It now becomes apparent why British Columbia was described as the province where East meets West and works out Destiny.
On the other side of the Pacific lies Japan come to the manhood of nationality, demanding recognition as the equal of the white race and room to expand. Behind Japan lies China, an awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of half a billion people, whose commerce under a few years of modern science and mechanics is bound to equal the commerce of half Europe. It may in a decade bring to the ports that have hitherto been the back doors of America an aggregate yearly traffic exceeding the four billion dollars' worth that yearly leave Atlantic ports for Europe. Canada is now the shortest route to "Cathay"; the railroads across Canada offer shorter route from China to Europe than Suez or Horn, by from two to ten thousand miles. Then there is India, another awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of three hundred million people—two hundred to the square mile—clamoring for recognition as British subjects, clamoring for room to expand.
The question is sometimes asked by Americans: Why does Canada concern herself about foreign problems and dangers? Why does she not rest secure under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine, which forever forfends foreign conquest of America by an alien power? And Canada answers—because the Monroe Doctrine is not worth the ink in which it was penned without the bayonet to enforce the pen. Belgium's neutrality did not protect her. The peace that is not a victory is only an armed truce—a let-live by some other nation's permission. Without power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, that doctrine is to Canada but a tissue-paper rampart.
To add to the complication involving British Columbia comes the opening of Panama, turning the Pacific Ocean into a parade ground for the world's fleets both merchantmen and war. Commercially Panama simply turns British Columbia into a front door, instead of a back door. What does this mean?
The Atlantic has hitherto been the Dominion's front door, and the Canadian section of the Atlantic has four harbors of first rank with an aggregate population of nearly a million. Canada has, besides, three lake harbors subsidiary to ocean traffic with an aggregate population of half a million. One may infer when the Pacific becomes a front door, that Vancouver and Victoria and Port Mann and Westminster and Prince Rupert will soon have an aggregate population of a million.
Behind the Atlantic ports, supplied by them with traffic, supplying them with traffic, is a provincial population of five millions. Behind the Pacific ports in British Columbia and Alberta, one would be justified in expecting to find—Strathcona said a hundred million people, but for this generation put it at twelve million.
Through the Atlantic ports annually come two hundred and fifty thousand or more immigrants, not counting the one hundred and fifty thousand from the United States. What if something happened to bring as many to the Pacific, as well as those now coming to the Atlantic?
Then a century of peace has a sleeping-powder effect on a nation. We forget that the guns of four nations once boomed and roared round old Quebec 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 Canada had not been a part of Greater Britain four or five years ago when the trouble arose over Japanese immigration, guns might easily have boomed round 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 States on the Atlantic support fifty thousand skilled artisans, or what would make a city of two hundred and fifty thousand people. The shipyards of England support a population equal to Boston. In the United States those shipyards exist almost wholly by virtue of government contracts to build war vessels, and in Great Britain largely by virtue of admiralty subsidies. Though they also do an enormous amount of work on river and coastal steamers, the manager of the largest and oldest plant in the United States told me personally that with the high price of labor and material in America, his shipyard could not last a day without government contracts for war vessels, torpedoes, dredges, etc. Front door on the Pacific means that to Canada, and it means more; for Canada belongs to an empire that has vaster dominions to defend in Asia than in Europe.
But isn't all this stretching one's fancy a bit too far in the future? How far istoofar? The Panama Canal is open for traffic, and there is 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 millions on, the expectation of Panama changing the Pacific from a back into a front door. Either these harbors are all wrong or Canada is sound asleep as a tombstone to the progress round her. Boston has spent nine million dollars acquiring terminals and water-front, and is now guaranteeing the bonds of steamships to the extent of twenty-five million dollars. New York has built five new piers to take care of the commerce coming—and the Federal government has spent fifty million dollars improving the approaches to her harbor. Baltimore is so sure that Panama is going to revive shore-front interests that she has reclaimed almost two hundred acres of swamp land for manufacturing sites, which she is leasing out at merely nominal figures to bring the manufacturers from inland down to the sea. In both Baltimore and Philadelphia, railroads are spending millions increasing their trackage for the traffic they expect to feed down to the coast cities for Panama steamers.
Among the Gulf ports, New Orleans has spent fifteen million dollars putting in a belt line system of railroads and docks with steel and cement sheds, purely to keep her harbor front free of corporate control. This is not out of enmity to corporations, but because the prosperity of a harbor depends on all steamers and all railroads receiving the same treatment. This is not possible under private and rival control. Yet more, New Orleans is putting on a line of her own civic 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 a harbor out of a duck pond. San Francisco and Oakland have improved docks to the extent of twenty-four million dollars. Seattle attests her expectation of what Panama is going to do on the Pacific by securing the expenditure of fifteen million dollars on her harbor for her own traffic and all the traffic she can capture from Canada; and it may be said here that the Grand Trunk Pacific of Canada—a national road on which the Dominion is spending hundreds of millions—has the finest docks in Seattle. Portland has gone farther than any of the Pacific ports. Portland is Scotch—full of descendants of the old Scotch folk who used to serve in the Hudson's Bay Company. If there is a chance to capture world traffic, Portland is out with both hands and both feet after that flying opportunity. Portland has not only improved the entrance to the Columbia to the extent of fifteen million dollars—this was done by the Federal government—but she has had a canal cut past bad water in the Columbia, costing nearly seven millions, and has put on the big river a system of civic boats to bring the wheat down from an inland empire. There is no aim to make this river line a dividend payer. The sole object is to bring the Pacific grain trade to Portland. Portland is already a great wheat port. Will she get a share of Canada's traffic in bond to Liverpool? Candidly, she hopes to. How? By having Canadian barges bring Alberta wheat down the Columbia.
And now, what is Canada doing? Canada is doing absolutely nothing. Canada is saying, with a little note of belligerency in her voice—What's Panama to us? Either every harbor in the United States is Panama fool-mad; either every harbor in the United States is spending money like water on fool-schemes; or Canada needs a wakening blast of dynamite 'neath her dreams. If Panama brings the traffic which every harbor in the United States expects, then Canada's share of that traffic will go through Seattle and Portland. Either Canada must wake up or miss the chance that is coming.
Two American transcontinentals have not come wooing traffic in Vancouver for nothing. The Canadian Pacific is not double tracking its roadbed to the Coast for nothing. The Grand Trunk has not bought terminals in Seattle for nothing. Yet, having jockeyed for traffic in Vancouver, 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 Canada doesn't want the traffic from the world commerce of the seas, then Portland and Seattle do.
One recalls how a person feels who is wakened a bit sooner than suits his slumbers. He passes some crusty comments and asks some criss-cross questions. The same with Canada regarding Panama. What's Panama to us? How in the world can a cut through a neck of swamp and hills three thousand miles from the back of beyond, have the slightest effect on commerce 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 divert a share of shipping away from Montreal and St. John and Halifax?
There is no use ever arguing with a cross questioner. Mr. Hill once said there was no use ever going into frenzies about the rights of the public. The public would just get exactly what was coming to it. If it worked for prosperity, it would get it. If it were not sufficiently alert to see opportunity, it certainly would not be sufficiently alert to grasp opportunity after you had pointed it out. Your opinion or mine does not count with the churlish questioner. You have to hurl facts 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 a back door?
Almost every big steamship line of England and Germany, also a great many of the small lines from Norway and Belgium and Holland and Spain and Italy, have announced their intention of putting on ships to go by way of Panama to the Orient and to Pacific Coast ports. Three of those lines have explicitly said that they would call at Pacific ports in Canada if there were traffic and terminals for them.
The steamers coming from the Mediterranean have announced their intention of charging for steerage only five to ten dollars more to the Pacific Coast ports than to the Atlantic ports. It costs the immigrant from sixteen to twenty-five dollars to go west from Atlantic ports. It can hardly be doubted that a great many immigrants will save fare by booking directly to Pacific ports. Of South-of-Europe immigrants, almost seven hundred thousand a year come to United States Atlantic ports, of whom two-thirds remain, one-third, owing to the rigor of winter, going back. Of those who will come to Pacific ports, they will not be driven back by the rigor of winter. They will find a region almost similar in climate to their own land and very similar in agriculture. Hitherto Canada has not made a bid for South-of-Europe immigrants, but, with Panama open, they will come whether Canada bids for them or not. They are the quickest, cheapest and most competent fruit farmers in the world. They are also the most turbulent of all European immigrants. We may like or dislike them. They are coming to Canada's shores when the war is over, coming in leaderless hordes.
The East has awakened and is moving west. The West has always been awake and is moving east. The East is sending her teas and her silks to the West, and the West is sending her wheat and her lumber to the East. When these two currents meet, what? If two currents meet and do not blend, what? Exactly what has happened before in the world, impact, collision, struggle; and the fittest survives. This was the real reason for the building of the Panama Canal—to give the American navy command of her own shores on the Pacific. Now that Panama is built 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 world conclave assembling on the Pacific than a boy can grow into strong manhood and keep out of the rough and tumble of life, or a girl grow to efficient womanhood and play the hothouse parasite all her life. Fleets, naval stations, coaling stations, dry docks, whole cities supported by shipyards are bound to grow on the Pacific just as surely as the years come and go. The growth has begun already. Nothing worth having 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 and pass up enough platitudes to pave the way to a universal brotherhood of heaven on earth, but in the past good intentions and platitudes have paved the way to an altogether different sort of place. In the whole world history of the past (however much we might wish this earth a different place) the nation most secure against war has been the nation most prepared against war. Canada can't dodge that fact. With Panama open come the armaments of the world to the Pacific!
How about a merchant marine for Canada? This question was important to the maritime provinces, but the maritime provinces are well served by British liners. On the Pacific seventy-two per cent. of the carrying trade is already controlled by Japan. Now Canada can buy her ships in the 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 I know, has never had a case of abuse arising from this freedom which her laws permit.
Except for the St. Lawrence after October, there is no foreign discrimination 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—a fishing bounty, one or two mail contracts—the United States has not given and may never give government aid to ships. The Canadian government does and does wisely! Ocean traffic may be as requisite to prosperity as rail traffic, and you can't give land subsidies to the sea.
It is when one comes to consider Panama's influence on rail traffic that it becomes apparent the Canal may divert half the Dominion's traffic to seaboard by Pacific routes. Why do you suppose that the big grain companies of the Northwest want to reverse their former policy? Formerly the biggest elevators were built east, the medium-sized at the big gathering centers, the smaller scattered out along the line anywhere convenient to the grower. To-day, as far as Alberta is concerned, the biggest elevators are going up farthest west. Why? Why do you suppose that the big traction companies of Birmingham, Alabama, the big wire companies of Cleveland and Pittsburgh are looking over the Canadian West for sites? One Birmingham firm has just bought the site for a big plant in Calgary. Why do you suppose that the Canadian Pacific Railway is building big repair shops at Coquitlam, and the Canada Northern at Port Mann? Why are both these roads also stationing big repair plants at inland points, one at Calgary, the other supposed to be for Kamloops? It is not to help along the townsite lot booms in these places. No one deprecates these town lots running out the area of Chicago more than the railroads do. "Wild oats" hurt trade more than 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, to Calgary one thousand two hundred eighty, to Edmonton one thousand four hundred fifty-one miles. From Alberta to Vancouver is slightly over six hundred miles. Port William navigation is open only half the year. The Pacific harbors are open all the year. Manitoba and Saskatchewan wheat may be rushed forward in time for shipment before the close of navigation. Because Alberta is farther west and must wait longest for cars, very little of her wheat can be rushed forward in time; so Alberta wheat must go on down to St. John, another one thousand two hundred miles. Look at the figures—six hundred and fifty miles from Alberta to the seaboard at Vancouver, two thousand four hundred miles from Alberta to sea-board at St. John! In other words, while a car is making one trip to St. John and back with wheat, it could make four trips to Vancouver.
One year the crop so far exceeded the rolling stock of all the railroads in America that millions of dollars were lost in depreciation and waste waiting for shipment. This state of affairs does not apply to wheat alone nor to Canada alone. It was the condition with every crop in every section of America. I saw twenty-nine miles of cotton standing along the tracks of a southern port exposed to wet weather because the southern railroads had neither steamers nor cars to rush shipments forward for Liverpool. In New York State and the belt of middle west states thousands of barrels of fruit lay and rotted on the ground because the railroads could not handle it. In an orchard near my own I saw two thousand barrels lie and go to waste because there were no shipping facilities cheap enough to make it worth while to send the apples to market. Hill has said that if all the fruit orchards set out in western states come to maturity, it will require twenty times the rolling stock that exists today to ship the fruit out in time to reach the market in a salable condition. The same of wheat, especially in the West, where wheat is raised in quantities too great for any individual granary. A few years ago, when the northwestern states had their banner crop, piles of wheat the size of a miniature town lay exposed to weather for weeks on Washington and Idaho and Montana railroads because the railroads had not sufficient cars to haul it away.
The same thing almost happened in Canada one fall, though conditions were aggravated by the coal strike.
Now, then, where does Panama come into this story? What if the railroads did not carry the crop two thousand four hundred miles to seaboard in order to ship forward to Liverpool? What if they carried some of the big crops only six hundred miles west to sea-board on the Pacific? They would have four times as many cars available to handle the crop, or they could make just four times as many trips to Vancouver with the same cars as to the Atlantic seaboard after the close of navigation in the East. It is apparent now why the Pacific ports have gone mad over the possibilities from Panama and are preparing for enormous traffic. Of course there are features of this diversion of traffic to new channels which the lay mind will miss and only the traffic specialist appreciate. For instance, there is the question of grade over the mountains. The Canadian Pacific Railroad meets this difficulty with its long tunnel through Mount Stephen. The Grand Trunk declares that it has the lowest mountain grade of all the transcontinentals. The Great Northern uses electric power for its tunnels, and Los Angeles will tell you how its new diagonal San Pedro road up through Nevada puts it in touch with the inland empire of the mountain states by running up parallel with the mountains and not crossing a divide at all.
Take a look at the subject from another angle! At the present rate of homesteading in the West, within twenty years the three prairie provinces will be producing seven to nine hundred million bushels of wheat a year. Possibly they will not do so well as that, but suppose they do; the three grain provinces of Canada will be producing as much as the wheat produced in all the United States. Now, the United States to take care of its crop has practically seven transcontinentals and a host of allied trunk lines like the Illinois Central, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania; but when a big crop comes, the United States roads are paralyzed from a shortage of cars. Canada has only three big transcontinentals and no big trunk lines to take care of a crop that may be as large as the whole United States crop. Panama promises, not a menace, but the one possible avenue of relief to the railroads.
Of course eastern cities may fight a diversion of traffic to the seaboard of the West, but they can not stop it. Portland is already one of the big grain shippers and will bid for a share of Canada's west-bound grain, if Vancouver and Prince Rupert do not prepare for the new conditions.
Not only terminals but elevators must be prepared on the Pacific. Terminals mean more than railroad company tracks. They mean city-owned trackage, so that the tramp steamer seeking cargo at cheap rates shall have every inducement and facility for getting cargo. They mean free sites for manufacturers, not sky-rocket boom prices that keep new industries out of a city. Elevators and terminals have been announced time and again for Vancouver, but up to the present the announcements have not materialized. Regular grain steamers must be put on, steamers good for cargo of three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand bushels, as on the lakes, and with devices for such swift handling as have made Montreal one of the best grain ports in the world, in spite of high insurance rates and half-season. As long as there are no elevators at Vancouver, grain must be sacked. Sacking costs from five to six cents extra a bushel, and more extra in handling. The remedy for this is for the Pacific ports to build elevators; and even when they haven't elevators, the saving in rates over and above the extra sacking has already been from eight to fourteen cents a bushel on grain billed for Liverpool via the one hundred ninety miles of rail over Tehuantepec, or via the Panama railroad, where bulk need not be broken twice.
An objection is that in the humid Pacific Coast winter climate there is danger of grain heating. This has been overcome at Portland, and against this must be set the incalculable advantage that Pacific Coast ports are open all the year round. One year, of 65,000,000 bushels of grain from the prairie provinces that passed over the Great Lakes forty-three per cent. went out by way of Buffalo to American ports. Why? Because the glut was so great, the facilities so inadequate for the enormous crop, the insurance so high, that the grain could not be rushed seaward fast enough before close of navigation. Through Vancouver during this very period there passed only 750,000 bushels of wheat. Why not more? No facilities.
"We could have shipped millions of bushels of wheat to Liverpool by way of Vancouver," said the head of one of the largest grain companies in Calgary, "but there were simply no facilities to take care of it. On 16,000 bushels, which we shipped by way of Vancouver and Tehuantepec, we saved eight cents a bushel, as against Atlantic rates. You know how much handling the Tehuantepec route requires. Well, you can figure what we should save the farmer when Panama opens and the cargo never breaks bulk to Liverpool from our shore."
Rates, not heating nor sacking, are the real cloud in the Canadian mind regarding Panama; and if Canada continues to stand twiddling her hands over rates when she should be hustling preparations, the inevitable will happen—Portland, which sends millions of bushels of her own wheat to Liverpool, is ready to take care of Canada's traffic; so is Seattle. There is nothing these cities hope more than that Canada will continue to shun the question of rates.
Let us look at this question of rates!
Ordinarily the rate on wheat from Chicago to New York is about ten to twelve cents a bushel; from New York to Liverpool about three to seven cents. That is, for one thousand miles (roughly) the rate by rail is ten 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 cent buys him one thousand miles by water. Get out a chart and figure out for yourself what the saving means on wheat via Panama to Liverpool on a crop—we'll say—of one hundred million bushels, Alberta's future share alone, leaving Saskatchewan and Manitoba crops to continue going to Liverpool by Fort William and Montreal. You can figure the distance to Liverpool via Panama twice or even three times as far as via Atlantic ports, long as water rates are to rail, as one to ten, the saving on a one-hundred-million-bushel crop for a single year is enough to buy terminals, build elevators and run civic ships as Boston and New Orleans and St. Louis and Kansas City and Portland are doing. Via Tehuantepec the saving was eight cents a bushel. At that rate your saving in a year would be eight million dollars for Alberta wheat alone, not counting dairy products, which are bound to become larger each year, and coal, which will yet bring the same wealth to Alberta as to Pennsylvania, and lumber, on which the saving is as one to four.
Please note one point! It is a point usually ignored in all comparisons of water and rail rates. While sea and lake are the cheapest method of transportation in the world, canals (unless some other nation builds them as the United States built Panama) are not so cheap as sea and lake. When you add to the cost of canals, the interest on cost, the maintenance, and charge that up against traffic—for it doesn't matter, though the government does maintain canals; you pay the bill in the end—canal rates come higher than rail rates. But in Canada's use of Panama, Canada is not paying for the building of the canal; and the Lord pays the upkeep of the canal of the sea.
Take this question of Vancouver rates, from which Canada is standing back so inertly! Take the latest rates issued! These are subject to change and correction, but that does not affect final conclusions. It costs Manitoba and Saskatchewan from twelve to nineteen cents a hundred weight to send grain to Fort William, then during open navigation from four to five cents to reach seaboard at Montreal. It costs Alberta, being farther west, twenty-five cents to reach Fort William; but, as a matter of fact, her wheat can seldom reach Fort William before the close of navigation; so she must pay twenty-five cents more to send her wheat on down to St. John, and five to six cents from St. John to Liverpool, or in all fifty-five cents. The Alberta rate is twenty-two cents plus a fraction to Vancouver, or forty-five cents to Liverpool. Now, Alberta wants to know: Why is she charged twenty-two and a fraction cents for six hundred fifty miles west, and only twenty-five cents for one thousand two hundred miles east?
There is the nub and the rub and the hub of the whole thing, and the discrimination bears just as vitally on fruit and dairy products and lumber and coal as on wheat. It is a question that has to be settled in Canada within the next few years, or her west-bound traffic will build up Portland and Seattle instead of Vancouver and Prince Rupert.
The whole problem of the effect of Panama is so new in Canada that data do not exist to make comparisons; but details have been carefully gathered by American ports, and the cases are a close enough parallel to illustrate what Panama means in the world of traffic to-day. Freight on a car of Washington lumber to New York is from three hundred ninety-five to four hundred eleven dollars; by water, the freight is from one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. To bring a car of Washington fir diagonally across the continent to Norfolk costs eighty-five cents a hundred weight. To bring it round by Panama costs twenty cents, or to ship the very same cargo from Norfolk to England—which many southern dealers are now doing—costs twelve to fifteen cents, including the handling at both ends. Dry goods from New York to Texas by water cost eighty-nine cents; by rail, one dollar and eighty-two cents. Oranges by rail from the Pacific to the Atlantic cost twenty-three dollars a ton; by water before the canal opened, breaking bulk twice, ten dollars, and through the canal, when bulk is not broken, will cost only five to eight dollars. On oranges alone California will save twenty million dollars a year shipping via Panama. The Balfour-Guthrie firm of Antwerp can ship a ton of groceries from Europe to Los Angeles round the Horn for the same amount the Southern Pacific ships that ton from Los Angeles to San Francisco—namely, six dollars plus. The rail rate on salt in Washington is eight dollars seventy cents for eighty-eight miles; the river rate one dollar fifty cents. I could give instances in the South where cotton by rail costs two 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 make their profit on the long or the short haul. Ask them whether high rates and sparse population or dense population and low rates pay the better dividends! Compare New York Central traffic receipts and Southern Pacific on the average per mile! Now ships that are to use Panama plan pouring twenty million people into the Pacific Coast in twenty years.
Will Canada share the coming tide of benefits? Only two things can prevent her: first, lack of preparation—too much "hot air" and not enough hustle; too much after-dinner aviating in the empyrean and not enough muddy mess out on the harbor dredge with "sand hogs" and "shovel stiffs"; then, second, lack of adequate labor to prepare. After-dinner speeches don't make the dirt fly. Canada wants fewer platitudes and a great deal more of good old-fashioned hard hoeing.
It must have become apparent to the most casual observer that transportation has been to Canada more than a system of exploitation by capital. Transportation has been to Canada an integral part of her very national life—which, perhaps, explains how with the exception of extravagance incident to a period of great prosperity her railroad systems have been founded on sound finance from bed-rock up. In spite of huge land grants—in all fifty-five million acres—and in the case of one railroad wild stock fluctuations from forty-eight to three hundred dollars—it is a question if a dollar of public money has ever been diverted from roadbed to promoters' pockets. Certainly, in the case of the strongest road financially in Canada, no director of the road has ever juggled with underground wires to unload worthless securities on widows and orphans. Railroad stocks have never been made the football of speculators. Charters in the old days were juggled through legislatures with land grants of eight and twelve thousand acres per mile; but at that time these acres were worthless; and the system of land grants has for the last ten years been discontinued. Because railroads are a necessary part of Canada's national development, state aid of late has taken the form of loans, cash grants and guarantee of bonds by provincial and federal governments. This has given Canada's Railway Commission a whip handle over rates and management, which perhaps explains why railroads in Canada have never been 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. Including capital cost and maintenance, Canada has spent on her canals $138,000,000. On steamship subsidies, Canada's yearly grants have gradually risen from a few hundred thousands to as high as two millions in some years. Nor does this cover all the national expenditure on transportation; for besides the thirty-eight millions spent on dredging and improving navigation on the St. Lawrence, twelve millions have been appropriated for improving Halifax Harbor; and only recently federal guarantee for bonds to the extent of forty-three millions was accorded one transcontinental. This road was so heavily guaranteed by provincial governments that if it had failed it would have involved four western provinces. Its plight arose from two causes—the extravagant cost of labor and material in an inflated era, and the depression in the world money markets curtailing all extension. Workmen on this road were paid three to seventeen dollars a day, who would have received a dollar and a half to four dollars ten years ago. In fact, the owners of the road themselves received those wages thirty years ago. Sections cost one hundred thousand dollars a mile which would formerly have been built for thirty thousand; and prairie grading formerly estimated at six to eight thousand dollars a mile jumped to twenty and thirty thousand dollars. In coming to the aid of the Canada Northern, the government did no more than Sir John Macdonald's government did for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885, and the prosperity of the Canadian Pacific Railroad has amply justified that aid.
Canada's transportation system has been a national policy from the first. Her first transcontinental she built to unify and bind confederation. Her second two transcontinentals she launched to carry commerce east and west, because the United States had built a tariff wall which prevented Canada moving her commerce north and south. Her canal system to cut the distance from the Great Lakes to the seaboard and to overcome the rapids at "the Soo," at Niagara and on the St. Lawrence—has simply resolved itself into an effort to move seaboard inland, on the principle that the farther inland the port the shorter the land haul and the lower the traffic toll. Owing to the enormous increase in the cargo capacity of lake freighters in recent years, grain ships reach Buffalo carrying three hundred thousand bushels of western wheat, and Canada's Welland Canal has worked at a handicap. Until the Canal is widened, the big cargo carriers can not pass through it, and the necessity to break bulk here is one explanation of more than half Canada's western traffic going to seaboard by way of Buffalo instead of Montreal.
For years the proposal has been under consideration to connect the Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence by way of a canal from Georgian Bay through Ottawa River. This would be a colossal undertaking; for the region up Mattawa River toward Georgian Bay is of iron rock, and to build a canal wide enough for the big cargo carriers would out-distance anything in the way of canal construction in the world. Both parties in 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 to have cheap insurance on this route, the canal will have to be wide enough to guarantee safe passage; and the cost would be twice this estimate.
On no section of her national transportation has Canada expended more thought and effort than improving navigation on the St. Lawrence. This, in its way, has been as difficult a problem for a people of seven millions as the construction of Panama for a people of ninety millions. Consider the geographical position of the St. Lawrence route! It penetrates the continent from eight hundred to nine hundred sixty miles. Montreal, the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence, is the farthest inland harbor of America with the exception of two ports—Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico and Port Nelson on Hudson Bay. Galveston is seven hundred miles from the wheat fields of Kansas. Port Nelson is four hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba. Montreal is—roughly—a thousand miles from the head of the Lakes, one thousand five hundred miles from the wheat fields of Manitoba, two thousand two hundred miles from the wheat fields of Alberta. Montreal's great advantage is in being situated so far inland. Her disadvantages are from the nature of the St. Lawrence. First, the port is closed by ice from November to April. Second, the St. Lawrence is the drainage bed of inland oceans—the Great Lakes. Third, it passes into the Atlantic at one of the most difficult sections of the coast. South of Newfoundland are the fogs of the Grand Banks. North of Newfoundland the tidal current beats upon an iron coast in storm and fog. To save detour, St. Lawrence vessels, of course, follow the route north of Newfoundland through the Straits of Belle Isle.
When Canada began dredging the St. Lawrence in 1850, the channel averaged a depth of ten feet. By 1888, the channel averaged twenty-seven and one-half feet at low water. To-day a depth of thirty to thirty-one feet has been attained. At its narrowest points the St. Lawrence has a steamship channel four hundred and fifty feet wide and thirty feet deep from side to side. In the days when high insurance rates were established against the St. Lawrence route, there was practically not a lighthouse nor channel buoy from Tadousac to the Straits of Belle Isle. To-day between Montreal and Quebec are ninety-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 of Belle Isle, and hydrographic survey has charted every foot of the river. In spite of these improvements, insurance rates are four to six per cent. for lines to Canada, where they are one and one-half to two and one-half to American ports.
What with three transcontinentals, a complete canal system from seaboard to the Great Lakes and an outlet for western traffic through Panama, one would think that Canada had made ample provision for transportation; but she has only begun. If she is to be the shortest route to the Orient, she must keep traffic in Canadian channels and not divide it with Panama and Suez. If she is to feed the British Empire, she must establish the shortest route from her wheat fields to the United Kingdom; and if she is to overcome the disadvantage of harbors open only half the year, she must secure to herself some other advantage—such as access to the harbor having the shortest land haul and therefore the lowest freight rates in America. There is another consideration. If when Canada is raising less than three hundred million bushels of wheat her transcontinentals are glutted with traffic and her harbors gorged, what will happen when her wheat fields raise eight hundred million bushels of wheat? So Canada has cast about for a shorter route to Europe by Hudson Bay, and both parties in Dominion politics have backed the project.
At a time when the food supply of Great Britain must be drawn almost solely from her colonial possessions and the United States and Argentina, when her very national existence depends on the sea lanes to that food supply being kept open—a route which shortens the distance to that food supply by from one thousand five hundred to three thousand miles becomes doubly interesting.
Take a mental look at the contour of North America! All the big export harbors of the Atlantic Coast are situated at the broadest bulge of the continent—Halifax, St. John, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore are all where the distance across the continent from the grain fields is widest. That means a long land haul.
Take another look at the map—this time at a revolving globe! Any schoolboy knows that a circle round a top is shorter at the ends than around its middle. The same of the earth. East and west distances are shorter the nearer you are to the Pole, the farther you are from the Equator.
To England from Eastern Asia by Suez is fourteen to eighteen thousand miles. To England from Asia by San Francisco is eleven thousand miles, by Seattle ten thousand miles, by Prince Rupert and Hudson Bay seven to eight thousand miles—representing a saving by the northern route of almost half round the world.
Another point—take a compass! Stick the needle on Hudson Bay and swing the leg down round New York and up through the wheat plains of the Northwest. Draw lines to the center of your circle—to your amazement, you find the lines from the wheat plains to New York are twice and thrice as long as the lines from the wheat plains to Hudson Bay. In other words, Mr. Hill's wheat empire is one thousand miles nearer tidewater to Hudson Bay than to New York. The three prairie provinces of Northwestern Canada are from four hundred (for Manitoba) to eight hundred miles (for Alberta) distant from ocean front on Hudson Bay. They are from one thousand two hundred to two thousand four hundred miles distant from tidewater at Montreal and New York and Philadelphia.
That is—if land rates were the same as water rates—the Hudson Bay route to Europe would cut rates to England from the Orient by half, and from the wheat plains by the difference between one thousand two hundred miles and four hundred, and two thousand four hundred miles and eight hundred. But land rates are not water rates. From Alberta to the Great Lakes is roughly one thousand two hundred miles. From the Great Lakes to tidewater is roughly another one thousand two hundred miles—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 to twenty-five cents a bushel. For the one thousand two hundred miles from the head of the Lakes to Buffalo, the rate is three cents, from the 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 by water.
To the argument—shorter distances by half by the northern route—is added the argument cheaper rates as eight to one.
That is why for twenty years Canada has gone sheer mad over a Hudson Bay route to Europe. For obvious reasons the ports in Eastern Canada have fought the idea and ridiculed the whole project as "an iron tonic from rusting rails" for the cows. That has not stopped the West. Grading is under way for the railroad to Hudson Bay from the grain plains. The Canadian government is the backer and the builder. Construction engines, dredges, steamers now whistle over the silences of the northern inland sea; and Port Nelson, which for three centuries has been the great fur entrepôt of the wintry wastes, now echoes to pick and hammer and blowing locomotive intent on the construction of what is known as the Hudson Bay Railroad. Should the war last for years as wars of old, and Port Nelson become a great grain port as for three centuries it has been the greatest fur port of the world, the navies of Europe may yet thunder at one another along Hudson Bay's shallow shores, as French and English fought there all through the seventeenth century.
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, a railroad system of 29,000 miles? Hadn't the Dominion spent $138,000,000 on canals heading traffic to the St. Lawrence? Why divert half that traffic north to Hudson Bay? Surely three great transcontinental systems for a country with a population not larger than New York State were enough. So argued the East, and a great many conservative people in the West. Better make haste slowly, especially as it was becoming more and more evident that Canada would have to come to 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 a century, jumped two million in less than ten years. Immigrants began pouring in at the rate of four hundred thousand a year—they were coming literally faster than the railroads could carry them.
It sometimes takes an outsider's view of us to make us realize ourselves. Do you realize—they asked—that your three grain provinces alone are three times the area of the German Empire? Here is a grain field as long as from Petrograd to Paris and of unknown width north and south. You have 480,000,000 acres of wheat lands. (The United States plants only 50,000,000 acres a year to wheat.) You are cultivating only 16,000,000 acres. If there is a grain blockade now, what will there be when you cultivate 100,000,000 acres? Yes—we know—you may send Alberta grain west by Panama to Liverpool; but even with half going by Panama, can the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence route take care of the rest? We hear about a constant shortage of cars; of elevators bulging with grain every September; of miles of lake cargo carriers waiting to get in and out of their berths every October before navigation closes. Do you know—they asked—that you have five times more traffic—seventy-two million tons—going through your canals than is expected for Panama? Do you know your rail traffic has jumped from 36,000,000 tons in 1900 to 90,000,000 tons in 1912? If you sent 200,000,000 bushels of wheat abroad in 1912 and 158,000,000 bushels in 1914—a poor year—what will you send in 1920 with twice as much land under wheat?
Two other comparatively unpondered facts were the hammers that drove the argument for a Hudson Bay route home and forced the Canadian government, irrespective of party, to back the project. The two facts were these—of Canada's agricultural exports eighty per cent. went to Great Britain. In spite of Canada spending a billion on her transportation system, look at the fact well—it is a poser—only from thirty-two to forty per cent. of her export trade went out by Canadian routing. Why was that? The Department of Railroads and Canals in its annual report explains elaborately that sixty per cent. of Western Canadian grain went out by the Duluth-Buffalo route instead of Ft. William-Montreal because the lake rate of the former was cheaper as three to six cents a bushel; but there is nothing in this argument because Montreal is tidewater. Buffalo is not. To the cheaper Buffalo rate you must add five cents to New York, proving the American routing really two cents a bushel higher. Yet sixty per cent. of Western Canadian wheat went out by the costlier routing. Why? For the same reason that if you jam a bag too full it bursts. Because the Canadian trans-continentals simply could not take care of the traffic blockading tracks 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.
What of the road itself?
I camped in the region a few years ago when the venture was still in air. The wheat plains terminate just west of Lake Winnipeg in an interminable swamp region that has been the home of small furs from the beginning of time. Saskatchewan River here literally widens to seventy miles of swamp, where you can barely find foot room dry soled except in winter, when the marsh turns to iron ice twelve feet thick. Through this swamp country runs a ridge of rock northeasterly to Hudson Bay. Down this ridge run Nelson and Hayes and Churchill Rivers in a succession of rapids and lakes, wild rough barren country, where you can paddle in summer or course by dog-train in winter for four hundred miles without sight of arable land or human dwelling. Along this ridge the railroad runs from the wheat plains. It is a route destined for the present to be barren of local traffic, but that also is true of the stretches along Lake Superior, or across the desert of the Southwest. Back from the ridge coal deposits have been found, and traces of copper, the mines of which have not yet been located. I myself saw chunks of pure copper from the Churchill River region the size of one's hand, but the veins from which the Indians brought it have not yet been located. In time these great deposits may be worked as oil and coal and gold and silver have been taken from the American Desert, but for the near future the Hudson Bay Railroad will carry little traffic but that received at its terminals.
The western terminal connecting with the wheat railroads is the Pas, an old, very old fur post of the French wood-runner days, on the Saskatchewan west of Lake Winnipeg. Here the railroad touches the Canada Northern and will doubtless later connect with the Canadian Pacific Railroad and Grand Trunk. To any one who knows the region well it seems almost a pity that the western terminus could not have been Grand Rapids just northwest of Lake Winnipeg. Here is a fine wooded high park country with the unlimited water power of nine miles of a continental river walled into a canyon half a mile wide. But the country west of Lake Winnipeg is as yet untouched by a railroad, though one can hardly conceive of a city not some day springing up at this the head of Manitoba navigation. Eastward from the Pas to Hudson Bay it is four hundred miles plus. Construction presents no great difficulties except bridging, and that can hardly be compared to the difficulties of canyons in the Rockies and drouth in the desert.
For years there was sharp contest whether the terminus on the Bay should be Nelson or Churchill. Churchill is one of the best harbors in the world, land locked, rock protected and fathomless; and Nelson is probably one of the worst—shallow, with sand bars caused by the confluence 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 kept open. Navigation is open a month earlier and a month later at Nelson than at Churchill; so the Dominion dredges have gone to work to make Nelson a fit harbor.
How long is navigation open on the Bay? The Dominion government has sent three expeditions to ascertain this, though data might have been obtained from the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company covering the record of over two hundred years. Both the Archives and the official expeditions record the same—navigation opens between the middle of May and the first of June, and closes about the end of October. Seasons have been known when navigation remained open till New Year's, but this was unusual. So as far as the opening and closing of navigation is considered, the Hudson Bay route is not far different from the Great Lakes.
Hudson Bay itself is in area about the size of the Mediterranean. Because it is so far north the impression prevails that it is afloat with ice. This is a false impression. Hudson Bay lies in the same latitude as the North Sea and the Baltic, which are freighted with Russian and German commerce, but the climate, of course, is colder. The ice, which has given the great inland sea its ill repute, comes from the Pole and goes out through the Straits, seldom coming down the Bay in the season of navigation.
The Straits are the real crux of the Hudson Bay route to Europe, and there is no narrow neck of land to cut a way of escape through to open sea as at Kiel and Cape Cod. The Straits have been navigated by fur-traders since 1670, but the fur-traders could take a week or a month to the four hundred and fifty miles of Straits. They could afford the time to float back and forward with the ice packs for six weeks, and as many as seven vessels have been wrecked in ten years. To this tale of wreckage in the Straits, friends of the Hudson Bay route answer as follows:
First, the fur-traders' vessels were little discarded admiralty vessels of small tonnage and rickety construction. Give us ice jammers such as the Russians use on the Baltic, built narrow and high of oak, not steel, to ride and crush down through the ice; and we can take care of high insurance rates. Second, the Straits are still an utterly uncharted sea four hundred and fifty miles long and from seventy to one hundred 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 safe as well as unsafe channels, shelters, smooth reaches. Let us get the Straits charted and marked with buoys, with telegraph and cable points, and we shall navigate these four hundred and fifty miles. The questions of lighthouses need not bother the Straits, for the season of navigation is also the season of long daylight.
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 Canadian Northwest is lucky if it cuts before the eighth of August. Consider the area of the big wheat farms! The whole of August is taken up with cutting and threshing. It is September or October, before the wheat is hauled to market, and it is November before it reaches seaboard. In November navigation on the Bay closes, and one hundred, perhaps two hundred million bushels of wheat must be held by the farmers, or the elevators, till May. This means interest on money out of the farmer's pocket for six months, or storage charges. On the other hand, there will be no danger of stored wheat "heating" on the Bay. The cold there is of too sharp a type, but this is a danger in many of the all-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 print Hudson Bay Railroad will be on wheels and tracks. Then the real difficulty of the Straits will be faced, and probably—as Russia has overcome the difficulties of the Baltic—so will the Canadian Northwest overcome the difficulties of this hyperborean sea.
The contest between capital and labor in Canada has never become that armed camp divided by a chasm of hatred known in other lands. This for two 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 the very nature of Canada's greatest wealth—agricultural lands—the substantial proportion of the population consists of land owners, vested righters, respecters of property interests because they themselves are property holders. The city dweller in Canada has been from the very nature of things the anachronism, the anomaly, the parasite, the extraneous outgrowth on the main body of production.
To take the first reason why capital and labor has not been divided in hostile camps in Canada, because the labor of yesterday is the capital of to-day—I am not dealing with speculative arguments and opinions. I am trying to set down facts. The owner of the largest fortune west of the Rocky Mountains in Canada began life with a pick and shovel. The owner of the richest timber limits in British Columbia began at a dollar and twenty-five cents a day piling slabs. The wealthiest meat packer east of the Rocky Mountains was "bucking" and "breaking" bronchoes thirty years ago at twenty-five dollars a month. The packer who comes next to him in wealth began life in Pt. Douglas, Winnipeg, loading frozen hogs. The richest newspaper man in Canada began life so poor that he and his father hauled the first editions of their paper to customers on a hand sled. The four men who are to-day the greatest powers in the railroad world of the Dominion began life, one as a stone mason, another as a lumber-jack, a third as a store keeper, a fourth as a telegraph operator. I do not think I am wrong in saying that the richest wholesaler in Canada reached the scene of his present activities with his entire earthly possessions in a pocket handkerchief and a tin lunch pail. Of two of the most powerful men who ever came out of the maritime provinces, one swept a village store for his living at a dollar and fifty cents a week; another reached St. John, New Brunswick, from his home in the backwoods, dressed in a home-made suit, which his mother had spun and carded from their own wool. The fact that the door of opportunity is open to the talented tends to prevent the opening of a chasm of hatred between capital and labor, though it must be admitted that the warfare of capital and labor in the States was developing in the era when Rockefeller and Carnegie were lifting themselves from penury to the heights of financial power.
Infinitely more important is the second reason. For a long time at least the stanchest, strongest and stablest part of Canada's people must be rooted to the soil. Up to the present half her population has been rural, and less than three per cent. absorbed by the factory, the railway, the labor union. Of her population of 7,800,000, only 176,000 workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety per cent. of these have never been on strike. These figures alone explain why class hatred has never widened into a chasm dividing society in Canada.
Why Big Business has never dominated government in Canada will be dealt with in a later chapter, but if Big Business can not violate law with impunity at one end of the social scale, it may be safely said that anarchy will never violate law at the other end of the scale.
At the same time there are symptoms appearing in the industrial conditions of Canada as gravely dangerous as anything in her immigration problems. These need only be stated to be apparent. Where wages have increased only ten per cent. in a decade, the cost of living has increased fifty-one per cent.—according to an official commission appointed by the Ottawa government to report. Though Canada is an agricultural country, in food products alone, she pays ten million dollars duty yearly. In one farming province ten million dollars' worth of food is yearly imported. Why is this? Why is Canada not producing all the food she consumes? Because in certain sections only one 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 will find that one-fourth as many people live in the cities as in the country. In one province you will find that out of half a million population, three hundred thousand are living in cities and towns. This is the province that imports such quantities of food. It is also the province that has more labor trouble than all the other sections of the 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 is the province where the highest wages in the world are paid for every form of labor. It is also the province where the greatest number of people are idle, and neither you nor I nor anybody else, can convince the idle stone mason who demands eight dollars a day that he keeps himself idle by not accepting half that figure. He is not dealing with "the robber baron" capitalistic class. He is dealing with the humble householder who wants to build but can not afford workmen at eight dollars to five dollars a day, when he could afford workmen at four dollars 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 is prosperous, and her people are the thriftiest and most saving in the world. They with their tiny savings are the world's bankers. In the United Kingdom, the rural population has decreased from twenty-eight per cent. to twenty-three per cent. of the total population. How about Canada? In 1891 thirty-two per cent. of Canada's people lived in towns and cities. By 1901 thirty-eight per cent. were town dwellers. By 1914 the proportion in towns and cities is almost fifty per cent.
The entire movement of population from country to city is reflected in the astounding growth of the cities. In 1800 Montreal had a population of seven thousand; in 1850, sixty thousand; by 1914, almost half a million. Similarly of Toronto, of Winnipeg, of Vancouver. From nothing in 1800, these cities have grown to metropolitan centers of three hundred thousand, and their growth is the subject of fevered civic pride. It ought to be cause of gravest alarm. In the history of the world, when men began to hive in a crowded cave life, those nations began to decline. The results are always the same—an extortionate rise in the cost of food, the long bread line, charity where there ought to be labor and thrift, food riots, terrible tragic contrasts of the very rich and the very poor, all the vices that go with crowded housing. When charity workers investigated in Toronto and Montreal and Winnipeg, they found foreigners living forty-three in five rooms, twenty-four and fifteen and ten in one. Wherever such proportions exist as to rural and urban population, ground rentals and values ascend in price like overheated mercury. Men begin to build perpendicularly instead of latitudinally. The cave life of the skyscraper takes the place of the trim home garden, and so greed of gain—interest on extortionate real estate values—takes its toll of human life and virtue, clean living and clean thinking. In one section of Canada during ten years, where there had been an increase of 574,878 in the country population, there was an increase of 1,258,645 in the city population. Between 1901 and 1911, where 39,951 newcomers settled in the country districts of Quebec, 313,863 settled in the cities. For one who chose life in the open, eight chose the tenement and the sweatshop. In 1901 Canada had 3,349,516 people living in the country, and 2,021,799 living in the cities. By 1911 there were 3,924,394 living in the country, and 3,280,440 living in the cities.
All this signifies but one thing to Canada—a swift transition from agricultural status to industrial life; and whether such an artificial transition bodes good or ill for a land whose greatest wealth lies in forest and mine and farm remains to be seen. For the time it has resulted in a cost of living almost prohibitive to the very poor. The sweatshop, the tenement, the Ghetto, the cave life hovel of Europe have been reproduced in the crowded foreign quarters of Canadian cities. It means more than physical deterioration and moral contamination and degeneration of national stamina. It means if Canada is to become a great manufacturing country, feeding the human into the hopper of the machine that dividends may pour out, then she, the youngest of the nations, must compete against the oldest and the strongest—Germany, England, France, the United States; but if she is to be a great agricultural country, then she has few peers in the whole world. Neither need she have any fear. The nations of the world must come to her, 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 loss from it and can blame no one but himself for that profit or loss. With the renting out of a man's labor to some other man for that other man's profit or loss come all the discontent and class strife of industrial warfare. Of industrial strife, of labor riots, of syndicalism, of social revolution, of the few plundering the many, and the many threatening reprisal in the form of legislation for the many to plunder the few—of this dog-eat-dog, internecine industrial strife—Canada has hitherto known next to nothing; but she is at the parting of the ways. The day that a preponderance of her population becomes urban instead of rural, that day a preponderance of her population must ask leave to live 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 as the sign of labor owned by some other man. That day the preponderance of Canada's population will cease owning their own vested rights and will begin attacking the vested rights of other men. That day plutocracy will begin plundering democracy, and the unfit will begin plundering the fit, and the many will demand the same rewards as the few, not by winning those rewards and rising to the plane of the few, but by expropriating those rewards and pulling the few down to the level of the many. To me it means the sickling over a robust nationhood with the yellowing hue of a dollar democracy, the yellowing hue of gnashing social jealousy, the yellowing hue of moral putridity and decadence and rot. Hitherto every man has stood on his own legs in Canada. There has been no weak-kneed, puling greedy mob bellowing for pap from the breasts of a state treasury—demanding the rewards of industry and thrift which they have been too weak and shiftless and useless to earn. But Canada is at the parting of the ways. The day more men live in the cities demanding food than live on the soil producing it—which God forfend—that day Canada goes down in the welter of industrial war and social upheaval.
Hitherto no statesman has arisen in Canada who remotely sensed the impending evil, much less made an effort to avert the doom that has come like a cloud above the well-being of every modern country. The man who makes it a national policy in Canada to attract the settler to the soil rather than to the city hovel will in the future annals of this great nation be rated above a Napoleon or a Bismarck.[1] This to me is the crux of the very greatest and most acute problem confronting the Dominion's future destiny.
In a country where organized labor numbers only 176,000 out of 7,800,000, labor problems can hardly be set down as acute. They do not split society asunder as they do elsewhere. I am glad of it. I am glad that in Canada up to the present labor is only capital in the inchoate. I should be sorry if the day ever came when labor was the serf, and capital the robber baron, as—let us frankly acknowledge—it is elsewhere.
In this connection three points should be emphasized. Whether they should 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 breakwater of adamant and reinforced concrete against all labor or capital legislation that has arisen from the passions of the moment. More than once when labor or capital, holding the whip handle in the Commons, would have forced through hasty legislation as to compensation, as to liability, as to non-liability—the leaders in the Commons have said frankly in caucus to the Senate: We are dependent on the vote for our places here. You are not. We are letting this fool bill through, but we are letting it through because we know you will kill it. Kill it!
In the next place, "the twilight zone" between federal and provincial power in matters of labor has proved an unmitigated curse. When the syndicalists of Europe, known in America as the Industrial Workers of the World, succeeded in tying up railroad construction and almost ruining the contractors of two transcontinental systems in British Columbia a few years ago, endless delay in terminating an impossible situation occurred through the province trying to throw the burden of dealing with the matter on the Dominion, and the Dominion trying to throw the burden on the province. Both province and Dominion were afraid of the labor vote. The losses caused during that three months' strike in the construction camps indirectly afterward fell on the Canadian people; for the embarrassed transcontinentals had to come to the Dominion government for aid; and the Dominion government is, after all, 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 woes another 'twilight zone' as to Dominion and Imperial powers."
It seems almost ungracious in this connection to say that Canada's far-famed Arbitration Act has been overrated. That it has accomplished some good and settled many controversies no reasonable person will deny, but it is not a panacea for all ills.
Here is the difficulty as to arbitration. It is not unlike the situation of Belgium regarding Germany in the great war. Arbitration depends on "a scrap of paper." What if some one tears up "the scrap of paper"? What if one side says there is nothing to arbitrate? Twenty years ago—yes—wages, hours, conditions of labor—could have been arbitrated; but to-day the contest in the industrial world is often not for wages and hours of labor.
"Demand three dollars a day for an eight-hour day, to-day," I heard an Industrial Worker of the World shout in a Vancouver strike. "Demand four dollars a day to-morrow, till you secure four dollars a day for a four-hour day—till your ascending wages expropriate capital—take over capital and all industry to be operated for labor."
In the great struggle between the railroads and the I. W. W.'s in British Columbia, Canada's Arbitration Act fell down hopelessly simply because there was nothing to arbitrate. Labor said: We shall paralyze all industry, or operate all industry for labor's profit solely. Capital said—you shall not. There the two tied in deadlock for months, and there all arbitration acts must often tie in deadlock in industrial warfare. That is why I hope industrial warfare will never become a part of Canada's national life. That is why I hope and pray every Canadian settler will become a vested righter by owning and operating his own acres till Death lays him in God's Acre.
In a country where the public debt is only $350,000,000 or forty-five dollars per head, and the national income is $1,500,000,000 from farm, factory, forest and mine—or two hundred dollars per head and that fairly well distributed—for the present there is little to fear of social revolution. It is not the social revolution that I fear for Canada. It is the canker of social hate and jealousy preceding revolution. If fifty per cent. of the population can be kept owning and operating their own land, that social canker will never infect Canada's national life as a whole.
[1] Thomas Jefferson desired such a rural future for the United States and deplored the day of cities and industrialism. It came, nevertheless.—THE EDITOR.