ship will be coastingwhat seems to be a rampart wall of sheer black iron towering up three, four, six hundred feet flat as if planed, planed by the ice-grind andstorms of a million years beating down from the Pole riding thunderousand angry seas. You wonder what would happen if a storm caught yourship between those iron walls and a landward hurricane; and the captaintells you, when the wind sheers nor'-east, he always beats for opensea. It isn't the sea he fears. It is these rock ramparts andsaw-tooth reefs sticking up through the lace fret. Suddenly you twistround a sharp angle of rock like the half closed leaf of a book. Youslip in behind the leaf of rock, and wriggle behind anotherangle--"follow the tickles o' water" is, I believe, the term--and thereopens before you a harbor cove, land-locked, rock-walled from sea tosky, with the fishermen's dories awash on a silver sea, with women inbrightly colored kirtles and top-boots and sunbonnets busy over thefishing stages drying cod. Dogs and hogs are the only domestic animalsvisible. The shore is so rocky that fences are usually little sticksanchored in stones. There are not even many children; for the childrenare off to sea soon as they can don top-boots and handle a line. Thereis the store of "the planter" or outfitter--a local merchant, whosupplies schooners on shares for the season and too often holds wholehamlets in his debt. There is the church. The priest or parson comespoling out to meet your ship and get his monthly or half-yearly mail, and there are the little whitewashed cots of the fisher folk. It is asimpler life than the existence of the habitant of Quebec. It is moreremote from modern stress than the days of the Tudors. On the northand west shore and in that sea strip of Labrador under Newfoundland'sjurisdiction and known in contradiction to Labrador as TheLabrodor--are whole hamlets of people that have never seen a railroad, a cow, a horse. They are Devon people, who speak the dialect of Devonmen in Queen Elizabeth's day. You hear such expressions as "enow, ""forninst, " "forby"; and the mental attitude to life is two or threecenturies old. 

"Why should we pay for railroads?" the people asked late as 1898. "Ourfathers used boats and their own legs. " And one hamlet came out andstoned a passing train. "Checks--none of your checks for me, " roaredan out-port fisherman taking the train for the first time and luggingbehind him a huge canvas bag of clothes. "Checks--not for me! I knowchecks! When the banks busted, I had your checks; and much good theywere. " This was late as '98, and back from the pulp mills of theinterior and the railroad you will find conditions as antiquated to-day. 

If Newfoundland is absolutely essential to a Greater Britain Overseas, why is she not part of Canada? Because Canada refused to take her in. Because Canada had not big enough vision to see her need of thissmallest of the American colonies. For the same reason thatreciprocity failed between Canada and the United States--because whenNewfoundland would have come in, Canada was lethargic. Nobody was bigenough politically to seize and swing the opportunity. Because whenCanada was ready, Newfoundland was no longer in the mood to come in;and nobody in Newfoundland was big enough to seize and swing anopportunity for the empire. 

It was in the nineties. Fish had fallen to a ruinous price and forsome temporary reason the fishing was poor. There had been bank kitingin Newfoundland's financial system. She had no railroads and fewsteamships. Her mines had not been exploited, and she did not know herown wealth in the pulp-wood areas of the interior. In fact, there aresections of Northern Newfoundland not yet explored inland. Every bankin the colony had collapsed. Newfoundland emissaries came to Ottawa tofeel the pulse for federation. The population at that time wassomething under two hundred thousand. 

Now Canada has one very bad British characteristic. She has the JohnBull trick of drawing herself up to every new proposal with an air of"What is that to us?" At this time Canada herself was in bad way. Shehad just completed her first big transcontinental. Times were dull. The Crown Colony of Newfoundland did not come begging admission toconfederation. No political party could do that and live; for politicsin Newfoundland are a fanatical religion. I have heard the warden ofthe penitentiary say that if it were not for politics he would neverhave any inmates. It is a fact that out-port prisons have been closedfor lack of inmates, but long as elections recur, come broken heads. So the Crown Colony did not seek admission. It came feeling the Ottawapulse, and the Ottawa pulse was slow and cold. "What's Newfoundland tous?" said Canada. One of the commissioners told me the real hitch wasthe terms on which the Dominion should assume the Crown Colony's smallpublic debt; so the chance passed unseized. Newfoundland set herselfto do what Canada had done, when the United States refused reciprocity. She built national railways. She launched a system of national ships. She nearly bankrupted her public treasury with public works andultimately handed her transportation system over to semi-privatemanagement. Outside interests began buying the pulp-wood areas. Pulpbecame one of the great industries. The mines of the east shore pickedup. There was a boom in whaling. World conditions in trade improved. By the time that the Dominion had awakened to the value of Newfoundlandno party in Newfoundland would have dared to mention confederation, andthat is the status to-day. One can hardly imagine this statuscontinuing long. The present war, or the lessons of the present war, may awaken both sides to the advantages of union. Sooner or later, forher own sake solely, Canada must have Newfoundland; and it is up toCanada to offer terms to win the most ancient of British colonies inAmerica. British settlement in Newfoundland dates a century prior tosettlement in Acadia and Virginia. Devon men came to fish before theBritish government had set up any proprietary claim. 

II

And now eliminate the details of Canada's status among the nations andconsider only the salient undisputed facts:

Her population has come to her along four main lines of motive; seekingto realize religious ideals; seeking to realize political ideals;seeking the free adventurous life of the hunter; seeking--in modernday--freehold of land. One main current runs through all thesemotives--religious freedom, political freedom, outdoor vocations infreedom, and freehold of land. This is a good flavor for theingredients of nationality. 

Conditioning these movements of population have been Canada's climate, her backwoods and prairie and frontier hardship--challenging theweakling, strengthening the strong. No country affords moreopportunity to the fit man and none is crueler to the unfit thanCanada. I like this fact that Canada is hard at first. It is theflaming sword guarding the Paradise of effort from the vices of inertsoftened races. Diamonds are hard. Charcoals are soft, though bothare the very same thing. 

Canada affords the shortest safest route to the Orient. 

Canada has natural resources of mine, forest, fishery, land to supplyan empire of a hundred million; to supply Europe, if need arose. 

She must some day become one of the umpires of fate on the Pacific. 

She yearly interweaves tighter commercial bonds with the United States, yet refuses to come under American government. It may be predictedboth these conditions will remain permanent. 

Panama will quicken her west coast to a second Japan. 

Yearly the West will exert greater political power, and the East less;for the preponderance of immigration settles West not East. 

As long as she has free land Canada will be free of labor unrest, butthe dangers of industrialism menace her in a transfer of populationfrom farm to factory. 

In twenty years Canada will have as many British born within herborders as there were Englishmen in England in the days of QueenElizabeth. 

In twenty years Canada will have more foreign-born than there arenative-born Canadians. 

Her pressing problems to-day are the amalgamation of the foreignerthrough her schools; a working arrangement with the Oriental fair tohim as to her; the development of her natural resources; the anchoringof the people to the land; and the building of a system of powerfulnational defense by sea and land. 

Her constitution is elastic and pliable to every new emergency--it maybe, too pliable; and her system of justice stands high. 

She has a fanatical patriotism; but it is not yet vocal in art, orliterature; and it is--do not mistake it--loyalty to an ideal, not to adynasty, nor to a country. She loves Britain because Britain standsfor that ideal. 

Stand back from all these facts! They may be slow-moving ponderousfacts. They may be contradictory and inconsistent. What that movesever is consistent? But like a fleet tacking to sea, though the courseshift and veer, it is ever forward. Forward whither--do you ask ofCanada?

There is no man with an open free mind can ponder these facts and notanswer forthwith and without faltering--_to a democratised edition of aGreater Britain Overseas_. Only a world cataclysm or national upheavaldisplacing every nation from its foundations can shake Canada from thatdestiny. 

Will she grow closer to Britain or farther off? Will she grow closerto the United States or farther off? Will she fight Japan or leaguewith her? Will she rig up a working arrangement with the Hindu?

Every one of these questions is aside from the main fact--England willnot interfere with her destiny. The United States will not interferewith her destiny. Canada has her destiny in her own hands, and whatshe works out both England and the United States will bless; but withas many British born in her boundaries anchored to freehold of land asmade England great in the days of Queen Elizabeth, unless historyreverse itself and fate make of facts dice tossed to ruin by malignantfuries, then Canada's destiny can be only one--a Greater BritainOverseas. 

THE END

INDEX

ALBERTA: size of, 16, 39; coal deposits of, 38; investment of Britishcapital in, 104; distance from seaboard, 180; rate from on wheat toFort William, 187-188; distance from Montreal, 195; from Great Lakes, 199. 

"AMERICANIZING OF CANADA, " discussion of, 61-79. 

AMERICANS: emigration of to Canada, 65, 72, 273; investments of inCanada, 66, 80, 92; as pioneers, 74, 76; sell ranches as rawnches, 105;trade of with Canada, 128; attitude of Americans in Canadian Northwestto Monroe Doctrine, 244; view of opportunity, 280. See also UNITEDSTATES. 

ARBITRATION ACT, defects of, 220. 

BELL, GRAHAM, a Canadian, 278. 

BIG BUSINESS, does not dominate government in Canada, 212, 223. 

BORDEN, ROBERT: social prestige of, 4; a self-made man, 53; newpremier, 91; one of Canada's great men, 109; naval policy of, 283, 285. 

BRITISH COLUMBIA: demands self-government, 11; railway to planned, 14;larger than two Germanies, 16; climate of, 22; coal deposits of, 38;description of, 40-41; investment of British capital in, 104; opposesOriental immigration, 129-133; coming of Hindus into and problem of, 141 et seq. 

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT: the Canadian Constitution, 11; mentioned, 42, 111, 245; elasticity of, 51; constitution of Canada, 223;provisions of, 228. 

BROWN, GEORGE, favors reciprocity, 82. 

CABINET, how chosen and to whom responsible, 229. 

CANADA NORTHERN: builds repair shops at Port Mann, 179; uses electricpower in tunnels, 182; aided by government, 193. 

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY: builds repair shops at Coquitlam, 179; tunnelof through Mount Stephen, 182; aided by government, 193. 

CANADIAN SOO CANAL; tonnage passing through, 14; influence of inreducing freight rates, 38. 

CHINA, an awakened giant, 168. 

CHINESE: agitation against on West Coast, 129; head tax upon, 130, 164;a separate problem from that of the Hindu, 138; in British Columbia, 159-167. 

CHURCHES, well attended in Canada, 252-255. 

COBALT: discovery of silver at, 34; boom in, 67. 

"COBDEN-BRIGHT SCHOOL, " mentioned, 82, 84. 

COCKNEYS, Canadian hostility toward, 52. 

CONNAUGHT, DUKE OF, rebukes lip-loyalist, 48. 

CONSERVATIVES: tariff views of, 81-86; and appointment of judges, 234;support Family Compact, 242; principles of, 242-244; support Navy Bill, 283; oppose Laurier's naval program, 285. 

DAWSON, GEORGE, on coal deposits of Alberta and British Columbia, 38. 

"DIRECT PASSAGE" LAW: enacted, 130, 142; attempt to evade, 143, 153. 

DIVORCE, low rate of, 264. 

DOUKHOBORS: are accumulating wealth, 117; law-abiding, 118; influenceof priests upon, 124. 

DURHAM, LORD: work of in Canada, 226-228; report of, 274. 

ENGLAND, see GREAT BRITAIN. 

"FAMILY COMPACT": a governing clique, 9; mentioned, 14, 226, 242. 

FRANCHISE, in Canada, 232-233. 

FUR TRADE, account of, 294-322. 

GEORGE, LLOYD: mentioned, 56, 57; Canada not interested in theories of, 58; effects of tax system of upon investment in Canada, 104. 

GEORGIAN BAY SHIP CANAL, proposed, 194. 

GLADSTONE, EDWARD E. , attitude of toward colonies, 42. 

GORDON, CHARLES, investigates mining strike, 117. 

GOVERNOR-GENERAL: appointment and powers of, 43-44, 228-230; appointsprovincial judges, 236. 

GRAND BANKS, mentioned, 323. 

GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC: has dock in Seattle, 173, 174; its low mountaingrade, 182. 

GREAT BRITAIN: withholds self-government from Oregon region, 11; foodrequirements of, 36; grants no trade favors to her colonies, 43;dependence of Canada upon, 43-45; trade of with the United States, 62-63; her dependencies, 95; immigration from, 95-110; allied withJapan, 127, 132; as a world policeman, 137; shipyards of, 171; need ofshortest wheat route to, 197; eighty per cent. Of Canada's agriculturalproducts go to, 202; acquires Canada, 224; secret of her success as acolonial power, 269; overplus of women in, 265; rise of as a worldpower, 269; her navy Canada's chief defense, 289; what defeat of hernavy would mean to Canada, 292-293; importance of Newfoundland to herpossessions in America, 323; will not interfere with Canada's destiny, 333. 

GREAT CLAY BELT; described, 33; mentioned, 303. 

HENDRY, ANTHONY, first white fur-trader in Saskatchewan country, 314. 

HILL, JAMES: he and associates buy large coal areas, 66; predicts breadfamine in United States, 88; on rights of the public, 175; on westernfruit crop, 181; wheat empire of, 198, 208; a Canadian, 278. 

HINDUS: agitation against in British Columbia, 129; problem of inCanada, 138-167; possible effects on constitution of unlimitedimmigration of, 245; troops rushed across Canada, 286. 

HOPKINSON: murder of, 144; had secret information regarding Hindus, 144, 153. 

HUDSON BAY RAILROAD, account of, 191-209. 

HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY; monopoly of, 11; journals of mention mineraldeposits, 35; governor of testifies that farming can not succeed inRupert's Land, 271; effect of contentions regarding Northwest, 276;trade of, 297-298; former monopoly of, 299; mentioned, 302. 

HUDSON STRAITS, the crux of the Hudson Bay route, 206-209. 

HUNTERS' LODGES, raids of, 8. 

ICELANDERS, story of in Manitoba, 122-123. 

IMMIGRATION: increase in ten years, 20; from Great Britain, 51, 95-110;American immigration into Canada, 61-79; from continental Europe, 111-126; from the Orient, 127-167; probable effect of Panama Canalupon, 176. 

IMPERIAL FEDERATION, a dead issue in Canada, 47. 

INDIANS: number of in the fur trade, 294; rights of Indian wivesmarried to white men, 266. 

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD: in Canada, 219; program of, 221. 

JAPAN: dominates fishing industry of the Pacific, 24; alliance of withGreat Britain, 127; attitude of on equality question, 130-132; activityof on West Coast, 134-136; controls seventy-two per cent. Of theshipping of the Pacific, 136, 178; future influence of, 137; attempt todraw into Hindu quarrel, 146; demands room to expand, 168; becomes aworld power, 269; future relations of with Canada, 333. 

JAPANESE: inrush of into British Columbia, 129; limitations onimmigration of, 130; exclusion of becomes party shibboleth, 133; aseparate problem from that of the Hindu, 138. 

JUDGES, position and powers of, 233-236. 

KOOTENAY, mining boom in, 66-67. 

LABRADOR, as a fur country, 302-304. 

LABRODOR, THE, under jurisdiction of Newfoundland, 327

LAURIER, SIR WILFRED: social prestige of, 4; helps allay racialantagonisms, 7; prediction of as to Canada's future, 17; supports BoerWar, 31-32; a self-made man, 53; a free-trader, 82; and reciprocity, 89-91; one of Canada's great men, 109; and a Dominion navy, 283, 285;mentioned, 243. 

LESSER GREAT LAKES, fisheries of, 39. 

LIBERALS: favor free trade, 82; seek reciprocity agreement, 83-85;launch two more transcontinentals, 86; and appointment of judges, 234;organize to oust Family Compact, 242; principles of, 242-244; opposeNaval Bill, 283, 285. 

LITERATURE: no great national in Canada, 262; Canadians slow torecognize writers, 279; most Canadian books first published out ofCanada, 79. 

LORD SELKIRK'S SETTLERS, come to Canada, 6. 

LOYALISTS, see UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS. 

MACDONALD, SIR JOHN: influence of upon Canadian constitution, 11-12;comes up from penury, 53; seeks tariff concessions from the UnitedStates, 81; tariff views of, 83; launches Canadian Pacific Railway, 86;one of Canada's great men, 109; mentioned, 243. 

MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER: comes up from penury, 53; mentioned, 81; afree-trader, 82; a man of the North, 295. 

MACKENZIE, WILLIAM LYON, a leader in rebellion of 1837-8, 226. 

MANITOBA: almost as large as British Isles, 16, 39; coal deposits in, 38; distance of from Montreal and Hudson Bay, 195. 

MANITOBA SCHOOL CASE, mentioned 44, 83. 

MANN, DAN, comes up from penury, 53, MARITIME PROVINCES, described, 221. 

MONROE DOCTRINE: mentioned, 32, 45, 285; Canadian opinion of, 169, 288;attitude of French Nationalists toward, 244. 

MOUNTED POLICE: say crime in Northwest is increasing, 118; efficiencyof, 238-240. 

MUNRO, DOCTOR, quoted regarding Oriental immigration, 162-163. 

NATIONALISTS; oppose Navy Bill, 283, 285; and outside entanglements, 244. 

NAVY BILL: defeated, 284. 

NEW BRUNSWICK, mentioned, 22. 

NEWFOUNDLAND; mentioned, 195; description of, 323-328; why not a partof Canada, 323-330. 

NEW FRANCE, conquest of, 6. 

NORTH AMERICA ACT, see BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT. 

NOVA SCOTIA, mentioned, 22. 

ONTARIO: first settlement of, 3; more ultra-English than England, 4;description of, 33-35. 

OSLER, WILLIAM, a Canadian, 278. 

PANAMA CANAL; mentioned, 14; influence of upon commerce, 27; turnsPacific into a front door, 41; what it means to Canada, 168-190; willreverse conduits of trade, 280. 

PAPINEAU, LOUIS, a leader in the rebellion of 1837-8, 226. 

PARLIAMENT: composition and powers of, 230-233; a session every year, 234. 

PEACE RIVER COUNTRY: mentioned, 16; wheat grown in, 271; wheat landsof, 300. 

PEEL, PAUL: lost to Canada, 279. 

PRAIRIE PROVINCES: resources of, 350; probable wheat production of intwenty years, 183. 

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, mentioned, 22. 

QUEBEC, PROVINCE OF: more Catholic than the Pope, 4; size of, 16;description of, 27-32. 

QUEBEC ACT, first constitution of Canada, 225. 

RAILWAY COMMISSION, 192. 

REBELLION OF 1837: significance of, 8. 

RECIPROCITY: Canadians seek, 15; why rejected, 80-94. 

RED RIVER, demands self-government, 11. 

RELIGION, influence of in Canada, 252-259. 

REVILLONS: yearly fur trade of, 298; inquiry made of as to number ofwhite hunters, 302. 

RIEL REBELLION, mentioned, 227, 284. 

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, sends fleet round the world, 128. 

ROYAL NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE, absence of flunkeyism among, 49. 

SASKATCHEWAN: area of, 16, 39; coal deposits in, 38. 

SCHURMAN, JACOB G. , a Canadian, 278. 

SIFTON, CLIFFORD: a self-made man, 53; campaign for immigrants, 70-74, 87. 

SMITH, GOLDWIN, opinion of Canadian loyalty, 47-48. 

SOCIALISM: plays little part in Canadian affairs, 248-251; in Canada, 210, 222. 

SOCIALISTS, have never collected money to buy rifles, 149. 

SPORT, interest in and forms of, 259-262. 

ST. LAWRENCE RIVER, improvements along, 192-196. 

STRATHCONA, LORD: prophecy of regarding the prairie provinces, 39, 170;once a fur-trader, 295. 

STRATHCONA HORSE, daring of in South Africa, 49. 

SUDBURY, nickel mines of, 34. 

TAFT, WILLIAM H. , and reciprocity, 45, 89-91. 

TEACHERS, lack of recognition of services of, 125-126. 

"TWILIGHT ZONE": borderland between Dominion and provincial powers, 145; embarrassing in labor disputes, 219. 

UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS: first people Ontario, 3; mentioned, 6, 7, 9, 225, 274, 295. 

UNITED STATES: effects of Civil War upon unity of, 2; emigration tofrom Canada, 15; population of compared with that of Canada, 18, 269, 275; absorption of immigration by, 20; spring wheat production of, 37;government of compared with that of Canada, 50-51; transportationfacilities between Canada and the United States, 64; trade of withCanada, 64-65; lumbermen from our timber lands in Dominion, 76; andreciprocity, 81-94; increase in value of fruit lands in, 105;similarity to Canada, 113; political corruption in, 116; why she builtPanama Canal, 128, 187; problems of immigration in, 120, 130, 176;emigration to Canada from, 170; shipyards in, 171; expectations ofPanama, 174; little aid given by to shipping, 179; how it transportsits wheat crop, 183; a source of the British wheat supply, 197; acreageof wheat in, 201; increase of urban population in, 214; as a competitorof Canada, 216; churches of poorly attended, 252; friendly relations ofwith Canada, 273; comparison of with Canada, 269-277; Canadiansgrateful they are not as, 277; a "big ship, " 278; what menaces UnitedStates menaces Canada, 287; foreign policies of two countries similar, 292; even closer commercial relations of with Canada, 332; will notinterfere with Canada's destiny, 332. 

VAN HORNE, SIR WILLIAM C, comes up from penury, 53. 

WALKER, HORATIO, lost to Canada, 279. 

WAR OF 1812, cripples Canada financially, 7. 

WELLAND CANAL, not wide enough, 194, WILSON, WOODROW, tariff reductions under, 94. 

YUKON: mentioned, 16; gold discovered in, 23.