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J90C

CANADA
THE NEW NATION

All rights reserved

CANADA
THE NEW NATION
A BOOK FOR THE SETTLER
THE EMIGRANT AND
THE POLITICIAN BY
H. R. WHATES

1906
LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO.
BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON & CO.

305V\I

PREFACE
In January 1905 it was my professional duty to go to
Canada to study the emigration movement. To obtain
first-hand kno^wledge I travelled steerage ¦with a ship
load of emigrants from Liverpool. On landing at St.
John, New Brunswick, the question whether Canada
in mid-winter would yield a subsistence to a new
arrival was put to a practical and personal test. The
stream of immigration westward and northward was
then followed, the Pacific Ocean being reached in
May and the return to Montreal made at the end of
June. During five months' almost constant travel I
visited the . greater part of the settled portions of
Eastern Canada, traversed the Prairie region in various
directions, found and took up a homestead — a "Free
Farm of 160 acres" — in the Saskatchewan Valley,
wandered in British Columbia and on the Pacific Slope,
and, on the return east, made a detour northward into
" the great Clay Belt," which in a few years will be
opened up for colonisation by the construction of the
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway — the second line of com
munication between Ocean and Ocean.
For the First Part of this book I have drawn freely

vi PREFACE
upon my copyright Letters sent to the newspaper for
which I was acting — the Standard. The chapters deal
chiefly with the question of emigration. Taken collec
tively, they offer a broad survey of the suitability or
otherwise of the Dominion as a field for English
emigrants. The sole claim they have upon the attention
of would-be emigrants, and upon that of politicians and
philanthropists concerned with the double problem of
unemployment in and emigration from England, is that
they represent an attempt to depict actual conditions.
They were not written to gratify the Immigration De
partment of the Dominion Government, or to further
the policy of Railway Companies, Land Companies and
Speculators, Manufacturers' Associations and others, to
whose financial advantage it is to entice population into
Canada. Their general tendency is to encourage
carefully selected emigration and the emigration of
hardy young men with some capital, much intelligence,
and determination of character. They are, however,
calculated to deter the indiscriminate emigration of
people who find themselves crowded out of the
English labour market and are weakened in physique
and morale by long endurance of defeat in the battle
of life in great cities. Their purpose will be served
if they assist any reader to decide the personally
momentous question — Shall I emigrate to Canada ? and
if they should help to persuade public men to formulate
an Imperial policy in emigration, and thus assist and

PREFACE

vu

regulate, on settled principles and by an organised
administrative system, the movement of population
from our shores.
But in that my hopes are slight indeed. The energies
of the political class are consumed in the production of
a discordant chorus of party cries — in these days of
"whole hoggers," "anti-hogs" and "little piggers"
should I not have written of " party grunts " ?
Constructive statesmanship, ordered administration
on principles arrived at after patient study of social
facts and the direct application to them of the
best brains in the country, seem to be alien to the
genius of the English people. Our National and
Imperial life develops itself haphazard. Because the
voyage is cheap, people go to Canada who are not fit
for life there, but would succeed in some less rigorous
clime in our wide-spread Empire. If Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's estimate is correct, we have
in England, imprisoned in economic circumstances
they cannot of themselves surmount, thirteen millions
of people ever on the verge of destitution. Across the
seas are untold millions of acres of British soil unpro
ductive for lack of men. Yet we make no organised
effort as a State to transplant our poor from the
warrens where they constitute a social and political
menace, to unpeopled regions of our over-sea Estate,
where they could live above their present level of semi-
barbarism and become instruments for the economic

viii PREFACE
development ofthe Empire, for the continuity of political
traditions, for the evolution of an Imperial organisation,
founded on an overwhelming preponderance of men and
women of Anglo-Saxon breed. On the contrary, we
import Chinese into South Africa (I am aware ofthe
reasons for that " regrettable necessity "), and, in Canada,
we are filling up the Empire with Russian and Galician
Jews, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Arabs,
Chinese, Japanese and other peoples who, however
estimable, are not the material of which the British
Empire of the future should be built. Why do we
do this? Because as an Empire we take no thought.
We let things drift. We do not apply brain power
to the management of our Imperial Estate. We leave
the politicians to wreak their will upon it, to use
this or that topic of Imperial importance as a weapon
for party warfare. Eloquent writers and orators ex
haust the English language in extolling the greatness
and glory of the British Empire. But Government
succeeds Government, and nothing is done to convert
the "thirteen millions" of English flesh and blood,
wasting away more or less unproductively here, into
Anglo-Saxon communities in the over-sea marches of
Empire. Suppose England were Germany, and that we had a
Wilhelm II. to stir us up to the establishment of a
thinking department for the production of definite
methods of action. Imagine what would be done if

PREFACE ix
Germany had an Empire such as ours. See what she
has accomplished in her relatively worthless Colonies,
everywhere except in South West Africa, by the exer
cise of brains, forethought, the constructive, regulating
power such as she applies to every department of life in
the Fatherland. Her Colonial OfHce is a thinking, a
creative and acting force. Ours only becomes so by
accident when a man of Mr. Chamberlain's mental
vigour gets there. How many Secretaries and Under-
Secretaries of State were there in the past century who
had never seen a British Colonist outside Downing
Street ? From what Germany is doing in her African,
Pacific and Asiatic possessions, it is easy to imagine
what she would do if she had regions where white
men, confronted only with natural difficulties not
essentially greater than those which have been over
come in Europe, could live and thrive. But Germany
is governed by brains ; the British Empire — as Mr.
Sidney Low has so clearly brought out in his
Governance of England — by amateurs, intent upon
Party triumph rather than upon the better organis
ation of National and Imperial life. While that lasts
we must be content, to use Lord Rosebery's con
temptuous phrase, to " muddle through," thankful that
we possess a permanent officialdom in Downing Street
which is able by its administrative experience and its
freedom from party feeling, to prevent the Colonies
from being made altogether the sport of faction.

X PREFACE
Some day, perhaps, a Colonial Secretary may set these
gentlemen, or any others who may be fit for the work,
to help him to think and to devise plans for evolving
order out of the emigration chaos. Then we may see
something attempted to lessen congestion in England
and sparsity in regions of the Empire, safely habitable
by men of our own blood. Mr. Lyttleton has made
a tentative effort in that direction. But a governing
class who paid no heed to the emigration writings
of Carlyle and Froude and a host of lesser men (it
probably never read them ! ) is not likely to listen to
the suggestions of an obscure journalist. Hence it is
with much trepidation that Chapter XIV. has been
included in this volume.
Part II. of the book consists of a definition
and analysis of Canadian political thought. No
respect has been paid to Party interests here or
in the Dominion, and the chapters were written
long before the General Election. Investigation
suggests the conclusion that Canada is destined to
become an Independent Nation, though, possibly,
not discarding the nominal overlordship of a British
Sovereign. The connection with Great Britain is now
of a very fragile character. The people are American
in modes of thought and habits of life — American, that
is, in the geographical sense. They have no present
desire to become citizens of that part of the continent
known as the United States. They wish to keep and

PREFACE xi
develop their own individuality. It is sharply distinct
from the individuality of the English people. Cultiva
tion of it is leading Canada away from Great Britain,
though not necessarily towards incorporation with the
United States. The movement is towards Nationhood,
self-dependence, severance from the slight constitu
tional tie which links the fortunes of the Dominion to
those of the British Isles. Such a development seems
to be inconsistent with the theory that the British
Empire can be organised as a fiscal entity. Whether
the speculations as to the future of Canada and of
the Empire are made with any just appreciation of
present conditions and insight into what these may
lead to, time will demonstrate. The exposition of
Canadian opinion and national tendencies is, however,
the outcome of a painstaking endeavour to learn from
Canadians themselves what Canada thinks. My time
was passed with the working people rather than with
the professed — and professional — politicians of the
country. Few knew my calling or with what object
I engaged them in political discussion. To most
men I was an English immigrant roaming about the
Dominion, playing at work here and there, and other
wise learning local conditions before finally deciding
where to settle. They revealed their thoughts with
much candour. If I have been a faithful interpreter
of their ideas I need not crave pardon for adding to
ephemeral writing on Colonial and Imperial issues.

Xll

PREFACE

I may be permitted a public expression of thanks to
Mr. W, D, Scott, the Dominion Superintendent of
Immigration, whose knowledge and experience are
equalled only by the readiness and courtesy with which
he places both at the disposal of inquirers; to Dr.
William Saunders, of the Experimental Farms at
Ottawa, to whom I am indebted for a comprehension of
the wheat-growing possibilities of the North and some
slight ability to milk a cow — a desirable accomplish
ment for an emigrant going West ; to Mr. Wm.
Mackenzie, the doyen of the press in the Dominion
Parliament, who maintains in Canada the high tradi
tions of the best English journalism and through
whom I was privileged to make the acquaintance of
Canadian statesmen and politicians, whose conversations
were of much assistance to me in writing the latter
chapters of this book ; to Mr, Thomas Southworth, the
able and kindly Director of Immigration at Toronto,
who assisted me in many ways in investigating emigra
tion conditions in Ontario, and without whose aid I
should have been unable to penetrate into " the Great
Clay Belt " of the Northern part of the Province ; to
Mr, Frederick Young, of Regina, whose debtor I am
for varied facilities for travel and study in the Prairie
regions ; to the newspapers of Canada for the extreme
pungency of their criticisms of my Emigration Letters
to London, criticisms which, in the latter part of my
tour, made life in remote up-country "hotels" and

PREFACE xiii
mining-camps slightly embarrassing ; and, last but
assuredly not least, to the Average Canadian of thc
Prairie and the Backwoods — a man whose virile
character and keen intellect, bodily hardihood, self-
dependence in isolation, heroic endurance of long,
fierce winters, strength of will and patient courage in
converting primeval wastes into a noble homeland,
make him the typical figure of Canada, the New
Nation.
H. WHATES.

London, March 1906.

CONTENTS
PART I. — The Emigrant in Canada.

I. A Shipload of Emigrants .
II. In Search of Work
III. Life in a Lumber Camp
IV. Some City Impressions
V. The Demand for Farm Hands
VI. To Winnipeg — and Disillusion .
VII. A Fellow-Traveller's Experience
VIII. Life on the Prairie
IX. The Finding of a Homestead
X. The Cost of a " Free " Farm
XI. Westward and Northward .
XII. Across the Mountains
XIII. The Great Clay Belt
XIV. Why not an Imperial Emigration Policy

I
i630
42 62 7386
96
"5142 157
169 184
197

PART II. — An Analysis of Canadian Thought.
I, The Republican Tendency . . . .215
II, Aristocracy and the Monarchical Idea . 225
III. The Idea of Nationhood .... 234
IV. Nationality and Fiscal Freedom . . 243
V, Treaty Powers and Imperial Development 253
VI, Canada and the English Fiscal System , 264
VII. Some Tendencies in Religion . . . 273

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
These Illustrations are reproduced from photographs kindly supplied by
the Dominion Government. The view of the Saskatchewan is from a
photograph by Messrs. Mathers, of Edmonton, Alberta.

The Foothills of the Rockies .
St John, New Brunswick .
A Prairie View ....
Breaking the Prairie
An Albertan Sheep Run .
A Corral of Brood Mares
A Prairie Schoolhouse
The Prairie Harvest
Plan of the Battleford Land District
MoosEjAw Creek
A Western Ranch
The Saskatchewan at Edmonton
A Mountain Glacier (Selkirk) .
" The Three Sisters "
A British Columbian Valley
Mountain and Lake .
A Break in the Bushlands

Frontispiece

. facing p. 16

76

ICO

, 116

118
124
. 142
acT .
> 145
, 158
.
160
164
, 170
, 172
176
184
, 192
PART I
The Emigrant in Canada

Canada, The New Nation
CHAPTER I
A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS
At five o'clock on a dismal morning in January, after a
cold and sleepless journey through the night from London,
a trainload of several hundred men, women and children
huddled together on the platform of the London and
North - Western Station at Liverpool. They were
steerage passengers for St. John, New Brunswick, the
one ice-free port in the Dominion of Canada ; and
they were going thither either to better their fortunes
or to win the bread they had failed to obtain in the
disorganised labour market of England. It was my
lot to share their journey, as part of a programme of
study and observation of the emigration movement to
the West. Some acquaintance with ships and the sea
made the probable discomforts a matter of personal
indifference. It was not so with the majority of my
fellow-travellers. Few of them had ever crossed an
ocean. Many had a vivid apprehension of the supposed
" horrors " of the coming passage ; but they were
cheerful and hopeful. Emigration literature, emigra-
A

2 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
tion agents, steamship company's touts had all depicted
Canada to them as a veritable paradise — a wintry one,
perhaps, where rather more clothing was needed than
that which sufficed for our first parents, but none the
less a paradise, at least in an economic sense. There
a sufficient sustenance for self and wife and family was
to be obtained if a man would but work. This was
the conviction in which those who had had homes had
sold them. It was this belief that had brought them
to the water's edge.
A succession of covered brakes took us through the
sleet-swept streets of Liverpool towards the docks and
dropped us at the steamship company's " hotel," where
breakfast was served — and charged for at one-and-six-
pence a head, which the emigrants, many of whom
were desperately poor, regarded as extortionate. In an
ordinary coffee-house, such as is used by the working
classes, they would have fered quite as well at a third
of the cost. As the steamship company had assumed
charge of them on arrival at the station, and had taken
them to the "hotel" on the statement that breakfast
would not be served on board, many had thought the
meal would be provided free. When they were called
upon to pay one-and-sixpence for what they could have
purchased elsewhere for sixpence or eightpence, they
were keenly dissatisfied. But the brake-ride was free,
except for the toll levied by the conductors, who did
not regard their wages as sufficient recompense for their
own and the coachmen's services, but pestered the
emigrants for pence and would not be denied. Any
future emigrants who read these lines should note that
they are under no obligation to use the steamship

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS 3
company's "hotel," or to "tip" that company's
brakesmen. Later in the morning we were driven to the Alex
andra Dock, where the steamer lay, and were shepherded
up a steep gangway to the foredeck. There were 642
of us, including eighty-two children and eleven infants
in arms. Here we crowded together on the hatchways
and among the winches as best we could — a shivering,
dejected mob of Englishmen, Scotchmen, Danes, Nor
wegians and Swedes, with their womenkind and
children. Hours passed before all the berths could be
allotted, and it was late in the afternoon when we
dropped into the tideway to await the tug that was to
bring aboard the first and second class passengers.
The steerage accommodation ran from the forecastle
to amidships, and consisted of two floors — the 'tween
decks fitted with forms and tables for meals, with berths
round the sides, and a lower deck similarly furnished.
Part of the first deck was arranged with cabins, each
containing four berths. These were allotted — as far as
could be — to families and women and children. Besides
these cabins, there were tiers of berths on galvanised
iron supports, and divided into compartments by canvas
" walls," each set consisting of thirty-two " bunks."
The deck space below was utilised in much the same
way, and here most of the foreigners were berthed.
They slept and fed by themselves, and were not suffered
to sit at table among the third-class aristocrats of the
"state" rooms, though this principle could not be
carried out in its entirety by the berthing master.
We sighted St. John on the early morning of the
eleventh day out of Liverpool. On the last four days

4 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
we had heavy seas and severe cold. The inevitable dis
comforts of the voyage were borne with patient courage.
The cheerful endurance of the English poor is amazing.
These townsmen and townswomen, most of whom were
making the first sea-voyage of their lives, adapted them
selves to their new and crowded environment with
singular ease. There were acute discomforts of course,
the chief arising from the limited deck space and the
over-crowded tables. But if the accommodation was
limited and rough, the fare was abundant and tolerably
good. The only justifiable dissatisfaction was caused
by the tea — a vile decoction quite unrecognisable for
what it purported to be, and tasting as though it had
been brewed in vessels used for boiling soup. The
conditions of life in the steerage will be immensely
improved when the manners of the people become less
uncouth. There was much sea-sickness. The rats
were something of a nuisance to the nervous. But on
the whole, all except persistent invalids or women with
ailing or unmanageable children, seemed to enjoy thc
voyage. It is certain that the steerage passengers looked far
better at the close of the journey than at the beginning.
The sea air and generous diet had vastly improved them.
Several told me that they were putting on flesh. The fact
was obvious to a close observer. Many had never lived
so well in their lives. Nearly all left the ship in vigorous
health, and were fit enough to find the icy air of thc
Bay of Fundy exhilarating.
No man travelling alone, whether he is accustomed
to the sea or not, need hesitate to travel third. He will
get plenty to eat. Provided that he is warmly clad he

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS 5
can live on the open deck, except when the seas wash
over the bows. The fresh air will compensate him
for the sometimes noisome overcrowding down below.
But for women and children whose standard of comfort
is above that of life in one or two rooms in a tenement
house, a steerage passage involves hardships that should
be avoided. Still, these are such as can be borne by any
woman of ordinary resolution. There were two or three
of this stamp aboard — girls, travelling alone, who were
going out to look for situations in domestic service.
They were none the worse for the rough life and
rough company. But shipowners can afford to give
better value for steerage - passage money than some
of them now do. Railway companies have found it
greatly to their advantage to improve the third-class
accommodation, and shipping companies in the trans-
Atlantic trade may well adopt a more liberal policy, not
necessarily in diet, but in cleanliness, service, sanitary
appointments, organisation of the steerage staff, and more
efficient supervision. The old boats in the trade should
be avoided. The newer craft are far in advance of the
old in all that contributes to the well-being ofthe poorer
traveller. The emigrants themselves were a typical lot.
Hundreds of such shiploads leave our shores yearly.
It may help to convey an idea of the class and character
of the people who are building up the population of the
New Nation of Canada if a few passages of description
are interwoven into this chapter. There were about
a hundred foreigners amongst us, the majority of them
Norwegians. I detected only five Jews. Two of them
were women, from Poland, Another Jew was a youth

6 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
who had escaped from military service in Russia, and the
remaining two were East London Jews a generation
removed from the alien " greener " stage ; very aggres
sive and objectionable specimens of humanity they
were — noisy, foul-tongued " hoodlumites " of whom
London was well rid. The deserter was an intelligent
man, who defended his escape with much force. Russia
was not his Fatherland. He was a Jew. He had no
ill-will towards the Japanese. Why should he, a Jew,
fight the Japanese because the Christians of Russia
had got into a quarrel with them : What had Christian
Russia done for him and his like ? Thus ran the
argument. The Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes were as strong
and wholesome a collection of men and women as could
be got together from one end of Europe to the other.
They were nearly all of the peasant class. Many of
them were fisher folk. Every one of them — women
as well as men — were broad-shouldered, broad-hipped,
well set-up. The majority were under thirty. They
bore the impress of vigorous health, and their children
were the sturdiest little rascals aboard. They knew
no English, and their own languages were as a sealed
book to me ; but from one of the Norwegian women
who had picked up a little English from thc sailors
of the seaport from which she had come, I gathered,
with the aid of a map, that most of them were looking
to the fishing industries of the Canadian lakes as a means
of support. The Danes, for the most part, were going
as farm labourers for other Danish settlers. So were the
Swedes. Altogether, they were a set of people likely to be

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS 7
a valuable acquisition to the sparsely-peopled parts of
Canada. What impressed me strongly about them,
apart from their fine physique and the cheeriness with
which, by song and dance, they bore the unavoidable
discomforts of the voyage, was the durability and
serviceability of their clothing. The men were in
leather top-boots, turned up at the toes — snow and water
proof boots, made, I should judge, in their own villages,
the leather of the best and well tanned, and the stitching
done throughout by hand. The suits of the men were
of stout cloth, thick and warm, but light. You can feel
no cloth like it in any London tailor's I know. The
cloth or sheepskin overcoats were wind-proof and rain
proof. Finer protection against a rigorous climate
could not have been devised. Most of the outfits
were new, or almost so. All the men wore sheepskin
or woollen caps, doubled half way up so that they could
be turned down over the ears.
The women were — to the outward view — equally
well-dressed. Their shortened skirts were of stout cloth,
something like the warm " linseys " that used to be
worn in the villages of England in the 'sixties and
'seventies, bodices of equal warmth, thick cloth jackets,
and home-made woollen shawls. Neither in point of
clothing nor in cleanliness — and certainly not in point
of size and physical vigour — were the Englishwomen the
equal of the Scandinavians, The reason may be that
the latter were village folk, and the Englishwomen,
for the most part, were from the mean streets of the
towns. As for our own people, the men were a fair average
lot. Few of us were over forty. Several were ex-

8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
army men. There was a percentage of " hoodlums "
— not more than a score perhaps. The rest, with one
or two exceptions, were men of the industrial classes,
accustomed to physical labour. But town men pre
dominated. A serviceable battalion of infantry could easily have
been got together. But there were many, who, in com
parison with the sturdy Scandinavians, looked shrunken,
ill-clad, deficient in physical strength, weedy, and lacking
manliness of bearing. Notwithstanding that there were
men as hardy as any to be found outside the great cities
of England, it was not the flower of English manhood
which was going to Canada — this trip. The explana
tion doubtless is that many had undergone a spell of
severe privation. They had been insufficiently fed,
probably for several weeks ; they were inadequately
clothed even for an English winter, much less for a
climate of almost Arctic fierceness, such as that of
Canada. As for the women, they were, with a few exceptions,
a poor lot — poor in physique, ill-clothed, more or less
incapable in the management of their children, sharp-
tongued, querulous, and fearful. A few of the younger
ones were in cheap coloured finery, with hats and
blouses and ribbons that might have done duty in
England on a fine day in September, but were useless
for an Atlantic voyage in mid- winter. One could
not but feel sorry for these unfortunate creatures ;
but is there sufficient reason why the working women
of England should not be sensibly and properly clad
in winter ? Is not the use of the scissors and the
needle taught in our schools? Cloth and wool are

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS g
cheap. Cannot the modern young woman cut out and
sew and knit ? If not, what is the use of our system of
elementary education ?
Not all the women, of course, were badly clad, and
not all the children. As an example of motherly com
petence and care I will cite the case of a middle-aged
woman, the wife of a Jersey ex-seaman, who was
travelling with her husband and four boys, ranging in
ages from five to thirteen. His wages ashore had not
averaged £i a week ; yet she and her husband and
little sons were abundantly and neatly clad, and had,
indeed, reserve stores of winter clothing. She was a
woman of the old school, and her sons were little gentle
men in behaviour as in appearance. She and her
husband were going to Canada partly because they
were wearied with the struggle for a bare subsistence in
England, but chiefly in order that their children might
have a better chance in life than they could get in the
old country. This is the sort of emigrant family the
Dominion needs — and the kind England can ill afford
to lose.
There were instances of superb courage amongst us.
One man was taking out his wife and twelve children,
the youngest a baby under two, and the eldest a girl of
eighteen. He had been a soldier, and had fought in
Egypt and India. His pension was Is. 3d. a day.
Since leaving the army he had earned a living as a time
keeper in Yorkshire, But the firm went into liquida
tion, and since then the luck had been against him in
getting permanent employment. Having had no work
for seventeen weeks, he had exhausted his savings.
Seeing no prospects of wages in England, and his pension

IO CANADA, THE NEW NATION
being insufficient to keep his family alive, he had sold up
his home and was landing in Canada with £2 cash — and
a family of twelve, of whom only two would be able to
support themselves ! He had a letter of introduction,
but no work to go to. He showed me his discharge
and testimonials. He was a splendid fellow, of fine
moral courage.
Another man was taking out a family of ten children,
another of seven, another of six, another of five; and
each of these men had been out of work for many
weeks. They were bond-fide working men — men of self-
evident character, who were leaving England for the
sole reason that their native land did not yield them
work outside the prison or the poorhouse.
Several had left their wives and families behind them
in England, having got the passage money some
how. Of the single men, the majority had left the
country solely because they had fallen out of work and
could not get other employment.
One typical case was that of a bricklayer — a young
Trade Unionist, earning, when he could get it, lojd.
an hour in London. He told me there were 8000
bricklayers on the out-of-work books of his society.
Year in and year out his wages averaged, he said, about
28s. per week. He had earned nothing for six weeks,
and had " chucked it " in disgust at the poor prospect
his trade offered him in London. He was an intelli
gent and well-educated man, who had studied the
higher mysteries of his calling at the Polytechnic.
But I might cite case after case. The burden of
all would be the lack of work in England, the
difficulties of earning a subsistence there. That

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS ii
was the main factor in filling the steerage of the
vessel. Among the passengers was a party of Salvationists, in
charge of " Colonel " Taylor, of the Emigration Depart
ment of the "Army." "Col." Taylor is a gentleman
who combines practical sagacity in the management of
emigration parties with extensive knowledge of the
Dominion. It was evident that he had been at the pains
to select only that type of man or family such as Canada
desires. Some were members of the Salvation Army,
others belonged to the Church of England, or to no
church. They all came from West Ham and neigh
bouring East-end districts, and were all indisputable
members of the working class — not loafers, not rescued
particles of the "submerged" mass. The money for
emigrating these families was provided, in whole or in
part, by the fund so opportunely started at Christmas
time (1904) by the Daily Telegraph. These people were
very poor. I went into the particulars of their cases
minutely, chiefly for the purpose of satisfying myself
whether the men were workless from no fault of their
own ; for it would be fatal to any emigration policy that
may hereafter be formulated if the money of the charit
able were spent in exporting ex-criminals and similar
degenerates, whether through the agency of the Salvation
Army or any other body. It is gratifying to be able to
say positively that the men — some of them mechanics,
most of them " labourers " of one kind and another — were
honest and respectable workers, whose only misfortune
was want of employment. Everyone was favourably
impressed by the Salvationists, Except when they were
playing cornets and singing doggerel hymns, they were

12 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
quiet and unobtrusive. They were helpful to others ;
they bore the discomforts of the voyage with cheerful
ness ; they were considerate towards their womenfolk
and affectionate towards their children. They did
not drink, nor did they smoke. Abstinence from
alcohol and tobacco are cardinal rules of the Army.
Observance of them gives the Salvationist a great
advantage over the average English immigrant, for it is
only by severe and continuous self-denial in matters of
personal indulgence that a man without capital in
Canada can raise himself above the level of the casual
or seasonal labourer at a bare subsistence wage. The
immigrants aboard were wisely disciplined in this respect.
The management of the canteen was unexceptionable.
The bar was not opened at all until we had been two
days at sea, and thereafter it was opened twice or thrice
a day for about a quarter of an hour. There was only
one steward in attendance, and he worked with
dignified leisure. It was almost impossible to get
a drink unless one took up one's stand in front of
the arm-hole, behind which liquors were served,
long before the barrier was withdrawn. Beer was six
pence a mug ; spirits sixpence a " tot." The price was
prohibitive, and the difficulty of getting served at all was
almost insuperable. If beers and spirits had been cheap
and easily obtainable, no doubt there would have been
drunkenness on board. As things were managed, it was
impossible for any man or woman either to get drunk or
to waste money which would be needed on landing.
No one, however, suffered from what, in effect, was
compulsory abstinence from beer and spirits. Manv of
the passengers were much better for their enforced

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS 13
sobriety, and though they grumbled, there were wives
not a few who rejoiced.
The reader will have been able to judge from the
foregoing paragraphs what sort of people England is now
losing to Canada — at present at the rate of about
80,000 per annum. Is it to England's advantage that
she should be rid of them ? That is a large question,
which will be variously answered according to individual
views of the defectiveness and remediability of the social
organism which casts them out. Is it to the advan
tage of the immigrants themselves that economic forces
should have extruded them from the land of their birth ?
That is a subject on which later chapters may afford
some light. Is it to the advantage of Canada that they
should come ? Of that there can be no doubt whatever,
for in that country no able-bodied man can live by
begging or sponging, or on public charity. He must
work, or starve, or join the host of hoboes or tramps
across the United States border. No tramp can subsist
in Canada the year round. He would freeze to death.
That is one of the compensating advantages of being
nearest neighbour to the Polar regions. And since a
man must work he must also consume. In search of
a livelihood he must go from place to place, and as
towns and farming regions lie hundreds of miles apart,
his presence means business for the railway companies.
He must eat of the produce of Canada. He must wear
Canadian clothes — and as many of them in winter as
would suffice to stock a small clothing shop in a back
street in an English town. The Protectionists will see
to it that he does not wear low-priced English or foreign
clothing, and also, thanks to their political " pull," that

14 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
he pays an exorbitant price for locally made articles,
and is thus forced to work harder and earn more, some
how or other, than he would otherwise have to do.
Every immigrant is therefore a valuable asset to the new
and rising nation. The Canadian Government treat
him in that spirit. At St, John, as at the summer ports
on the St, Lawrence, they have provided a vast hall,
properly steam-heated, and lighted by electricity, where
the emigrants are housed for medical inspection and
examination as to means, for the Dominion does not
allow destitute people to land if they are likely to become
a public charge. Full details as to every steerage
passenger appear on the ship's papers — his or her name,
occupation, destination, and so forth. These particulars
are checked by the officials of the Dominion Immigra
tion Department, and transmitted to the officials at
Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, or elsewhere, as the case
may require. Immigrants can therefore be traced, and
are, indeed, shepherded by the Department, until the
community absorbs them into the social system.
The officials at the ports of entry are men of judg
ment and experience, with wide powers of discretion as
to admittance or exclusion. Many of my fellow-
passengers were almost penniless. None, however, was
excluded on that account. The conclusion I drew was
that the officials thought all of us had a reasonable
chance of earning a living ; but I noticed that in the
case of the foreigners they required the production of
money or notes.
These formalities and the checking of luggage from
the ship's hold occupied many hours. Nearly all the
emigrants were going West, some as far as Toronto,

A SHIPLOAD OF EMIGRANTS 15
others to remote Winnipeg. It was after midnight
before the'^ " emigrant special " left the dock siding for
a four days' run across the Continent. I did not go
with it. An uncontrollable desire to get a bath, a
change of raiment, and a well-served meal led me to
abandon my fellow-emigrants as soon as I had satisfied
the authorities that I was not a criminal, nor a sufferer
from loathsome or infectious disease, and not likely to
become a burden on the community. Hence I stayed
in St. John, a picturesque and prosperous little city,
thickly mantled in snow, and there endeavoured to dis
cover what would befall an emigrant who had no means
of getting West, and must find work on the spot or go
hungry.

CHAPTER II
IN SEARCH OF WORK
St. John is an historic as well as a picturesque city. In
its deep and spacious harbour Champlain and De Monts
anchored their craft in the dawn of the seventeenth
century and prepared the way for white settlement by
entering into relations with the Mic-mac Indians.
Here, thirty years later, Charles de la Tour built a fort
by virtue of his grant of this portion of Acadia ; and
here he and his rival Charnisay fought and refought
each other, the latter finally getting the upper hand in
La Tour's absence, though only after a gallant resistance,
directed by Madame de la Tour, whom he compelled to
witness the hanging of the other survivors of the garrison.
It is a tragic and romantic story, for Charnisay and
Madame de la Tour died, and La Tour thereupon
regained his domain by marrying his enemy's widow.
Here also an expedition, sent out by Oliver Cromwell,
effected an English occupation of Acadia, There
after the mouth of the St. John River often resounded
with discharge of French and English cannon, and there
were several miniature naval battles in the Bay of Fundy.
The New Englanders established themselves here
in 1762-1765, and being much troubled by American
privateers, built Fort Howe, on a rocky eminence over-
16

ST JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK

IN SEARCH OF WORK 17
looking the harbour — the fort, by the way, where
Cobbett did duty as an infantryman and where he fell
in love with a little maid -of- all- work, whom he
first saw scrubbing out a wash-tub in the snow, and
sent to England with a hundred and fifty guineas on
which to live in ease and comfort until he could return
and marry her ; which he did, and dwelt happily with
her ever afterwards, for this treasure of a woman had
maintained herself by domestic labour, and handed him
his hundred and fifty guineas intact. The fortified
settlement did not become a populous place until 1783,
when ten thousand United Empire Loyalists, as a
handsome monument in King Square reminds the
traveller, landed at the market slip and thus preserved a
large portion of North America for the British Crown,
From St, John, until the age of steam, came the great
pine-trees which provided the masts for the British Navy,
and the early records of the place are full of quaint
information of the intercourse between those whose
business it was to furnish these masts and the Indians
who scoured the hinterland forest for them, and sent
them floating down the St, John River. For a man of
a bookish turn St, John is a place to linger in, and it
needed no small resolution to resist the attractions of
its libraries and set about the prosaic business of dis
covering whether there was work to be had by an
immigrant who remained in the city.
A brief investigation showed that there was very little.
The few factories were slack and additional hands were
not wanted. It was the depth of winter — the dullest
period of the "off" season. The river was frozen
several feet deep and no lumber would come down until
B

i8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
great ice blocks tumbled over the falls, which, by the
way are " reversible," for while the drop from the
river level at low tide is some fifteen feet, the tide ofthe
Bay of Fundy raises the harbour waters twenty-five feet,
and sometimes much more. At half tide the waters in
the gorge are level ; at full tide they pour over the rocks
and surge up the river ; when the tide is out they drop
down into the harbour for many feet. These falls
which go both ways are one of the wonders of the
place. But to revert to the question of work.
All that there was to be had was due to the heavy
snow. No doubt a man would " drop into some
thing " in time. Inquiries showed that there was at least
one opening for a man of the clerical class ; but that
was accidental and did not indicate an unsatisfied
demand for this kind of labour, which, as a general rule,
is not wanted anywhere in Canada ; and necessarily so,
for in every city and settlement there are many people
who bring up their sons to work in offices and the like.
There is a strong tendency, as in all modern countries,
towards the avoidance of manual labour as a means of
livelihood. Clerks and shopmen should not therefore
go to Canada unless they are willing to become labour
ing men — at least for a time, until they can find
work such as they have been accustomed to perform.
And they should be armed with a testimonial. For
lack of such a document, which I had never needed in
a profession where the quality of one's work is the
sole passport to its publicity, I missed what would
probably have been an easy method of demonstrating that
an emigrant stranded in St, John would not go hungry.
What I needed in order to get a living wage in " respect-

IN SEARCH OF WORK 19
able" and "responsible" rather than manual employ
ment, was something like this : —
"The bearer,  has been in my service as
for  years. He is honest, sober, indus

trious, and can be depended upon.
In the absence of such a missive, I found that the
only way to put to a practical test the opportunities
which St, John afforded to a man in search of a subsistence,
was to do what nearly every immigrant has to do in
Canada — descend to the ranks of casual labour and put
himself behind a shovel, A mechanic would not
necessarily be in this predicament, especially if he had
with him his card of membership of his trade union in
England. He would join the local trade union and its
members would do all they could to find him work at
his trade, either there or elsewhere. A trade unionist
who attaches himself to the Canadian labour organisa
tions is in a preferential position. Only if there is not
enough work to go round would he have to become a
casual labourer ; and then only until the season opened
or times improved. But artisans who are not trade
unionists in England and have no wish to join a union in
Canada, or have not the means to do so, would soon find
themselves compelled to work at anything they could get.
In St. John there was nothing to be had beyond
casual shovel-work ; and it was harder for me to get a
chance of earning money at what there was than it
would have been for an ordinary labourer. The very
fact that I had not the good fortune to be this easily-
recognisable type of man told against me. Presentable
clothes, accent, forms of speech, and so forth, so far

20 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
from being an aid in securing work, laid me open to the
suspicion, in the absence of any written "character,"
that here was one of the many " bad hats " who are
dumped, or dump themselves, upon the Colonies.
Believing this to be so — and not without good reason —
I determined to see how it was possible for a man
who really wanted work to earn his daily bread. So,
sallying forth one morning in my oldest clothes, I
made my way across the harbour to where I had noticed
gangs of men engaged in clearing a goods railway track
of snow. Now snow is a product which Canada yields
in superabundance, and the clearing of it from footways
and railway yards is a great national industry, in which
winter emigrants who have no luck can earn a few
dollars. I could have got work on the streets of St.
John, no doubt, but I should have had to join the men's
union (entrance fee, five dollars) or there would have
been a strike. At the railway yard anybody, I was
told, was taken on.
After following the shore-line ot the Bay of Fundy
for a couple of miles, and being sent up and down the
track in search of the head foreman, I found that
important person "right here," as he expressed it.
Did he want a man ? He didn't think so. There
were plenty of men, and he indicated gangs up and
down the track as far as the eye could see, I remarked
that there was also plenty of ice and snow, and that
there seemed to be room for another pick and shovel.
With one eye on me and the other on several truck-
loads of ashes and cinders, he said that was so ; anyway,
I wouldn't take up much room on the track. Ignoring
the slight, I agreed with him and asked the wages. " A

IN SEARCH OF WORK 21
dollar and a half a day," he replied. If I came back at
one o'clock — it was then between nine and ten — he
might find me a spare shovel. He gave me a shovel
and placed me with a gang on the trucks of ashes and
cinders — do they not call it " breeze " ? This was not
what I had bargained for. Breaking up ice with a pick,
or shovelling snow, was one thing ; unloading truck-
loads of ashes another. Still, it was work. Was I not
in employment, demonstrating in practice to labourers
in England who had nothing to do and little to eat that
if only they could get themselves transported to Canada
they could earn 6s. 3d. a day — enough money in that
country for a man to have meat twice a day ?
Taking off my overcoat and hanging it on one of the
uprights against which the boards forming the body of
the truck were fastened, I put my back into the work,
and shovelled away with a will. I had not been at
work ten minutes before I found that I was putting
out more stuff than my mate on the same truck. He
growled audibly. I therefore kept time with him and
filled my shovel no more heavily than he did his.
Moreover, when the ganger's back was turned — a
ganger walked up and down the track to see that no
one was " miking " — the correct technical term, I
believe — I imitated my fellow-worker by admiring the
fine view of the Bay and the snowy rock masses of St,
John. It was sound policy to do this, for the shovelling
had to go on for four hours, and if I had worked at
my starting rate I should have exhausted myself in
one. By the time, however, that I had removed the top
layer from my end of the truck and made a fairly big

22 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
hole in the stuff, I realised that the ashes and cinders
had been drawn red-hot from the locomotives, and had
not cooled. Every shovelful that I shifted raised a
cloud of fine white smoke. I now began to understand
why the head foreman had found room for me, and why
he had not given me a nice clean job with a pick on the
ice by the metals and points. These Colonials always
give a "green" hand the toughest job, just to see
whether there is any grit in him ; and the head foreman
had doubtless seen at a glance that I was as " green "
as anything that ever grew. None the less it was
work. Was I not proving that the British Empire
was worth a dollar and a half a day to any labourer who
could get to this part of it, whether he were a trained
shoveller or a soft-handed man — I don't say " gentle
man," for that conventional variety is unknown in Canada
— with or without a " character .? "
Fortified by this thought, and refreshed by an
occasional glance at the beauties of the Bay of Fundy,
I bent my back to the job with a will. But after a
time, as the wind strengthened and the smoke from the
ash and cinders increased, I began to get very hot about
the feet, and to think with anxiety that, by the time I
had earned my half-day's pay — three-quarters of a
dollar — I should probably have spoiled my boots. But
what were a pair of forty shilling boots in comparison
with the great imperial principle on which my labours
were founded ? Sticking resolutely to mv task in the
blinding smoke I shovelled on.
Then with a yell, I dropped the shovel. The wind
had blown some hot ash into my left eye. While I was
dancing round the hole in the truck, my sound eye

IN SEARCH OF WORK 23
revealed the fact that, on the side where I had hung my
overcoat, the wind had fanned the hot cinders into
flame, that the wood planking had caught alight, and
that my one and only overcoat in that country was
smouldering. Leaping off the truck, I got the overcoat
down and piled shovelfuls of snow upon it. When I
unburied it, one arm was gone and part of the front.
It was a beautiful coat — cut in Savile Row, wool-lined,
wind-proof, and warm as a fur or sheepskin.
The loss was irreparable. I forthwith "jumped my
job" — a Canadian colloquialism which is easily intelli
gible. Indeed, there was nothing else to do, for my left
eye seemed to contain as much hot ash as would lie on
a sixpence. Telling the ganger that I was going to the
office to draw my pay — a joke at which he smiled
grimly — I hung the remains of the coat over my
shoulders, and tramped through the snow over the hill,
down to the harbour, and thence by ferry across to St,
John. Clearly, I was no good as a shovelman in
" breeze," I had not worked long enough to earn half
a day's pay, yet had a bad eye and had burnt an overcoat
which had originally cost me seven guineas.
Trivial as this record of a personal experience may
seem, it proves that an immigrant, willing to turn his
hand to anything at the first wage offered, need not
starve. If in order to arrive at that fact so far as regards
St. John in mid-winter, I had suffered monetary loss
instead of earning wages, the fault was mine. The loss
was due solely to want of intelligence — or inexperience —
in dealing with locomotive ashes. Except for that cir
cumstance, which would instinctively have been avoided
by anyone who had been accustomed to manual labour.

24 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the position was that I could have gone on with the
shovelling work day by day and put a dollar and a half
in my pocket every evening, until some easier or more
remunerative work offered itself; and I could certainly
have continued in absolute confidence that the snowfall,
like seed-time and harvest, would not fail. Snow-storms
recurred daily, and the heavier the fall the more work
had to be done, for the yards had to be kept moderately
clear, and gangs were frequently in request for work
with the snow-ploughs ; even these powerful machines,
forced by heavy locomotives, were sometimes brought to
a standstill far up the line. But St. John could not, of
course, absorb an unlimited amount of immigrant labour.
It was one thing for a few isolated immigrants like
myself to get the work ; but if a shipload had stayed
at St, John, the great majority would have been com-
pulsorily idle. It is a port of entry. Its capacity for
utilising fresh arrivals is small, for, like all sea-ports, a
large percentage of its permanent population lives by the
daily wage of casual labour at the docks and in the
railway yards. At the same time, there are no very poor
people in the city. If there are, they are not to be seen
in the streets. I searched in vain for a wretched -looking
man, such as can be met by the score in London any day
of the year, or a bedraggled, repulsive-looking woman.
There were drink shops, of course, but it is bad form
for even a labouring man to enter them. No woman
ever goes into one of them — so at least I was told —
and my own observation confirms this. All classes
looked well-fed and warmly clothed, the women and
children especially. There is, in fact, no poverty as
we understand it in England. St. John is a city of

IN SEARCH OF WORK 25
workers in varying stages of prosperity. You see
neither the extremes of poverty nor of riches.
This, as I afterwards found, is characteristic of the
entire province of New Brunswick. It is a Splendid
Province to look upon — an adjective borrowed from
Raleigh, but one which can be used without Eliza
bethan extravagance. The region is not quite so large
as Ireland. It is a hilly, roughly undulating country,
with the Atlantic on the south, and the Gulf of St.
Lawrence on the east, but cut off from the River St.
Lawrence by a strip of Quebec Province. On the west
lies the State of Maine. It is covered with a network of
rivers and lakes, the chief streams being the St. John,
the Miramichi, and the Restigouche. The coast-line
extends some five hundred miles, and is broken by good
bays and inlets. St. John is one of the finest harbours in
this region, and, as it is the only port north of Maine
which is free from ice all the year round, it is destined
to have a great future, as the policy of directing all
Canadian produce over home territory and through
Dominion ports is developed.
There are possibilities in St. John becoming one
of the noblest and wealthiest seaports of the Empire.
In summer it must, even now, be one of the most
beautiful of our cities ; and for splendour of situation
and scenic attraction of its environs, it would be difficult
to find its superior. Americans rather than English
men know its charm as a pleasure resort, and as
the starting-point for some of the most delightful river
scenery on the American continent, or, indeed, in
Europe. The capital of the province is Fredericton, eighty odd

26 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
miles up the stream. The river being frozen over, I
travelled thither by rail, and thence also by train to
Woodstock. Fredericton, which was visited by King
Edward in the early 'sixties, is a pretty little place on
the right bank of the St. John River, its streets planted
with avenues of well-grown elms. It has a university,
a cathedral, a military school, and Parliament buildings,
but, commercially is, as yet, of little importance.
The country traversed by the railway is bold and
picturesque, with ranges of forest-covered hills and wide,
open valleys. Farms and small villages lie on either
side of the track ; beyond them are the woods of
spruce and fir, cedar, birch, and maple — the great asset
of New Brunswick, which, in its present stage of
development, is a lumber and farming country.
The entire course of the St. John waterway is rich in
historic traditions and stories of Indian warfare. As
for the river, whose course I followed up to the con
fluence with the Madawaska, it is comparable in majesty
and impressiveness with the Rhone or the Vistula. It
is frozen in winter to a depth of three to four feet.
For one day of snowfall there were five of clear, frosty
weather, with seven or eight hours of brilliant sunshine
and clear steel-blue skies ; and the nights as beautiful as
the days — the heavens cloudless, the moonlight tinting
the snow with a hue for which I can find no fitting
word. Hard and cold as the winter climate is, it is none the
less delightful and invigorating to be out of doors.
One's ears smart and tingle, one's moustache becomes
matted with icicles, one rubs one's nose in apprehension
of a frost-bite, but, so long as one keeps on the move.

IN SEARCH OF WORK 27
there is a strong sense of exhilaration. The inhabitants
admit the severity and long duration of the winter in
the maritime provinces — it lasts from mid-October until
the end of April — but they are a hardy and healthy race,
and many live to a great age. The population of New
Brunswick is about three hundred and thirty thousand,
nearly all whites, who are distributed along the banks of
the rivers and the lines of railway. There is a prosperous
little Danish colony on the Tobique River, a pretty
region which comprises much rich and almost untouched
farming land, as does the entire watershed of the St.
John and its tributaries.
The majority of the people seem to be of Scotch
descent. They support themselves by agriculture, the
fisheries, and lumbering, and I was unable to find a
poor man — as poverty is understood in England. The
province could easily maintain ten times its present
population. About two-thirds of the area are available
for agriculture, but only about one-tenth is cleared and
occupied. Without wearying the reader with statistics, let it be
said generally that in this province alone there is a great
reserve of habitable territory which for the most part is
unutilised for lack of men. The stream of immigration
flows through New Brunswick ; but some of the people
borne by it are left behind, and I did not learn of any
instance in which an Englishman had been unable to
earn a subsistence. Everyone had but one story to tell
— that the immigrant from the old country can find
work and keep it if he so desires.
Land can be had for little or nothing — a hundred
acres for, roughly, a five-pound note or for doing a

28 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
certain amount of road work for the Government. Thc
title is, of course, subject to conditions, such as clearing
and cultivating ten acres, building a habitable house
(nearly all the dwellings in this province are of wood),
and residing on the land continuously for three years.
Or Government land may be bought at public
auction. With a little capital a man may become a landed pro
prietor on a large scale. With a five-pound note he can
enter into possession of one hundred acres, and can get
work on other farms or in the woods, and thus earn
enough to keep himself going and save a little for de
veloping his own estate. No doubt his lot would be a
hard one for a few years. He would work early and
late and have to be economical ; but it seemed to be
quite a common thing for a steady and industrious man
to possess a modest competence by the time he is
forty. The farmers, many of whom began with nothing, as
mere labouring men, seem to be a prosperous, if not an
independent class. One hears of mortgages, but seldom
of foreclosures. They can sell everything they raise,
and the prices of farm produce are high. Even the
labouring folk, though wages are lower than in the
North-West, are more prosperous than their compeers
in Europe. I should judge that their chief characteristic
was an absence of anxiety as to their means of subsistence,
present or prospective.
No man, they told me, need suffer want. If one
employer is not to his liking, he can find another.
To be out of work and to endure privation in con
sequence is a thing which is inconceivable to them.

IN SEARCH OF WORK 29
They know of it only at second hand, when they
read in their newspapers reports of distress in
London. These, then, are the general economic conditions
which prevailed in New Brunswick,

CHAPTER III
LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP
Lumbering is the chief industry of the maritime pro
vinces of Canada. Men live on their own farms in the
summer and in the forests in the winter. A landless
man can get work all the year round if he so desires ;
and in that case he need not be landless for many years.
By the frugal use of his summer and winter wages it is
quite possible to accumulate enough capital to take up
land, build a house of his own, buy a team of horses,
and a few implements, and become his own master. I
had opportunities of studying this phase of Canadian life,
for at Woodstock I had the good fortune to make the
acquaintance of a member of a firm of lumber-men who
have extensive timber-cutting grants in various parts
of New Brunswick and Quebec,
He sent mc on to Cabano, through the beautiful
valley of the St, John, and put me in charge of one of
his managers, who dropped me at a camp a score of
miles away from civilisation, in the heart of the lake
country across the Quebec border. It is worthy of re
mark that the founder of the firm • was a Scotch mill
wright, who emigrated in youth with or without the
proverbial half-crown. No doubt he would have " got
on " anywhere ; but the chances are that if he had rc-
¦ Messrs Donald Fraser & Sons.
30

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 31
mained at home he could have climbed no higher than a
head foremanship. Here he had created an immense
business and was a man of social as well as commercial
importance. Nearly all the successful men in Canada
are those who began life with little or nothing. For
the young emigrant there could be no more encouraging
fact. We had a five-and-twenty mile sleigh drive. Our
animal was a good one and the scenery was attractive,
the forest-clad hills lofty enough to be impressive,
though without being majestic. But the track was
rough and we often had to throw ourselves to right or
left and cling to the back of the seat to avoid being
tilted into deep snow-drifts ; and the cold was intense.
So bad was the going, that the journey could not be com
pleted by dusk, and at a Canadian-French village over
looking Lake Temiscouta, we put up for the night in a
sort of loge d pied et cheval, the host and his family
speaking a French which would have puzzled a Parisian,
and giving us rooms hung with pictures of the Christ
and the Virgin, certificates of the Premiere Communion.^
prints of the Acte de Contrition., Oraison pour quand
rhorloge sonne^ and such like memorials of a religious folk.
There were no English in this village. The priest was
the head of an undivided little community ; the Roman
Catholic Church the only edifice of its kind,
A few hours' drive the next morning took us across
the frozen Temiscouta Lake and up and down forest-
covered ridges to Lake Squattuack, Crossing this
lake and climbing up a great hillside we turned into
a snow-track through the forest and, after a circuitous
drive, arrived at a broad clearing. The camp itself

32 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
was a long, low-roofed log cabin. I was shown within
in order to " warm up," and found myself inside a
great oblong room, with a huge iron stove in the
middle and a pile of wood stacked behind it. The
heat was fierce and the temperature high; but the
change from the intense cold, after a long and toilsome
drive, was not unwelcome. The floor was of logs, the
rounded surface roughly hewn with an axe. The walls
and roof, which sloped from the centre log at a sharp
angle, were of unshaped logs, the interstices filled in with
the foliage of spruce and fir, the weight of the timber
making the crevices air-tight even in a strong wind.
Around two sides of the cabin was a double tier of
sleeping berths, the pillows lying against the walls.
There was accommodation for about fifty men, the beds
being formed of young spruce branches or rough hay
and lengths of coarse, heavy blanketing. Light was
furnished by a cutting in the logs, which had been filled
in with glass, and against this was a heavy log table,
strewn with month-old newspapers.
Round the sleeping berths and table, logs were fitted
for seating purposes, and there were rough movable
seats about the stove — a closed cylindrical stove burning
split logs of from two to three feet in length. In one
corner of the cabin was a wooden trough and basins for
washing, a large water-barrel, and a wooden tub, with a
tin mug, containing drinking water. In the centre of
the cabin, over the stove, were lines of rails dependent
from the roof, and these were hung with shirts, boots,
moccasins, woollen mittens, and every imaginable article
of clothing. As the light faded two oil lamps were
brought in, and simultaneously the tinkling of sleigh

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 33
bells announced the arrival of the teams which had been
drawing the logs.
Presently men streamed into the cabin — bearded,
rough-haired men, more or less covered with snow,
their beards frozen and their moccasins stiff with ice.
They crowded round the stove to thaw themselves, and
began removing their heavy leather and oilskin jackets
and thick jerseys, taking off their moccasins, and otherwise
preparing themselves for supper, washing and tidying
themselves with the aid of a piece of brokeu mirror
glass and a comb common to all.
Then they started pipes and awaited the call for supper,
which was served in a large separate cabin, where the
cook and his assistant held sway. A further log hut
served as a stable for twelve horses. After supper, which
consisted of boiled beans,dried codfish mixed with potatoes,
wet toast — toast steeped in hot sugar and water — dough
nuts, bread and salt butter, with tea and condensed milk,
we returned to the cabin and smoked and talked till about
nine, when the men " turned in " — a simple process,
which meant no more than taking boots off and slipping
braces from the shoulders.
At half-past five the cook's assistant roused us all by
a " Get up " — the first word on F, and the second on C,
prolonged until his breath gave out ; and long practice
had enabled him to lengthen the call almost interminably.
The teamsters went into the stables to get out the horses,
and the rest of us into the cook's quarters for breakfast.
By the time the stars had dimmed and daylight was
stealing over the forest we were dispersed in the woods.
The foreman amused me — and himself — by setting me
to work with him in traversing the sled paths and patching
C

34 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
up the broken places — a simple but important task.
When we came to a place where the " shoe " of the sled
had cut deeply, he broke up the ice from the opposite
side with an axe while I shovelled it into the cut. The
next log-laden sled that came along would crush the ice
debris into a solid mass. Trivial as the work was, the
consequences of omitting it would be a blocked road and
great difficulty in getting the team through without un
loading the sled. Half-an-hour's labour on a bad spot
on the road meant the avoidance of extra toil for men
and horses and long delays. It was excellent work to
keep one warm, and was exactly what would be given
to a newly -arrived immigrant ignorant of the
woodman's art. It is no mean art in the Canadian
forests. In the Spring, when the snow has fallen frofti the trees,
but still lies on the ground, an experienced man will be
sent " cruising," or prospecting ; and he will generally
be a man in permanent employment, at a salary of from
three to four hundred pounds a year. He will select
which area of the virgin forest can be cut with most profit
to his employers. In the Fall he will come again, locate a
site for the camp, and set men to work cutting roads
from the point of the lake shore or river bank to which
the logs are to be brought. The labour is enlisted
in mid-October, and felling proceeds apace until mid-
February, or later, according to the depth of snow.
When the snow becomes too deep, as it usually does
about this time of the year, work with the axe ceases,
and haulage to the landing-place commences.
A first-class axeman will cut eighty logs of various
sizes in a day ; but the timber is not great. One seldom

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 35
sees a log more than three feet in diameter — a mere
stick in comparison with the greenheart giants which I
have known in the timber grants of tropical South
America, where trees abound of a girth and height which
would be scarcely credible to a European who has not
wandered in lands where Nature runs riot. In Canada
an axeman would get from twenty to thirty dollars
a month and his board, according to whether the lumber
market in England is up or down. And this seemed to
be the price of other kinds of experienced labour —
hauling, " driving," and so forth. As the timber is
felled it is sawn into lengths — twelve, fourteen, or
sixteen feet, as may be required — and is stacked along
side the haulage roads. These roads, which are only
wide enough for a single sled to pass, are kept in
condition for the sleds by water being thrown on each
side, holes being cut in the frozen brooks, and water being
conveyed in horse-drawn wooden tanks with a hole
plugged with a stick at each side of the rear end. The
water freezes as it falls, and the ice and snow make a good
surface for the " shoes " of the sled, while the horses find
a sure foothold in the hard snow in the centre of the
track. It was at this stage of the operations that I came upon
the scene, and the work consisted of keeping the haulage
tracks in good condition, breaking the ice holes in the
brooks, running the water-cart over the road, loading the
sleds, driving them to the shore of the lake, and there
stacking the logs in great piles in readiness for the time
when the ice would break up, and they could be rolled
into the lake, fastened into " booms" or log islands, and
towed down the lake into the river until they reached

36 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the saw-mills — in this case a water journey of fifty or
sixty miles.
The haulage work is done partly by teams owned by
the lumber merchant and partly by farmers' teams.
Thus, a farmer with a pair of horses, instead of sitting
by his stove through the winter, will hire himself and his
team to a lumber merchant for from thirty-five to fifty
dollars a month, and go into the woods, being boarded
in camp, and his horses fed, and coming out again in the
spring with a good round sum in his pocket.
The handling of the logs calls for much physical
strength, skill, and agility. Each man has a "cant
dog," or log wrench, a stout spruce pole, about five feet
in length, fitted at the end with a steel shaft ending in
a point ; and on the side of this is a pointed hook, which
works on a hinge and grasps a log, embracing part of its
circumference, so that a man can turn the log away
from him or towards him by a twist of the handle, thus
reversing the hook.
Two slight logs from the stack to the sled form the
means of communication, and up or down these supports
two men with cant dogs will roll the heaviest and most
awkwardly shaped logs with astonishing rapidity. It is
hard and exhausting work, and the man on the sled who
grapples the log and twists it into position among the
others has to be nimble if he would avoid a smashed leg
or foot. Steel chains are fastened round the load, which
may consist of from thirty to forty logs, and weigh from
four to five tons, and then the teamster starts for the
landing-place, down the hillside to the lake shore.
The track is cut through the forest with an eye to
safety, but there are steep declivities and sharp curves

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 37
down which the sleds glide over the ground at a great
pace. Teamsters and horses enjoy these bad places, but
to a novice it seems sometimes that, if a horse should
fall, sled and riders and logs would be shot a mile ahead,
over the intervening tree-tops, on to the frozen lake
beneath. Fortunately the horses do not fall ; but the
driving ofthe teamsters would excite the admiration of
a London carman who finds himself coming down
Highgate Hill with a heavy load and a useless skid.
The lumber-man, or lumber-Jack, is a fine fellow.
There were about thirty men in the camp at Lake
Squattuack, a third of whom were French-Canadians,
who spoke no English, The inhabitants of French
descent cling tenaciously to their own tongue. All
were as fine a set of men, physically, as one could wish
to see ; and courteous and kindly, both to each other and
to a stranger. Indeed their standard of manners and of
speech was higher than that of men of the labouring
classes ofEngland, or, if that is too sweeping a generalisa
tion, of my fellow-passengers on the steamer. I was in
the woods and in camp with them for the better part of
a week, and scarcely heard an oath of deeper quality
than a damn.
The arrival of a stranger with, presumably, some
little knowledge of the world's latest affairs, was not
unwelcome to men who had been out of touch with
civilisation for four months, and I had many conversations
with them. With one exception — that of aquick-witted
Bristol man — they were all Canadian born ; and if they
were a fair average sample of the native population,
I should judge that Canada is breeding a race of men of
a ane mental and moral, as well as sound physical stock.

38 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Will it be believed that « Yes, sir," and " No, sir," are
common forms of speech among them ? A man there is
sir to his fellow-labourers — not a " bloke," a " cove," or
such like vulgarism. The men respect themselves and
each other. They work willingly ; the foremen have no
need to drive them — would not, apparently, be able
to do so if they wished. They work and live together
like brothers, and in camp I was in the company of
gentlemen. Their very speech was that of educated
men, pointed, reasonably exact, and free from obscenities
and senseless excrescences. Not only did it show a fair
knowledge of the world's affairs — it was wondrously
rich in woodland lore and in the bird and animal life of
hillside, lake, and river — but it also revealed a capacity
for independent thought, a sure grip of an idea, insight,
and the qualities which are usually associated with highly-
trained minds.
Perhaps, during these long Canadian winters, men
reflect more than in temperate lands. Not unfrequently
a deeper note was suggested. A low moral level was
never touched. Indeed, take them all round, they were
men of a superior stamp. What is the explanation ?
In the French Canadians it may be sought in their
devotion to their Church ; in the men of Scotch
descent — of whom there were several — in that ingrained
piety and belief in moral excellence, which, in the
eighteenth century at anyrate, when much emigration
from Scotland took place, was the distinguishing
feature of the Scotch character. In all of them
a key to the phenomenon is, doubtless, to be
found in the fact that men there lead a free life.
They are not crushed by sordid cares or debased by

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 39
an environment of poverty in vast cities. They live
in natural conditions, amid fine scenery, on farms,
in woodlands, among great lakes and broad rivers.
Should not such circumstances result in a better type of
human being than that which is born and bred, and lives
from hand to mouth in — for example — the noisome
region — watered by the unsavoury Grand Junction
Canal — from Shoreditch to the Thames ?
An absolute sobriety was also one of their characteristics.
They had been in camp since mid-October, had not
tasted whisky and would not see any until they went
out of the woods in April. They did their work on
tea, which was to be had at all hours. Imagine thirty
British working men, accustomed to a public-house
at every street corner, living in a forest for six months
without a break, and with never a can of beer to be had !
Not 10 per cent, of our English working classes would
stand the strain. Like the navvies who were sent out to
South Africa on railway construction after the War, they
would throw up the job because the beer-seller had
not followed them into the wilds. Therein lies a
fundamental difference between the English and
Canadian labourer.
What chance has the ordinary immigrant in the
lumbering industry of New Brunswick and Quebec ?
There is at times a scarcity of labour. But lumbering
is an art which requires to be learned. Anyone can
shovel ice into a deep rut in a haulage track ; a " green "
hand like myself could earn a subsistence at that, free
board, and twenty dollars (^^4, 3s, 4d.) a month.
Even a newcomer, ignorant of the woodman's art,
can win his bread at lumbering in New Brunswick and

40 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Quebec should he find himself stranded in those
provinces. But felling and the handling of logs requires practice.
To use an axe efficiently calls for skill and knack. The
life, I should judge, is a hard one. The work begins
when the stars pale in their light, and ends only when
they again illumine the skies. It is continued, however
heavily and persistently the snow may fall, and whatever
may be the lowness of the temperature and the keenness
of the wind ; for not all the days are glorified by the sun.
When the sun is shining the lofty forest hills and
lake-gemmed valleys are scenes of matchless beauty — an
almost silent fairyland of white and gold, the stillness
broken but infrequently by the cry of the moose-bird, or
of the blue-jay, and the short, sharp song of the white-
throated chickadee. But when snow falls it comes so
thickly that the hill ranges are blotted out, while ever
and anon a furious cutting wind tears through the forest,
bringing down masses of snow from the tree-tops. The
lumber-man works on in all weathers. No matter how
far the temperature may fall below zero, darkness alone
brings cessation of toil. But the men are healthy and
" as hard as nails." The immigrant who is accustomed
to manual labour, or is young enough or willing enough
to adapt himself to it, would find the work and the life
tolerable, if not enjoyable. He would be labouring for
something more than a mere wage. At the end of a
season's toil in the woods he should have at least ;^20 in
his pocket, for in the forest his only possible expenditure
would be on jerseys, moccasins, socks, and tobacco;
and with ;£^20 a man is something of a capitalist. In
England all he can do with it is to put it in the post-office

LIFE IN A LUMBER CAMP 41
at 2^ per cent, ; but in New Brunswick it will get him
one hundred acres, and leave him with ;^I5 with which
to build a log house. By working in the summer, partly
for himself and partly for other farmers, he can keep
himself going in fair comfort ; and another winter in
the woods should enable him to devote the whole of the
following season to the clearing of his own land. Thus,
in a few years he would lay the foundations of inde
pendence, as nearly all the men in the Squattuack camp
had done, for each of them, in one part of New Bruns
wick or another, had a farm of his own, with wife and
children, who kept the cattle fed in his absence. Of
course, a man who can take capital with him has a
great advantage ; he can buy the best land, with the
easiest accessibility to the railway, or a farm which is
already cleared and stocked ; but, as I have said before,
many of the most successful farmers in the maritime
provinces are men who began without capital, took up
land, and by labour in the woods, winter by winter,
earned the money for the development of their properties.
And what one man can do another may do. Even if an
immigrant does not take up land he can live — provided
that he will work hard and keep away from the drink,
for in these provinces it is only the drinking man who
remains a landless man.

CHAPTER IV

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS

To plunge from the almost idyllic life of the maritime
woodlands into the great cities of Canada is to receive a
disagreeable shock. For the moneyless immigrant, who
probably knows a good deal of city life elsewhere, the
experience may be useful but is by no means necessary.
He will do well to remain in the country or, if an
urban existence is essential for his well-being — as it is
to men of a certain order of temperament — in one of the
smaller towns where he has a chance of growing in
prosperity with the automatic extension of the place. In
the larger centres he is in danger of becoming enmeshed
in an environment even more uncomfortable than that
from which he escaped when he left Liverpool, If he
is merely a labourer he will find the market overcrowded
with men like himself and will be able to earn only a
hand-to-mouth existence, on wages which, particularly
if he have a wife and family, will with difficulty yield a
margin for travelling elsewhere ; and in Canada the
distances are enormous and the cost of railway journeys
great. An artisan with employment to go to and the
good offices of a trade union to fall back upon if local
work fails, would not be in so sorry a plight. He would
42

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 43
be able to earn enough to keep him in reasonable
comfort and, if he were an extremely frugal man, to save
enough to strike out for himself either there or in one
of the newer towns where competition is less severe.
But for the man who has only his physical strength to
sell, the probability is that he would be little better off,
if better off at all, than in England. Wages are no
higher in many callings, while the cost of living is
greater and the climate much harder. In Montreal, for
example, the wage of unskilled labour when I was there
was twelve cents an hour ; and sixpence an hour in
Montreal in winter time, where shelter, fuel, food and
clothing are dearer than in English cities, is not a wage
upon which a man can do more than barely maintain
himself, far less a wife and family, unless, of course, he is
content to live as the " Dagos " or Italians, who were
brought into the city for the purpose of depressing the
wages level. It may be true that work at this rate may be
less spasmodic and uncertain than in winter time in the
region of the London Docks ; but the hardest of hard
weather here seldom lasts more than a few days, while in
Montreal the snow lies for months, and low temperatures,
such as are unknown in England, are continuous from
mid-October until the spring. It is this fact which
makes sixpence an hour worth less to the unskilled man
in Montreal than the like sum would be to him in
London. He has to eat more food, burn more fuel,
wear more clothes — and to pay far more heavily for
these necessities than he would have to do in the cities
of the old country. The same thing applies to the
wage-earner of any kind. His monetary reward may
seem to be higher than that which he has been able to

44 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
earn in England; the prospects of regular work may
seem to be better, but he must not expect to get so much
comfort out of life, for if he spent every cent he earned
in shelter, warmth, food and clothing, he could do no
more than palliate the miseries of urban existence under
almost Arctic conditions.
Notwithstanding the climate and the fact that the
St. Lawrence is unnavigable except in the summer
months, Montreal is destined to be one of the great
cities of North America. The splendour of its situa
tion, the number of its factories, the volume of its
commerce, the activity of its streets, the ambition and
energy of its inhabitants, are factors which make that a
safe forecast. But it may also be a reasonably sure
prediction to say that, despite its famous university, its
noble cathedral, its many stately churches, its wealth,
and its historic interest, it will reproduce the evils
associated with great cities in every age. Here, in fact,
is another London, or Liverpool, or Glasgow in process
of growth ; and though one does not see the extremes
of wealth and poverty which obtrude upon the attention
in those centres, one cannot fail to note unmistakable
signs of a duplication of old-world conditions.
There are a West-end and an East-end there already.
In one you find the homes of reputed millionaires ; in the
other, mean tenement houses of the labouring class; in
the West the mansions and club-houses of the successful,
in the East a labouring horde and the nucleus of a
foreign Jewry, which is yearly becoming more congested
and extending its boundaries. There is a housing
question, a drink question, and a social evil question.
Canada, of course, has so vast a domain that urban

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 45
diseases may never become so acute as they are in
countries of narrow limits like our own. But that is a
qualifying consideration which, though it may affect,
does not destroy the main point. The strongest and
most energetic of the English immigrants would,
doubtless, be able to create opportunities for becoming
rich. But the average immigrant, ambitious only for a
livelihood and having nothing to sell but his bodily
labour, aided by commonplace intelligence, could scarcely
expect to be anything more than a labourer. His
children would probably be labourers after him. He and
his offspring would but add to the proletariat — to the
great mass of urban wage-earners ; and to do that does
not seem to be worth the doing by English immigrants
in the present stage of Canadian development ; for the
labouring man can, by settling on the land instead of in
the towns, so spend his strength as to become his own
master, and be, on a small scale, one of the landed
proprietors of the Dominion. The prospects are more
alluring than bread-and-cheese wage-earning in cities.
But it should always be remembered that, to the
ambitious, the able and the exceptionally energetic men,
cities offer possibilities broader and richer than farming,
even on a large scale. These possibilities are, in
fact, to be measured only by the number of the urban
population and the magnitude of its commercial interests.
And the tendency of great cities is to become ever
greater. Men of the type here suggested to the mind
find adequate scope for their powers only where their
fellow-men congregate in many hundreds of thousands.
The immigrant class contains, however, very few of
this stamp. Such as there are, would have no difficulty

46 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
in getting a foothold on the lowest rung of the ladder,
where all newcomers to Canada have to begin. Once
there they may climb as high as they will, by sheer
superiority of equipment in qualities that go towards
the acquisition of wealth. I ascertained for myself that
this start could be made by obtaining, through the
agency of the Immigration Office at Montreal, an
offer of manual work at twelve cents an hour. Few
English immigrants who had once appreciated the cost
of living in the city would care to hold themselves so
cheap as that. Nothing but dire necessity would
compel them to accept a wage which would enable
them to live on no higher level than that which
contents a " Dago." But the offer was, after all,
tangible proof that no willing man need remain idle —
that even a " greenhorn," who had never earned his
bread by physical labour, could get work forthwith
through the Immigration Office, and thus keep body
and soul together until promotion came ; and promotion
comes quickly in Canada to the man with brains and
some education as well as bodily strength. If a man
did not like the work and the pay it would be his own
fault if he went hungry while the Immigration Depart
ment was helping him to find something more consonant
with his wishes and with his own ideas of his value.
And here let me say that the educated man who
comes as a moneyless emigrant — that is, educated
as is understood among the middle and upper classes
in England — is not of so much marketable value to the
community as an able-bodied labourer. A man who
has never done mental toil more severe than mav be
involved in the proper loading of a brick cart, will get a

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 47
living, while a scholar will starve — unless he drops
his scholarship and places his muscles rather than his
brains on the market. Montreal is the seat of the
famous M'Gill University. The existence of that place
of learning should alone show that Canada does not
want educated men unless they have means. She breeds
her own. Still less does she want gentlemen — in the
conventional social sense of the word, though she will
put up with them if they will be content to begin life
anew as labourers. Nor does she want clerks, com
mercial travellers, shopmen, and such like soft-handed
people. This does not mean that an active and clever
man would not sooner or later "fall on his feet," for I
came across cases in which this had been done ; but it
does mean that, as a general rule, such a man, if he
stayed in Montreal and had no remittances, would prob
ably have to take off his coat and shovel snow or
" wrastle " with baggage, or do such like honourable,
though distasteful, helotry. He had better be using his
bodily strength on someone else's farm, and thus fitting
himself for taking up land of his own.
Montreal is a magnet for the cheap labour of Canada.
Italians, and Russian and Austrian Jews, swarm there.
The artificers among them are quickly absorbed
in the industries of the city. While I was there
batches of Russian Jews arrived via New York.
They were consigned to the Hirsch Institute and
the authorities of that place gave me documentary
evidence that employment had been obtained for
them. Further shiploads were expected. The In
stitute is under a heavy bond to the Dominion
Government that none of its people shall become a

48 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
public charge, and I was informed that in no case had
the head-money been claimed. Some of the people are
put on the land, at the Hirsch Settlements in the
Qu' Appelle Valley, in Saskatchewan province ; but not
more than 25 per cent, of these remain on the soil.
The rest drift into the cities to trade, or into factory
employment. Now the Russian and Austrian Jew
artificers and factory hands are the least skilled of any to
be found in Europe. The fact that Montreal is making
use of them in ever-increasing numbers may be taken
to prove that if they can get a living, of a sort, their
technically superior English competitors can also do so
— and of a better sort. But it also suggests that the
labour market will further deteriorate and will become
congested. Is it worth the Englishman's while to enter
into competition with the Jew so long as there is vacant
land to be had in Canada for a few dollars, residence
upon it, and some cultivation of it ? I suggest that it is
better policy for the English emigrant to let the Jew, or
whoever else may come, contribute to the proletariat
of Montreal and such like manufacturing cities. In the
present disorganised condition of human society it seems
to be regarded as a necessity for manufacturing industries
to have great reserves of cheap and partially employed
"hands." These reserves the Continental Jew is now
providing in Montreal. The English immigrant can do
better for himself by keeping out of the whirlpool of
poverty which such reserves create, and taking his chance
on the land. Otherwise, he had better stay in England,
where he will not — at least not yet — be exploited by a
rapacious Protectionist party, and where labour is
sufficiently well organised to exact adequate protective

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 49
legislation and fair treatment in the matter of wages and
hours. This Jewish question is sorely exercising the Canadian
mind — or at least the mind of the Canadian wage-
earners, who naturally see in the influx, which is fostered
by the capitalist class, a potent instrument for the lower
ing of wages rates. They say the foreign Jew is no
good to Canada. In one respect, however, he discharges
a useful purpose. He goes by the thousand into the
ready-made clothing trade. There are streets in
Montreal where the Jew tailor lives side by side with
the Chinese laundry man ; and every time a bearded
Russian Jew comes out of a house staggering under a
load of garments, you know that the effect of his work
and presence is to diminish the complaint of the
emigrant that clothing is outrageously dear. Should
the inrush continue, and should the political power of
the Protectionist manufacturers be broken, the grievance
would disappear, though new evils would arise.
From Montreal I proceeded to Toronto — a fine city
to whose growth no limits can be set — and thence
through the manufacturing and fruit-growing region to
Niagara. It may be sufficient to deter the least desirable class of
emigrant from going to Toronto, if it be put on re
cord that it is iinpossible to obtain a glass of beer, or any
other alcoholic liquor, from seven o'clock on Saturday
evening until six o'clock on Monday morning. The
saloons and bars are closed by law ; and with that
drastic restriction the population of Toronto, excluding
the newly-arrived immigrants, seem to be in cordial
agreement.

5o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
" They call this the land of liberty," snarled a dis-
gusted immigrant whom I had the misfortune to find
in the same rat-infested hotel as myself, and whose
bibulous habits would have justified his immediate de
portation by the Dominion Government. "Where's
the liberty, if you can't get a glass when you feel
like it?"
You see no drunkenness in the streets; no public-
houses crowded with men — and women — swilling away
their week's wages. Nor do you see little knots of men
waiting outside on Sunday for the bars to open. There
are few more degrading and significant features of
English life than public-house interiors after mid-day on
Saturday and between one and three and six and eleven
on Sundays. Canada has not reproduced them. Toronto
is a great manufacturing and trading city, with a popu
lation of about a quarter of a million, most of whom are
ofthe working classes. It is in many respects more like
an English city than any in which I had thus far been
on that side of the Atlantic; yet it is quite un-English
in the facilities it affords for spending money on drink.
And its people are more prosperous-looking than those
to be found in many English or Scotch industrial centres.
Is this cause and effect ?
To a very considerable extent, no doubt. Toronto
spends a larger proportion of its wages on food, clothing,
and firing, and its working classes, therefore, look
stronger, better clothed and shod than do similar popu
lations in England. Public opinion is against drink.
The emigrant who comes to Canada must give up drink
ing. If he is a moderate drinker he must be still more
moderate to make his way in a city like Toronto; if he

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 51
cannot "cut out" his "week-end drunk" he had better
stay where he is. He will do no good for himself, and
will only add to the bad repute in which English immi
grants are already held.
Bad repute .? Yes. I was repeatedly told by people
who should have had no other motive than that of giving
a true statement of their experience that the class of
Englishman who emigrates is not up to the Canadian
standard. Some members of it are as good as are to be
had anywhere in the world, and far better than most.
But the average English emigrant muddles his brain
with frequent glasses of beer or " tots " of bad spirit,
and is often a drunkard, with only intermittent spells of
sobriety, I am not giving my own experience of the
Englishman in Canada ; but statements made to me by
various people, whose duty it is, either as large employers
of labour or as directors of immigration work, to study
the characteristics, to note the merits and the failings,
of the various nationalities out of whose overflow the
population of the Dominion is being created. More
than that, the English immigrant was described as being
lazier than any other worker.
"It is much more difficult to get a good day's work
out of him," said an employer, through whose hands
for many years the immigrant class has passed. " The
Englishman," said another, " is too cocksure ; he is too
conceited ; he thinks he knows everything, and he
won't try to learn our ways. Take a young Scotchman
or Irishman, or Swede or Norwegian, and he will fit
himself into our methods and make a good Canadian,
while the young Englishman will grumble and raise
difficulties, and get a passage back on a cattle boat, and

52 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
give the country a bad name at home. We have that
sort of man abundantly, and he does Canada and emi
gration great harm."
I give these opinions for what they may be worth.
Ic is for emigrants, and people who assist in sending them
out, to note their significance ; but, speaking merely as
an observer, I should say that the Canadian working
classes are superior to their English compeers in the
matter of sobriety ; and in Canada sobriety tells. Public
opinion is against drunkenness. The Canadian working
man is sharply censorious and openly contemptuous of
a fellow workman who drinks.
Hamilton — the Birmingham of Canada — is a rapidly
expanding city. I arrived there as the work-people —
men, women, and girls — were trooping out of the
factories after the day's labour. The scene was but a
repetition of what may be witnessed at Toronto. It
did not differ from similar panoramas, except in this —
that nowhere in England, and certainly not in any
manufacturing centre known to me from Lancaster to
Moscow, have I observed working people so prosperous-
looking, so well fed, so well clad, and, apparently, so
contented with their lot in life. I scrutinised them
narrowly for the unavoidable signs of alcoholism, of the
physical degeneracy which is so marked in the industrial
populations of the Old World, and found little to call
for comment. What is the significance of this feature
ofthe street life of Toronto, of Hamilton, and of other
places which dot the Canadian shores of the lakes ?
It is that Canada is becoming, and is determined
to become, a great manufacturing as well as an
agricultural community. She is creating a factory as

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 53
well as a farming population, and she is doing that as
part of her national policy, as the expression of the
ideal of productive self-sufficiency which lies at the back
of the Canadian mind.
As the population increases so the percentage of those
who will not live on the land is enlarged. In almost
every settler's family there is one who will not plough,
or reap, or tend cattle. Every shipload of emigrants
contains persons to whom the city, not the farm, is a
magnet they cannot resist. The result is seen in the
inevitable growth of town populations. With that
growth there is an increasing output of manufacturing
energy, and from it arises a demand for more protection
of manufactures against the competing power of older
and highly-organised communities. In due time the
demand becomes a corporate ideal — a policy of national
self-sufficiency in which manufacturer, factory hand,
agent, clerk, and the farmer from whose household
these people have come, are in general agreement.
This is what has happened in Canada. It accounts for
the rise of her manufacturing cities, the protective
system under which they are being developed, the in
tense determination of the Canadian people to conserve
and extend them. And, on the analogy of the United
States, it also suggests the vastness of that extension.
To see these lake cities as they are to-day, and to
think of them in relation to the stream of population
pouring into the Dominion from the Old World, is to
foresee the evolution of new Manchesters and Birming-
hams. Canada as a manufacturing country is only in
her infancy, but every Canadian believes that in in
dustrialism his country will equal, if she does not in time

54 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
outvie, the rest of the world. Who can say that this
ambition will not be realised ? It is being brought
about. I was shown factories in course of erection
which will give employment to thousands of additional
hands. Building is going on everywhere from Toronto
to the smallest township in Ontario province. But not
throughout the year. Structural operations are practi
cable in Canada only during the summer. Artisans in
the building trades must calculate upon six months' idle
ness. This increase in the number of factories implies an ex
panding demand for factory labour. Employers assert
that there is always a shortage of labour in the manu
facturing industries of the Dominion. Working men
and the trade unions affirm that there is always an ex
cess. The Dominion Government takes up a neutral
attitude by concerning itself solely with immigrants who
are willing to toil on the land. For these it under
takes to find work on farms at the current rates. It
does not ask non-agricultural labour to come to the
country. If it comes, it does so at its own risk and must
shift for itself except for such help as the Immigration
officers may, incidentally to their other duties, be able to
give. It was impossible to draw any positive conclusion
from the conflicting evidence of manufacturers and work
people, " No man who is skilled in the use of any tool
or appliance from a shovel upwards need be out of
work for more than twenty-four hours," said a Toronto
gentleman whose duty it is to know the facts. I tested
this statement as far as I was able, and it seemed to ex
press an economic fact. Artisans and factory workers —
women and boys as well as men — were in demand in

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 55
that city. Certain illustrative data were supplied to me
from the Manufacturers' Association, which circularises
its members from time to time for specific information
as to the number of people required in various callings.
One report, dated 14th January 1904, shows in elaborate
statistical detail that 4697 workers were wanted.
Another, dated ist July 1904, gives a grand total of
6717. I quote one passage from these documents: —
"The present needs (January, 1904) so far as male help is
concerned, are being met in some measure by the entrance
into Canada of a number of ¦workmen from the United States.
If, in the coming spring, the industries of the great Republic
show no signs of depression, it is quite probable that the de
mand for men in Canada may be even as great as it was a
year ago. The Canadian Manufacturers' Association has no
desire to flood the country with surplus labour. An extreme
in either direction results in injury and injustice. It is no
part of the Association's work to bring labour into Canada,
but rather to ascertain the actual needs of its members and
bring them in touch with reputable sources of supply.
" There seems to be a growing demand for female help in
many Canadian factories — a need which it seems absolutely
impossible to supply without the aid of emigration. There
are no factories in the world, however, where women and
girls work under the same favourable conditions as they do in
Canada, and while the present conditions show an increasing
scarcity of female labour, there is reason to believe that the
needs may be met through wise and careful emigration."
If I do not specify the trades, it is because I should
have to set out a list which would fill a page. There
seems to be scarcely anything which Canada does not
manufacture for herself — which she does not intend to
produce on a sufficiently large scale to supply the needs
of her own people. The bearing of this condition of

56 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
things on the emigration question in England will be
apparent to everybody. At the same time I would not
advocate any indiscriminate exodus of English artisans,
mill hands, and factory workers. They should go
out only through the Self-help Emigration Society, the
East-end Emigration Society, the Salvation Army, the
British Women's Emigration Society, and such like
bodies who are in direct communication with manu
facturers and other employers, and can send them to
fill actual situations. They should not go to Canada
on chance. Most certainly they should not go through
employment agencies, or through the touts who beat up
passengers for the shipping companies, and draw com
mission on the passage money.
The more closely I looked into this aspect of the emi
gration question the less disposed I was to write any
thing which would tend to encourage the indiscriminate
efflux of mill hands and such-like people into the
manufacturing cities of the Dominion ; and the firmer
became the conviction that the goal of the immigrant,
of whatever class, should be that of independence as a
landowner. But enough of the economic aspects of city life
in Eastern Canada. A conclusion may be brought to
this chapter by a few observations upon the manners and
customs of the people. The Canadian townsman is a
rough diamond, who needs a few centuries of cutting
and polishing before he will be quite equal to his
own opinion of himself. His manners are free and his
self-assertion conspicuous. The newcomer is a marked
man, and many — not all — of his necessary chance
acquaintances will take pains to convince him of his

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 57
utter inferiority to men of local birth and upbringing.
In Canada, every Jack seems to be as good as his
master — or to think he is. There are marked in
equalities of pecuniary fortune, but not of social
standing. The spirit of the people is intensely
democratic. In the hotels, in the streets, in offices and public
places, it is a case of each man for himself. Towards
each other and towards the stranger there is a somewhat
assertive disregard of the minor graces of life. But it is
not in reality an offensive disregard of them. It arises
from ignorance of their very existence. Speech is
brusque and aggressive in tone, though not always in
intention ; good manners are almost unknown. The
children are brought up without them, and the outward
forms of courtesy are but relics of a past age. Of
course, I am writing not of refined and educated society,
but of the working Canadians — a comprehensive class
which embraces many well-to-do people, who live on the
some social level as they did when they were earning a
wage, or making a profit in trade of only a few dollars
a week. No one, in fact, desires to be thought to
be a gentleman, in the sense that that word implies
a certain social superiority. The poor man is on an
equality with the rich — or the moderately rich ; and
though wealth may carry with it power in business
affairs, it does not entitle a man to social con
sideration. Reserve, reticence, hesitancy in encroaching on a
man's private domain — his mind and his personal affairs —
are qualities in which the town Canadian does not excel.
The reverse side of the picture is that there is no

58 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
snobbery, servility, toadying, and so forth. Though
a man be as poor as Job, he is as independent as a
Croesus. I discussed this question of manners with
an educated and travelled Canadian whom I chanced to
meet. His point was that, though the manners of
the townsmen were crude and rough, they were not
objectionable inasmuch as they were the natural
expression of bluff and hearty temperaments — of minds
which knew no social inequalities, or, if they knew
them, were resolutely bent on refusal to recognise
them. The Dominion was a Democracy, in which the
humblest man enjoyed the widest measure of social
freedom, either to do as he liked, talk to whom he liked,
or otherwise impose his own personality upon others,
no matter whom they might be. Another Canadian —
a University man engaged in professional work —
illustrated the matter thus : —
"If Sir Wilfrid Laurier were in this train the
brakesman (an official who has the run of the corridors)
would probably, in a moment of leisure, sit down beside
him and open up a conversation with him on politics or
anything else. Such freedom of intercourse is the
custom of the country. It is not bad manners. It
would not be so regarded by Sir Wilfrid himself."
I explained the difference between Canadian and
English manners in such a case by saying that the first
anxiety of a Englishman who found himself in a railway
carriage with Mr Balfour' would be not to obtrude
himself upon the Prime Minister's notice in any way.
He might or might not raise his hat — probably not.
Rather would he pretend not to have recognised his
' Then First Lord ofthe Treasury.

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 59
fellow-passenger. In any event, he would wait until
Mr Balfour addressed him. His whole conduct would
be governed by the assumption that Mr Balfour would
prefer absorption in his book or newspaper or his own
thoughts rather than spend his mental energies in
conversation with a stranger, whatever the social
standing of that stranger might be. And this mental
attitude, I contended, constituted true politeness. My
Canadian friend saw the difference of method, the
contrast in manners ; but he could not see that the
Englishman in such a case would be a better-behaved
man than the supposititious Canadian brakesman. Or
he would not admit it. He complained of subservience
in England — of the use of sir, and the touching
of caps, and treated these courtesies as indications of
servility. My Canadian University acquaintance told me I
should soon get used to the abruptness of the people,
and would cease to notice it, just as other newcomers
did. No doubt. When one lands for the first time in a
tropical country one is almost deafened by the hum and
buzz of insect life in the grass. In a few days one's
hearing becomes attuned to the noise, and only the
sawing chirp of the loudest grasshopper is carried to the
brain. Something of the same kind occurs in regard to
the manners of the people in every country that is new
to one ; peculiarities are not heard or seen after ear
and eye and brain have become dulled by their
continuity. As to the customs and habits of life of the people they
do not differ very materially from those which obtain in
England. The chief exceptions are the absence of fire-

6o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
grates, the excessive heat of interiors, and the super
abundance of meat in the daily bill of fare. The
Canadian works hard, he lives in a climate which for six
months in the year is extremely severe, and these things
make him a mighty trencherman. He has meat, often a
choice of meat dishes, three times a day ; and much meat
is needful if bodily heat is to be maintained. He lives
surprisingly well, better, I should judge, than his fellow
workman in England, But he takes no liquor with
his meals. There is no wine and beer list in most
Canadian restaurants. Tea or coffee is served at break
fast, dinner, and supper, and one meal is almost
exactly like another. Any one of them would do for
a dinner. The Canadian, in fact, eats three dinners
daily, and, thanks to the active life he leads, is in rude
health in spite of them.
Other features of town life which are so different
from those in the Old Country are that the streets
in winter contain many feet of snow, trodden to a thick
layer on the sidewalks, and heaped up in great banks
away from the tramway and sled tracks. Then there
are the sleighs and sleds, with bell-hung harness.
Wheeled vehicles are not seen. They are for summer
use. But perhaps the most novel feature of the streets is
that the common room of the hotels is on the ground
floor facing the pavement, from which it is cut off by
uncurtained glass. Empty a shop front in Oxford Street,
put a desk far at the back with a clerk in attendance,
place a stout brass rod across the glass front inside,
about two feet from the floor, fill the ground space with
seated figures — the front row with their feet on the

SOME CITY IMPRESSIONS 6i
brass rail — and there you have a Canadian hotel front.
Seen from without and you have a view of twenty or
more pairs of soles and of lolling figures in every
imaginable attitude. The life of the room is open to
the passers-by, and the life of the street to the occu
pants of the room. It is un-English, but it has its
attractions.

CHAPTER V
THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS
While in the province of Ontario, both in the early
and latter periods of my journeyings, a superabundance
of proof was forthcoming that any man who was un
employed there and in the neighbouring province of
Quebec, during the open season, was so by his own
choice or fault. But this broad generalisation has to be
qualified by the statement that the work available was
that of farm-labouring. In other words, the immigrant
who had not been a farm labourer in Great Britain had
to turn farm labourer in Canada. That course offered
a sure means of subsistence to all and sundry with the
necessary health and strength. If a man did not care
to follow it he might have to go hungry ; but by
walking into the Immigration Offices of the Ontario
Government at the Union Station in Toronto, or those
of Mr Marquette, the officer ofthe Quebec Government
at Montreal, and expressing a wish to go on the land,
he could be sure of being despatched forthwith to a
farm, at a wage, for the season, of not less than ten
dollars a month with board, if he knew nothing of
agriculture, and from twenty to thirty if he were an
experienced farm hand. That was the economic situa
tion. The land is like a great sponge. It takes up
62

THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS 63
every human being who offers himself for absorption.
There was a time during I905 when the rush of
immigration was so heavy that it threatened to be in
excess of the requirements of the farmers ; but the crisis
then feared passed off, chiefly because of the extra
ordinary exodus of the sons of Ontario farmers to the
North-West. The prairie country is, of course, being
" boomed " in Canada as well as in England. Farms in
Ontario and Quebec and elsewhere in the East will
not support large families. As the children grow up
they have to get out into the world. There is a
livelihood for one son or more on the family homestead,
but the others have to find acres of their own. The
choice before them is to go into the uncleared areas and
spend a lifetime in cutting down forest and "stump
ing" the ground, living as best they can on the timber
and the yearly extending patch of cultivated soil, or
going far West with a few dollars, and taking up a
prairie homestead which, being treeless, can be sown
with wheat after a breaking plough has been driven over
it, and the turned sods have been exposed to a winter's
frost and snow. Thousands of Ontarians take the latter
course. There is so great an exodus to the West that
the extension of cultivation in the Peninsula is retarded.
It is this migration of the youth of Ontario and the
Eastern provinces which creates so keen a demand for
immigrant labour on the land. There has to be an in
flux to balance the efflux. This is carefully fostered by
the Provincial Governments, who, without decrying the
North-West, claim that Ontario offers superior advan
tages to the immigrant, either with or without capital, or
with or without experience of farm work. There is

64 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
much force in their contention, for mixed farming is the
rule, not merely wheat growing ; and mixed farming
offers more chances of employment all the year round,
for cattle and hogs must be tended during winter, and
it is not practicable to dismiss all the hands when the
harvest is reaped. Moreo\er, an immigrant who learns
his business as a farm hand on a mixed farm necessarily
learns more than he would on a wheat patch in the
North-West ; and according to the extent and variety
of his knowledge, he is better fitted to take up land of
his own in the East, or, if he prefers to go there, in the
West, where there are many great stretches suited for
mixed farming, rather than for cereals only. From
the standpoint of the emigrant, therefore, Ontario may
be regarded as the training ground for the farming class
of the whole Dominion ; and when the later chapters
of this book shall have been read, it will, I think, be seen
that the immigrant will do well to turn a deaf ear to
the enticements of the West, until he has worked for a
season in the East.
Even without the exodus of Ontarians there would
still be plenty of room in this province alone for a horde
of newcomers. A hundred million acres are still avail
able for exploitation. Not all of it is suitable for agri
culture. Much of it is under tolerably heavy forest.
Generations may pass before these great reserves of
territory are touched. But so long as there is primeval
land, and so long as the youth of Ontario drifts west
ward, the province will be able to take an enormous
immigration. I have seen a trainload of English emi
grants arrive at Toronto, and, in the course of twenty-
four hours, disperse over the country-side ; and this is

THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS 65
what happens two or three times a week in the
Spring. The modus operandi of the Immigration Office is
simplicity itself. Applications for labour, experienced or
inexperienced, pour into the offices daily. A precise form
has to be filled up and the wages stated ; and these are
never less than ten dollars a month for an inexperienced
hand, and may be double or even treble that figure for a
man who is an expert at farm work. The Immigration
Office will not supply inexperienced labour for less than
ten dollars. It acts upon the principle that if a man is
worth engaging at all he is worth so much cash as well
as his board. Otherwise the cities in winter would
be full of penniless men from the farms. The applica
tions are dealt with in the order of their receipt. It is a
case of first come first served. The immigrants present
themselves at the office, crowding the reception-rooms,
and are dealt with singly by a staff under Mr. Persee,
who has thirty years' experience of this kind of work,
knows many of the farmers who want help, the kind of
farming they do, and can estimate the suitability of an
immigrant at a glance.
The immigrant produces the card of introduction
which has been handed to him before sailing by the
Emigration Agent in London, or Liverpool, or elsewhere,
and is asked whether he will go on the land, and if he
has any knowledge of farm labour. A few questions
suffice to inform the clerk what manner of man he is,
and a situation is forthwith offered him — of a year's
duration or for the season, as the case may be ; and the
amount of pay, which includes board and lodging, is
stated. If he accepts, he signs a contract, and is forth-
E

66 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
with furnished with a free railway ticket and sent out
to find his farmer by the earliest train. With such
despatch is the business conducted that scores of men are
disposed of in a day. And ifa man has a wife it may be
all the better. She may represent an additional ten
dollars a month, with quarters and board. If there are
young children the problem is a little more difficult.
But a family gets placed sooner or later. For amongst
thc richer farmers of Ontario there is a disposition to
abandon the practice of housing the hands in the farm
house — a custom which overburdens the farmer's wife
with work — and to build a separate dwelling for their
accommodation, placing it in charge of the wife of a
permanent hand and allowing her so much each month
per head for feeding the labourers. It is this system,
which is also growing up in the North-West among
the more prosperous farmers and stock-raisers, which
makes it possible for a man with a wife and family
to get employment together ; and if there are boys
of a working age, the combined earnings of the
family and the profit made out of the boarding
allowance, should result in the accumulation of a little
capital. The traveller through the Ontario peninsula, which
has been more or less settled for a century, is impressed
by the apparent prosperity of the farming class, the
solidity and architectural pretensions of the stone and
brick houses, the solid and spacious cattle sheds, barns,
and out-buildings. Who are the people who own them
and the broad acres in which they stand .'' The answer
is, the sons and thc grandsons of Scotch and English
immigrants, with a goodly proportion of men who

THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS 67
themselves arrived, penniless, any time during the past
half century. It is true that this part of the country
— I speak of the peninsula lying between Lake Huron
and Lake Erie — has no uncleared land, and that much
of the farming area commands a high price ; but the
opportunities for an immigrant acquiring a farm
seem to be frequent. He may start for himself first
by renting a farm, and he usually ends by buying
it. I saw many farms in the fertile country in the
neighbourhood of Guelph which had passed into the
hands of immigrants of this generation.
I drove through one of the oldest and richest parts of
the region, and wherever I went was shown here and
there a substantially-built farmhouse, the home of an
English or Scotch family, the head of which landed
ten, or twenty or thirty years ago, as the case may be,
with no capital but the labour of his hands. This
evolution of the immigrant labourer into the landowner
is going on now. It is quite true that the immi
grant who has brains, capacity, and character becomes
in due time the owner of a farm. This is not so
often the case in the fruit district, where consider
able capital is needed, and where the population is
leavened by people of gentle birth or by the descendants
of the United Empire Loyalists, who went there in
Washington's time. But in the farming lands lying
farther back from the Lake it is so frequent as to be
regarded by Ontarians as the natural and inevitable
course of things. As a general rule, the immigrant
who does not rise to the rank of farmer is looked upon
as a social failure — as fit only to be a hired servant of
others, and as being incompetent to make use of the

68 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
opportunities Ontario offers to an intelligent man.
Such facilities for observation as I had confirm this
view. In scientific agriculture Ontario is the foremost
province of Canada. At Guelph the Provincial Govern
ment maintains an agricultural college and experimental
farms which are ranked among the finest in the world.
Here, under the presidentship of Mr. Creelman, a man
of academic distinction as well as a practical agriculturist,
a race of scientific farmers is being trained, and year
by year is distributed throughout the Dominion. I
need describe neither the college nor its work, and I
introduce this reference to it merely for the purpose of
saying that the ambitious immigrant should study
there. I was taken through the buildings by a young man
who came three years ago from Birmingham. He
declined to take work in Toronto. He had left
Birmingham in order to escape from city life. He
wanted to be a farmer, though of farming he knew
nothing. So he hired himself out as an inexperienced
hand at ten dollars a month, entered at the college in
winter, worked again in the summer, entered again,
and thus spent his wages in fitting himself for his
calling, scientifically as well as practically. The result
is that after three years' combined work and study his
market value is anything from three to four hundred
dollars a year and board. In a few years' time that
particular immigrant will be farming for himself on a
large scale, and making money freely. But he had
brains and strength of character; without either or
both of these the immigrant can scarcely expect to be

THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS 69
more than a hired labourer in Canada or in any other
country. In Quebec also the farming is of a " mixed " kind, but
the climate is more severe than on the lake shores.
There are non-French areas which provide abundant
room for English immigration. Here, however, it is a
case of hastening slowly. The Provincial Government
encourages only carefully selected immigration, and
spends but a trifling sum upon it. The work is in the
hands of Mr. Marquette, who is well known in emi
gration circles in London. He is an enthusiast ; but his
enthusiasm is tempered by long experience and ripe
judgment. He was good enough to give me an insight
into the work of his bureau, and the impression I
brought away with me was that indiscriminate immigra
tion into this province would be a mistake. The North-
West may want people by the thousand ; Quebec, in
its present stage of development, or undevelopment,
asks only for single labourers, or such families as may
be able, with reasonable certainty, to provide themselves
with a comfortable existence. The policy is to build
up the population in the non-French areas slowly and
surely, rather than in a haphazard way. Quality, not
numbers, is Mr, Marquette's aim ; and to secure this he
takes infinite pains.
Much of his work in planting out immigrants is the
result of pre-arrangement with the Self-Help Emigra
tion Society, and such like bodies in London, Lists of
would-be emigrants are supplied to him, each entry
giving a synopsis of the personal and industrial history
of a man and his family, Mr, Marquette knows his
London and the immigrant class ; and on the data

70 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
supplied to him he is able to form a tolerably just
estimate as to whether A. or B. would be likely to do
well in the province. Clerks, warehousemen, shopmen,
and such like people are generally excluded — in their
own interest ; though not necessarily so, if they are
prepared to take up farm labour, cither as a means of
subsistence, or as a preparation for investing their
savings in acquiring farms of their own. Mechanics,
as a general rule, are not favoured merely because they
are technically skilled. But farm labourers, or intending
farm labourers, and domestic servants are needed, and
there are openings for them almost without limit in
Quebec. Once Mr. Marquette has advised that a man and a
family may be sent out, he accepts full responsibility
for them. When they step into his office in Montreal
their future is assured, provided that they will work and
adapt themselves to the new conditions of life. The
result of this forethought and careful supervision is that
very few mistakes are made, and that none is bad or
irremediable. The immigrant influx into the province
of Quebec, excluding Jews and foreigners, is nearly
ten thousand souls yearly, and this number was said to
be insufficient to supply the demand for farm labour.
There is always a deficiency in the farm supply, of
women as well as men ; and, so far as I could ascertain,
it is possible for a man — even a man with a family,
provided that his boys and girls are of wage-earning
years — to save enough money in time either to buy a
farm, or, if he prefers, to take up bush land at the
nominal charge of is. 3d. an acre. The better plan, I
was told, is to rent a farm, with thc option of purchase,

THE DEMAND FOR FARM HANDS 71
for, though the agricultural class makes a living, farming
is an art which has to be learnt, though high tech
nical qualifications at the outset are not necessary.
Much of the province has not yet been explored or
surveyed for colonisation purposes. This work is
being done by the Government yearly. There are
now some seven million acres available for colonis
ation — surveyed, mapped out into farm lots, and
nearly all accessible by fairly good roads ; and of this
area at least half is known to be well suited for cul
tivation. It is a province of high plateaux, of hills and valleys
and rolling plains, of fine rivers and noble lakes, of ex
tensive forests full of marketable timber. But Quebec
is a country for the strong, for those who can endure.
If I had run through parts of it in summer, its
beauty would have enchanted me, as it has all other
travellers ; but the fact of seeing it and its people in
mid-winter, as well as, later on, in summer, gave me a
clearer idea of the realities of life the year round.
Graphically put, the climatic difference between this
region and England is that the tipsy man who falls by
the roadside there in winter will soon freeze to death.
But, when everything is said that can be said about
the duration and severity of the winter — the long
spells of zero weather — the climate is healthy and
invigorating, and the air astonishingly exhilarating.
Whether in the country or in towns, I spent as little time
as possible in the stuffy, overheated, and often evil-
smelling houses. Long spells in the open meant nothing
worse than a frost-bite and temporary disfigurement,
and this was due to incautious and prolonged inactivity

72 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
in a sleigh. Excessively cold as the air sometimes is,
it gives life and health and vigour. The sudden access
of summer, the glorious heat of four or five months, and
the beauty of the " fall," compensate for the long winter
and the monotonous snow-falls.

CHAPTER VI
TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION
The westward bound train from Ottawa takes the
traveller through scenery which varies from the
picturesque to the desolate and from the sterile and for
bidding to what may justly be described as magnificent.
For hours he passes through the Ottawa Valley, a com
paratively well-populated region, studded with little
villages, saw-mills, and farmhouses. It is a pleasant,
open land, its undulations clad here and there with
tracts of forest, which provide the labourers of the farms
and lake fisheries with a means of subsistence during
the long winter. The scene is beautiful when the snow
lies deep on the ground and the lakes are thickly
sheeted with ice, for the skies are intensely blue, and the
sunlight gives to the earth a dazzling whiteness. What
it is when the land is green with growing crops and the
waters of river and lake are stirred by the summer breezes
should be seen to be appreciated. There must be many
trout fishers in England who know the glories of the
Isle des AUumettes, the Narrows, and the Deep River.
From this point the scenery begins to change, and
for many miles the train passes through Laurentian rock,
with frequent views of gloomy forest highlands to the
north. After Mattawa, we enter New Ontario, a great
region stretching upward from the lakes to Hudson Bay.
73

74 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
A line is built from Lake Nipissing, as far as Lake
Temiskaming, which gives access to a large expanse of
farming land that is known to be good, while across
the great tract, through the district of Algoma from east
to west, the new Grand Trunk Pacific Railway will be
run. This line will open up a belt of agricultural land
which, it is believed, will be as productive as any in the
Dominion. At present it is almost entirely uninhabited.
With an appreciation of the possibilities shortly to be
turned to account in the North, no traveller can allow
himself to be misled by unfavourable impressions of thc
country through which he now passes. He will know
that beyond the rocks and the great forest reserves thc
region has been explored with sufficiently good results to
lead to thc construction of yet another trans-Continental
railway. Nor are these desolate rock-masses, with their sparse
timber and scrub — branchless, burned, and scorched by
fires set up by sparks from the locomotives — destitute of
interest. Geologists would find in them a source of
endless gratification. To the unlearned, thc monotony
of the rock heaps and ledges is relieved by an occasional
break, which reveals, far below, the broad expanse of a
frozen lake or the sinuous course of a river, for, during
several hours, the line follows the height of land which
forms the watershed between Hudson Bay and the
Great Lakes to the south ; or, again, the eyes are
fascinated by a succession of great rounded hummocks,
and ledges and slanting shelves of granite, where the
snow gleams in the sunshine like molten silver.
About eight hundred miles west of Ottawa the line
touches closely the north shore of Lake Superior, and

TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 75
for about two hundred miles there is a succession of
magnificent views. The lake lies hundreds of feet
below, to the left, and often the train is travelling on
what seems to be the very edge of the granite cliff.
The views of the lake in winter are even finer than in
summer, for, though the ice extends far to the south, the
sky-line is formed by a broad band of unfrozen water —
a wide belt of indigo blue, under a light blue sky with a
vast foreground of pure white, and — at Jackfish Bay and
Nepigon Bay — by snow-covered islands and clusters and
chains of islets.
At Fort William, there is again magnificent scenery,
which makes the place one of the finest summer resorts
in the world ; and until Rat Portage is reached — so
called from the myriads of musk rats which cross to
and from the prairies — there is a fine panorama of rocky
ravines and deep-lying lakes. Rat Portage, with its
Lake of the Woods — a sheet of water some sixty odd
miles long, embedded in ever-green forests and set with
innumerable islands — is a sight worth travelling thousands
of miles to see. Canadians say that there can be no
more beautiful spot in the universe.
Another fifty miles brings the traveller to a more
level country, the rocks becoming covered with alluvial
deposit. In an hour or two the train is tearing over a
vast level plain — the beginning of the first of the three
steppes which lead to the base of the Rocky Mountains.
Here the snow has almost disappeared — I am writing of
the early days of March — and the rich black earth ofthe
wheat-growing prairies is to be seen. Against the sky
line is an occasional farmhouse. Two or three teams of
horses, with low-built wagons, are crossing the prairie

76 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
this way or that ; now and again you see a farmer's
buggy, the driver in his great fur coat ; and before
you realise that you are really in the West the train
draws up at Winnipeg, and you find yourself walking
through the main street of that city — in the company of
hundreds of men who belong unmistakably to the out-
of-work class !
The Main Street is a broad and spacious thoroughfare,
the concrete-slab pavements twice as wide as those of
Regent Street, and the roadway nearly twice the width
of Oxford Street — so broad, indeed, that there is room
for a double line of traffic between the electric car rails
in the middle, and again between the rails and the curb
stones. The road has evidently been cut with an
eye to the future, when Winnipeg may become one
of the great cities of the world. The side-streets are
also on a noble plan, and there are few narrow streets
or quarters where the houses are huddled together.
In Main Street, the " shacks," shanties, and fi-ame-work
shops and houses have almost wholly given way to large
and sometimes imposing blocks of stone and brick built
offices. Some of thc shops are among the finest in
the Dominion, Clearly, it is a wealthy and rapidly
growing city, which even now, in its transition stage,
is a not unworthy capital of a great province. As a
doorway to thc enormous territories West and North,
its importance and its possibilities of expansion would
impress the least imaginative.
But some study of local conditions showed that
it contained a large number of workless men, and
during thc winter had held many who had felt thc
pinch of distress. The causes of this state of things

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TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 77
were easily discoverable. In the first place, Winnipeg
IS a " dead " city from the end of October until the
beginning of April. It has, as yet, no factories and
industries of sufficient importance to give employ
ment either to skilled or unskilled labour. Its population
lives on its summer earnings and by letting lodgings.
1 he building trade is almost entirely stagnant. Stone
and brick edifices cannot be proceeded with, nor can
carpenters' work be done, except on a small scale. The
cold is so severe that it is impossible, for long spells,
to work continuously out of doors. People there talk of
temperatures of from thirty to forty degrees below zero
as quite ordinary occurrences of a normal winter.
While these last, men and women go out as little as
possible. Nothing is done in the open which can
possibly be postponed. Then, again, the railway traffic
is much less, and a considerable proportion of the labour
which is used in handling the passenger traffic and
freight trains west and east of Winnipeg is "laid off" —
a local euphemism which means that the men get no
wages unless their services are temporarily requisitioned.
Some of the labour used for municipal purposes is
also dispensed with. Streets do not need to be cleaned
when the snow gives them a surface which is frequently
being renewed ; and no progress can be made in paving
the side thoroughfares and in such like work.
In addition to these causes which keep men in idleness,
there is the far greater cause inherent in the fact
that wheat alone is grown in the surrounding country.
The West has all its eggs in one basket. Farmers
do not need labour all the year round. They require it
only for seeding in April and May, and thereafter until

78 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the harvest is gathered. Consequently the' majority
of them engage men only for six or seven months.
The harvesting is a time of great pressure, and for
a month or two extra hands are urgently demanded, and
can obtain wages at the rate of as much as thirty dollars
or more a month, with board. The railway runs cheap
excursion trains from the East and brings up whatever
superfluous labour there may be in Nova Scotia, Ontario,
Quebec, and New Brunswick. Some of these labourers
get no further on their way back than Winnipeg, having
determined to "put in thc winter" on their wages
there, and remain in the West. Of the labourers who
bind themselves in the spring to serve until thc frost
begins, a few succeed in getting shelter with thc more
prosperous farmers over the winter, doing such work as
there is to be done in looking after horses and cattle, and
being content with board and no wages. But the great
majority make their way to the towns. Winnipeg
is their goal after harvest, and almost the only chance
of work which Winnipeg affords them is that of going
far out into the prairie "bluffs," or bushlands, to
cut and haul such timber as thc country yields. This
absorbs a proportion of the displaced labour, but not
much. The unemployed winter surplus is of necessity
considerable. Nor should the English emigrant forget that in going
to Winnipeg he must be prepared to live cheek by jowl
with labourers of other nationalities. He is in danger
of having to reduce his standard of comfort to that of
races who are content to work for a wage which does
no more than enable them to live in hovels and fare
meanly, Canada is not a reserve for English labour.

TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 79
It is an open market for the labour of every other
country. The overflow of Europe rather than of Great
Britain alone, is being directed into the towns and
wheat-lands of the prairies. The immigration policy of
the Dominion is a gigantic commercial as well as a
political enterprise. The railway, manufacturing, and
trading corporations want people on the prairies. Every
newcomer has to be fed and clothed, and the money of
a " Galician " for a railway fare or a pair of boots is as
good as that of a Britisher. Moreover, an additional
foreigner is worth more than a newly-arrived Britisher as
a factor in keeping down the price of labour.
But this has to be qualified by the fact that, so
long as vast regions of the country are unfilled, cities
are growing into greater cities, villages are becom
ing towns, and new villages are springing up every
where, no healthy, intelligent and frugal man, of much
energy of character, need continue to live for many
years as a wage-earner. The master men of Winnipeg
to-day were the artisans and labourers of yesterday ; the
great employers of the present were themselves twenty
years ago in the pay of others. The transition from one
stage to the other goes on daily ; numbers of men step
every spring from the labour ranks into those of em
ployers, and few fall back into their original place ;
many of them, on the contrary, extend their operations
and become men of substance. Undoubtedly the con
ditions are such that a man who is resolutely bent on
dying rich can accumulate money, whatever his up
bringing, and however illiterate he may be. I have had
wealthy men pointed out to me in Winnipeg who were
scarcely able to sign their names when they went there

8o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
twenty years ago ; and an intelligent acquaintance, who
showed me over the city, could scarcely indicate a
prominent business house or an imposing-looking resi
dence which is not controlled or owned by a man who
came to the prairie without a cent.
All this has to be borne in mind. It is true that the
English labouring man will find himself subject to the
competition of the foreign labourer, that thc English
artisan can only exercise his calling for six months in
the year, and that, therefore, thc conditions in which he
will start life anew may not be intrinsically and immedi
ately better than those from which he has fled. But it
is equally true that, subject to climatic causes, which
compress a year's work into half a year, he need not
lack employment, that he can become his own master,
and, by shrewdness, enterprise, and energy, may attain
to comparative wealth.
But there is no royal road to wealth, or even to inde
pendence. Thc immigrant without capital in Winnipeg
will have " a hard row to hoe," however frugal, shrewd,
and industrious he may be. He is at the very bottom
of the ladder. Thc conditions will be new and strange.
He will find his lot hard and distasteful. That, at least,
is thc general experience. A man has to " tough it," to
" get broken in " to the ways of the country, and to
learn how to endure cold and discomfort and isolation.
When he has passed through this period of probation
thc chances are he will earn money more freely and
accumulate it steadily if he be of a thrifty disposition.
As a general principle, a man should go alone ; wife
and young children should only be brought when he
has sufficiently well established himself in the country

TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 8i
to be sure of being able to give them a comfortable
existence. Luxury they will never get ; not, at least,
in this generation, for wealthy people there do not know
even such luxury as the working-classes of England
can obtain. They will not need luxury ; but adequate
protection against the winter will be essential. Such
protection cannot be given if poverty is at the door.
The bare necessities of life — shelter, food, fuel, and
clothing — are extremely dear. Housing accommodation
is insufficient for the present population ; and the rate
of growth is not proportionate with the inflow of new
comers. Hence rents, even for the poorest sort of
dwelling, are outrageously high, except from the
standpoint of the speculative house-owner, who buys
"lots," runs up wooden houses, and lets them at so
much per month.
Again, the West is almost solely a wheat-growing
country. One would suppose that bread, therefore,
would be ridiculously cheap. It is somewhat dearer
than in the West-end of London ! And the baker is
under no legal obligation to give full weight. Again,
the farmers raise very little stock. Meat, therefore, is
dear. Mutton is poor, and beef is cow-beef, or of such
cattle as are not good enough to be transported East
for sale and shipment. Both are dear, as well as of
indifferent quality. Eggs, milk, bacon, butter, and
cheese are dearer than they are in England; and
" groceries " — a comprehensive term which comprises
most edibles and commodities for household use — are far
more costly than in the Old Country — necessarily so,
perhaps, seeing that they have to be transported a
couple of thousand miles. And they are dearer than

82 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
they need be, because the credit system is so generally
prevalent, the retailer buying on long credit from the
wholesale houses, and the consumer of " groceries "
often running up an account which extends over the
winter. Coal and wood for fuel are often very costly.
Notwithstanding that the stoves are so constructed as
to utilise the full value of the fuel burnt, the cost of
obtaining a warm room or house is greater than it is in
England ; and for six months in the year continuous
heat is a primary necessity of life. Without it, you
might freeze to death indoors. That fuel should be so
costly is attributable to the facts that there is no hard
coal nearer than the Rocky Mountains, that there are
no forests on the prairies, and that such slight and
scrubby timber as grows in the "bluffs" lies at great
distances from the towns. As for clothing, even shoddy,
which is what the Canadian manufacturer chiefly pro
duces, is anything from 50 per cent, to 75 per cent,
dearer than in England.
It will be seen that, with the bare necessities of life
so dear, the lot of the labouring man in so severe a
climate can only be made tolerable if wages are high.
That of wife and young children would be doubly hard ;
and, from conversations I have held with immigrants
who have "toughed it," and fought through their
difficulties, because they had to, and had not the money
to get away, it is as clear as anything can be, to my
mind, that real and severe hardships have to be endured
by many friendless immigrants into the North-West, for
the first year or two of life there, if not longer. On the
other hand, I did not meet a labouring man who, having
gone through this time of travail, would now return to

TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 83
the Old Country and take up life there anew at the point
at which he had left it.
Throughout the season of 1905 immigration into
Winnipeg continued on a heavier scale than in any
previous year. Fortunately, the demand for cheap or
" inexperienced " farm labour in the North-West was
brisk and persistent and, so far as could be ascertained,
the Dominion Government were able to fulfil their
pledge to pass into employment all who were willing to
go on the land. But immigrants with trades, and
others who did not find farm labouring sufficiently
attractive, had considerable difficulty in getting work.
On a day in June, when I was again in the city, I
calculated that there were at least a thousand men in
and about Main Street and the employment offices
looking for work. On the same night an "immigrant
special" came in from the East and left about two
hundred of her passengers, the rest going further west
over the prairie. The figure of one thousand is not
statistically accurate, but I do not think there is any
material error except in under-statement of the facts.
I put the number to a tradesman who had lived in
Winnipeg for some years, and he ridiculed it. " Why,
there are five thousand, at least," he said. But this
seemed to be an exaggeration. He could give no
authority for his estimate other than the data of the
streets, and on these I preferred my own judgment,
though it may fall short, rather than be in excess, of
the truth. Of the thousand, probably five hundred
were foreigners — German-speaking people from Central
and South-Eastern Europe. The rest were from the
British Isles, chiefly mechanics and general labourers,

84 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
who had, apparently, so far as inquiries enabled me to
form an opinion, declined to take work on farms at
from ten to twenty dollars a month and their board
until the harvest is reaped. Some of them, at least,
would have to do that or starve, for those who had not
thc money to take them to distant towns would be
unable to get work in Winnipeg, where there was
already an excess of artisan labour for the new buildings
being erected.
As for the immigrants who came in by the special —
and a similar scene was to be observed at the station
two or three times a week — they were nearly all English
people, ofthe working classes, with a noticeable sprink
ling of young men of the clerical and shop-assistant
type. There were some young girls, who could get
domestic work at from twenty to twenty-five dollars
a month. They would be all right. A woman worker
in the West, and, indeed, in every other part of thc
Dominion, is of equal pecuniary value to a man, and
often commands a higher wage than a mere labourer.
There were a few wives and young children, and cases
such as these present special difficulty, which, however,
is resolvable if the man, for lack of anything better,
takes work away from his new home (or lodgings), and
if the wife goes out to daily work. In that way the
family can be kept going, though at a temporary sacri
fice of home life and ties. It is not a state of things
which can be agreeable to an immigrant familv, or to
readers in England ; but the conditions are what they
arc, and men who take wives and children with them to
Winnipeg should know what is in store for them.
English immigrants should not go to Winnipeg with

TO WINNIPEG— AND DISILLUSION 85
the object of staying in the city ; their lot is not likely
to be a whit better there than it is in the great centres
at home. When I left the place it had just recovered
from a visitation of enteric, and was waiting for the
next. Its air was typhoidic, despite the winds that
swept through it from the surrounding river flats. It
was a mistake to place a city there. A more un
desirable site could not have been found. The fact is
notorious, for many years ago the Dominion Govern
ment urged, for sanitary reasons, settlement on higher
land. For these and other reasons Winnipeg is a
place from which immigrants should get away as
speedily as possible. It has already a population of
about a hundred thousand. It is not, and it is unlikely
to become, a manufacturing centre. It is merely a dis
tributing town for goods consumed in the North-West
— a sort of wholesale emporium for the smaller places
which do not yet trade direct with the manufacturing
and distributing houses of Ontario. And it is also a
clearing house for immigration into the North-West.
In this sense only should it enter into an emigrant's
calculations.

CHAPTER VII
A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE
" Going far ? "
" Moosejaw," I replied.
" Just come through ? "
" Yes."
" Much snow down East r "
" The hill-tops clear it. That's about all."
He smiled at the exaggeration. The man of the
Western Plains likes to hear of snow in the East. He
would have you believe that the winter of the prairies is
but a cold summer in comparison with that of the
Maritime Provinces ; while the inhabitant of the latter
region, who cuts blocks of ice five feet square out of his
lakes and rivers, will tell you that the winter of the
prairie is fit only for a Cree Indian or an Esquimo.
" We've had scarcely any snow out here," said my
fellow-traveller, indicating the prairie through the
windows of the train ; and the appearance of the seem
ingly interminable plain proved the truth of the asser
tion, for the snow had almost disappeared under the
influence of a few days' sunshine. He was a young
man of two or three and twenty, and he had walked
along the corridor of the car, sat himself beside me and
opened a conversation, as is the custom in the country,
86

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE 87
where introductions are superfluous and one stranger is
at liberty to put to another any pertinent — or imper
tinent — question that enters his head.
"Just come from the Old Country, haven't you ?" he
asked, after a moment's reflection. I admitted that I
had, and prepared myself to listen anew, with such
patience and courtesy as I could command, to the now
familiar diatribe upon the uselessness ofthe Englishman
as m immigrant, and his unfathomable inferiority in
eveiy way to the Canadian born. But I was mistaken.
My friend was an Englishman himself, for he began
criticising the Canadians with considerable freedom.
" Vhen did you come out ? " I asked.
" At the age of fourteen," he replied. " My father was a
 merchant at  ,and I was at the grammar school
there, The governor was pretty well-to-do, and he's
made a good bit since then, for I've a letter from
the HHter saying that he's bought quite a little estate
outsicb  , and will be the next mayor of the city
for a certainty. But the governor and I couldn't
hit itoff. You see he is quite a self-made man — had
to be;in work when he was ten, and never had any
schooing to speak of; and this he was always dinning
into .Tiy ears, giving me to understand that I was a
fool, md that the money he was spending on me and the
' advaitages ' he was giving me were thrown away. I
didn' like it, I was no more of a fool than any other
boy )f my years, and I grew angry and sullen. At last
I coildn't stand it any longer, and I told him that if he
coull go out into the world at ten, and earn his
own living and become well-off, I could do the same
at furteen — and better. But he only ridiculed me. I

88 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
had been reading about Canada and the West, and
I made up my mind to get there. So I told the
governor I should go. He wouldn't hear of it, but
I kept at him for a week, and we had a furious quarrel,
about it. The upshot was that at last he offered to pay
my passage out, second-class, to Winnipeg, and to
give me fifty pounds ; but never another shilling would
I get from him, nor would he, he said, send me maiey
to come home with when I wrote for it, as I was sure
to do, he prophesied. Well, I accepted the passage but
would only take two pounds from him in cash ; and Itold
him that I would rot in Canada before I asked hin for
anything. So out I came."
" With two pounds in your pocket at Winnipeg' "
" Oh dear no, I came second. Some fellows h thc
saloon relieved me of the two pounds at nap ; but me of
them gave me a couple of dollars, with which I g<t food
for the railway journey. I had twenty cents when
I went into the Immigration Shed at Winnipeg, and
there I took the first job the officials offered. A armer
wanted a boy at eight dollars a month until Novimber,
I was handed over to him and spent my first sumner on
the prairie. Now and again he gave me a few cents
on account of wages, but I never got anything more.
He had rented the farm and I found out afterwarc that
he was heavily in debt. Anyway he skipped the cantry
in August and left the man and myself in the luri. I
got work over thc harvest with another farmer, sleping
with the cattle ; working from four in the moning
till eight or nine in the evening and living oi tea
and bread and fat pork. In October I found njrself
again in Winnipeg — clothes all in rags as you tnay

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE 89
imagine, and full of vermin besides. You can't help
getting verminous in harvesting in this country, and your
clothes get torn to rags. But I had twenty-five dollars
wages in my pocket when I left the farm, and that got
me a new rig-out for the winter. Winnipeg was filling
up with men. The crop hadn't been good, and times
were pretty bad when the frost set in ; but I hustled
around and obtained a job at a baker's, delivering bread.
That brought me five dollars a week, and my board cost
me three and a half dollars, and I put in the winter that
way. And it was a winter — snow all the time, blizzards,
in which it was impossible for man or beast to be out
of doors, and long spells of cold — forty to sixty below
zero I Feel it much ? I can't say I did. I didn't
suffer as some did. The newcomer never does. His
blood is thick and warm, I feel a few degrees of frost
much more acutely now than I did zero weather seven
years ago. I used to laugh in those days at the rich
Winnipegers in the sleighs, muffled up in great furs and
with a look of agonising misery on their faces, as though
they were on the point of crying with the cold as
children will do. When the spring broke I said good
bye to the baker and went on a farm, this time at twenty
dollars a month, all found, with a decent room to sleep
in. And I engaged as a man not as a boy. When the
harvest was beginning the man who fired the engine
that runs the separator fell sick — "
" What's a separator ? "
" The threshing machine, worked by a steam-engine,
and the fire is kept going in these parts with straw.
The ' boss' couldn't get a man anywhere, and he
asked me if I knew anything about engines. I said

90 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
I knew all about them, though I'd never fired an engine
in my life. That's what you have to do in this country
— say you can do this or that, and have a shot at it ; thc
chances are that you won't get fired — "
" Fired ? what's that ? "
"Sacked I — sent about your business. You get through
anyhow, and if thc ' boss ' sacks you, the probabilities are
that he gets someone who does the job worse. Well, I
took thc man's place for the same wages he was getting
— forty-five dollars for the month — and fired well enough
to keep thc machine going. Thanks to that bit of luck
I got back to Winnipeg with one hundred andfifty dollars
in my pocket, and, as my winter clothes were still good,
I hadn't much need to spend. I got a winter job with
another baker, driving a horse and cart for fifteen dollars
a month and board. But I had difficulty in getting my
wages. The fellow was hard up. I saw my opportunity
and bought the business for three hundred dollars,
paying one hundred dollars down and the balance in
instalments. I sacked the working baker and got a better
one at ten dollars a week, went round to my customers
of the previous winter and got most of them — "
" Playing it rather low down, wasn't it ? "
'' You've got to play it rather low down in Winnipeg,
let me tell you. They'll play it low down on you, and
no mistake. All the sharpers in Canada get there, and
you have to skin others or be skinned yourself. Well, in
a few months I had a sound little business; and I sold it in
the spring for six hundred and fifty dollars spot cash,
having lived well out of it and saved money to boot. By
that time I had come to the conclusion that any man who
worked for hire on a farm, or for wages for anyone else.

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE 91
was stupid, so I bought a town lot for five hundred
dollars with a house on it, and let the house for twenty-five
dollars a month. And with the rest of my money I paid
the first instalment for the purchase of a grocery business.
That I transferred at a profit, and I've been buying and
selling ever since, sometimes with poor luck, sometimes
with good. Last year I sent home to a little girl I knew to
come out and marry me, and out she came and we set up
house in a new lot I had bought. The lot cost me four
hundred and fifty dollars and the furniture four hundred
dollars. I've just sold that lot for one thousand two
hundred dollars. The first lot for which I paid five
hundred dollars is now in the market for two thousand
dollars. If it doesn't sell this spring, the price next
year will be two thousand five hundred dollars; and I
shall get it. In a few years, when I've made quite a
pile, I'm going to take the wife home for a holiday, and
I'll surprise the governor. He thinks I'm quite a poor
devil, drawing a baker's cart or firing engines."
" So you've sold up your house just now ? "
" Yes. The fact is I can't make money fast enough
in Winnipeg. You want large capital to get ahead.
All the good lots are in hands that can afford to hold
them a long time, I don't know yet where I shall
settle — perhaps Brandon, or Regina, perhaps Moose-
jaw ; at one of the new and growing places, which
will be as big as Winnipeg in ten years or so, and where
a few hundred dollars in hand go a long way just now in
buying town lots. Regina's the place, I think. There's
a boom coming on there, which will mean a small fortune
to those who get in first. Got any money yourself? "
I produced a few dollar notes, sufficient to convince

92 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
my friend that I should be no good as a partner in any
scheme he might devise for buying up townships in thc
capital of the new province of Saskatchewan. He
looked grave and sympathetic.
" What are you going to do ? " he asked.
"Don't know," I replied. "I shall have a look over
the country first."
" Well," he said, " you'll fall on your feet somehow.
But don't go hiring out on a farm. That's a mug's
game. There's no money in this country for a man
who works with his hands. You've got to work with
your head. If you work with your hands you'll only
make a bare living, taking the whole year round. What
you save in the summer you'll eat up and burn up in
fuel during the winter. That's what happens to thc
man who works for another man for wages, unless he
also has money which he turns over by buying and sell
ing town lots or something else. Labour's getting
cheaper. It's bound to get cheaper as immigrants come
in ; and the Government's drawing in foreigners by the
thousand every week. They're queering thc English
man's pitch in the North-West. An Englishman ought
to have money enough to start for himself in farming,
or trade, or speculation, or else have the wits to get
money and turn it over. If he hasn't cither the money
or the wits, he's no better off than the foreign labourer
who has to work for twenty dollars a month on thc land,
or fifteen cents an hour with a shovel in the towns
or in handling freight, and be 'half brother to thc ox,'
Things are bad enough for that sort of man already, and
they'll get worse. Wait till there's a bad season or two,
and you'll have thousands of hungry men in Winnipeg

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE 93
in the winter. Why, there've been many scores this
winter, though of late years crops have been splendid
and everything on the boom,"
" But I thought this was a country in which no man
willing to work need go hungry."
" Well, you see, it's like this. The country's all
right, and it's going ahead. But the farmers don't
want labour all the year round. When they do want it
they can't afford to pay enough for it so that a man can
keep himself comfortably through the winter. And if
he has a wife and family, as many of them have. Heaven
help him and them ! There isn't enough winter work
in town or in the " bluffs " to go round. Consequently,
you have distress."
" In Winnipeg ? "
" Yes. Any amount of it. This winter and every
winter. I don't say it isn't partly the fault of the people
themselves. They flock into the city after harvesting,
perhaps with just enough money to last them through
the winter if they crowd into the cheap boarding-houses
and live like rats in their holes. But many of them spend
their money too freely in the first month or two. Others
again drink. Winnipeg is a drinking place, and the bars
arc always full so long as the labouring men have a dollar
or can raise a few cents through the pawnshops. That
is the chief cause of the distress. But, apart from that,
there are men who from illness during the summer
working season, or from ill-luck of one kind or another,
find themselves in poverty in Winnipeg from no serious
fault of their own. And there is hardship amongst
this class which is never known, or is only known when
things are so bad with them that distress cannot be con-

94 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
cealed. People who know the city in winter are quite
aware of it, and the citizens do what they can to alleviate
the suffering. Don't make any mistake about it.
Winnipeg has its poverty just like cities in England.
It is on a small scale now ; but the poverty grows as the
city grows. It shows itself among the foreigners by
the overcrowding in the foreign quarter, and its existence
among the English working people is proved by thc
efforts made by the citizens to provide shelter and meals
for men in winter who are 'right up against it' — that
is, men who have not the price of a meal."
The above is — particularly in the latter passages — a
summary of a long conversation, during which I satis
fied myself by such cross-examination as was possible
that my friend was speakingthe truth and, on thc subject
of poverty in Winnipeg, really knew what he was talk
ing about. Indeed, on this, he furnished me with proof
which showed that he had been actively concerned, and
had spent his own money, in the work of alleviation. I
give the conversation for what it may be worth, because it
tells the story of a successful emigrant's life, and sets forth
views he had formed on the social conditions now pre
valent. We went into the next corridor carriage and
he introduced me to his wife — a good-looking English
girl, who did not conceal her discontent with life in thc
West. She could make no friends, she said ; the ways
of the country were so different from those in which she
had been bred. She could get no help in the house
and a woman's work was never done. There was no
comfort in the country, no social intercourse, no re
finement, and few pleasures : thc only compensation was
in the thought that in the next few years her husband

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER'S EXPERIENCE 95
might be able to accumulate enough money to enable
them to return to England — and stay there. She was
going through the painful process of adapting herself
to new and rough conditions in a strange land. Yet
her husband was on the high road to success. How
much more painful the process must be in the case of a
woman whose husband had not the money-making gift 1
My friend had evidently inherited it from the self-made
father who had allowed him to cut himself adrift from
England in early boyhood.

CHAPTER VIII
LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE
As one star differs from another in glory, so does
one region of the Dominion of Canada contrast with
another. It was an impressive change from thc prim
eval solitudes of the New Brunswick forests — from a
land of lofty, tree-covered hills, the undergrowth of
the woods scarcely visible above thc accumulations of
snow, and the lakes and rivers ice-bound in valley
and ravine — to a vast sun-lit plain, the air so warm that
one could remain for hours in thc open without an over
coat. Except in the sloughs, or in the winding
clefts in the surface, where rivers may once have flown,
there was no snow to be seen. It was April, and
spring was unusually e^rly. So I passed over the
Regina plains and secured lodgment in a farmhouse,
where I could observe the conditions of life on the
settled portions of the prairie. The farmer with whom I
stayed was a Canadian by birth, and went into those parts
just after thc second Riel Rebellion, about twenty years
ago. He had no money, and was a carpenter by trade.
The plains were then in course of settlement, and any
man who could handle a saw and drive a nail could
96

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 97
command good wages. My friend could do more than
these things — could, indeed, set up a house, from founda
tion to roof, which could be warranted to withstand the
winds and keep them out in winter. He obtained as
much work as he could do, and took up a homestead as
well, living on it in winter, ploughing a strip of it, and
otherwise discharging the " duties " which in three years
secured to him the absolute ownership of a quarter
section — one hundred and sixty acres. Then followed a
spell of bad years. Fortunately for him, he was not
obliged to live by his farm. He kept to his trade,
saving enough to acquire two adjacent quarter sections
from neighbours who had either lost faith in the
future of the country or from other causes wished to
surrender their holdings. With a return of good seasons
he found it profitable to cultivate more and carpenter
less. Now he does nothing but farming, and is yearly
amassing wealth — making a clear profit, after all living
expenses, of between two and three hundred pounds a
year. Part of this surplus he invests in town lands, which
are reasonably sure to increase in value year by year, and
may at any time be saleable at a heavy advance. His
own land, which cost him little or nothing — for the
homesteaders whom he bought out were glad to sell for
what they could get — is saleable to-day at anything
from ten to twenty dollars per acre. It will be seen,
therefore, that in the course of another thirty years he
will, by judicious management of his estate, become a
rich man. He had no money when he arrived there —
no knowledge of farming other than that which he
acquired in boyhood in the bushlands of the Ottawa

98 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Valley, where the agricultural conditions are wholly
different from those which obtain on the prairies. But
he had a trade which was much in request at the time
he entered the North-West, was inured to a hard
climate, had youth, strength, and energy, and was in
dustrious and frugal.
On a clear day the range of vision over the Tregarva
prairie is about twenty-five miles in every direction.
You can count over a hundred farmhouses. Not more
than ten of them are in English hands. Yet many of
the original homesteaders were from the old country.
The land immediately thereabouts is held entirely by
Canadians — chiefly by Ontarians, What is the reason
for this ? A Canadian has plenty of reasons. He will
tell you that the Englishman is extravagant, wasteful,
lies a-bed in the mornings, is too fond of his pipe, if not
also of his whisky, cannot live without company, gets
into debt, is easily discouraged by adverse circumstances
— and so forth. Undoubtedly there is truth in these
charges, for the Englishman frequently fails where the
Canadian succeeds. But the Canadian is a paragon of
all the virtues. He beats the Englishman out of the
field, because the Englishman is constitutionally unable
to practise thc self-denial which has become second
nature to the Canadian,
The farmhouse is a two-storeyed dwelling, the walls
of prairie boulders — granite and other stones roughly
surfaced with the hammer. The roof is of shingle,
painted red. The front of the house faces south, and
on this side is a verandah, enclosed at one end by a frame
work of coloured glass. The entrance through the
verandah takes you into a room about thirty-five feet

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 99
long by fifteen feet wide. This is divided by curtains.
One half is the sitting-room and is carpeted. It has a
sheet-iron ceiling stamped with a device which in
Schools of Art is supposed to be decorative. The walls
are painted dead white ; the woodwork of doorways and
window recesses is stained ; the ceiling is bluish grey ;
the carpet is yellow, with a reddish flower ; the curtains
are crimson and yellow, and the furniture covering is
also yellow. On the floor are gorgeous mats, apparently
of domestic manufacture. All Canadian sitting-rooms
are more or less like that — crude and tasteless ; but most
of them contain an organ or harmonium, upon which
hymns and " sacred songs " are played on Sundays — and
on week-days. On the other side of the curtains is the
dining-room — an uncarpeted room, with a table, half-a-
dozen chairs, and a map of British North America hung
on the wall. At the back of this room is the kitchen.
Above this storey are the bed-rooms, the " best " room
carpeted, the others with mats woven with odds and
ends. In each room of the house is a steam-heating
apparatus, served from a boiler in the cellar beneath the
kitchen. Such is the dwelling, and such are the appointments,
of a well-to-do farmer. The poorer sort live in wooden
" shacks." The farmer's wife does all the work of the
house. Servants arc not wanted. It would be useless
to want them, for they are not to be had ; and no well-
disposed Canadian farmer's wife in the North-West
would wish for one. She dresses, as does her " man,"
for work, not for elegance, for warmth, not to gratify
her vanity or taste. Besides husband and wife and
children, if there are any — and there usually are

loo CANADA, THE NEW NATION
— there is a "hired man," in this case an English
immigrant. Thc household rises at six — the hour of sunrise — or
earlier. When the man has fed the horses and turned
the cattle out on to the prairie, breakfast is served. It is
preceded by grace, and is followed by the reading of a
chapter from a well-worn Bible by the master of the
house. This is succeeded by prayer offered by the wife
— a prayer evidently learned in a Methodist chapel and
delivered with unction. I mention these points because
daily reading of the Scriptures and family prayer are
practices faithfully observed in many Canadian farm
houses. After breakfast the horses are taken out, hitched on
to the drill-seeder, four abreast, and driven over the
prairie to the field to be sown. Sacks of Red Fife
wheat, which has previously been moistened with " blue-
stone " — a solution of sulphate of copper — are taken out
to the field. The boxes of the seeder are filled, the
levers are drawn and the drills " set," and as the machine
is driven the seed trickles down the tubing into thc
ground, thc drills turning up the soil and again turning
thc soil over the seed. Thus the work goes on, furrow
after furrow, until mid-day, when dinner is served ; and
again until six, when tea or supper is ready.
Then, at dusk, the cattle are driven in from the
pastures, the horses are fed, and the day's work is done.
A team of four horses will sow from one hundred to one
hundred and twenty acres a week. This then, is the
daily life and work on a prairie wheat-farm. When thc
sowing is finished, thc work of man and horses consists
of ploughing the fallow-land for cultivation in the

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE loi
succeeding year, or breaking up the prairie to put
additional land in cultivation. Until the crop is ready
for cutting there is no pressure. A man sits on the
seeder, and he is seated also on the plough. The work
of the hired man on these grain-growing farms is not,
therefore, unduly heavy, and can be learned by an in
telligent man in a week. The farmer himself will see
that the horses are properly fed and kept in condition,
for it is through them, rather than through the hired
man or his own physical efforts, that he earns his income.
On the prairie everyone drives. The only pedestrians
you will see are the children wending their way along
the trail from some isolated farmhouse to the nearest
school, which may be anything from one mile to
five from home. If you are a newcomer, and wish
to make the acquaintance of your neighbours, you
" hitch " a horse to a " rig," or conveyance, and strike a
road, jogging along until you come to a house, or within
hail of some one working with a team in a field. No
introductions are necessary. Everyone is eager to know
you, to tell you everything about himself, to learn more
than you choose to disclose of your own affairs; and
you will not want for a mid-day meal. Social custom
requires that the stranger who is several miles from a
village or town where accommodation is to be had for
payment shall be entertained to dinner and his horse
given stable room and a feed. One may learn more
of the conditions of life by driving over the plains than
in any other way.
White farmhouses dot the scene, and here and there
are long broad patches of rich black earth, lined with
furrows which run straight as a ruler for half a mile or

102 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
more. Snowbirds, with a ringlet of black round the
throat, flit over the grass or thread a devious way through
the short stubble of last year's wheat-field ; the meadow
lark is singing in the heavens, and large heavy thrushes
will be startled from the neighbourhood of the trail as
thc horse passes their haunts, and, after a short flight, will
be lost again in the thick dead grass. The bright-cycd,
venturesome little gopher will scamper across in front
of the horse's feet, and from thc security of his hole in
the ground will watch you for a moment, wag his tiny
fore feet, and then turn a somersault and disappear.
You may come upon a great white owl, whose plumage
is flecked with black, and he will watch you with round
yellow eyes as though he would contest the path before
he will deign to rise and seek some other resting-place.
Or with noisy rustling wings three or four prairie
chickens, as they call the pheasants of this region, will
fling themselves upwards with a startled clatter and fly
away with outstretched necks.
The trail takes you past a ploughed field. Two men
are at work with teams of four horses attached to drills
or seeders. Their lands adjoin, and each is engaged in
sowing wheat. They stop their work for a talk as you
check your horse. One of them is a young Canadian,
square-headed, square-jawed, and with those peculiar,
dark-brown, lustrous eyes which suggest a possible strain
of Indian blood. The other is a Scotchman, from Mid
lothian — a long-limbed, big-boned, strong-featured, blue-
eyed man of three or four and twenty.
He is " batching " it in a little " shack " over yonder,
and has been doing that for three years, baking his own
bread, cooking his own meals, and mending his own

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 103
clothes — or, rather, not mending them, for his clothes
are ragged. His appearance is wild and unkempt, for
he has not shaved for a week, and his hair is in wisps
round his neck. (The man who "batches" it on the
prairie can do most things for himself, but he cannot cut
his own hair.) He was, he told me, farming a quarter-
section. He had not done badly. It was a grand
wheat country. There was nothing like it — not even
in Scotland. The life was a hard one, no doubt. It was
rough for a man living alone, but one got accustomed to
that. The winters were severe, but he had never had a
day's illness and had scarcely felt the cold — only once,
when he went out, in a temperature fifty-four below
zero, to see another farmer to the westward, was caught
in a blizzard, lost the trail, and got home again only by
accident. But it was a splendid climate — cold yet with
so much sunshine. And the crops were magnificent.
A man could do better than in the Old Country. There
could be no doubt of that.
To this view the Canadian gave enthusiastic assent.
His " Old Country " was " down East " — in Ontario.
Farming on the prairie was child's play compared with
such work in that province. The land there had to be
cleared of timber, some of it three to four feet across.
And the returns were so poor. One got very little for
the lumber. The merchants took good care of that.
The work of tearing the dead stumps out of the ground
was terrible. It was back-breaking labour, wearing out
a man before he was forty. A life-time had to be spent
in clearing the land, and, when it was cleared, the soil
was poor. Here all that had to be done was to break up
the prairie, and back-set the sods — plough the ground over

104 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
a second time, and somewhat deeper, so as to facilitate
the rotting of the grass roots. Then it could be sown ;
and the soil was so rich that the crop was abundant.
He had been on this quarter section for three years, and
had done well. He was a bit behind — which meant
that he had either a mortgage on the land or was in
debt for horses or implements. But he was sowing more
this year, and a good crop would " put him on his feet."
Anyway, he was making a living for his wife and two
children besides himself, and with much less toil and
trouble, and far better prospects, than if he had stayed
down East, grubbing at tree stumps, cultivating patches
of poor soil, and keeping a few cows.
A drive through the "bluffs " brings you again into
more level country, and here you come upon a little
farmhouse, and make the acquaintance of its occupants,
whose mid-day meal you will be asked to share. The
farm, which is a mile square — a whole section — is worked
by a widow, her brother, and three sons. She and her
husband were born in Ireland, and went to Canada
when they were quite young. The husband served as a
volunteer during the first Riel Rebellion, and was rewarded
by a land grant of half a section in the North-West
territories. Here they settled with their young children
and the wife's brother. For some years they had a terrible
time, and were often so poor, the widow will tell you,
that they could scarcely afford to give a chance wayfarer a
bit of bread and a mug of tea. They had to learn how
to farm the prairie, and successive seasons of drought
nullified their efforts. Being, however, too poor to get
away and start afresh in Ontario, where they had
originally settled, they had to remain where they were.

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 105
As there was no alternative to making the best of it,
they stayed on. The years of drought passed, and
prosperity came their way. As the boys grew up home
steads were taken for them ; and the more cultivation
was extended the better off the family became. The
death of its head made no change in their fortunes,
for by the time this occurred the boys were growing
into manhood. The widow and her brother have
no fear for the future, even should years of drought
recur, for I gathered that each of them had a goodly
store of money in hand. Nor have the boys any fear,
for they are practical and expert farmers, who know
how to prepare the soil so as to conserve the moisture it
contains after the winter snows. They were admirable
examples of young Canadian manhood — strong, well
set up, in vigorous health, and more than contented
with their lot.
Leaving this household of prairie pioneers, you drive
across another stretch of rolling country. On the east
is a broken scrubby land, more or less covered with
stunted timber. This, you will learn, was once the home
of a number of Scotch crofter families, who were settled
there under a colonisation scheme associated with the
name of Lady Cathcart, The little beetle-browed
Irishman, who has accompanied you from the farmhouse
a part of the way, in order that you may " strike " the
right trail, will point out to you a tiny cemetery where
fifteen of these people lie buried. He well remembers
them coming twenty years ago. Their lands, he says,
were badly selected. They were fisher folk, not farmers.
They did not know how to prepare the soil and sow the
seeds and use the implements with which they were

io6 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
supplied. They would go across the prairie to the valley
of the Qu'Appelle and pass their days fishing. Their
animals and farms were neglected. Moreover, the times
were bad. They fell into such a condition of poverty
that relief had to be sent them.
After a mile or two you reach once more the level
prairie — the tenacious black lands which are unsurpass
able for the wheat-grower's purpose. A stalwart man
of middle age, his black hair plentifully streaked with
grey, stands at a four-horse drill. His rough clothing is
covered with innumerable darns — neat circular or oval
darns, cleverly stitched by someone to whom the use of
the needle is an art. You stop for a chat, and when he
knows your name, and which farmhouse you hail from,
he talks freely. He came from Elgin twenty-five years
ago, and homesteaded here with his wife. Now he is
the owner of a square mile of thc best wheat-land in
the world. You learn afterwards that he is one of
the wealthiest farmers in the country-side. He, too,
went through a period of hardship and poverty. The
years of drought almost drove him off the prairie. But
when a change came for the better, he made money
freely enough to buy out neighbours who did not share
his stubborn faith in the soil. The North-West, he
will tell you, is the finest country in the world — a
farmer's life the most natural and independent of any.
He is something of a thinker, this Scotchman, for he
discourses at length upon the incomparable advantage
of life in a country where a man can acquire land of his
own, where poverty such as is known in Europe does
not exist, and where a man is valued solely for what he
is and can do.

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 107
There is growing up here, he declares, a race which
is physically, intellectually, and morally — he puts
significant emphasis on the last word — superior to that
of the Old Country, about whose future he shakes his
head dubiously. Ask him whether he has come across
many English people, and he will reply in the affirmative.
A few have done well, but the majority not well. Many
with money came to grief in prairie farming, and with
what they could save from the wreck of their fortunes
went further west — to British Columbia, where the
climate is milder. English immigrants without money
seldom succeed, simply because the majority of them
are from great cities. That, at least, is his view. But
English agriculturists — men who have been born and
bred to farm labour — are fairly certain of success, if they
have the sense to profit by the experience of the earlier
settlers. The more one sees of this vast prairie the more hope
less it becomes to convey through the written word any
definite impression of its immensity. Mere figures are
useless. Who is there who can form any clear concep
tion of areas and distances from a row of numerals ?
Most of us have a rough idea of the size of a five-acre
field ; but when one tries to think of millions of acres
the mind refuses to act — my mind, at least. Yet in
Manitoba alone there are forty-one million acres. In
Assiniboia, where my host lived, there are fifty-seven
millions ; in Saskatchewan seventy millions, in Alberta
sixty-four — two hundred and thirty-two millions in the
four districts I The surveyors tell us that it is not,
in reality, a great level plain. This it seems to be, for
the traveller, wherever he is, sees only land which is

io8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
apparently as flat as a table. It lies within the encirc
ling edge of a sky which appears to be far more highly
arched — to have a nobler and grander sweep — than in
other regions. On the ocean, in some atmospheric
conditions, one may occasionally obtain a feeble com
prehension of the vastness of the level waters, the
spaciousness of the heavens. A clear day on the tree
less prairie enlarges even this conception of terrestrial
and celestial space. It is doubtful whether thc eyes
command more than a radius of twenty-five miles on
the plain. And what is a disc of twice that diameter in
comparison with the whole prairie area ? A mere pin
point, almost without dimension ! One may travel for
weeks — this way or that — and never see a tithe of thc
territory. The Dominion has in it not a province or
group of provinces, but an Empire. There is room
for numberless millions of men. But the mind falters
when an attempt is made to appreciate the significance
of the figures in which thc extent of the prairie is
expressed. Still less, perhaps, will your imagination be able to
bring home to you a sense of thc value of those plains
as a food-producing area for future generations. Thc
cultivation of them has scarcely yet begun. In Manitoba
and the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta there are
something less than three-quarters of a million of people
— on two hundred and thirty-two million acres ! Only
by taking a large map will you be able to realise how
much has yet to be done in opening up the country to
new settlement. From Winnipeg to the base of the
Rocky Mountains runs the trunk line of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, with a network of branches to the

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 109
South-West, another network to the North through the
province of Manitoba, and two other northward lines,
one from Regina to Prince Albert, a distance of about
two hundred and fifty miles, and another from Calgary
to Edmonton, on the upper waters of the Saskatchewan
River. On a small map it looks as though the region
were fairly well supplied with facilities for communica
tion ; on a large one you are impressed, not by the
number of lines, but by their fewness, and the enormous
spaces of intervening territory yet to be served.
Only the fringe of the culturable expanses has been
touched. Calculation shows that only about three
million and a half acres were in wheat in 1904, with a
yield of some sixty million bushels. Area and yield
alike are trivial in comparison with what might be —
with what will be, should immigration continue during
the next quarter of a century on its present scale. It is
estimated by experts that, after making liberal allowance
for bad and doubtful lands, there is a culturable area of
one hundred and seventy-one million acres. Of this
only three and a half million acres are now used — solely
because of the lack of population. Imagine what the
North-West will be when the remaining one hundred
and sixty-seven and a half million acres are under crop !
Here, indeed, is a vast reserve of wheat-land such as no
other Empire possesses. Have our Statesmen realised
this ? In England there is lack of bread ; here, lack of
men to break and plant the virgin prairie. With what
measure of wisdom is our Empire governed, when
hunger in one overcrowded portion of it co-exists with
unutilised wheat-lands in another ?
Let the mind be thrown forward to a time when the

IIO CANADA, THE NEW NATION
entire two hundred and thirty million acres are under
the plough. Will limits even then have been set to the
wheat-growing possibilities of Western Canada — to the
capacities of these immense plains to absorb the super
fluous labour of the British Isles, or even of Europe ?
The answer is in the negative. There are still nearly
five hundred million acres of land in Athabasca and the
Mackenzie basin alone. It is a matter of conjecture
how much of thc land in this far northern region is
capable of profitable cultivation. The territory is
known only to explorers, to the Indians and half-
breeds, and to such whites as have left civilisation
far behind them, and return to railhead only once
a year with their stores of skins. But evidence of its
value and its possibilities as a field of future settlement
is being steadily accumulated by the Dominion Govern
ment, which is yearly extending the area of its effective
administration in the wilds that stretch northward to thc
shores of Hudson Bay, I do not presume to express any
opinion on that evidence, which is at present fragmentary
and incomplete ; but educated and far-seeing Canadians
arc convinced that these northern lands constitute a
national asset of incalculable value.
Moreover, it is quite conceivable that the scientists
may yet evolve a wheat which will grow and ripen in
the short summers which prevail in the farthest North.
No finality can be put upon the experiments on which
they are engaged. Here I touch upon matters which
are not within a layman's ken ; it should not be in
ferred that I am suggesting that the • Experimental
Farms will supply the agriculturist with seed which
will produce crops within the Arctic Circle. But it is

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE iii
probable that they will find a wheat which can be
grown far beyond the area in which it is now possible to
ripen grain. Indeed, they may be said to have solved
this problem, tentatively at all events, for wheat, barley,
rye, and oats are now produced farther north than it was
thought prudent to plant them a few years ago.
When I was in Ottawa I had the good fortune to
meet Dr, Wm, Saunders, Director of the Dominion
Experimental Farms, who took much personal trouble
in showing me over his laboratories outside the city, and
in efforts to initiate me into the mysteries of his re
searches. They were above my comprehension, and I
shall not endeavour to describe them. It will, however,
be within the bounds of accuracy to say that the studies
which are there pursued lead to definite knowledge of
what varieties of cereals can be brought to perfection in
regions where crops were hitherto thought to be unob
tainable, Dr, Saunders furnished me with evidence
of Ladoga wheat, plump and well-matured, weighing
sixty-four pounds to the bushel, and of oats, barley,
and rye, grown on land near the Peace River, four
hundred and fourteen miles by latitude north of
Winnipeg ; of Ladoga wheat and other crops of good
quality, grown in Athabasca, five hundred and ninety-
one miles north of Winnipeg ; at Fort Providence,
seven hundred and ten miles north ; and, at Fort
Simpson, eight hundred and eighteen miles north ofthe
same Manitoban city. The latter fort is the farthest
point north from which samples of cereals have been
obtained. The period between seeding and harvesting
varied from one hundred to one hundred and eight
days. This is less than Nature's allowance in the

1X2 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
great wheat belt which lies along the United States
frontier. Then, again, though the open season is shorter, the
summer days are longer. Growth is quicker. If
Nature is prodigal of her winter, she is also lavish in
summer heat, and borrows freely from the night
to compensate for the longer time in which frost holds
dominion over the earth. She gives a fierce sunlight, a
more prolonged daylight. The combined effect of
warmth and extended days gives quicker and intenser
life to vegetation. The ripening of cereals is hastened.
Thc period in which it is possible for grain to mature may
be shorter, but, in the wonderful alchemy of Nature, the
grain itself acquires the habit of earlier ripening. Seed
which will take a certain time to come to maturity
further south, where there is no inevitable necessity for
haste, will be ripe for the harvest a fortnight or even a
month sooner.
Would life be endurable the year round in these
northern lands ? It is terribly hard on the more
southerly prairies, and, except for a few favoured
localities, where thc climate is modified by obscure
meteorological conditions, the winters farther north
must necessarily be longer and keener. Here, however,
another element comes into operation — the wonderful
adaptability ofthe human frame to rigorous conditions, I
have seen much Dominion ice and snow, and have felt the
'countless razor-edges of her Polar winds, I should have
just a little fear of living on the plains from November
to May, But against these conditions there has to be
set an added power of resistance to cold. This quality
the Canadians, native-born and immigrants, seem to

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 113
develop in a marked degree. Indeed, the Dominion is
producing a race of men and women finely adapted
to the environment of a long and fierce winter and a
short but intense summer.
The process of adaptation may be painful, or at
least uncomfortable. In the evolution of thc type
only the fit survive and perpetuate their kind ; but
the special type is evolved. And it persists. The
Canadian, or the man or woman who has been there
for many years, is a somewhat different physical being
from the Englishman. The native-born are of larger
growth, hardier in physique, and certainly in tempera
ment. Their children are sturdier, more robust, and
grow with greater weight of bone than those of more
temperate latitudes. There are few puny people in the
country, few weaklings, few whose deformities arise
from rickets rather than accident, I have not seen
these suggestions advanced in any writings about
Canada which have come my way, though they have,
doubtless, been made, and are commonplaces in
medical literature. But if they rest on any basis of
physiological truth they help to widen the area of
development. Far across the prairie — hundreds of miles beyond the
expanse now marked out for human habitation — lies a
still vaster tract of Mother Earth, unknown areas of it
suitable for cultivation ; and on the settled prairie and
in the great lands eastward to the Atlantic there is
being bred and fashioned and moulded into hardihood
by rough climatic conditions a race of men able to
adapt themselves to yet greater severity. Aided by
immigration, they are throwing out a fringe of their
H

114 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
most vigorous sons, who press ever northward towards
the Arctic Circle, narrowing slowly but surely the
broad belt of territory which lies between the cultivated
prairie and the eternal ice. The railway is following
them. The scientist is keeping pace with them,
searching the earth for wheats which will grow and
ripen in the shortest of summers and with the minimum
of heat, analysing soils, reinforcing the labour of pioneer
hands with the brain power educed in the Universities of
Toronto and Montreal and expended in the laboratories
of experimental farms. These are factors which open
out an illimitable prospect for such European peoples as
can fit themselves into a semi-Arctic environment.
Who, then, can set limits to northward migration and
agriculture ?

CHAPTER IX
THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD
Towards the end of April in every year there is a
noticeable migration of people towards the outer confines
of the settled prairie. Along the railway line East and
West there are millions of acres of unoccupied land ; but
these are the property of great corporations, who hold
them for sale at fancy figures which few but non-
Canadian newcomers into the North-West would be so
foolish as to pay. There are also considerable areas in
and about this strip of future wheat-land which are in
thc hands of men who have acquired them by the
performance of " homesteading " duties, and have, for
one reason or another, abandoned farming and would sell
if they could find purchasers gullible enough to buy at
inflated prices. Beyond all these lands, however, lie
many millions of acres of virgin prairie, for which nothing
need be paid by the settler except an entry fee of ten
dollars for a block of one hundred and sixty acres — the
" Free Farm," which allures so many English people to
the West. It is to these lands the spring migration goes.
They may be reached from Regina by a branch line
northward which runs as far as the dreary bushlands of
Prince Albert ; or, again, far across thc prairie, from
another northward branch starting from the foothills of
"5

1x6 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
thc Rockies. That from Regina runs for several miles
through thc picturesque Qu' Appelle Valley. Thc train
was crowded with homcseekers when I travelled by it.
There were a few English immigrants whose means had
enabled them to travel thus far. They had determined
to spend their all in the perilous experiment of "home
steading," without having first learned the agricultural,
climatic, and other conditions of the problem by a season's
work with an established farmer. There were several
Ruthenians, Roumanians, and Russians who were on
their way to Rosthern and other foreign settlements,
which stretch across the plain northward in a thin line
to the bushland fringe and the land of thc fiir-trapper.
But the majority of the occupants were from the Ontario
peninsula and the Ottawa Valley — young men who had
left thc family roof-tree and wished to farm for them
selves where there were no trees to cut down and stump ;
or farmers who had wearied of forest-clearing toil, and
had decided to exchange the heavy bush for the grass-
covered plains, A few had already made the prelimin
ary exploration the previous fall ; had selected their
homesteads and were taking up their wives and children,
their goods and chattels, their farming implements and
so forth ; but the majority were searchers after land, and
had little notion where they might find it except that it
would be somewhere in the Valley of the Saskatchewan,
The valley of the Qu'Appelle River is a great winding
cleft in the surface of the prairie, the sides broken into
rounded hillocks which give shelter to stunted maple-
trees and coarse shrubs. The railway runs through the
cleft, and every now and again a prairie wolf could
be seen, taking a morning walk over the mounds,

AN ALBERTAN SHEEP RUN

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 117
his long lithe form and head and pointed ears silhouetted
against the sky. Emerging to the prairie level an
almost uninhabited country was traversed. An eight-
hours' run brought us to a farming region, where men
and teams were busy on the plain breaking the prairie,
or sowing wheat, or harrowing the newly-sown fields.
Then a broad wooded ravine came into sight with
clusters of wooden houses, and we were soon crossing thc
southern fork of the Saskatchewan River, on a trestle
bridge, at less than a snail's pace ; and with some
apprehension of a collapse, for the structure had been
partly carried away a few days previously by the ice-
masses, and hastily repaired, pending the construction
of a new bridge. Once across the stream — a much
deeper and broader cleft in the prairie than the little
river of Qu' Appelle — wc were in Saskatoon. Here the
train nearly emptied itself, for Saskatoon is the chief
"jumping-off place" for the prairie wilds. North and
West. It is a name of evil omen in some English house
holds, for there, about three years ago, the " Barr Colony "
detrained, preparatory to a trek of some two hundred
miles, where unopened lands had been selected for them ;
and from the Saskatoon post-office many a letter
was sent home, telling of illness, death, and disillusion,
Thc colony numbered about two thousand persons, and
was largely recruited from the smaller middle classes of
London. They were not poor people, and their
aggregate capital was considerable. Unversed as they
were in the unscrupulous rapacity of the Canadian trader,
they fell an easy prey to his extortion. Wherever you
meet a "Barr" colonist he will warn you against
Saskatoon as containing a disproportionate number of

1x8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
sharks. The colony camped out on the prairie outside
the little town, and provisions and supplies rose forthwith
to famine prices. The weather was severe. There had
been trouble on the voyage — almost a mutiny some
said — and discontent and depression had been rife.
Camping out in severe weather in such circumstances
as these, and for people who had probably never known
hardship more severe than being caught in an occasional
shower without an umbrella, led to illness, and the
women folk were kept busy making pneumonia jackets.
When the long trek was begun, difficulties increased
rather than diminished, and the Dominion Government
had to send special officers to pilot the colony through
the wilds. The settlement — it lies near the Saskatchewan
River — is named Lloydminster, after an Anglican clergy
man who shared the fortunes of the party. It was said
to be " doing splendidly "; but from all I could hear from
chance wayfarers who had abandoned it, it was having
its full share ofthe hardships and disappointments which
attend the transference of English townsmen to the
semi-arctic conditions ofthe northern prairie.
The main street of Saskatoon faces the railway track
and loses itself in a trail which runs north-westward,
across thc prairie for a thousand miles or thereabouts.
At the end of the street is a livery stable, with a large
corral for horses, which arc driven in from the plains —
where they forage for themselves under the snow during
the winter — in readiness for sale to spring settlers in the
Saskatchewan Valley, I had walked to thc end of the
town, facing the setting sun — often a spectacle of in
comparable beauty in those regions — and when its glories
had vanished and there was nothing but a reddish after-

p
oo a:
mo ?J<oi«
o o

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 119
glow in the skies, I leant over the fence of the corral,
and watched the horses, loading a pipe meanwhile.
There were other loiterers like myself, and one of
them courteously proffered me a light — an Englishman
by the cut of his clothes, and, apparently, a gentleman,
though he could not have shaved for a week. We fell
to talking about the horses, which were the sorriest lot
of crocks ever gathered together ; and a broad-faced,
thick-set young man, with an accent which suggested
a Yorkshire origin, joined in the conversation. He was
a friend of the man who had first addressed me. They
had travelled out from home together and had just
arrived, after a continuous railway journey of four or
five days. After the usual conversational fencing, by
which Englishmen who are strangers endeavour to
" place " one another, we exchanged names.
He was the son of a Scotch doctor, settled in a York
shire town which shall be nameless, and his broad-
shouldered, thick - limbed companion had been an
assistant master in the grammar school there. He had,
however, thrown up schoolmastering in disgust at the
poor prospects open to a junior, and, two years ago, had
emigrated, coming out to a Manitoban farmer to whom
he had introductions. Here he learned the business of
prairie farming, just as any ordinary labourer would do,
and in November went home, with the determination
to return and go homesteading for himself. He met
there his old schoolmate, the doctor's son, who had no
settled career, but whose experiences included many
phases of outdoor life in England and a spell in South
Africa during the war as an officer with a Volunteer
draft. There are thousands of Englishmen like him —

120 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
well-bred, expensively educated, for whom it is difficult
to find suitable lucrative positions in the Old Country.
When he learned that the ex-schoolmaster intended to
set up as farmer for himself, he proposed to join him.
Hence they came out together, each with as much
capital as he could scrape together.
To buy land in Manitoba was beyond their means.
Each of them wanted one of those " Free Farms of
one hundred and sixty acres " which tempt the passer-by
from the windows of the Canadian Emigration Offices
in Charing Cross ; and they had come straight on to the
Saskatchewan to look for one in the Valley.
I told them I was on the like quest, though merely
for the purpose of getting further experience of thc
country, and being able to tell intending emigrants how
to find a homestead for themselves. We agreed to go
together, and the next morning set to work by paying a
visit to the Dominion Land Office, with the object of
finding out what " townships " were available, our im
pression being, from what we had already seen of the
country round Saskatoon, that we could pick and
choose within an easy walk of the town, or of one of
the stations up or down the line.
The Land Office we found on an upper floor of an
agricultural implement shop, and it was approached by
a rough wooden ladder with a handrail. Up this break
neck stairway we climbed, and found ourselves in a tiny
office crowded with applicants for homesteads, who were
being attended to by a youth. After a time we ob
tained a place at the counter and were referred to a map
on the wall, marked out in " townships," or squares,
each block representing thirty-six square miles of land.

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 121
Those squares were subdivided into thirty-six sections,
each of one mile square. The sections which bore a
pencilled cross were as yet unallotted, and of these we
might take our choice. We learned with some surprise
that there was no vacant land within thirty miles of
Saskatoon, Many of the seekers, we were told, were
going in a south-westerly direction, but the youth could
not advise us what to do. That was not his province.
The map was on the wall, and it was for us to find
where the land was and see it, and then file a homestead
entry with him. We asked for a map of the Valley
such as would help us in our search, but were informed
that the office was out of maps, and new ones had not
arrived. This did not impress us with admiration for
the manner in which the Land Department conducts its
business, or for the assistance which it professes to give
the immigrant in finding a homestead.
Finally, we learned that the best thing to do was to
hire a " rig " at seven dollars or eight dollars a day, and drive
out somewhere where we could find a man to " locate "
us — that is, show us the land represented on the town
ship plan as unallotted. In the course of time we were
introduced to a man who said he could " locate" us on
the richest land on earth the very next day. But he
must first settle with a man toi whom he was selling
some harness. He would arrange details with us after
wards. Where were we staying ? We mentioned the
name of the wretched inn, which was the only place in
the town where we had been able to get sleeping
accommodation, and an appointment was made for him
to call. He never came.
My friends were much troubled in their minds as

122 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
to whether they should buy oxen or horses for the
farm. It had snowed rather heavily all day, and we
discussed the merits and demerits of each type of
animal in the smoking-room of the building which
called itself an hotel. The word " oxen " was overheard,
and soon the usual little comedy was enacted. A man
went out. Another man came in and casually remarked
to the company that he had as strong and handsome a
team of oxen as ever stepped on thc prairie. They were
young, they were powerful, they could be driven by the
" lines " ; they would " gee " or " haw," get up or stop,
or do anything they were asked to do in the English
language. He had no use for them now ; they were
on his hands in town, costing him money for stabling.
They were cheap at two hundred and fifty dollars, but
he would sell them at two hundred dollars, and throw
the harness in. Did any men in the room require oxen ?
Did we three men require oxen ?
A flippant inquiry as to how many miles they could
trot in a hour rather hurt his feelings ; but he was equal
to the occasion. If we wanted a team that would trot
he had a pair of young horses who were fast walkers
with the plough behind them, and would trot with a
loaded wagon as long as any one of us could hold the
" lines." Then followed an artistic description of the
physical beauties and mental attributes of the animals,
which were purchasable for three hundred and fifty
dollars spot cash. He went away after he had talked
until his throat was raw, no business having resulted ;
and he was succeeded by another man who adjured us
not to buy horses, for they would surely die a lingering
death from marsh fever, but to purchase oxen ; and by

((

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 123
yet another, who counselled us not to have oxen on any
account, because of their slowness and stupidity, but to
buy a team of horses from him — horses which had drunk
sloo" water all their lives, and were proof against
marsh fever or any other malady.
Meanwhile we discussed the situation caused by the
non-appearance of the person who had agreed to locate
us, and having found out the name of another man in
the district who did this kind of work for new settlers,
we decided to trek out in his direction as soon as the
weather cleared. On my return a few days later from
a trip to the bushlands of Prince Albert, I found my
friends waiting for me with a brand new wagon, a
serviceable team of horses, a store of provisions, and a
spirit kettle. Before the sun was high in the heavens
we had left Saskatoon behind us, and were following a
trail leading south-west across the prairie.
They were what the Yorkshireman called a "hefty "
team — plenty of bone, with good shoulders, chests, and
forelegs, powerful quarters, and an even stride. One
was a grey, and the other a brown. They worked well
together, each keeping the traces taut ; and from the
manner in which they picked their way over the gopher
holes and drew the wagon along the easier ruts, it was
plain that they had for long been accustomed to follow
a trail. The prairie, in fact, was their workaday world.
Their recent owner had been economical in the use
of oats, and they were a little soft and out of
condition from continuous hay feeding ; but we had
not driven them many miles — now at a walk, now
at a slow trot — before we found out that there was
nothing the matter with them. My friends had paid

124 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
two hundred and forty dollars for them, with harness,
which was in tolerably good condition ; and this was
unquestionably a bargain.
The wagon was a new one, and cost eighty-five
dollars, and our provisions cost another five dollars. A
farm wagon in this region is different from any similar
article I have seen in any other part of the world. It
is, of course, springless, with heavy axlctrees and wheels,
and the body of it is an oblong box, about twelve feet
long, three feet six inches wide, and about three feet
deep. Across this a detachable spring seat is fixed, so
that the driver is almost as high above the horses as he
would be if seated on the dickey of a Pickford van.
The body is detachable, so that the underpart of the
wagon may be used to bear a rack for carrying hay, and
half the depth of planking at the sides and ends may be
removed if only a shallow body is needed.
Altogether, it will have been seen, the outfit with
which we three went to look for a free farm of one
hundred and sixty acres apiece, cost three hundred and
thirty dollars, of which five dollars represented food, lest
none should be obtainable on the way.
Leaving the Saskatchewan behind us, with thc houses
of Saskatoon fringing the bend in the deep deft through
which thc river flows, we were soon on the open prairie.
The trail took us past a tiny settlement, with a few
farmhouses in the distance, a schoolhouse on one side of
the road, and a little cemetery on the other. It con
tained about a dozen graves, marked by new and neatly-
cut stones chiselled out ofthe granite boulders which arc
occasionally met with in this part of the Valley. It
was " recess " as we passed the schoolhouse, and a few

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 125
children were playing on the ice of a frozen "sloo,"
while the schoolmistress watched us from the doorway
of the building as we passed along the trail.
Why should such trivialities be mentioned ? Because
we did not come to another schoolhouse for twenty-five
miles or more. These little wooden shacks, with their
single-handed schoolmaster or mistress, are an agreeable
feature of prairie life, for they signify that facilities for
education, elementary though it be, are provided simul
taneously with the throwing open of newly -surveyed land
for settlement. The schoolhouse precedes the church
and the post-office. It accompanies the pioneer, and
is equally an outpost of civilisation as the shack of
the settler. The intending emigrant can be sure that,
though he may have to go to the very fringe of the
prairie for land, there will appear on the landscape in
a short period a little lumber schoolhouse, to which
his children, if he have any, may be sent with confidence
that instruction will be given by a competent person.
About one o'clock we left the trail, and turned the
horses towards a distant farmhouse. There we " un
hitched," took the animals to a " sloo," and gave them a
drink, obtained water for ourselves, tied the animals to
the wagon, gave them a feed of hay, and afterwards of
oats, made tea for ourselves, and set to work on bread
and canned beef. It was a glorious repast — a veritable
feast after the atrocious cooking of the dirty, smelly
"hotels" of the West, Then, sheltered from the cut
ting wind by the wagon, we smoked our pipes and fed
the farm dogs with scraps. When the horses had rested
sufficiently, we said adieu to the farmer — an Ontarian,
who was doing fairly well on his land, and gave us the

126 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
rather alarming intelligence that we should have to go
another thirty miles or so for homesteads for ourselves.
Late in the afternoon we passed, to thc south, a long
broad lake, with thousands of duck on the unfrozen
margin. Wc halted, and tried to get one or two of
them for supper ; but they were too wary. No doubt
they had been shot at all the way during their long
flight up the continent from the Gulf of Mexico.
Though we crawled on our hands and knees through the
long dead grass, their sentinels saw us long before it was
possible for us to get a shot. They gave thc alarm along
the whole edge ofthe lake, Thc birds rose in thousands
against the wind, wheeled round, and flew off, settling
a couple of miles or more away. It was a pretty but a
tantalising sight.
Resuming our way, the horses plodded along thc
endless trail in a strengthening and ever colder wind.
We needed shelter for them during the night, if not
also for ourselves, and we quickened their flagging
steps until we saw in the distance a shack and a rude
stable. A little spectacled man came down the side
trail to meet us. His, he said, was the " half-way " house
— half way to nowhere it seemed — and he made it his
business to accommodate travellers. We halted at the
stable, which was built of thickly packed sods from the
prairie. The breaking plough, let me explain, strips off
the surface of the earth in lengths of about three feet
by fourteen inches, and turns the sod over, exposing
the densely-matted grass roots to the air. These
sods, doubled over and piled one on top of thc other,
over a slight wooden framework for sides and roof, make
a fairly comfortable stable ; and I have seen such places

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 127
used for dwelling purposes by homesteaders who were too
poor to buy lumber, though their erection in lieu of
houses is not a proper compliance with the homestead
ing regulations of the Land Department,
After the tired horses had been watered, bedded down,
and fed, we turned our steps towards the shack, crossing
a belt of ploughed land — a " guard " against prairie fires.
Here we were received by the settler's wife, who had
prepared a frugal but a hot meal and tea, and had a
blazing wood fire in the closed iron stove. We needed
both the warmth and the food, for the evening had
turned bitterly cold, and the keen wind and strongly
oxygenated air had exhausted our vitality,
A glance round the shack revealed a single room,
with a bedstead partitioned off by thin drapery — the
dwelling being about twelve feet by eight. Alongside
the bedchamber was a low couch ; next to that was a
little table, at which we had our meal.
Above it was a variegated assortment of coloured
Scripture texts. In the centre of the remaining space
was the stove, with a couple of wooden chairs, and,
against the wall, some cupboarding, with shelves, which
carried a few plates and cups. Where should we sleep ?
We volunteered the suggestion that we had plenty of
rugs and had intended to sleep in the wagon ; but the
settler and his wife would not hear of this. No one
who had ever come that way had slept out of doors, and
we should certainly not do so.
We went out to have another look at the horses.
The sky was like burnished steel ; the stars were
luminous points of gold ; every dead fibre of grass on the
prairie was jewelled with little globes of ice, which

128 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
glistened and sparkled in thc moonlight ; across the
great wastes from northward there swept a strong and
continuous wind, which drove us into the sod stable for
shelter with the horses, while we smoked a final pipe.
It was certainly not a fit night for any one to sleep in
thc open, and under the friendly compulsion of our host
of the half-way house we retraced our steps to the
shack, A mattress and coverlets had been spread on the
floor. The sofa was allotted to me, and the mattress to
my companions. The lady of thc house was already
busy disrobing behind the curtains, and with some em
barrassment we disappeared as quickly as we could be
neath our coverings, removing only our overcoats.
Our host piled more wood on the stove, took off his
coat and boots, and vanished, A good-night in C and
another in A sharp were thrown out to us over thc
curtain rods, and we composed ourselves to slumber.
Our host for the night was the native of a little town
in Surrey, which has since become almost a part of
London. He had been in Canada about ten years, had
done all sorts of things, and finally set up for himself in
a " shoe-shine " shop in — well, let us say, Toronto, He
made no money at this, but found a wife, and went
homesteading in the Saskatchewan Valley, He had
grown no crop as yet, had no animals or implements, but
scraped a living together somehow by entertaining
benighted travellers like ourselves, and doing odd jobs
for neighbours ; and his wife baked bread and darned
socks for one or two bachelors whose shacks figure in
the landscape thereabouts, A poor life for both of them !
But the little man said he was perfectly happy, and
preferred the isolation of the prairie to the conditions in

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 129
which he would have had to live had he been drawn into
the whirlpool of London,
After regaining the main trail next morning we passed
through an unoccupied country, on which, however,
we knew there was no homesteading land to be had.
The wind had shifted to the south-west, and had
moderated its force ; the sky was cloudless, and the
steady sun rays made the morning air delightful. A
three hours' drive, mostly at a walk, brought us within
sight of a wooden farmhouse, with a large barn and two
shacks — one of which we afterwards found to be a
schoolhouse, and the other a stable where the children
put up their ponies. The prairie was here a gently
rolling plain, and the buildings appeared to stand on
a slight eminence.
As we breasted the rise three other farmhouses came
in sight, and, far away to the north-west, a long range
of low hills, with a sharp rise from the plain. These we
knew must be the Eagle Hills, and it was somewhere
in their neighbourhood — or at least between them and
Goose Lake, away to the south — that we hoped to find
land. Turning off the trail, we went to the farmhouse
¦which had first caught our attention, and were fortunate
in finding that we had come to the dwelling of the
farmer whose name had been given to us in Saskatoon as
one who knew the locality, and could show us available
land of the right kind. But he was away over the
prairie, helping a new neighbour to build a house ; and
we went on a couple of miles further to a point where a
«tack of Columbian lumber glistened white in the
sunlight. Here we found a keen-eyed, active man, with a
I

130 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
goatee — a true Uncle Sam of the caricatures. He gave
us a cordial welcome, and said he could locate us on
genu/ne land as good as that which he had selected for
himself ; but it was several miles away. It would take
a day's driving out and home again, and that not with
our heavy horses, but with a light team and buggy which
he used for such purposes. We had better go back
to the farm, unhitch, put our horses in the stable, and
have dinner. He would be home in an hour. Wc did
as we were instructed. Two strapping young men
were at thc stables, and, after looking round at the
horses and the stock until their owner returned from his
building work, we went into the house, dining sump
tuously off stewed prairie chicken — a full and uniquely-
flavoured bird, somewhat resembling a ptarmigan in
taste. Our host was an American farmer from Oregon, from
which State he had trekked a year previously with
his family, his household gods, his horses, and his cattle.
They had travelled by road every mile of the way
into British Columbia, and thence into the Saskatchewan
Valley, The trip took them fourteen weeks, the rate
of progress being determined by the walking capacity
of the beasts — some twenty head, including a valuable
thoroughbred Jersey cow, which had been imported into
thc States, and had thus seen much of the world and its
pasturage. His family consisted of his wife and two
sons. When he reached this neighbourhood the
Dominion surveyors had not carried their work so far ;
but he selected his land, squatted on it, and, as soon as
was practicable, filed an entry for a homestead, each of
the sons doing likewise. They thus had three adjoining

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 13X
quarter sections, each of a hundred and sixty acres ; and
the land, he declared, was as good as any a farmer could
wish to have. As soon as the buildings were put
up much of the land was broken, and now they were
about to commence seeding for the first crop. Altogether,
he had sunk four thousand dollars in his enterprise,
and he was confident that, given tolerably good seasons,
he would do far better than he could have done by
farming anywhere in the States,
The farmer's wife, however, I found to be somewhat
less enthusiastic. She longed for the flowers and fruits
of Oregon, the genial climate, the warm humid airs that
come from the Pacific, The Canadian winter was
bitterly cold and long and dreary ; and, for her, life was
an endless round of monotonous duties within doors,
broken only occasionally by " surprise visits " from
neighbours. The sons liked the change from Oregon.
Here, they thought, they had a clear prospect of pros
perity as independent landowners ; and as for the cold,
they did not give it a thought. Last winter had been
nothing to complain about, and spring was now here.
Their home was a spacious two-storeyed wooden
frame house, with a pointed, sharply sloping roof. The
ground-floor was divided into two rooms. In one —
" the parlour " — were household gods which had not yet
been unpacked after the trek from Oregon. The other
was the combined kitchen, general dining-room, and
bedroom of the farmer and his wife. The walls were
papered with old news sheets. The cooking and heating
stove stood in the centre ; near this was the table at
which meals were taken ; at one end of the room was a
rude dresser, and beside it a low bench, with water-pails

132 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
and a hand-basin and soap for thc family ablutions ; at
the other end stood a double bedstead and a rocking
chair. From this room there was a stairway leading to
the sleeping-room of the boys, and any wayfarers like
ourselves. I give these particulars of the household because they
represent, roughly, the conditions of life on many an
American-Canadian homestead in the North-West.
United States farmers have crossed the boundary line in
very large numbers, and there are many hundreds of
prosperous farms worked by them on the great plain
which lies to the south of Regina. Forty-five thousand
United States settlers came into the Dominion in the
year ending June, 1904, and the invasion is continuing
unabated, the newcomers going ever further afield.
My friend of the Saskatchewan Valley was, doubtless,
only the forerunner of other Americans in that remote
region. A better and more welcome class of foreign
settler — from the Dominion and from the English point
of view — does not exist.
The American immigrant is a pioneer, and accustomed
to deal with, and adapt himself to, new conditions. He
is a man of the plains — resourceful, self-reliant, and
enterprising. And he often brings growing boys and
girls with him — the best asset that Canada can attract,
for what she needs most are young men and women.
Youth adapts itself more readily and easily than age to
her climatic conditions. Moreover, thc American brings
thc wherewithal to convert the prairie wilds into wheat-
fields. He has money in his pockets — bundles of
bank-notes and huge " cartwheel " dollars — and he travels
thither with horses, cattle, wagons, and implements.

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD X33
He possesses both the means with which to farm, and a
knowledge of farming, and his mind is so alert and im
pressionable that whatever is new and strange to him is
quickly learned. He is, indeed, an aristocrat among
Dominion immigrants ; and, it should not be forgotten,
he is an English-speaking immigrant.
The immigration officials draw all kinds of foreign
fish into their net. During my wanderings I met Turks,
Syrians, Maltese, Arabs, Icelanders, Russians, Scandi
navians, Hungarians, Austrians, Bulgarians, Greeks,
Armenians, Poles, Moldavians — the list might be widely
extended. Without being prepared to say that the
British Empire is no proper place for some of these, and
that the Dominion is in too great a hurry to fill up her
vacant territory with fifth-rate human material, I am
quite sure that the American is the best foreign immi
grant she can get. He has all the virtues of the
people of every other nationality, and few of their
vices. We spent the afternoon on the prairie, looking for
something that could be either stewed or roasted, arriv
ing — after a long tramp under a sun that was almost
uncomfortably hot — at a meandering creek, where wild
duck abounded. But the birds were far too clever to be
the victims of our guns. Of the two or three who
would not deign to fly until the last moment, only one
was hit ; and it fell on thc other side of the creek, the
waters of which were so icily cold that to wade across
was a feat requiring more courage than we possessed.
But our walk back when the sun was setting was
rewarded by a prairie chicken apiece, and with these
plump and appetising birds we were fully content.

134 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
We had to pass the night in the hayloft, over the
horses and cattle. Rising before six next morning, and
having well breakfasted on porridge and prairie chicken,
we went out to look at the team behind which we were
to drive. They were a pair of young bronchos, about
fourteen hands, which had been picked up in Oregon
two years ago, unbroken, for four dollars, and were not
now to be had for less than three hundred dollars. But
before we entered the buggy we thought it well to have
a business understanding with our American friend.
What would he charge ? Charge ? Why, that need
not trouble us a " durn." We gave him to understand
that it vexed us very many " durns." Well ! there
were three of us to be located ; then there was himself,
his buggy and horses, his knowledge of where the good
land lay ; all these were elements in his reckoning. To
come to the point — he never thought much of any man
who would not come straight to the point — his charge
would be seventy-five dollars. We recognised the
righteousness of his views, and paid admiring tributes to
the large-heartedness of his character ; it was just what
we had expected from him ; but, unhappily for our
selves, we were not millionaires. To pay seventy-five
dollars would make so huge a hole in our little capital
that homesteading would be impossible. Really, there
was nothing for us to do but to take the horses and
wagon back to Saskatoon, sell them for what they would
fetch, and hire out.
Then he paused — a long pause, during which he
scanned us narrowly from the corners of his eyes, worked
his iron-grey goatee skywards with a twitching move
ment of the chin, drew it gently back to its true angle

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 135
with his hand, and stroked it caressingly. We main
tained silence and a crestfallen attitude. Our disappoint
ment was too keen to permit of speech, until one of us
so far mastered his emotions as regretfully to suggest
that we had better get out the horses and hitch up.
This subtle appeal to the business instincts of our host
led him to observe that he saw no reason for us to lose
heart. We were just the sort of chaps he would like to
see settle in the country — genume Englishmen, of the
same stock as himself. Why 1 his great-grandfather
was an Englishman who came to the States from York
shire ; his wife's people were English, from Leicester
shire. For all he knew, their bones were mixed up
with the bones of our own forefathers in some ancient
village churchyard. We were the same stuff as he and
his boys were. He wanted us for neighbours. He
knew we'd do well. All we needed was a start right
there on genuine land. "Durn " it all, if he wouldn't
locate us for ten dollars a head and five dollars a day for
driving ; and we could have him out as many days as we
liked until we found land to satisfy us 1 As we had
previously ascertained that this was the minimum figure
at which we could get the work done, we closed the
bargain and entered the buggy.
Though the sun was out, it was a bitter day for a
drive. A vicious but not blustering north-east wind found
its way through clothing and rugs, telling anew how
" Winter, ling'ring chills the lap of spring." We could
not go straight to our objective — the Eagle Hills, a long,
low line against the horizon to the north-west — because
of the vagaries of the Eagle Creek, which meanders
along for more miles than anyone seems to know, and

136 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
has but one bridge — a primitive structure of maple poles
from bank to bank, with similar logs laid across them.
After passing over this we followed a trail which led us
for three hours or so through railway or homesteading
land which had already been allotted but was not yet
occupied, though we came across two homesteaders who
were trying to make up their minds where they should
put up their shacks. One was an American, and the
other a Canadian from Ontario, and their eyes brightened
at the possibility of getting neighbours who would be
yet further away in the wilds than they were themselves.
Urging the bronchos forward, we passed through one
of the wildest stretches of prairie country I had yet
seen. It was seared with buffalo tracks. These animals,
now almost extinct, must have found splendid pasturage
in the broad valley of the Saskatchewan, and it was easy
to imagine the noble beasts passing over the plain in
single file on their way to water or to other regions
north and east. Badger holes and the holes of other
burrowing animals abounded, but we saw nothing larger
than the frisky gopher. The trail was bad going,
because of the holes ; indeed, after a time it became no
true trail at all, though the buggies of surveying parties
or land-seekers like ourselves had passed before us, their
wheel tracks forming a rough guide from one section
post to another.
We crossed one broad trail which was of much
interest, for it was that which runs due north to Prince
Albert Land and the wilder bushland regions beyond ;
and down this now unused thoroughfare, for a century
before the days of railways, the Indians, with their
" Shag-a-nappees," or rough ponies, or their dog-sleds,

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 137
brought down their loads of furs from the Arctic Circle
to the far-away " forts " of the old trading companies.
Many a reader of this will remember having seen in the
picture-books of his childhood a wood-cut showing
Indians and half-breeds, with their animals and loads,
struggling through a snowy waste along an interminable
track ; and, doubtless, there is many an old lady in
England with a once costly and now faded but carefully-
treasured fur garment which, as a pelt, passed over this
very trail when she was in her first youth. Our search
did not lead us along this interesting route, and we had
to cross much "hummocky" ground. The jolting of
the buggy was painful, and we fared scarcely better
when we regained the level, for the wheels bumped first
into one badger hole and then into another. Our
bronchos were clever little animals, and it was a pleasure
to watch them pick their way through these leg-break
ing places.
As the morning wore on we drew nearer to the Eagle
Hills — a bold range for this part of Canada, and giving
not only variety but also picturesqueness to the scene.
We passed during the morning a frozen lake, some
miles long and a few broad in its widest part. It lay in
a rather deep depression, and round its edges, where the
water had melted, were myriads of geese, white and
black, and duck of many kinds. About one o'clock we
pulled up to feed the horses and eat some enormous
sandwiches which the farmer's wife had put up
for us.
We were now, with the Eagle Hills some ten or
fifteen miles away to the north-west, on sections avail
able for homesteading. The afternoon we spent driving

138 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
over them, trying to discover the best section out of
which to pick three separate quarters. Here the
ground was too rolling, and the tops of the eminences
— if that word can be applied to prairie land — consisted,
therefore, of rather light soil. There, though it was un
questionably rich black loam on a tenacious clay subsoil,
it lay too low, and was, therefore, subject to early frosts.
The higher the altitude North-West from the Regina
Plains, the less is the danger of the crop being damaged
by frost before it is ripe. In one section there were too
many " sloos " and nothing but pasturage; in another
there were no " sloos " at all, and hence no grass areas
for cutting hay for the horses. Nowhere was there any
bush or timber to be seen.
The difficulty of choosing aright was great, notwith
standing the help of our American friend and the ex
perience which our shrewd Yorkshireman had already
acquired in Manitoba. At length, however, we selected
alternative sections and quarters to file upon — a neces
sary thing to do, lest someone should have been over
the ground the day before, and have filed an entry
at Saskatoon before wc^ returned. With these duly
marked on our township plans, we turned our backs on
the Eagle Hills, and commenced the long ditour before
we could reach the farm.
It was a cold and uncomfortable drive, though those
wonderful little bronchos, which must have covered
sixty miles out and home, went at a good pace, never made
a false step, and arrived at the stable seemingly as fresh
as when they set out. But the last half-hour of sun
light converted the wild prairie into the most beautiful
coverlet earth ever bore. The long grass was dead, and

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 139
the predominant colour in the slanting sunlight was,
therefore, a light saffron. But beneath were the delicate
green shoots of the spring verdure. Here and there
were tracts of feathery grass, with faint grey sheaths
silvered by the sunlight, and broad irregular expanses of
reddish brown shrubs with crimson berries. Who could
describe the rainbow radiance of the grasses as the almost
horizontal sun rays shot through them, the resultant
hues varying and blending in exquisite harmony as the
shifting evening breezes rose and fell ? The colour
tones were past counting. There was every imaginable
shade of yellow and grey, brown and green, and here
and there a big patch of brilliant blue, light or dark
according to the contour ofthe ground and the variations
of the dead and living verdure. Blue ? Yes — a blue as
pure as that which enfolds the hills of Eastern Prussia
or washes the shores of the Mediterranean.
Our next business was to file entries at the Land
Office at Saskatoon without delay. The day following
was Sunday. Rising early, we breakfasted, hitched our
horses to the wagon, and took to the trail. It was a
glorious day, the wind faint and the sun so hot that by
evening the three of us had complexions of a. fiery red.
Though ice was still thick in the centre of the lakes,
the power of the sun was equal to that of a cloudless
English July. We reached Saskatoon late in the evening
— too late to get a meal at any of the " hotels," and un
able to obtain beds at them except on the condition
that we shared rooms and sheets with earlier comers.
This not being in accord with our fastidious English
notions, we threw ourselves on the mercies of a Chinese
restaurant proprietor, who gave us tea, a dish of eggs.

140 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
bread, and preserved fruit, and let to us a tolerably clean
room with truckle beds in it.
As soon as the Land Office opened we struggled up
the stairway with a number of others. Each of us
swore an oath on a greasy Bible that the land on which
we desired to make entry was not occupied by anybody,
and had not been made the subject of improvements ;
and each of us paid the clerk ten dollars, the entry-fee,
receiving a receipt, subject to confirmation by a superior
office — a technicality of no practical importance. We
then walked out into the street, each of us a j oint occupier
and prospective owner in fee-simple of a. quarter of a
square mile of Dominion land in the Saskatchewan
Valley. My " quarter " became, of course, lost to me because
of non-fulfilment of the statutory " duties," All right
to a " free farm " or homestead lapses unless the home
steader builds a house on the plot, resides in it for six
months, and breaks up so many acres each year. If he
does these things for three years he obtains his " patent "
of absolute ownership, and then he may allow it to
relapse into its original state if he likes. When a
homestead is abandoned before the patent is obtained,
anyone may " file on the entry " at the local Land
Office — that is to say, may take up the land himself by
paying ten dollars entry fee and performing the " duties."
My " quarter " has since, I believe, been " filed on " by
a relation of my fellow-homesteaders. The last I heard
of them was that they had put up shacks and stabling,
had lost one of the horses from marsh fever, and had had
to buy others ; that they had dug a well and found good
water, and that they were working from sunrise to dark

THE FINDING OF A HOMESTEAD 141
breaking up the land, so as to be able to seed as much as
possible of it in the spring. I add these sentences on a
chill October day in London, writing in a fire-lit library
overlooking a spacious and pleasant garden, with all the
comforts and some of the luxuries of existence ready to
hand, or forthcoming by touching an electric bell. A
few streets off are the open houses of friends, the theatres
and pleasure resorts of the Metropolis, the thronging and
ever-fascinating life of the main thoroughfares. What
a contrast to the conditions in which my companions
now are ! Housed in a mean little timber shack, faring
on salt pork and bread and tea, they are " toughing it "
on the desolate prairie, forty miles away from any village,
for Saskatoon is nothing more, doing their own washing,
cooking and mending, and with the prospect of six
months' isolation, amid snow and frost and biting winds
such as are unknown elsewhere, except, perhaps, in
Siberia. The would-be emigrant with a little capital
should reflect on these things before he exchanges the
comforts of England — even such as are obtainable by the
industrious poor — for exile on the frozen, wind-swept
prairie.

CHAPTER X
THE COST OF A "FREE" FARM
The attentive reader will have noticed from the fore
going chapters that to get homesteading land worth
having, it is now necessary to go far afield. As the
West fills up, as it is fast doing, the immigrant will have
to go still farther. This, of course, means that the cost of
getting to the land will be heavier and supplies dearer.
Railway facilities are, however, likely to be multiplied
during the coming decade. Many branch lines are either
under construction or are projected ; and when the Grand
Trunk Pacific is built, accessibility to what is now remote
prairie will be relatively easy. Whether it will be
cheap is another matter, for the railway companies of
Canada are not philanthropists. It is an urgent
necessity for them, however, to get population into the
country, and for this reason they carry immigrants at
relatively low rates. Once the people are there, the
railways have them at their mercy ; and they exercise
consummate skill in extracting from the established
settler the uttermost farthing for the transportation of
persons and goods. The progress of the country and
the cost of homesteading may be said to depend upon
the extension of the railways. But even now the
emigrant can be tolerably sure of getting good home-
142

THE PRAIRIE HARVEST

" THE COST OF A FREE FARM " 143
steading land within a few days' drive from a railway
line. I propose therefore to enter into a little calcula
tion in this chapter, which should help to inform the
intending emigrant of the amount of money which he
should have at his command when he takes up a
homestead — not when he leaves England, but when he
arrives at the Land Office of the district in which he
has made up his mind to settle. But before doing this,
a few sentences should be written descriptive of the
parcelling out of prairie land. It is simplicity itself.
The boundary with the United States may be regarded
as a straight line across the prairie — it is not in
reality straight, because the earth is a sphere. From
this line run the meridian lines due north. Look for ex
ample at this inset plan of the Battleford Land District,
in which I went homesteading. At the foot of the
fourth meridian line on the United States boundary
is a square numbered i, with a succession of squares
until the 30th is reached. At 31 the boundary of the
Battleford Land District commences. Its northern
limit is square 71. Across the oblong region enclosed
by the black boundary lines is a line of squares,
numbered from 10 to 27, meeting the fourth meridian,
and then recommencing at i. These squares represent
"ranges." Each of the squares within the plan
represents a " township " six miles square. The Office
ofthe Land Agent ofthe Battleford District is marked
by a circle. It will be seen that it is in " township "
43, range 16, west ofthe third meridian — or east of the
fourth ; but locally the description is always west of this
or that meridian. The " grained " or shaded areas re
present those which have been surveyed and thrown open

144

CANADA, THE NEW NATION

for settlement. Those not so marked represent land
in process of survey, upon which anyone may squat if
he chooses, and thus obtain priority of settlement as soon
as the survey is completed and plans are accessible at the
local Land Office, Those areas marked by lines over
the "graining" represent land already taken up at the
time this Index plan was printed — it is the latest obtain
able when I was in the West. Now a " township " —
six miles square — is divided into thirty-six |' sections"
— each of one square mile, the enumeration beginning
ffom the right-hand bottom corner. Thus : —
N
SIX MILES.

1

1
-33—

1
-34— 1

1
-35- 1

1
-3^ 1

3'

3-'

—30— 1
—29— 1
-28— 1
1
—27- 1
1
—26—
1
—25-
?Ji XCO
1
-T
1
—20 —
1
1
— 21 —
1
 T> 
T
1
—23— 1
1
—24— 1
—18-
-17—
1
—16— 1
1
-15-
—14— 1
1
— 13—
— 7—
-8 —
1
i
— 9 —
—10—
1
— II —
1
— 12 —
1
-6 —
1
1
— 3 —
1
1
I
~i~
1
1
Each square mile is subdivided into four quarters
each of one hundred and sixty acres. If an immigrant
started out from Battleford and intended to settle near thc
THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 145
Bear Hills he would have to find his way over the
prairie trail, township by township, being guided in his
search by the landmarks put up by the surveyors.
Having arrived at what he thought was suitable land, he
would first select a " section," or one square mile. This
would contain four quarter sections of one hundred and
sixty acres each ; and on one of these quarters he would
be entitled to " file an entry " at the Battleford Land
Office — provided that no one else had done that before
him. To avoid a mishap of this kind he would probably
have noted down other alternative quarter sections, on
one of which he could file if some other homeseeker had
preceded him and happened to hit upon the very
quarter section which pleased him best. In order to
familiarise himself with the parcelling out of the prairie
land, the intending emigrant may localise my abandoned
homestead. It was section 2, in township 35, in range
12, west of the third meridian.
Now for the calculation of what it costs to accept
from the Dominion Government a " free farm of one
hundred and sixty acres." Let us take the case of an
English agricultural labourer who has come into a legacy
or some other windfall, and try and measure the financial
difficulties that will beset him before he can start farming
• for himself in the North-West. He is, we will assume,
young and strong, has no one but himself to keep, no
claims upon him which will call for the remittance of
part of his earnings to the old people at home. And he
is strictly abstemious and frugal — the sort of man who
does not find it necessary to visit the village public-
house every evening for ale and the society of his fellow-
men. He is hardy enough, physically, to bear the
K

146 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
rigours of a winter where the temperature may fall oc
casionally to fifty and even to sixty degrees below zero,
and sufficiently vigorous, mentally, to be able to live a
solitary life for weeks on end ; for the chances are that
when he goes homesteading he will be out of sight of
neighbours and several miles from any settlement large
enough to contain a post-office or a church. Assume
further that he has saved up sufficient money to get a
good stock of warm clothing, including a Manitoba calf
skin coat, which he should buy in the West, and carry
him from his English hamlet to Regina, where he will
arrive in April, He will be able to obtain work for the
season at, say, twenty-five dollars a month, and thus gain
the needfiil experience of the country and the people.
He will need no new clothes. His food will cost him
nothing. He ought to leave his farmer with, say, one
hundred and fifty dollars in hand. How much more
money will he require before he can set up for himself?
He will have to spend about forty dollars in travelling
and living expenses when searching for homesteading
land, away from the settled area in which he has been
working. Having fixed upon the location in which he
would like to settle, he would go to the District Land
office and pay ten dollars for his right of entry. He
would then need to build a shack or hut in which to
live. The lumber for this would cost him one hundred
dollars, and if he were handy with saw and hammer he
would be able to put up the structure without expert
assistance. Sundry tools would cost him, say, ten
dollars. His next business would be to sink a well, if there
were no spring on his land, and this would cost him

THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 147
from fifty dollars to one hundred dollars, according to
the depth to which he might have to pierce. He
would have to lay in a stock of food for himself for the
winter, and if he could live as plainly and as roughly as a
Canadian in like circumstances would live, this would
cost seventy-five dollars. He would then have to build
a stable for two oxen, and the lumber for this would
absorb fifty dollars. He would buy a small stove, which
would cost him twelve dollars to twenty dollars, and cut
a store of wood either from his own land or from the
nearest unowned "bluffs," He would then hibernate
for four or five months, taking good care, unless his
shack was unusually well built and wind-proof, to keep
the fire going night and day.
In the spring he would wake up and start spending
again. He would have to buy a hand-plough, which
would cost him twenty-five dollars, and a team of oxen,
which are obtainable at from seventy-five dollars to one
hundred dollars a-piece, according to age and condition —
say two hundred dollars for the team, with harness.
He could then break up some of the land so as to prepare
it for sowing in the succeeding year. Meanwhile he
would buy a wagon, which would cost him eighty
dollars, a drill, or seeder, at sixty dollars, and a harrow
for twenty dollars.
Obviously, he would not be able to plough and pre
pare his own land and at the same time be working for
someone else ; but he would probably hire out during
seeding and harvesting time, and earn enough to pro
vide himself with food for the ensuing winter. When
the spring came he would buy seed, say, at one dollar per
acre — sixty dollars, if he had worked desperately hard

148 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
and prepared as much as sixty acres of land. While
that crop was growing he would have to live, and this
would cost him about fifty dollars, for during this time
he would not be " working out " for any other farmer.
His feed for the oxen would, of course, have been pro
vided by the prairie, where he could cut rough hay for
the winter store.
Now let us see what is the total sum — the minimum
which our imaginary agricultural labourer from England
would require if he went homesteading in the North-
West. The account would stand thus : —

Search for land

. $40

Homestead entry .

10

Lumber for house and stables

. 150

Team of oxen, with harness

. 200

Sinking well .

. 100

Wagon, seeder, plough, stove.

and other

requisites . . . .

. 215

Seed .

. 60

Food .

. 125

Total

$900

or about ;^i8o sterling. But against this should be set
the one hundred and fifty dollars (;^3o) which the man
would have earned during the first season in the country.
It follows from this that an agricultural labourer who
brought / 1 80 with him, and worked the first summer
for a farmer — as every sensible emigrant should if he
would learn the method of cultivation and thc ways of
the people — would be able to start homesteading. It

THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 149
also follows that homesteading is impracticable for an
agricultural labourer, or anybody else, without capital.
To that I will refer later.
The figures I have given may be contested. They
do not agree with those which are sometimes advanced
by emigration agents and others who draw bonuses from
the Dominion Government for every emigrant they
despatch to Canada. Some of these plausible and
imaginative gentlemen would almost make one believe
that homestead farming can be commenced on a few
loose sovereigns. But the figures were given to me by
an old homesteader who has been in the North-West
for a quarter of a century ; and they agree not only
with figures obtained from others, but also with the
prices for lumber, oxen, implements, etc., ruling in the
prairie country when I was there. And in arriving at
them I have allowed no margin for waste due to
error or gullibility on the part of a newcomer to a
strange country. For example, in buying oxen a man
needs to know what sort of beasts are worth having.
Otherwise he would pay a long price for a team so
lacking in strength as to be useless after a few miles'
haul or the breaking of a few acres, or so stupid and
vicious as to be more or less unmanageable. I have
seen not a few immigrants on prairie trails reduced to
speechless despair by the behaviour of their beasts.
Powerful and intelligent oxen are indeed a treasure to
the homesteader of limited means. A man will soon
learn how to drive and handle them either in a wagon
or with a plough. But weak or fractious oxen will
wear down a man's will and strength faster than a team
of difficult horses. Again, the probability is that the

150 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
average agricultural labourer with ;^i8o in his pocket
would fall a victim to one of thc land sharks who infest
the prairie towns, and part with his money in buying
land — and bad land to boot — and going into debt for
his implements and lumber. Unless he keeps aloof
from the predaceous gentry of the towns, he will be
robbed at every turn. He will be "spotted" as a
stranger at once. The touts will flock about him with
offers of friendly help this way or that, but with thc
object of ascertaining what hard cash he possesses and
how he may best be relieved of it. The newcomer cannot
be too wary, for there is a large class in Canada which
has no other means of subsistence than those afforded
by the advent of strangers. They live upon and by and
through the immigrant. Not until a man has had
some experience of the country by working for a wage
does he become qualified to cope with the chicanery of
land-sellers, horse and oxen dealers, and the like. A
further point: in considering the sufficiency or other
wise of the figures I have submitted, it should not be
forgotten that they permit of homesteading only on a
modest scale. The item for food is calculated for a man
only — not for a man with a wife and family. Oxen are
allowed for, not horses, which would cost more in the
first instance and would certain!)' be more expensive to
keep, for it is doubtful whether the homesteader would
get a sufficient crop of oats off the land the first season
to keep the animals going through the winter, even
though, in addition, there was a slougn depression on his
"quarter" from which he could cut hay. Nor are the
implements priced above of the newest type and most
expensive. These, and horses and appointments for his

THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 151
shack, he would have to get in later years as he prospered,
and perhaps acquired an adjoining section. This he.
would need if he wished to make a comfortable living
and save money, or if he had to support a wife and
children in any tolerable scale of comfort, for no
Englishwoman, perhaps no woman other than a Nova
Scotian, who can endure anything, could be expected
to share the penurious lot of the homesteader in the
early years of his travail, or to bring up a family on the
productive power of one hundred and sixty acres alone.
It would not, however, be difficult to get possession of
an adjoining quarter section in a newly-opened part of
the prairie. If many homesteads are taken up, many
also are abandoned before the " patent " is granted, or are
sold for a song when it is once acquired. If the second
of the four ''quarters" of the whole "section" in
which our agriculturist found himself, were taken up by
an Ontarian, the chances are that that quarter would
never be available. If the third were held by a Scotch
man, it is probable that that also would not come into
the market — except at a very long price, for the Scotch
immigrant is almost the equal of the Ontarian in staying
power, besides being a better man of business. But if
the fourth quarter were in English hands, the probabili
ties are very strong that it would pass into the possession
of our agriculturist — assuming, of course, that he was
frugal and the other was not, and that he was, generally,
the better farmer ofthe two. It is surprising how few
Englishmen there are farming on the prairie. The
number is very small, compared with that of Scotchmen
and Ontarians, One hears of many who have tried it
and gone away ; and wherever you find an old home-

152 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
steader who now has a half or three-quarters of a section
of land, thc almost invariable explanation is, that he
bought up an English neighbour or neighbours, who
got into debt, or could not endure the cold and the
winds, or, because of one or two bad seasons, lost heart
and went away.
If the problem of homesteading is difficult for a man
with a cash capital of ;^i8o, what must it be for the man
who has no money at all ? As I have said, it is im
practicable for a man without capital to go homesteading.
Anything said or written to the contrary is moonshine.
But candour requires the statement that a homestead
can be acquired by a labouring man who has nothing but
his wages to set to work with. He need not wait until
he has ;^i8o to his credit. Few indeed are the home
steaders who have so much. Credit is very easily obtained,
A man who has selected a homestead, and paid his ten
dollars entry fee, can buy everything he needs on long
terms. He can go into debt for his oxen, his imple
ments, his lumber, and everything else. But this is a
very expensive way of setting to work, and if the first
crop should not happen to be a good one and to sell at
high prices, the chances are that the homesteader will
find himself without the means of continuing to work
his land. Nevertheless, men without capital have
succeeded by a judicious use of the credit system, A
few good seasons in succession may enable a farmer to
clear off liabilities which would involve him in bank
ruptcy were a single crop to fail while the debts
continued. Where credit is taken the enterprise is a huge
gamble. The risk is great and the interest charges high. It
works out something like this : implements which would

THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 153
cost, say, 1 1 00 cash, are charged 1 1 25 on long credit, with
from 10 per cent, to 14 per cent, interest on the latter
sum, and for security, a mortgage on the man's goods and
chattels. The implement seller is on the right side. It
may be costly for him to collect his debt when the crop
is reaped, but his profits are none the less enormous.
Unless a man has grown first-quality wheat — wheat
which grades as " No, i Manitoba hard," and this is a
matter of luck — and unless he sells when prices are high,
there is very little money left for him to get through the
winter. He has to go into debt perhaps for provisions,
clothes, and so forth, and may continue in indebted
ness year in and year out for years, until a few bad seasons
bring him to utter ruin, or a few exceptionally good ones
enable him to get straight and possibly have a balance in
hand. Of those who gamble in this way a few have luck
and in the long run succeed in becoming independent,
but many come to grief. This is what the labouring
man should bear in mind when he is tempted to use the
credit system. The chances are, that being once in debt
he will, unless he develops unusual resolution and lives
with singular frugality, never get out.
How then can a penniless immigrant become the
owner of a homestead ? The answer is, only by taking
several years in which to accomplish his purpose — how
many or how few will depend entirely upon his earning
capacity as a worker for other farmers, and upon his
ability to save his wages. For example, a man who has
saved enough out of his summer earnings to pay an entry
fee, buy lumber for a shack, a stove, a few tools of his own,
and a store of winter food, can enter upon possession.
He will at least live rent free during the winter.

X54 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Possibly he may get an odd job with a neighbouring
farmer, who has established himself and can afford to
pay for a little assistance now and again, if only in
carting and chopping wood from the bluffs. In the
spring he will be able to hire a team and a plough, and
thus break up enough land to enable him to claim that
he has performed his "duties." The homesteading
regulations are interpreted elastically in such cases.
Only serious and persistent neglect of them is visited by
forfeiture ofthe entry. The Inspectors have discretionary
power, and are men of sense, who know the difficulties
of the poor homesteader — probably from personal ex
perience. The breaking done he would hire out to a
farmer for the season. If he had a trade of any sort —
were a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a wheelwright — there
would be profitable odd jobs for him to do in the winter ;
and in the summer he would be fairly certain to be able
to earn high and steady wages in the nearest town, or in
putting up dwellings and stables for new homesteaders
who had capital. Each year he would break up a
further patch of his quarter ; each year he would sow a
larger crop, and each winter he would live in his own
shack ; and both winter and summer he would earn more
than enough to keep himself fed and clothed. In due
time he would be able to buy a plough of his own, next,
oxen or horses, seeder, harrow, wagon, and so on.
With these he would be able to concentrate his energies
upon his own homestead. Mere wage-earning would
not be essential to him. Nor is the course here sug
gested wholly impracticable for a man with a wife and
family, if wc assume that the man and his wife have been
in regular employment in an established farm, the

THE COST OF A " FREE " FARM 155
husband as labourer and the wife as housekeeper, and
that their joint savings have enabled them to see their
way a few years ahead in the matter of food and clothes
for the household, for the man would still be able to hire
out away from his homestead. The difficulties would
be great in the case of either a single or a married man ;
the life would be terribly hard ; but they could be over
come, and the life endured. Experience proves this to
be so. Many prosperous farmers — men who now own
and farm whole sections a mile square — began as home
steaders with only a few dollars, I know three brothers
in Assiniboia who went there eighteen years ago with
only one hundred dollars between them. One now owns
a whole section and the two others three-quarters of a
section each. Indeed, the really successful men — the
men who now own great blocks of land free from
mortgage — are usually settlers who homesteaded with a
very little capital in the days when the art of farming on
the prairie could be learned only by failures, such as thc
later immigrant, if he will but take local advice, can
avoid. Such men say that, paradoxical as it may seem,
it is an advantage to start homesteading almost without
capital. Case after case can be cited where men who
had money — and plenty of it — lost every cent in home
steading, while those who had nothing, or next to
nothing, and struggled through anyhow, succeeded, and
are now prosperous. In the North-West so much depends
upon the man — his frugality, resolution, and staying
power. These are, after all, the principal factors ; for
the man without them will never earn sufficiently good
wages in Canada to be able to save much out of them, nor
will he be able to utilise those savings in such a way as

156 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
to develop into a landed proprietor, earning bread for
himself and family on soil which none can take from him.
And, as a general rule, unless a man does attain thc
status of an independent farmer it is not worth his while
to have gone to the North-West. If he has no ambition
above helping on the land of others, or little capacity to
realise his ambition, he will be no better off, and perhaps
worse off than if he stayed in England, where, at
least, there is more abundant provision for him when ill-
health or old age incapacitates him for self-support.

CHAPTER XI
¦WEST'WARD AND NORTH^WARD
One of the dreariest railway journeys thc world affords
is that of the thousand miles across the prairie to the foot
hills of the Rocky Mountains. The monotony of the
uncultivated plains — for most of the land within sight of
the line is held for a rise by railway and other corporations
and private speculators — is broken only by an occasional
wooden farmhouse and by widely distant " towns "
which, with the possible exception of Winnipeg, have
no present pretensions to structural durability, Regina,
the capital of the newly-created province of Saskatchewan,
is as yet a mean little place of wooden villas and
shanties, and for nearly seven hundred miles, until
Calgary is reached, there is no town which has the
appearance of substantiality. For fifty miles or so west
of Regina, the prairie is covered with rich grass ; but out
of sight on both sides of the line lies a rather thickly
settled farming country, where the soil — a glutinous
black loam — grows the finest wheat in the world. At
Moosejaw — so called because, in the early pioneering
days, an Indian saw a white man mend his Red River
cart with the jawbone of a moose — there is a prosperous
little town. The farmers thereabouts, many of whom
were homesteaders, are fairly well-to-do, and for lands
157

158 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
which cost them nothing originally are now asking
twenty to twenty-five dollars an acre, though the
houses, barns, and stables may be mere wooden shacks.
But beyond Moosejaw, for many hours of travelling,
the country becomes indescribably dreary. Away on
the left are the drift hills of the Missouri plateau — the
great pile of rock which geologists believe to have been
deposited on the prairie slope by huger masses of floating
ice in some glacial age unthinkably remote. On thc
right is an apparently endless plain of gravelly and sandy
soil, with coarse grass and every now and then an
alkaline lake.
Signs of habitation are few and far between until
Medicine Hat is reached. This is an attractive little
town in the valley of the South Saskatchewan, and it has
lately become prospectively important, because of thc
discovery of supplies of natural gas, which is used for
lighting and heating. The importance or such a
resource in a country of long winters and bitter cold
need not be emphasised, and Medicine Hat — an Indian
medicine man with extraordinary head-gear gives the
place its peculiar name — looks forward to pre-eminence
among the growing villages of the prairie.
Ascending from the valley, the traveller is again on
the plateau — the third of the prairie steppes which lead
to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On this
plateau there arc few farms, for the country is arid and
the soil poor. It is used for cattle raising, and the
population is insignificant. Large sums are being spent
on irrigation works, however, and it is claimed that by
these means the soil can be made arable — or perhaps it
should be said saleable. If this is so — and such work on

MOOSEJAW CREEK

WESTWARD AND NORTHWARD X59
similar areas of the prairie on the other side of the
United States boundary line suggests that it is — it is
possible that this dreary and infertile region may be
changed into acceptable farm or ranching lands. As
the Bow River is reached, signs of settlement are again
observed, and many hundreds of cattle are out on the
prairie. Away to the south lies a ranching country,
and there the herds are reckoned by the thousand. At
Calgary you leave the western train and change for the
branch line north to Edmonton.
Calgary is a ranching city, and the Mecca of the
superfluous son. Thither go the young gentlemen from
England who cannot, or do not, pass their examinations ;
or cannot, or will not, sit on a stool in their father's
office ; or who have neither the capacity nor the will
to make for themselves acceptable careers in the
Old Country. They go to Calgary, usually with some
capital, to " raunch." When they have lost their money,
as they sometimes do, they still "raunch" — as "cow-
punchers," for somebody else, at from twenty dollars to
forty dollars a month, according to their skill as stock
men. If they have not the grit to do this, and keep at
it, they write home for money. Many of them have
regular allowances. The remittance men form a notable
element in Albertan society, and Calgary is their head
quarters. They abound in the lounges and bars of the
hotels, clad in riding breeches and Norfolk jackets, and
wearing round, soft felt hats, with enormous brims. I
wonder how many fathers there are in England who
have sons out there whom they are not particularly
desirous of seeing at home again, except for a very short
holiday, and are pestered every mail-day by recitals

i6o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
of misfortune, which can be summarised into a request
for money ? There must be a good many, judging by
the crowded state ofthe Calgary bars.
Some of the ranchers are English gentlemen, who
have put considerable capital into thc business of stock-
raising, and such as these have made a certain impression
on life in Calgary. There is one hotel which has slight
pretensions to comfort and refinement. Calgary city
itself is well built, chiefly of stone quarried in the neigh
bourhood. Its situation on the south bank of the Bow
River, at its confluence with the Elbow, is picturesque,
and from the hills above the town there are fine
views of the serrated peaks of the Rocky Mountains,
some fifty or sixty miles away. Thc climate is less
severe than that of the Eastern plains, for the warra
winds of the Pacific, which course through the gaps of
thc mountains, sensibly modify the temperature in
winter. It is not surprising that Calgary and the
surrounding country, particularly that to thc south,
should have attracted a class of Englishman with money
to invest in horse and cattle raising, or that such an
area, thus colonised, should be regarded as a suitable
destination for superfluous sons.
Edmonton, the capital of the autonomous province
of Alberta lies nearly a day's journey by rail northward
from Calgary. It is the gateway to the extreme north
west of Canada— the Farther North-West, as it may
be called. On the east, for some hundreds of miles,
are the rich valley lands of the Saskatchewan ; and
about these the reader already knows something from
thc chapter descnptive of the search for a homestead
For about fifty miles to the south, and also to the

WESTWARD AND NORTHWARD i6i
north, and eastward to the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains, is a tract of rich black soil, which is known
to be as good as that of the wheat-belt of Manitoba
and the Plains of Regina, Away to the north lies the
vast and, as yet, but partially explored basin of the
Mackenzie, What the soil may be worth in this farther
region remains to be demonstrated. But within a radius
of fifty miles from Edmonton, in any direction, there is
land which is as good as any to be found east of the
Rockies, Without posing as an expert in such matters,
it may be said that I was long enough in Canada to
learn the difference between good land and bad — to be
able to distinguish at a glance land of the kind on which
mammoth crops are grown and that which would
not support a goat. The soil in the Edmonton
district is of the first order.
The good land of the region begins from the south
at the Red Deer River, that which lies between Red
Deer and Calgary being better suited for cattle and
sheep runs. At Red Deer, by the way, is a farm
which bears the name of an historic scholastic town
— Berkhamsted, about thirty miles on the north road
from London, At Berkhamsted a school has existed
since mediaeval times. Under Dr, T, C. Fry, formerly
of Cheltenham, it has been greatly enlarged, reorganised,
and newly equipped, and it is now taking rank as one of
the foremost educational institutions in England. I
make this digression because at Red Deer — over five
thousand miles from the ancient and picturesque
Hertfordshire town — there is an extensive " mixed "
farm, owned by him and managed for him, where
Berkhamsted boys go to fit themselves for Colonial

x62 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
life. Dr. Fry's idea is that in every large school
there are lads who, for diverse reasons, are better
suited for Colonial life than for more conventional
or exacting careers, and that it is an advantage for such
as these to graduate on a Colonial farm which is linked
with the organisation of a Home school rather than be
sent out by parents to take their chance with a little
capital or as the recipients of a small allowance —
two tolerably sure roads to ruin for a very young
man in Canada. Hence the Berkhamsted Farm at Red
Deer. It is an interesting experiment in colonisation as well
as in education ; and certainly a successful one firom
the point of view of the lads and their parents. I
met with more than one youth of the well-to-do
classes who, for want of just such help and guidance
as he would have got at Berkhamsted Farm, had lost
heart because of the roughness and hardships of life
in the West, and gone to thc bad. At a school
farm he would be initiated gently and gradually into
the harsh realities of pioneering. He would still be
under the glamour of school traditions. There would
be a continuity of wholesome influences such as make
a youth steady in endeavour and firm in will; and
the companionship of others whose minds and
characters had been formed by kindred associations
in the Old Country, The chances of slipping down
to the ne'er-do-weel plane of life would be slight,
Thc fact that in the newly-opened region of the
Red Deer River there is a Berkhamsted Farm which
is used as a training ground for youths from the
ancient foundation in Hertfordshire, has an even

WESTWARD AND NORTHWARD 163
broader significance. It helps to give actuality to talk
of Empire. Here in a wild land, inviolate to the foot of
the white man little more than a generation ago, is a
group of young men who have carried thither the
memories of an historic school and town, and are
working out the problems of life in the new world on
a basis pf familiarity with England's past. They are
engaged in the rough work of subduing a remote bush
land ; but it is none the less for England and for Empire,
— for the preservation of good traditions in govern
ment, in social life and in religion — that they labour.
One could not help but think, when passing through
the Red Deer Valley, that it would be beneficial for
England and for Canada if other public schools followed
the lead of Berkhamsted, English immigration into
the Dominion would at least be leavened with men
of liberal education. Such an element would of itself
constitute a strong bond of Imperial union, and would
exercise a wholesome influence upon the public life of
Canada — assuming, of course, that the educated class
mastered the economic difficulty of becoming well-
to-do in the Dominion. Candour compels the addition
that few succeed in doing this by farming or ranch
ing. The Ontarian and the Scotchman get ahead
of the Englishman by an instinctive adaptability to
the circumstances of the country and by sheer
frugality of living. This I found to be the case in the
Farther North-West, even as in Manitoba and on the
Regina Plains.
An errant pen has taken me far from Edmonton,
The little town is beautifully situated on the northern
side of a tortuous and tree-covered ravine, thc river

i64 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
winding about some two hundred feet below, and
looking like a silvered ribbon carelessly thrown down
over yellow gravel and sand. Here, at Strathcona, on
the south side of the ravine, is the terminus of the
branch line from Calgary, But this is not the only
railway to serve the district, for the main line of the
Canadian Northern has passed through the Saskatchewan
Valley to Edmonton, Moreover, the Grand Trunk
Pacific Railway will go through Edmonton, on its way
to thc ocean. Then, again, the C.P.R. have located a
line from Edmonton, running south-east through the
vast pear-shaped tract enclosed by the forks of the
North and South Saskatchewan. And from Edmonton
a line is to run due north to Athabasca Landing,
towards thc great waterway of the Peace and Mac
kenzie Rivers. What do these things mean ? Take
a map of Western Canada, and look at Winnipeg.
Remember what the country was like when Lord
Wolseley led the Red River Expedition to Fort Garry
in the seventies, and compare that recollection with the
present network of railways radiating from Winnipeg,
Next, look out Edmonton on thc map, nearly a
thousand miles to the north-west, and think of it in
relation to the railway extensions I have mentioned.
You will then see that Edmonton is destined to become
a railway centre such as Winnipeg now is. That is one
reason, apart from the richness of the land, why I
suggest that this unknown district may in time become
the home of millions. Settlement will surge up the
Saskatchewan Valley, and is, indeed, doing so to-day ;
it will pass northward over the arid lands east of
Calgary to the rich soil of Red Deer Valley, upwards

THE SASKATCHEWAN AT EDMONTON

WESTWARD AND NORTHWARD 165
to Edmonton, and beyond that town to the Peace
River region.
That is not a wild prophecy. The directors of the
Grand Trunk Pacific, the Canadian Northern Railway,
and the C,P,R. do not lay railroads through lands which
are not habitable or do not present solid attractions
to homeseekers. They know the soil over which the
trains will pass. They are not likely to have formed
an erroneous judgment as to the numbers which will
throng along the lines of communication. Population,
indeed, is moving north and north-west to Edmonton
now. There is no homestead land to be had within
thirty miles of that town. Those who went out into
the wilderness ten years ago are asking twenty dollars
per acre — a ridiculous price, but symptomatic of some
thing besides the Canadian love of a one-sided bargain.
From Saskatoon I had to go nearly forty miles west,
into the valley of the Saskatchewan before homestead
land could be reached. These facts show that
the land is being taken up rapidly, and though the
acreage yet available is reckoned by millions, the early
comers will snap up the best locations — those which are
nearest to the lines now under construction or shortly
to be built.
Daily while I was in the region a trainload of home-
seekers went north from Calgary. Some of them
dropped off at various points of the Red Deer region and
beyond ; but the majority went on to Edmonton to
search for land on the north Saskatchewan. That
process will be repeated next year and the next and for
many years, over the existing line and over lines
now being constructed. There can be little doubt that

i66 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the region of which Edmonton is the centre will contain
a very considerable population. Here, at any rate, is a
spacious homeland for England's excess of population.
But, the reader may ask, is it possible to colonise
so far to thc North-West? If the winter is severe on
the Regina flats, what must it be a few hundred miles
nearer the Pole ? Paradoxical as it may seem, the
winter is in fact milder. This is owing to the near
neighbourhood of the mountains and to the prevailing
westerly winds of thc Pacific, which, in a way that
could only be made intelligible by a meteorologist, are
warmed by passing over the mountain ice-fields. It is
the genial Chinook winds which make the winter
temperature of these northern Edmonton lands appre
ciably higher than that of Manitoba and Assiniboia.
As a matter of strict fact, grain is successfully grown
four hundred miles north even of Edmonton, for the
Hudson's Bay Company have a fine modern mill working
at Fort Vermilion, while there is another at Peace
River Landing three hundred miles north.
But it is not on grain alone that the North stakes its
hopes for the future, though here there are great possi
bilities, as anyone can see, who will consider this chapter
in relation to thc efforts of the scientists to evolve an
earlier ripening variety of wheat. It is essentially an
area for " mixed" farming. Hog raising is already an
important industry. Cattle and sheep do well. There
is bushland in abundance — in superabundance, perhaps,
when one thinks of the severe labour involved in clearing
the ground and tearing out the stumps. But the timber
is not large. Many of thc trees are of the girth of
clothes props, and there are large tracts of willow bush

WESTWARD AND NORTHWARD 167
which can easily be burnt off. There is a bountiful
supply of timber for log housebuilding and fuel; and
in this respect the region has an advantage over any
homesteading land west of the third meridian, where
men have to go twenty miles or more before enough
wood can be obtained to cook a prairie chicken.
And Nature, ever lavish, has furnished the Edmonton
country with natural gas and illimitable coal, which lies
just under the prairie and crops out in the ravine of the
Saskatchewan. To get tolerable coal all one has to do
is to back a wagon against the side of the ravine and
shovel the fuel out of the earth.
The agriculturist has, of course, to reckon with the
danger of early frosts. They may come before the
wheat is ripe to cut and reduce a potentially valuable
crop to a thing of little worth, save as food for stock.
This is a risk which has everywhere to be faced in the
prairie country, and especially in the newer regions of it ;
but experience seems to show that the danger diminishes
with the cultivation of the soil. The earth is so rich that
the cereals grow rank. They continue to shoot up when
they should be ripening. Then comes the night frost
of late summer, blackening and destroying them. But
after the superabundant richness has been lessened by
the growth of a few crops, and air and sunlight have got
into the earth, the ripening process begins earlier. That
is the theory, and Canadians claim that its truth is
demonstrated by the history of the settled areas of the
prairie. The farmer of the Edmonton district and the
Saskatchewan Valley makes light of the frost difficulty,
though he may suffer severely for the time being. He
is convinced that what has happened in Manitoba, where

CHAPTER XII
ACROSS THE MOUNTAINSj
Francis Bacon in his essay " Of Travaile " adjured the
wanderer not to stay over much in one city. " Let him
remain," said he, " more or less as the place deserveth,
but not long." Following this sage counsel, I left the
rolling and diversified lands of Edmonton, though with
regret that I could not penetrate the yet more northerly
wilds, and returned to Calgary, striking thence due
west through and across the great mountain range.
Taking a steamer at Vancouver, I passed down the
Strait of Georgia to Victoria, the capital of British
Columbia, on the south-east corner of the island of
Vancouver, and, wishing to see what was possible of
that mountainous, forest-clad gem of the North Pacific,
followed the Esquimalt line of railway to its terminus at
Nanaimo. It is a beautifiil spot, notwithstanding that much
coal mining is done there. The blue waters of the
Pacific are studded with verdant islands. Eastward of
the bay are the towering mountains of the mainland,
stretching north and south in rugged, snow-capped
grandeur as far as the eye can see. To the west lie the
lesser mountains of Vancouver Island, densely covered
from base to summit with gigantic cedar, spruce, and
169

170 CANADA. THE NEW NATION
pine ; and beyond them are the thousands of miles of
ocean which join these new and almost unpeopled
western lands with time-worn and populous Asia.
Whoever would know thc majestic beauty of thc
British Empire must cross the great sierras which stand
between the Pacific and the prairie. The Himalayas
may be finer, but here there is a surfeit of grandeur and
of beauty. The eyes are enchanted and bewildered.
To translate one's visual impressions into words would
be an impossibility. Thc brush, and not the pen, is the
instrument for such a task ; even a master colourist
would fail to get upon his canvas more than a feeble
suggestion of the imposing splendour of the scene.
The photographer is scarcely less successful, but thc
illustrations now reproduced will give a clearer
idea of these majestic heights than any words at my
command. British Columbia is a quadrangle of mountainous
territory — many of the peaks being a mile above ocean
level — lying between the Pacific and the great central
plain. Exclusive of the Yukon territories, it is about
seven hundred miles long by four hundred wide, and it
is threaded by many passes, at elevations of from two to
seven thousand feet. From the prairie, the first range is
formed by the Rocky Mountains proper — a belt of about
sixty miles wide. Then, after a noble valley, comes the
Selkirk Range, some eighty miles in breadth. Westward
of this is a great plateau, some three thousand five
hundred feet above thc sea, but deeply broken in parts
by lake and river systems. Then there is the Coast
Range, a belt of crystalline rocks which slope pre
cipitously to the Pacific, and are broken by fjords and

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 171
inlets ; and across the Straits of Georgia are the tops of
a submerged archipelago, of which Vancouver and the
Queen Charlotte Islands are the most prominent.
What is its value as a part of the British Empire ?
What use can be made of these stupendous mountain
ranges, these deeply-fissured valleys, these illimitable
forests ? The answer is that it is of incalculable value,
and that no limits can be set to the use to which the
region will be put by future generations. It has a
population at present — whites, Indians, Chinese, and
Japanese — of something under a hundred and sixty
thousand — about as many as you will find in a single
London borough. It could support, and it may some
day contain — if we do not suffer it to be overrun by
Orientals, about whom I shall have something to say
later — sixty millions of whites.
For the white race the climate is ideal. Below the
snow-line there are no violent extremes of cold, and
even in the lowest valleys the heat of the summer sun is
not oppressive. Naturally, the further north you go,
and the greater the altitude of the mountains you ascend,
the longer and more severe is the winter ; but the
records show that it is not colder in the valleys than
in Central Russia, and is less rigorous than on the
American Plain. One feels, indeed, a marked climatic
difference as soon as one has climbed over the foothills
from the prairie and entered the mountain gap. The
change becomes still more noticeable after a few hundred
miles westward. The air is soft and humid. It may
blow with strength, but it has no cutting force. It
does not lash the skin. One might be in the south of
England, or on the coast of Brittany in early June. I

172 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
write, of course, of the lower valleys through which the
railway passes on its way to thc ocean, and of such
coast regions as I visited. In the valleys and on the
Pacific the air is luxuriously soft. In winter there is
little or no snow, but much rain. When snow falls,
it does not lie. Severe and prolonged frosts arc
unknown. Of the abundance of rain the rich vegetation in the
lower lying lands and the rank pine and fir on the
mountain slopes afford eloquent testimony. The prairie
was changing into green when I left it ; and while I
was travelling a heavy fall of snow covered it from end
to end for a depth of a few inches — a veritable gift of
the gods for the farmer of the Plains, who had been
consumed with anxiety lest his newly-sown grain should
be denied its mantle of moisture. But one passed in a
night's travel from winter into early summer, with the
new foliage everywhere developed and flowers in full
bloom. The homely dandelion — the white man's foot,
the Indians call it, for it does not seem to have been
known before his arrival — and the graceful buttercup
bedecked the luxuriant grass, and at the wayside stations
one saw lilac and gorse, geraniums and pansies.
At Vancouver the lawns in front of the houses were
of a fresh, deep green, such as one sees in Devonshire,
and syringas and wistarias were glorious masses of bloom.
So was it at New Westminster, on the Eraser River,
and at the beautiful little city of Victoria, across the
Straight ; and so it was at Nanaimo, where the miners'
cottages — their own freehold in most cases — are set amid
trim lawns, with porches and verandahs in a framework
of flowers.

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 173
What told even more forcibly than foliage and flowers
of the geniality of the region were the forms and
complexions of the white inhabitants. Not only had I
passed into another of the several Canadas of which the
Dominion is composed, but also another of the diverse
types of people who make up her population between
the Atlantic and the Pacific. How shall I describe the
difference without seeming to make invidious compari
sons ? Perhaps it can best be done by saying that there
life is less strenuous, the struggle with Nature less
severe. Existence is pleasant all the year round, despite
the copious rains. No one suffers from cold — and by
that I mean suffering such as the Canadian of the East
and of the Plains unquestionably and heroically endures.
Long-continued frost hardens men and women. It sets
the features grimly, and coarsens and furrows the skin.
The people of British Columbia have not undergone
that hardening process. The essences of life have not
been frozen within them. That is the difference.
Their forms are less angular, their skins are clearer,
their bearing is more leisurely, their voices brighter and
pleasanter, their expression kindlier, their manners
softer. Here one sees the fresh, clear complexions one
associates with the women of England — the glossy
tresses, the bright eyes, the smiling features that tell of
lives of comfort in a pleasant land. Nor need one go
far to find the reason why women who live on the Coast
outvie their sisters of the east. They are not cooped up
in hermetically-sealed houses during long periods of zero
weather, breathing stale air, which is often still further
poisoned by the gaseous fumes of imperfect stoves ; and

X74 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
they have — what the women of the prairies have not
— a limitless supply of pure, soft rain-water for bathing.
Moreover, their lives are tolerably free from the coarser
kinds of manual labour. Thc Chinaman does the
scrubbing, the washing, thc cooking, and the heavier
work ofthe household. They have fewer cares, and arc,
therefore, less careworn.
What ofthe economic resources ofthe region ? Here
much might be written, though little is known — little,
that is, in relation to the extent and diversity of the land.
It has inexhaustible supplies of some of the largest-
growing timber in the world. On thc ride through thc
mountains one can see many hundreds of square miles
where the sound of the woodman's axe has never been
heard ; and from the summit of a mountain near
Nanaimo I looked over a sierra country, crowded with
giant cedar and pine, which has not yet been entered.
The prairie is treeless. Only north of a line drawn from
Prince Albert to Edmonton is there timber much
stouter than a broom handle. Thc supports and plank
ing for every farmer's shack and stable, and often the
fuel for thc winter fires, come from British Columbian
forests, or from the competing forests south of the United
States boundary ; and from British Columbia lumber is
shipped to all parts of thc world, east as well as west. In
its timber alone the province has an industry which
is, as yet, only in its infancy, and one which as time
goes on should give employment to many thousands.
Then there are the minerals — coal, iron, gold, silver,
mica, and many others. These have been known to
exist for half a century. The British investor is too well
acquainted with the region as a mining field to make it

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 175
necessary for me to emphasise this aspect of its latent
wealth. Much English capital has been sunk there. To
put the matter moderately, some of it has been grossly
mismanaged, with the result that the country has
suffered in the estimation of the investing classes.
But there is a vast field for exploitation by capital and
labour — by American capital, if British should not be
forthcoming, and by Asiatic labour if a determined
effort is not made to keep this as a white man's province.
It is not, however, to mining that one looks for a broad
and deep foundation on which to erect a social edifice of
many millions of our people. Agriculture provides a
surer and more permanent basis. In her coast and
valley lands British Columbia possesses wide areas, which
in generations to come will doubtless support a large
population. I could give a long list of arable valleys west and
north of the Fraser River, and could fill pages with
geographical data pointing to the existence of cultivable
and pastoral lands, the acreage of which would have to be
reckoned by tens of millions. It is true that much of it
is forest-covered, that it can only be cleared by infinite
toil and effort, and that, again, much of it is inaccessible
save by Indian trail and lake and river work ; but it is
there. Hardy pioneers are entering it in twos and threes.
As the rest of Canada fills up, and railway extensions
are made through the mountain gaps, others will
follow. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which is
expected to have its outlet at Fort Simpson, will open
up some of these little-known and unpeopled valleys, and
the time will surely come when British Columbia will be
clamouring for population as insistently as the North-

176 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
West is doing to-day. At present she is neglected.
She is in that stage of development when only immigra
tion with capital is acceptable. She does not ask for, and
could not yet absorb in great numbers, the penniless
immigrant who has only his labour to put into the
market ; but as Canada becomes richer and money flows
towards the Pacific coast for investment, a labouring
population will also go, selling its strength for wages, as
it is now doing on the prairie, and working on in the
hope of acquiring land of its own.
What is that population to be — white or yellow ? Is
this grandly beautiful region, with its mild and attractive
climate, to be a homeland for the surplus people of
England or for the offscourings of Asia ? Is our own
overflow of population to occupy this fair and fruitful
area of Empire, or that of China and Japan ?
I had been in the yellow man's company, more or
less, from the Atlantic sea-board to the Pacific. Until
the western limits of the prairie are reached, it
is as a washerman only that he is known. In that
capacity he discharges a necessary and useful task, re
lieving the women folk — who arc all too scarce in the
Dominion — from much distasteful drudgery. One
seldom meets him out of doors. As one passes his mean
little shack one sees his head, through the window pane,
bent over a board, and hears the thud of his iron on the
linen. In the newer prairie settlements John Chinaman
may keep a restaurant, but, in the main, his occupation
on thc plains and in the east is at the washtub. In
British Columbia, however, his ambition extends beyond
thc laundry. There he works in gangs repairing the
railway track, in hauling the logs out of the forest to

<

S

ou

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 177
the water-courses, and in the salmon fisheries, which, in
the company of Japanese, he monopolises, so far as they
afford employment to the wage-earner. You find him
also unloading scows at the jetties, clearing forest land,
pushing the coal trucks at the surface of the mines, and
in the hotels and in many private houses he is cook,
chambermaid, scullerymaid, and I know not what else.
Undoubtedly he has made for himself a place in the
social economy there. No one can deny either his use
fulness or his merits. Let it be admitted that he is
patient, industrious, sober and honest, and that the work
he docs is needed by the community. But he could be
dispensed with. His labour could just as well be per
formed by whites. He is not, either individually or in
bulk, and tor social and economic reasons, a desirable
element in a British population. Canada is not a
tropical country, where white men cannot toil in the
open, and where servile labour is a necessity if white
occupancy is to continue. It is essentially a part of the
Empire where our own people can labour, building up
communities free from racial excrescences such as the
Asiatics present in British Columbia to-day. In Van
couver city, as in Victoria, there are some thousands of
them congregrated in a few mean, disreputable streets,
reproducing there, in what should be distinctly British
towns, the squalor and overcrowding of the Coast
places of Asia.
Thc case against the yellow man need not be put
higher than that. His vices may or may not be worse
than those of the European. It is not necessary to
discuss that question. The point to drive home is that
the province is a British, not a Chinese or Japanese
M

178 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
heritage. If we are to have there an unpolluted civilisa
tion, British Columbia should be jealously preserved as
a reserve for our own people, or, if not solely for them,
then also, and only, for such men and women as belong
to the European family of nations and desire citizenship
at our hands.
That principle is admitted by the Dominion Govern
ment, which now imposes a poll-tax of five hundred
dollars on every Chinaman entering Canada. But the
tax is either insufficient or is evaded : and it is, therefore,
argued that nothing short of exclusion will be effective.
According to the census of xgoi, there were nearly
seventeen thousand Chinese in Canada, fifteen thousand
of whom were in British Columbia, Some of them, thc
opium and tea merchants in particular, are well-to-do ;
but the majority herd together in huts, with tiers of
bunks, and live under conditions and on a scale far
lower than the most degraded class of whites would be
content with, either in thc New or the Old World.
Every Chinatown in British Columbia is more or less
of a plague spot, though the sanitary authorities and
medical officers of important centres, like Vancouver,
Victoria, and Nanaimo, do what is possible to enforce
the health regulations.
This, then, is the community which has been allowed
to establish itself in a British country which, for
climatic reasons, is superlatively well suited for settle
ment by our own people. Broadly stated, the economic
effect has been to retard white colonisation. It is very
little use for a man to invest money and energy in
market gardening there ; the competition of the
Chinaman prevents him from making a satisfactory

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 179
living out of thc land. If he wishes to hire out to
farmers, he finds himself in acute competition with coolie
labour. That wage-earning market is closed to him.
If he has taken up land and seeks to cut his timber into
cordwood and sell it for fuel, he cannot do it and live
— except on the same scale as the Chinaman lives.
Similarly, if he wishes to get work at a shingle mill, or
in salmon canning during the fishing season. Nor can
he find employment for his growing children. Under
ground coal mining is almost the only avenue of manual
work outside the town where Chinese competition has
not yet made it impossible for our own people to earn a
living wage. The result is that white labour is driven
out of the country and will not now go into it on any
appreciable scale.
The progress of British Columbia has been retarded
by the presence of Orientals, for white labour will not
go where it is subject to this degrading form of com
petition ; and what the province needs is an immigra
tion of whites of the class which have been the backbone
of Eastern and Central Canada — whites who will seize
every wage-earning opportunity that presents itself, and
by frugality in living will save enough to take up land,
on which they can work for themselves and rear their
families. At present in British Columbia immigrants of
this class would find that there is plenty of work to be
had, at least in unskilled callings — but only at the wage
for which Chinese, under a Chinese " boss," or ganger,
will do that work.
In practice this means that there is no work at all,
except in skilled trades, and so far as I could arrive at an
estimate of the condition of the labour market on thc

i8o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Pacific coast, there is an abundant supply of technical
labour of all kinds. If wages are high — ranging accord
ing to the trade, from two and a half to four dollars a
day — house-rent, clothes, and provisions are also corre
spondingly dear. We arrive, therefore, at the conclusion
that this portion ofthe Dominion, pre-eminently suitable
though it is as a field for thc surplus labour of England,
does not, because of thc presence of the Asiatic, offer a
livelihood to the out-of-work labourer in England. It is
not a British community which is to be found there,
but a small investing, residential, and trading class,
with an Asiatic proletariat, which it makes use of
because it must, and of which it would fain be rid if
it could. There is no poll-tax on Japanese, who are free to
come as they will, provided that they have passports
from their own Government. Five years ago the
Japanese were there in considerable numbers. Before
the commencement of the war there were about six
thousand in the Dominion, of whom nearly all were in
British Columbia. During thc hostilities this number
greatly decreased. But the British Columbians appre
hended that when peace ensued there would be a revival
of the immigration on an unexampled scale. Whether
this fear will be groundless remains to be seen. Their
argument is that the Japanese constitute an even
greater menace to the province and to the interests of
white labour than do thc Chinese. Broadly speaking,
the objection to the Japanese is the same as that to the
Chinese ; but it is the more intense, because of the
intellectual superiority of thc Japanese over the China
man. The former can live quite as cheaply as thc latter,

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS i8i
but his intelligence is much more active, he is quite as
industrious, and he is far more adaptable.
As British Columbia knows him, the Japanese not
only drives out the white man, but the Chinaman to
boot. Neither can compete with him. He is too
frugal, too active, too clever for either of them. In
fishing, mining, sealing, land clearing, tailoring and
other sedentary occupations he beats down all competi
tion, white or yellow. He learns English readily, does
not herd together so thickly as the Chinaman, adapts
himself to European ways of life, is cleanly, sober, law-
abiding, and ambitious. Morally he is an excellent person,
though his matrimonial system permits of concubinage.
But he is not the sort of immigrant the province wants.
He forms a floating rather than a stationary population.
The community does not and cannot assimilate him.
He often comes only for a part of the year, swamping
the labour market, and he carries the bulk of his earnings
away with him. The only white man who can live is
the white man with capital who employs him as a
labourer. Hence British Columbians who wish to see this
province inhabited by a British population look forward
with apprehension to a large influx of Japanese, and, as
English readers know, they have passed and re-passed
legislation which has exclusion for its object. This
legislation has been successively disallowed by the
Dominion Government at the instigation of the
Imperial authorities, who, in the case of an ally, could
not sanction the principle of exclusion on merely racial
grounds. It is a difficult question, permanent local interests

i82 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
conflicting with Imperial policy ; but I would suggest
that it should not be allowed to remain as it stands.
Statesmanship will have to find a solution consistent
with the preservation of British Columbia as a white
man's country — as a country for the white unskilled
labour, of which England has an excess. It may be that
the apprehensions of a large Japanese influx after the
war may be unfounded. The Japanese Government
have shown a disposition to restrain their people from
going to the Pacific Slope, which in practice means the
Canadian portion of it, for the United States restrictive
legislation is effective against yellow men of every kind.
But racial migrations occur, despite the restraining in
fluences of Governments ; and with so populous a state as
Japan, with a people so energetic and adventurous as hers,
it is quite conceivable that part of the overflow of thc
islands will cross the Pacific. There was an organised
immigration there a decade ago, and the British
Columbians have reason to fear that it will be repeated.
If it is, it will have to be checked — unless, against the
will of British Columbia and of the Dominion, the
Imperial Government arc prepared to see this part of
the white man's inheritance pass into the practical
occupancy and ownership of our Asiatic allies. Observa
tion there, however, leads me to the conclusion that, in
the long run, whatever the Imperial Government may
do, or may fail to do, this will not happen. Neither the
province, nor the Dominion as a whole, would tolerate
such a result.
Canada is a democratic country. It enjoys man
hood suffrage. Thc working man rules. He may be,
and is, under the domination of railway, manufacturing

ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 183
and ecclesiastical influences, each of which exercises
great power in internal politics, both provincial and
Federal ; but he knows his own strength, and will
surely exercise it to preserve Canada as a country for
the white, not the yellow, labourer, whether Chinese or
Japanese, and whether Imperial interests are affected by
a policy of exclusion or whether they are not. This is
a tolerably safe prophecy. The example of the United
States and Australian democracies in excluding the
yellow man will be followed by the Canadian democracy,
Canada has been so sorely pressed for want of popula
tion that she has hitherto been somewhat careless, or,
at least, indifferent, about the Asiatic inflow. She has
had no whites to spare for British Columbia, and has not
seriously concerned herself with the question of how
the interests of that province, and, indeed, of the
Dominion, might be affected by the incoming of an
alien race. The white labour already there is opposed
to yellow immigration root and branch, and in this it
has, and will have in an ever-increasing degree, the
support of the people elsewhere in the Dominion, On
this ground alone — the solidarity of white labour in a
democratic community — I suggest that thc demand for
the exclusion of the yellow man will become irresistible.
Judging from what I saw in this province, the claim is
just and necessary, not only in the higher interests of
the region and of Canada, but also in those of the popu
lation of our islands. For them British Columbia is
a reserve homeland which, in extent, in actual and
potential resources, and in scenic grandeur and beauty,
is a territorial jewel of great price.

CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT CLAY BELT
Beyond the majestic range of the Selkirks are placid,
crystal lakes which mirror with weird and enchanting
beauty the forest-clad and snow-capped mountains
surrounding them. But for quiet loveliness and restful
charm no region of Canada which I saw surpasses the
chain of lakes embosomed in the undulating bushlands
of New or Northern Ontario, Of these Lake Tema-
gami is the most beautiful. Until within the past year
or two it was inaccessible save by a toilsome journey
through the bush, or by canoe from Sturgeon River,
above thc falls crossed by the Canadian Pacific Railway
from North Bay. A railway, however, has been built
by the Ontario Government from North Bay, which
will eventually meet the projected trans-Continental line
to be known as the Grand Trunk Pacific ; and this
passes the head of the lake. On my' return across the
continent I broke the journey here and branched off
northward once more, in the hope of seeing something of
" the Great Clay Belt " which the Grand Trunk Pacific
is to make accessible for future generations of immi
grants. Much is likely to be heard in England concern
ing this belt, for it is possible that there may be develop
ment there somewhat similar to that which has taken
184

MOUNTAIN AND LAKE

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 185
place on the prairie during the past thirty years. It is
part of the newly-discovered cultivable lands in the
north. If the reader will take a map of Canada and trace a
line westward to Lake Nipissing he will see that the
whole of the country to the north is unoccupied. Until
lately it was unknown save to the traders with the
Indians. No white settlement existed between the
rocky land about Lake Nipissing and the shores of
James Bay. It is in this region that the " Great Clay
Belt " lies — a belt computed to be about two hundred
miles wide and a thousand miles long. The trans-
Continental railway of the Grand Trunk Pacific is to
run through this area ; and it is argued that a large
agricultural population will in due course be attracted.
The Government of Ontario regard it as a field for
colonisation — as an area which the projected railway is
ripening for settlement. They have themselves made
one part of the belt accessible by building a railway from
North Bay, on Lake Nipissing, in the direction of Lake
Abitibbi, and this line is to be continued until it forms
a junction with the Grand Trunk Pacific, It is now
completed as far as New Liskeard, on the northern shore
of Lake Temaskamingue, a distance of about one
hundred and thirteen miles, and its continuation will
throw open the country which lies aback of the Blanche
River. The Government line northward takes the traveller
through as wild a tract of the primeval world as one
would wish to see. For the first fifty miles he passes
over the rock formations which stretch westward for
nearly a thousand miles. This is, or, geologically.

i86 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
should be, a mineral belt, which is for the most part un
explored. After fifty miles the rock belt ceases, or
rather, is hidden by a thick layer of clay, though here
and there it crops out again in great masses and ridges,
giving boldness and variety to the scenery; and among
these ridges silver, cobalt, and nickel have lately been
found in such abundance that an active mining industry
has come into being.
Lake Temagami — the Indian name signifies Deep
Water — is not the largest of the lakes. That distinc
tion belongs to Lake Temaskamingue, which may
almost be described as a miniature inland sea separating
the province of Quebec from the northern area of
Ontario, But Temagami is incomparably the more
beautiful, because of irregularity of form and multi
plicity of islands. It is situated in the heart of a vast
forest reserve — an area of nearly a million and a half
acres, which the Ontario Government have kept in
violate against the lumberman. No settlement can
take place upon it. Such Indians as inhabit it or may
enter it are, of course, free from disturbance ; but
no white man can obtain concessions to cut lumber
within it or to farm. It is unsuitable for colonisation ;
but its scenic beauties, its wealth of woodland life, its
lakes and rivers, teeming as they are with fish, make it
an ideal holiday ground. The explorer, the sportsman,
the fisherman, thc canoeist, have here an expanse of thc
primeval world which is quite unspoiled.
Thousands of tourists might frequent the region and
yet never be seen by the traveller who takes his own
canoes and camp equipment with him, for the configura
tion ofthe lake is such that seclusion is easily obtained.

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 187
If you take a penful of ink and dash it violently upon a
sheet of paper you will get a central blot and innumer
able irregular radiating splashes. The shape of Lake
Temagami is not dissimilar. Wherever there is water
there are islands, with the result that there is a bewilder
ing number of channels and a new view of water and
woodland at almost every stroke of the paddles. Once
on the water, you can travel into other lakes for a dis
tance of fifty miles from north to south and sixty from
east to west, or along river-courses back to the line
of civilisation. The panorama is supremely beautiful.
And within the limits of the forest reserve game
abounds. The region beyond, where settlement has begun on
an insignificant scale, but where it is henceforth to be
directed by the provincial Government, is far less beauti
ful but more valuable — that is, if it be assumed that
what is reported of its agricultural potentialities proves
to be true in practice. The matter is worth careful
consideration by the English immigrant with a little
capital, for when he reaches Toronto he will probably
find himself subject to official persuasion to throw in his
fortunes with this undeveloped region rather than spend
his strength on the prairie. On the north-west shore of
Lake Temaskamingue he will find two tiny towns about
seven miles apart — Hailebury and New Liskeard. In
the neighbourhood of the latter there are several farms
well cleared of bush, and along the colonisation roads
and on the banks of the river are similar clearings, with
wooden houses and barns, and, in some cases, a few
cattle. Altogether I saw about a hundred clearings in
various stages of progress, on which pioneers were

i88 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
endeavouring to establish themselves. All else was forest
— a rolling open country, with heavily-timbered bush
extending as far as the eye could see. Occasional clear
ings were also to be seen in the course of a day's steam
ing up thc Blanche River to Tomstown — the farthest
limit of white settlement — the pioneer in this case being
an aged Englishman who had lived in the bush there
abouts since early manhood. I met one man coming
down the Blanche River, who had spent five months
exploring the country as far north as the Lake
Abitibbi, and another at New Liskeard who had
been surveying for two seasons south and east of
that lake. Each had the same story to tell. The
clay belt was an indubitable fact ; but it was also an
interminable forest, available only for agriculture when
it shall have been cleared.
It will be obvious, therefore, that the problem for the
emigrant settler in the Temaskamingue region and
throughout the clay belt traversed by the Grand Trunk
Pacific is a different one from that which confronts him
on the prairie. He will have to learn to swing an axe,
which is something of a fine art, to log trees, and haul
out the logs, to drag the stumps out of the earth. These
things will have to be done before he can sow or keep
stock. But the counterbalancing advantage is that the
logs he cuts are marketable. If there is white pine on
his lot, and there is sure to be some, he can get a price
for it. His labour is then remunerative. But if thc
soft woods predominate, the price is low — at least at
present, for the English market is overstocked with deal
and pulp woods. None the less thc lumber is an
asset. It can be converted into hard cash. The only

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 189
capital that need be put into the business of cutting
it is the price of an axe. I write, of course, figur
atively, not literally, for a man would have to keep
himself alive while he was accumulating logs for the
lumberman. Moreover, a forest region has this advantage over a
treeless prairie — timber for housebuilding is cheap. A
man can build quite a palatial dwelling out of rough logs.
Then, again, no fuel has to be bought. There is an
inexhaustible supply of firing to be had at one's doors
for the labour of chopping down the trees, sawing them
into two-feet lengths, and splitting them with an axe.
On the prairie one may have to take a team and a
wagon twenty miles before coming to available fuel.
To buy wood for winter use is a very heavy item in
the domestic budget, whether in the towns or on the
plains. On the other hand, it is the work of a lifetime for a
man to clear a lot of a hundred and sixty acres. It should
not be so, but in practice it is so, as in the heavily-
timbered parts of Australia, To spend money on
clearing for the sake of clearing, selling the lumber for
what it may fetch, regardless of the state of the market,
may cost, with stumping, anything from twenty dollars
to forty dollars per acre, according to the size and
density of the forest growth. Such a course would be
impracticable except for men of considerable capital.
The wiser plan is to go slowly — to clear a few acres
month by month, sow the cleared land, and extend
cultivation year by year. This is what the present
settlers on the edge of the clay belt are now doing.
Consequently the clearings are small, and they are too

190 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
recent to enable one to form any just estimate of the
fertility of the soil.
It appears, however, that the land will grow anything
from grain to potatoes, and that it is surprisingly good
for oats and peas. Growth is astonishingly rapid, and
drought is unknown. The winter is long. It sets in
in earnest in November, and the frost is not out of the
ground until May, On 7th June the oats on the clearings
among the colonisation roads north of New Liskeard
were scarcely showing above the ground, while on the
prairie, which I had left late in May, the wheat was
from four to six inches high. The explanation was that
Nature had been freakish — that the spring was late that
year in Ontario and early on the prairie, while normally
the reverse is the case. Be that as it may, the effect
upon the settlers was somewhat disheartening. I found
them weary of waiting until the warm weather came.
The ground, they complained, was "cold," as newly-
broken ground in Canada always is, whether on the
prairie or in a forest clearing. There could be no doubt
that the settlers, most of whom were poor and without
the capital with which to develop their holdings, were
confronted with what is known in Canada as "a hard
proposition," But they were tackling it with grim de
termination, men and horses working like Trojans to
tear the stumps out of the earth, A few sentences of
description will give an idea of the magnitude and
severity of the task. The colonisation road is merely
a broad straight path cleared through the forest. Along
side one of these roads, or along lake shore, or river bank,
the settler selects his holding. His first business is to
clear a sufficient space upon which to set up a shanty.

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 191
which he can, if he is too poor to buy lumber, build up
with the logs. His next task is to create a field out of
the surrounding backwoods. He goes through the forest
with an axe, felling right and left, taking care that the
logs fall in such a way as not to impede his progress.
To do this he must needs be, or learn how to become,
an expert axeman ; and in learning it he will misspend
much of his energy. The cutting done, he must haul
away the marketable logs to lake or river, pile up the
remainder and burn them. He may have to wait for
months before he will get a " good burn " ; and here
also experience and knack such as Canadians alone possess
are necessary, though an English immigrant who will
observe his Canadian neighbours and learn from them,
as well as exercise his mother wit for himself, will find
the task manageable, even if tedious and troublesome.
The logs disposed of, the slighter stumps would have to
be torn from the ground, with the help of a hired team,
if the settler did not possess horses of his own. It is
arduous and exciting work. A horse accustomed to it
pulls with brains. He leans with gradually accumulating
force against the broad breast-band to which thc chain
traces attached to the tackle round the stump are
fastened, and thus "feels" the resistance of the stump.
Again and again he throws his weight upon the band
until thc stump moves and " gives," The man at
the stump watches these movements, axe in hand,
and severs a root branch here and there which helps
to imprison the stump. When the horse has pulled
and pulled and finds the roots "giving" more and more,
he puts power into his work and at the right moment
gives a mighty tug — and out the stump comes. Some

192 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
of the stumps give an infinity of trouble, and the labour
wears out men and horses. The heaviest are often left
in the ground for many years.
Imagine what an infinity of labour will have to be
spent on " the great clay belt " before it can be converted
into a farming region ! But the forest is not so dense
and heavily timbered as was old Ontario. That region
has been cleared by the sweat of man and horse during
more than a century. The " belt " can only be made
into agricultural land by similar long and painful toil.
This then is the work which the English emigrant who
goes there will have to do. It is a Herculean task ; and
because it is so, settlement and cultivation must necessarily
be slow. The problem should not, however, be looked
at from the standpoint of the modern English townsman,
who has probably never seen an axe — certainly never an
axe such as the Canadian backwoodsman swings with such
consummate ease, and with which he can fell a towering
spruce in a few strokes, and before which the saplings go
down by a single easy cut. It has to be regarded in thc
light of human experience from the beginning of time,
Thc greater portion of the earth was once forest-covered.
Only areas such as the plains of North and Southern
America, of Central Asia, the desert regions of Afi-ica
and the heart of Australia, were destitute of this umbra
geous covering. Wide stretches of Northern and
North-Eastern Europe are still forest-clad. There is a
graphic resemblance between much of Russia and the
backwoods of Canada. England was once almost all
forest. Broad expanses of primeval woodland existed in
our own land until long past the Middle Ages. As
humanity spread over thc earth and developed from the

D<
a

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 193
nomadic stage into settled and organised societies, it has
had to clear the forests away by the axe and by fire.
Human ingenuity has done no more to lessen the labour
than by the invention of improved horse-tackle and
stumping appliances. The twentieth-century emigrant
to New Ontario will therefore have to do what his early
forefathers did in England before they possessed the land
for other purposes than thc chase. He will go into a
primeval world to do such work as his ancestors did in
remote ages. Only by strenuous labour and wear and
tear of body can he make a holding of one hundred and
sixty acres yield him a subsistence. He will, in fact,
have to sacrifice himself for those that come after him —
a sacrifice which will last as long as he has strength to
lift an axe, for the clearing of one hundred and sixty
acres is a life work which few men accomplish single-
handed. To keep at it for years breaks some men's
hearts. Others go on, season by season, in dull despair of
accomplishing their desire before death claims them.
"The clay belt," as I have said, is computed to be
nearly a thousand miles in length, with a breadth of two
hundred miles — some authorities say more. The exact
size of the probable farming area is immaterial. It is
sufficient to say that it is enormous. I climbed high
ground wherever that was possible. The colonisation
road, north from New Liskeard, goes up and down over
heavily rolling country. There are points where ex
tensive views are obtainable. In every direction the
scene was the same — a panorama of forest-clad hill and
valley, the trees everywhere so close together that one
could not swing a walking-stick without striking a
trunk. And this, to judge from what I was told by
N

194 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
explorers from the Abittibi region, is characteristic of the
country northward to the shores of the Hudson Bay, the
only important difference being that the farther north you
go the slighter is the timber, and therefore the easier the
land to clear. This, then, is the sort of country through
which the Grand Trunk Pacific is to pass after it leaves
the populated region of Eastern Quebec until it emerges
upon the prairie — and again as it goes north of the
Saskatchewan at Edmonton, north - westward into
Athabasca, and thence through the northern mountain
country to the sea in the neighbourhood of Queen
Charlotte Islands. Looking northward from beyond New
Liskeard and northward from beyond Edmonton, the
traveller can but speculate how many generations of men
will have come and gone before these vast forest lands
are subdued. The railway of itself is a stupendous
enterprise. It will be carried through. The Dominion
Government is pledged to that. Many thousands of
labourers from all parts of Europe will be brought into
Canada to do the work. A thin line of settlement will
grow up on each side of the permanent way. What
will be the lot of these settlers ? Will they prosper ?
Will such of them as are of our own race be glad to
have exchanged a life of struggle in densely populated
England for such economic independence as a forest
holding in the Canadian backwoods may afford ? These
are questions which no man can answer. The emigrant
must take his chance. All that an inquiring traveller
such as myself can do is to state his own impressions of
what he saw, and hint at his misgivings. Nor do these
last arise only from a contemplation of the struggles
of the few settlers who have, thus far, gone into the

THE GREAT CLAY BELT 195
" great clay belt," or from a sympathetic appreciation of
their uphill fight with the forces of Nature in a climate
which is almost semi- Arctic ; for that is what it is, however
artistically the writers of emigration literature for Euro
pean consumption may suppress or disguise the fact.
Perplexing doubts leap to the mind whenever one tests
one's own dubious opinions by a critical reading ofthe
reports of official explorers and surveyors. They talk
of lakes which are magnificent sheets of water, of slop
ing and level clay-lands, of rolling clay-lands and the
like, well or fairly timbered. If I were to attempt to
marshal the knowledge contained in these and similar
documents, this book would be of portentous length.
The sum and substance of it, so far as Northern
Ontario is concerned, is that north of the height of land
there is an arable area — when cleared of forest — of about
twenty-five thousand square miles. But experts are very
cautious when they come to close quarters with the
agricultural problem ; and rightly so, for there is so little
experience to guide them, only a handful of settlers, hardly
themselves established, at one corner of the area. " The
climate of this region is reported to have no features which
would prevent the ripening of grain or the growing of
wheat crops " is a sentence which may be quoted as an
example of this disquieting caution. (The italics are
mine.) And when one studies the weather records, such
as those kept at the stations of the Hudson Bay Company,
and appreciates what it means when rivers are clear of
ice only about May-day, and snow may fall in summer
one is surely justified in concluding that only emigrants
who are of iron frame and unflinching stoutness of heart,
should betake themselves to these northern wilds. If

196 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
that is a conclusion disagreeable to the " boomsters " of
the Dominion, it is, I suggest, that at which most
men would arrive who had an acquaintance with the
country itself and with the official evidence of its
natural features and resources. The " boomsters " have
that knowledge for the most part, but the fact that they
are sometimes financially interested in railway projects,
or get a bonus on emigrants they send out, may warp
their judgment and excite their imagination.

CHAPTER XIV
WHY NOT AN IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY?
In a spirit of deference to those who have made less
superficial studies of the emigration problem, certain
suggestions and conclusion will, in this chapter, be sub
mitted to the judgment of the reader. Five months'
investigation in Canada has but enabled me to see
the many-sidedness of the subject and the need of
focussing upon it the special experience and mental
activities of others. The elucidation and co-ordination
of knowledge could be accomplished by a Royal Com
mission, or even by a re-appointment, under compre
hensive but precise terms of reference, of the Depart
mental Committee which, as I write, is sitting at the
Colonial Office, under the chairmanship of Lord Tenny
son, to inquire into and report upon certain Colonisation
proposals made by Mr H. Rider Haggard, who visited
the Salvation Army Colonies in the United States, and
wrote a narrative which has deservedly attracted much
attention. It deals with an important feature of the
emigration problem, and the labours of the Committee
may be expected to add materially to public knowledge
and assist in the formation of opinion. But whatever
the verdict of the Committee may be upon the specific
proposals made by Mr Rider Haggard, there is, I venture
197

198 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
to think, occasion for an investigation of greater range
and thoroughness. The time is ripe for an inquiry with
the object of eliciting definite recommendations to
facilitate, on an organised system, the settlement on the
unutilised Crown lands of the Empire — not alone of
Canada — of such people in the United Kingdom as may
desire to emigrate, or for whom emigration would be
advantageous to the community in England, and those in
lands over-sea. Such recommendations might supply thc
basis of an Imperial policy with regard to emigration.
The proposition I suggest for acceptance is that the
movement from our shores should no longer be left un
directed and unorganised, but should be brought within
the range of constructive statesmanship, and regulated by
an administrative system. The first step to that end
is an inquiry into the facts relating to all parts of the
over-sea Empire where the white race can thrive. An
adequate examination of them could only be made by
men of trained minds, accustomed to deal with masses
of sociological evidence, and impressed by the necessity
of evolving a working plan for the better distribution
throughout the Empire of the white population of the
Empire. Put shortly, the fundamental facts are these : — In
Canada, as in other self-governing Colonies, there are
vast areas of uninhabited Crown lands — reserves of
territory for our racial increase for centuries to come ;
an immense "granary," so to speak, where the land-
hunger of our people can be appeased. In the United
Kingdom, from sheer pressure of population on a small
area, there is a surplus which should either find room
elsewhere to live, or, by remaining where it is, must

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 199
intensify evils which seem to be already beyond the
powers of statesmanship greatly to alleviate, much less
to cure. In the Colonies the Empire has the land and
not the people ; in the United Kingdom the Empire has
no available margin of land, but ever-increasing millions
of men. Obviously a remedy is to be found in a re
distribution of people.
Should such redistribution be left to accomplish itself
by natural processes, or should it be assisted and guided
by the State ? Should an Empire, with congestion of
people at the centre, and vast belts of unutilised
Crown lands, easily reached by the highways of the
sea, formulate for itself an emigration policy for the
Empire as a whole, or should it leave emigration to go
on unaided and undirected ? Having seen something of
what may be called the haphazard emigration of the
present day, I submit, as a positive result of study in
the Dominion of Canada, that these questions should
be brought within the scope of an authoritative inquiry.
Let it be assumed that his Majesty thought fit to
appoint a Royal Commission ; that the terms of refer
ence were comprehensively framed ; and that the Com
missioners were themselves men of constructive mind.
The public throughout the Empire would then, in all
probability, be in possession of a set of definite and
authoritative recommendations ; and with these as a
basis for action it would be comparatively easy for a
Secretary of State for the Colonies, in conjunction with
the Ministers of the Crown in the Colonies, to create
and work an Imperial emigration policy which would be
in harmony with the immigration needs of each Colony,
with our own necessities in the matter of obtaining re-

200 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
lief from congestion in the United Kingdom, and in
better accord than at present with the welfare of emi
grants — the last being not the least important point. Let
us sec what the nature of its investigations might be
It would, it may be assumed, be charged : —
I. — To inquire into and report upon the extent and
suitability for colonisation of Crown lands in such parts
of the over-sea Empire as are habitable by the white race,
and the systems under which they are administered.
II. — To inquire into and report upon the methods now
in operation, or suggested, for attracting population to
those areas ; and to inquire into and report upon the
economic conditions in which emigrants thus attracted
would find themselves.
III. — To inquire into and report upon such schemes
of colonisation as have been carried out in the self-
governing Colonies, and such schemes as may be in
progress or may now be projected,
IV, — To consider and report whether assistance should
be accorded to persons desirous of emigrating, and
on what principles such help should be given — (a) To
intending emigrants without means on leaving the
United Kingdom ; and (b) on their arrival in a
colony, V. — To consider and report what administrative
machinery should be created with the object of facilitating
emigration — (a) In the form of settling families or
individuals on the Crown lands ; (i) in the form of
labour for hire.
VI. — To inquire into and report upon the feasibility
of establishing, with the advice and assistance of the

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 201
Governments of the self-governing Colonies, an adminis
trative system in the United Kingdom and in each
of the Colonies, to be operated on principles and by
methods mutually agreed upon ; the cost of such a system,
and of such financial help as may be given to emigrants
individually, or to bodies of emigrants proceeding to a
colony under any approved system of colonisation, to be
apportioned between the Imperial Government and the
Colonial Government accepting the charge of such
emigrants. These would be, I apprehend, or might advantageously
be made, the broad avenues of inquiry by a Royal
Commission, Much would, of course, depend upon
the ability of the Commissioners, the thoroughness
with which they did their work, and the measure of
assistance they would receive in and from the Colonies.
I have no title to speak for Canada, but I should judge
that her statesmen and people would welcome the
appointment of such a Commission, and would co-operate
eagerly in making the inquiry fruitful in practical
results. It is of vital importance to Canada, and perhaps also
to the British Empire as a whole, not only that she
should continue to receive an abundant immigration, but
that the immigration should be of thc right quality.
A great nation is being built up there — a nation
whose ultimate numbers and power no man can fore
see. Only by a well-conceived and well-directed policy
of emigration, on a bolder scale than at present, will this
nation be in the future predominately British in blood
and speech and traditions ; and here let me say that for

202 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
all practical political purposes the French may be
regarded as British, It is not of them I am thinking,
but of the thousands of foreigners of all kinds, chiefly
from Central and South-Eastern Europe, who are
pouring into the country. It is to the best interests
of the Dominion in the long run, as it certainly is to thc
best advantage ofthe Empire, that the immigration into
Canada should be exclusively or almost so, a British
immigration. This is what Canada herself desires, so
far as I have been able to gauge her political thought.
If British emigration does not go there, the overflow of
Continental Europe will go — is indeed now going rapidly.
To the extent of this foreign influx Canada is developing
on wrong lines — on lines which she herself would wish
were otherwise ; on lines which may not wholly
correspond with Imperial interests. No one would
prefer to see a greater Canada composed of heterogeneous
races. The desire is for a development of the united
French and British Canada of to-day — a natural
expansion arising from the fecundity of the French and
British Canadians, aided by British immigration. If that
hope is to be realised, something must be done to
strengthen the British influx into Canada, If it is not
done the Dominion will become increasingly cosmopolitan
and to that degree indifferent to Imperial interests — a
matter on which something will be said in later chapters
dealing solely with political thought and tendencies in
the Dominion,
The reasoning set forth above applies generally to all
parts of thc Empire where the white race can live ; and
it may surely be assumed that the Governments of those
regions would gladly co-operate in an Imperial policy

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 203
for diverting the streams of emigration from England to
themselves. If not, it would be the business of states
manship here and in the self-governing Colonies to
overcome such reluctance to receive emigrants as might
be exhibited by, for example, short-sighted democracies
in Australia, whose tendency it is to misuse the right
of self-government, by locking up the Crown lands
entrusted to their management, against the people of the
Motherland, At present all that the Imperial Government does to
relieve congestion in England, to people the Empire, and
to help the would-be emigrant to help himself by getting
away to this or that region where his labour may be more
marketable, is to provide an office in a back street in
Westminster. It is called the Emigration Office, but is
merely a sort of bookseller's shop, where penny pamphlets
are sold. An inquirer is received by a polite and attentive
youth in the service of the Colonial Office, who re
peats certain official formulae learned by rote, and offers
pamphlets for sale. The offices open only during hours
when the working classes cannot attend. When I
went there to ascertain what advice and assistance it
could afford to an intending emigrant to Canada, there
was no one there who had ever been outside England !
An Emigration Office such as this is a waste of public
money. Let us try to imagine what might be a possible
outcome of an inquiry and recommendations by a Royal
Commission. A special branch of the Colonial Office
might be charged with the administration of emigration.
The principles on which emigration would be managed
would be settled by the Secretary of State for the

204 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Colonies in agreement with the governments of the
Colonies requiring immigration ; and the new depart
ment or branch of the Colonial Office would work in con
junction and in harmony with the Immigration Depart
ments of those Colonies. All poor-law authorities and
private societies sending out emigrants might be required
to do their work through the Emigration Department,
The offices of the Department need not necessarily be
in Downing Street, but in a great thoroughfare in a
populous working quarter. Or, if the head office were
in Whitehall — the offices where the policy was framed
and its execution directed — the building in -which the
executive work was done might be in the City Road,
or Mile-End Road, or some artery through which
the tide of industrial population pours daily. The
building need not be a marble palace, but should be
sufficiently imposing to attract attention ; and un
mistakably declaring its character and purpose as the
would-be emigrant's gateway to the over-sea empire.
It would, presumably, be under the direction of a Con
troller, who would have under him, apart from the
clerks, a sufficient staff of men who had travelled and
lived in one or other of the Colonies, and knew at first
hand the climatic and economic conditions. There
would be an expert or experts of this kind on Canada,
whose duty it would be to deal with emigration to
Canada ; and similarly for Australasia and various parts
of Africa. The staffing of the Bureau with the right
kind of men from the Colonies themselves would not
be impossible. The Bureau would be open in the
evenings and on Saturday afternoons ; and similar
Bureaus might be established in the chief provincial

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 205
cities if the outward movement of population continued
to be on a scale which justified that course.
To such a Bureau the intending emigrant would go
and put his case thus :
"I wish to emigrate. My trade or calling is such
and such. I am single (or I have a wife and —
children, as the case may be). I am thinking of Canada.
I can pay' my passage out. Shall I go ? And when and
where and what can you do to facilitate my trans
ference ? "
Or he might put his case thus :
"I am unemployed. My resources are at an end. If
I stay in England I must either starve or die by inches
on the streets or go into the workhouse. Fd rather go
out of England to one of the Colonies. Can you send
me, and where, and when ? "
The Bureau would, it may be assumed, deal with
either class of case. Its Colonial specialists would be able
to say whether this or that man and family would be
more useful to himself and to the Dominion by being
directed or sent to Canada, or to South Africa, or to
this or that part of Australasia ; and it would have
command of the administrative machinery by which
emigrants could leave the country.
But what of the cost ? It would be considerable, no
doubt, however the expenses might be apportioned
between the country parting with emigrants and the
colony receiving them. On the other hand, if the
Emigration policy were sound in itself, the expenditure
would be, socially and Imperially at least, as efficacious as
the addition of a new battleship to the fleet or a few
regiments of infantry to the army — matters about which

2o6 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
no one nowadays troubles himself. A Secretary of State
for the Colonies, who was also Secretary of State for
Emigration would, if he were worth his salary at all, be
able to obtain from the House of Commons whatever
money was necessary for carrying out a well-conceived
and defensible policy. He might have a little tussle in
the Cabinet with a Chancellor of the Exchequer, but
that is no more than every War and Navy Minister has.
Once the Cabinet had agreed on the principle of organis
ing an Emigration Service in co-operation with the
Colonial Emigration Services, the rest would depend
wholly upon thc ability of the Emigration Minister or
Secretary for the Colonies. If he required money for
plans which he could support with irrefutable arguments,
he would get it from the Cabinet in the long run ; and
as modern Parliaments merely register the decrees of
Cabinets, he would be reasonably sure of obtaining the
money in the House of Commons, which votes millions
for all sorts of purposes with scarcely a thought. Here,
in such an Emigration Service, there is at least a start
ing point for a more intimate working union between
the component parts of the Empire. For the Mother
Country and the Colonies to devise executive machinery
in concert for the better distribution of population, to
the advantage of the whole Empire, would seem to be a
somewhat simple problem. It is, at anyrate, simplicity
itself in comparison with the task of achieving organic
unity by Fiscal bargaining or by Colonial contributions
for the upkeep of an Imperial navy and army.
In these suggestions there is, of course, nothing
original — except, perhaps, in that which would provide
that the advice and help given to the would-be emigrant

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 207
should be forthcoming from men of Colonial experience
and not from untraveUed clerks, whose only qualification
was that they had passed the Civil Service examination.
State-aided and directed emigration. State schemes of
colonisation, are as old as Imperialism itself. The ideas at
the back of them illuminate Carlyle's tirades on the in
capacity of the aristocratic class so to govern the Realm
as to eliminate preventable poverty and misery from the
body politic. But if there is no originality in the sug
gestions, that does not of itself detract from any merit
they may have. They have not been put into operation.
Nothing has been done — except to open a pamphlet-
selling shop in a by-street — because past Secretaries of
State for the Colonies have not applied their minds to
emigration. A Royal Commission, or other sufficient
meansof investigation, would at least provide the material
for ministerial thought, if not also supply the Govern
ment with the framework of an administrative scheme
by which an Imperial policy of Emigration could be put
into effect.
The intending emigrant, meanwhile, must content
himself with the penny pamphlet, and exercise his own
judgment upon emigration literature, the statements of
salaried agents who obtain Colonial Government bonuses
upon emigrants sent out by them, and the views of
travellers, and other private persons. It may be well
to epitomise for the emigrant the case which is pre
sented in the foregoing chapters.
Canada is a country about three thousand five hundred
miles from east to west, and about one thousand four
hundred miles from north to south. The inhabited and
sparsely populated strip east to west is, say, four hundred

2o8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
miles broad ; the remaining breadth of a thousand miles
is primeval bushland,5extending into the Arctic region.
For about two thousand three hundred miles west
ward from the Atlantic it is a forest country, with the
exception ofold Ontario, cleared only in the neighbour
hood of its centres of population. Next comes a belt of
prairie, a thousand miles from east to west, and about four
hundred miles from south to north. Save for parts of
Manitoba, where there is stunted timber, this belt is almost
treeless, though beyond it, in a northerly direction, is a vast
forest, of lesser and poorer growth than that of the eastern
forest provinces. Then there is the mountain belt of six
hundred miles. About this the emigrant need not concern
himself until he is rich enough to buy land for a fruit or
dairy farm, when he can live out his old age amid magnifi
cent scenery and in a climate as genial as that of Devonshire.
Now as to the climate. The emigrant should clearly
understand that from October to April the snowfall is
so heavy and the frost so severe that the hardest English
winter within the memory ofthe oldest inhabitant is not to
be compared with the normal winter of Eastern Canada
and the prairie. On the other hand the summer is hot,
though the nights as ajrulejare cool. Throughout the
year there is an abundance of sunshine — in winter whole
days and weeks of it. Only during snowfalls is the sky
obscured. The air is brilliantly clear. There are no fogs.
It is dry and exhilarating, intoxicating even — so long as
you are well fed, thickly clad, prosperous, and contented,
Canada in winter is, then, a land of ice and snow and
sunlight ; and the nights are as glorious as the days —
of a glory surpassing credence by those who know only
the humid and variable winters of England,

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 209
Now these climatic conditions have an economic
bearing on the question of emigration. It is important
that the emigrant should appreciate what the relation
is. If he does not, he will go to that part of the Empire
under a misapprehension. He will be disillusioned and
disappointed, and may do as many others have done
— take the first steamer back to England. The chief
economic bearing is that, broadly speaking, except for
work in the woodlands, in the factories, shops, and
offices of the cities and towns, human activity of the
productive order is necessarily limited to seven months
in the year.
From this unalterable fact the following deduction
may be made.
An emigrant to Canada, who goes without capital
or without secure and definite employment, should be
a single man, under forty years of age, of strong physique
and accustomed to, or prepared to enter upon, the
roughest kinds of manual labour. That is the only
kindof immigrant who is sure to obtain work sufficiently
continuous and remunerative to enable him to feed
and clothe himself the year round well and comfortably,
and save a little money with which to become inde
pendent of wage-earning, either by farming a homestead
or engaging in business. Thereafter he would be able
to support a wife and family.
Wages, in Canada, taking a broad view, are in reality
no higher, and employment is no more continuous and
certain, than in England. Wages look much higher.
The London bricklayer, who reads that the pay for
such craftsmen in Ontario towns is thirty-eight cents
an hour, should divide the one shilling and sevenpence

210 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
by two, for it is only possible for him to work at his
trade during the summer months. His real earnings
are ninepence-halfpenny an hour the year round ; and he
should remember that rent, clothing, and the incidental
expenses of life, thanks to the rapacity of the Protec
tionists of the Dominion, are at least 25 per cent, higher
than in England. Facts and figures might be taken
from the official Labour Gazette of Canada, dealing with
all kinds of trades and callings, to show that the artisan
and labourer who can get fairly continuous work in
England is as well off here as he would be across the
Atlantic. The advantage of going to Canada does not
lie in the seemingly high rate of wages, and certainly
not in conditions which offer continuous employment,
for these do not, and cannot, for climatic reasons, exist,
except in certain permanent phases of city life. It lies
in the fact that Caiiada is a growing country, in which
there are opportunities for an adventurous and frugal
man to develop or change his calling. The agricultural
labourer, for example, can do what is impossible for him
in England, however frugal and industrious he may be
— become a farmer owning his own land, Thc plumber
who is the first to appear in a little prairie village
which is becoming a town has an excellent chance of
making money freely as a master man. These examples
will give point to the argument.
Another conclusion is that at present there is a surfeit
of labour throughout Canada, and particularly in the
North-West. Thc immigration of people without money
has shot ahead of the immigration of those with means
with which to take up land, and thus broaden the de
mand for hired labour. In the country there are more

IMPERIAL EMIGRATION POLICY 2x1
agricultural labourers, chiefly unskilled, available for hire
than there are established farmers and new homesteaders
who can afford to pay for hire. The inflow has been
greater than the amount of available capital for employ
ment on the land. In the cities and towns and villages
the immigration is in excess of the amount of capital
existent for the extension of business operations and the
profitable absorption of the newcomers — at least from the
standpoint of newcomers, who have not only to earn
enough to keep themselves while the sun is shining, but
also during the coming winter. These conditions will,
of course, be modified for the time being when the pro
jected new railways are proceeded with in earnest, for
many thousands of labourers — at mere subsistence wages
— will be needed upon them.
At the same time it is indisputably true that penniless
immigrants, even in a somewhat overcrowded labour
market, such as now exists in Canada, can, and do, earn
a livelihood, and work their way upwards to comfort, if
not also to wealth. They have done it in the past, and
they are doing it to-day, Canada is the land ofthe self-
made man. There is scarcely a score of men in the
country who were " born with silver spoons in their
mouths," but there are thousands who landed without a
dollar, and are now in comparative affluence, some of
them exercising authority and influence in public life.
On the terrace fronting the Parliament Buildings at
Ottawa — as fine an example of pure Gothic as can be
found in modern architecture — is a statue of Mackenzie,
the famous "Liberal" statesman. He went from Scot
land as a working stonemason, without a cent. The
statue is symbolical of economic and social conditions

2X2 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
which still prevail in Canada, and will last as long
as there is a " section " of virgin land within the
cultivable zone. But Mackenzie was an exceptional
man, strong-brained as well as strong-handed. All
the prosperous and successful immigrants I met were
of this easily recognisable type. But the immigrants
in the mass are not of this stamp. They are quite
average men in mental power, ambition, force of will.
Mediocrity can attain to only mediocre success; and
the economic conditions in Canada, as elsewhere, are
such that mediocrity should have no illusions as to
the degree of prosperity awaiting it. The Dominion is,
in brief, a hard country in which to live and work and
succeed. The immigrant without capital is heavily
handicapped. Whether he should be assisted, and in
what way, is a question which calls for consideration.
Taking a broad view of the matter, my impression is
that the emigration movement to Canada should be so
directed and controlled that the labour force it represents
should be expended upon the Crown lands, rather than
be left to shift for itself and swell the host of landless
men, living on intermittent and -seasonal hirings, and
ever at the mercy of combinations of capitalists who in
troduce " Dagos " or Italian shovelmen, Galicians and
Jews, in order to keep the remuneration of labour down
to the lowest level on which the labourer can subsist.
Out of the many thousands of English people now going
yearly to Canada, there is a considerable proportion who
would make successful peasant proprietors if means could
be devised, by the suggested Royal Commission or other
wise, for keeping them out of the maelstrom of the
seasonal labour market, and placing them on the soil.

PART II
An Analysis of Canadian Thought

CHAPTER I
THE REPUBLICAN TENDENCY
The current of thought in Canada is setting towards
Absolute Independence, In a few short chapters an
examination will be made of the varying and some
times conflicting considerations which suggest that con
clusion. No analysis of the condition of opinion among
six millions of people can be made with scientific
accuracy. Errors are inevitable. But, being a
journalist — a professional student of political phenomena
— my investigations were not restricted to the subject
of immigration. I made such explorations as were
possible into the Canadian mind — a domain almost as
far-reaching as the territory of the Dominion. The
opportunity was unique. For five months I was thrown
almost exclusively among what in England would be
known as the " common people," Except for a fort
night spent in Ottawa, in observation of the working of
the parliamentary machine there, and in endeavours to
follow the currents and cross-currents of thought among
professed politicians, my time was spent among men
whose minds were as an open book, I made it my
business to read the pages. Now the Canadian is a
thinking man and a facile talker. The people are
scattered thinly over a great land. Often there is little
215

2x6 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
opportunity for human intercourse. There is much for
reflection. The Canadian exercises an unusually vigor
ous intelligence upon public questions. Politics in the
broadest sense is the staple of his intellectual life. He
has an engaging candour. There is nothing he enjoys
more keenly than instructing an Englishman upon what
Canada is thinking and doing and what she intends to do.
He is at his frankest and best, perhaps, when he meets an
Englishman with as good a grasp of Imperial affairs as
himself. He revels in verbal combat and his power of
self-revelation is immense. Of these traits I took some
advantage, and many discussions, often animated, should
have given me a grip of, and insight into, Canadian
thought, which could hardly have been obtained by
prolonged association with professed politicians — who
sometimes try to mislead a public writer — or much study
of books and newspapers. They have, at least, engendered
ideas which may be novel to any English reader who still
thinks of Canada as a struggling colony subservient to
Great Britain. They are tolerably certain to excite dis
agreement as well as, or it may be, rather than, con
currence. In the role, however, of a self-constituted
interpreter of Canadian thought, I ask to be allowed to
place those ideas in the arena of debate.
Absolute Independence ! that is the Canadian ideal.
Canada looks forward to becoming a Nation, self-acting
in all matters, foreign and domestic. And she regards
her present Fiscal freedom as the foundation-stone of
that ultimate independence. Nor does she consider that
this ideal is necessarily incompatible with retention of
the Imperial connection. There is no valid reason why
a King of England should not also continue to be King

THE REPUBLICAN TENDENCY 217
of Canada — sovereign lord of our Dominions over-sea,
Charles V, was none the less King of Spain because he
was also the German Emperor, Canada would not,
however, do as Spain did — spend her resources in non-
Canadian interests except quite voluntarily. Liberty
of action such as the Cortes vainly tried to assert in
the sixteenth century would unquestionably be reserved
ahd exercised by Canada, But such a reservation would
not debar Canada, as an independent Kingdom with a
British Sovereign, from taking part in such foreign enter
prises as she judged to be necessary or desirable in her
own interests.
Both monarchical and republican tendencies exist
in Canada. There is, however, no excessive admiration
for republicanism, any more than there is for kingly
splendour and the social usages of Courts, Some English
men and some Canadians have an ineradicable habit of
thinking that republicanism has the force of natural
law on the American continent. The majority of
Canadians, however, recognise that it has no greater
validity than any other institution. It will continue
there only by reason of its fitness as a form and method
of government. It has no more divinity than king
ship itself, which survives in England solely by reason
of its utility as a unifying force in national life. The
tree is judged by its fruits; and no one with any acquaint
ance either with the history or existing conditions of
the American Republics, from the 49th parallel to thc
Straits of Magellan, can say that republicanism is a
more beneficial form of government than that of a
limited monarchy. No Canadian thinks that law
and order are better kept across the border than where

2x8 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the King's Writ runs. In that respect, Canadians claim a
decided superiority over the citizens of the United States.
I have known United States immigrants who have as
serted that they left their own country because of the
lawlessness and ruffianism which still go on more or less
unchecked in the Western lands. Some of the best
citizens of the United States are being transferred to
Canada from this cause and others of a kindred nature.
I can recall more than one case in which a Western
farmer, who had migrated into Canada, said that he had
done so because Sunday was strictly observed there, and
disregarded in the State he had left. These men pre
ferred that their families should grow up amid less irre
ligious surroundings. The reason may be sanctimonious ;
but it strengthens the Canadian argument that society
under the British Crown is more highly organised than
in some of the States over the border. Among the
foreign immigrants in theover-crowded dens of Winnipeg,
knives are used occasionally ; but no Canadian, English
or American settler or traveller, thinks of going
armed. The population is essentially pacific. It polices itself.
Every man is an unofficial member of the force. I am
thinking more particularly ofthe prairie and bush country
— of the little body of constabulary scattered in twos
and threes over the wilds. Old settlers tell of affrays in
the sixties and seventies, when revolvers were drawn and
used. Such things do not happen nowadays. A man can
travel anywhere with perfect confidence that not even in
thc lowest drinking dens of the towns will he need
any other means of self-protection than his own sobriety
and straightforward speech. In my wanderings in the

THE REPUBLICAN TENDENCY 2x9
West I heard of only one case of violence, and that
was committed by an American citizen who murdered
his companion on an expedition into the bush. Public
opinion is firmly set against violence. Obedience to the
law is voluntary and implicit, Canadians never tire of
contrasting this condition of things with that which pre
vails in the South, Many of them speak from personal
experience, for in the years of depression thousands of
Canadians had to earn their bread across the frontier.
That movement has almost ceased. There is now a
homeward migration of Canadians who have regained
faith in the future of their country. Such as these
declare with emphasis that there is far greater security
for life and property under the Union Jack than beneath
the Stars and Stripes.
An inference to be drawn is that republicanism is not
necessarily the final outcome of political development in
Canada. The rule of thought there is that whatever is
Canadian is best. There is now a strong feeling against
anything savouring of incorporation with the United
States. Annexation has become impracticable, except,
perhaps, as a military problem on the unthinkable basis
that Great Britain would desert Canada if the United
States attacked her. Even then, there would be a fierce
and sanguinary conflict. Annexation would cost the
United States dear, despite the disparity between the
population of the two countries. Even if it could be
accomplished, there would be an irreconcilable element
for some generations — how persistent, only those who
have mixed with United Empire Loyalists can, perhaps,
appreciate to the full.
On the other hand, there are very strong tend-

220 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
encies which flow in the direction of peaceable amal
gamation with the United States at some remote period.
The chief of these is the commercial intercourse now
intimate and certain to increase between two peoples
side by side along a political frontier for some three
thousand miles. If that boundary were a mountain
chain it would be a barrier to intercourse ; but river
banks, lake shores and a geometric line over the plains
make the passage from one country to the other almost
as easy as crossing a street. United States capital is
invested on whichever side of the line seems to promise
the best returns. Canada incites it to come by special
privileges. Successfully to tempt a United States enter
prise to establish a factory on the Canadian side of the
line is a great gain. There is, then, no international
barrier to the inflow of United States wealth. The
Canadian prospector who has found a silver vein never
thinks of any when he gets into a train for New York
in search of a capitalist to enable him to exploit the
property. And this point opens out a number of con
siderations bearing upon the question of an eventual
amalgamation with the United States and severance of
any formal tie with Great Britain, For the prospector
to go to New York takes him only as many hours
as days would be used in reaching London, He has to
spend only as many dollars as he would need pounds for
the journey to England. Moreover, when he arrives at
New York, he can walk into the office of a capitalist,
straightway sec the principal, and get a quick " yes "
or "no "to his proposal. In London, he will tell you,
he has to run the gauntlet of office boys and junior
clerks, whose instructions seem to be to deter anyone

THE REPUBLICAN TENDENCY 221
from ready access to the head of the firm, who is secreted
and guarded in an inner sanctum as though he were a
Grand Lama of finance. The difficulty of obtaining a
hearing, unless a man has a letter of introduction from an
influential correspondent, is great. A seeker after capital
in London has to kick his heels in office corridors and
endure the vexatious delays imposed on a despised
suppliant for a favour. In many cases he leaves England
with a feeling of soreness. He has been treated supercili
ously, perhaps, by a pompous magnate of the city, or by
a starched and affected junior partner, whose snobbish
education and upbringing have taught him to regard him
self as a being of different clay from a rough-mannered,
blunt-spoken bushman, in ill-cut clothes. He has been
made to feel that he is a " Colonial." He thinks he has
been " looked down upon " for that reason, and has been
snubbed. In his own land he is the equal of any man.
He can get access — and frank, manly and incisive speech
— with anyone, from the Prime Minister downwards.
In New York he is in a like atmosphere of equality.
Men of business encourage rather than deter those who
come to them with ideas. So noteworthy is this, and so
hard is it to enlist John Bull in the development of
Canada's latent resources, that some Canadians think,
against their will and desires, that commercial considera
tions will determine the question of political union
against Great Britain. John Bull, they will tell you, is
old, fat and lazy. He lacks enterprise, alertness,
imagination. His ignorance of Canada is unfathomable.
Of the geography of that vast domain he often knows
nothing, while the United States business man usually
knows everything. He is frigid, unsympathetic, inappre-

222 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
ciative of conditions other than the conventional ones
in which he passes his commercial and social life. Nine
out of ten travelled Canadians will speak thus of thc
Englishman of the cities ; and the idea has filtered down
through the untraveUed masses. It has become a national
thought. Canadians will tell you that they would
prefer to enlist British capital and brains in the exploita
tion of Dominion resources, but they go to New York
because they can get their business done — on hard
terms it may be. Still, they can get it done, because,
they say, the American capitalist is more adventurous and
better informed than his English rival and does not treat
them with priggish condescension. How far is this
view of English superciliousness and lethargy towards
"Colonials" — a designation which Canadians detest —
correct ? It is widely entertained in Canada. The very
shopkeepers will complain contemptuously of the diffi
culty of persuading English houses to supply what the
local market requires, and will describe in glowing terms
the alacrity with which United States merchants will go
out of their way, even at the temporary loss of their
margin of profit, to furnish what is needed. From this
cause much business goes to the United States which
might be kept within the Empire ; and more will follow.
" How did you get on in London ? " I asked a Toronto
trader who told me he had just returned from the capital.
" I did not get on," was the reply. " Your people
are all right if you can get beneath the crust. But
thc crust is too thick for my liking. You've too
much starch in your country. Everyone thinks him
self better than the man next to him, especially if
that man is from the Colonies. It's only your work-

THE REPUBLICAN TENDENCY 223
ing men who have the manliness to open out to a
stranger. Your big men of business, your officials
and the middle and upper classes generally, think
themselves superior to Canadians — and they show it.
No, I sha'n't go again. I can do all my business in
New York, and the social atmosphere there doesn't
stifle me. John Bull will have to come off his pedestal
if he wants to keep a Governor-General here and what
is left of the trade of Canada."
This critical and resentful mood cannot have arisen
spontaneously. Is it not due to want of knowledge, of
sympathy, of quick understanding among us ? That
may pass ; my point is, that its political significance is
great. Increased commercial intercourse, the yearly
immigration of many thousands of United States citizens
into the North-West, the establishment of United
States factories in Canada, the exploitation of Canadian
mineral resources by United States capital — all these are
powerful factors in unifying the political as well as
commercial interests of the two peoples. They tend
to foster in the Canadian mind a sense of closer affinity
with fellow-Americans in the United States than with
Englishmen. That affinity in modes of thought,
manners, forms of speech, accent, intonation, the sense
of social equality, has, I suggest, a profound influence
upon the question of Canada's political future. It
accounts largely for such tendency as there may be
towards absorption by the United States — or, as
a Canadian would audaciously put it, the absorp
tion of the United States by Canada. There are
not a few Canadians who affect to believe that this
will occur in the long run, because, they say, the

224 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Dominion comprises the largest and richest half of
North America — richest, that is, in natural resources.
So fantastic an idea need not now be discussed. Here,
however, are the pros and cons of the republican
tendency.

CHAPTER II
ARISTOCRACY AND THE MONARCHICAL IDEA
In the former chapter certain considerations were out
lined in support of the view that the intimate and
extending intercourse between Canadians and citizens
of thc United States may lead eventually to political
amalgamation. In the present, counterbalancing con
siderations and tendencies which are monarchical in
character will be examined. Among them arc thc
existing — and transient — feelings of hostility towards
the United States Government, not the people, because
of overreaching diplomacy in the matter of the Alaska
boundary ; admiration for the personality and the
family of the Sovereign ; the fact that Great Britain is
Canada's best customer ; the gradual formation of a class
of rich men — of whom Lord Strathcona may be accepted
as a type — who may desire to play a part in the larger
life of the Empire rather than remain mere wealthy
citizens of a small community ; thc growth of an
educated class with a sense of continuity with the
history of these islands and a distaste for the provin
cialism of Colonial life.
There is in Canada, among the professional and reading
class, a vital feeling of pride in the power and greatness
of England. Democratic as the country is and re-
P 225

226 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
latively small as the population is, there is growing up
an aristocracy of intellect and of wealth which looks to
England for recognition and honour. This class in
particular is predisposed towards retention of the tie
with monarchical England. Titular and social distinc
tions lie that way. In republics there is no Sovereign
who is the fount of honour. As Canada increases in
wealth this class will grow ; men of great riches will
multiply ; and when they spend their superfluity on
public benefactions they will look for the titular
r?,wards which are supposed to raise individuals above
their fellows. The intellectual class will also increase
— is, indeed, increasing somewhat disproportionately
already, for the tendency among successful farmers and
traders is to place their sons in the professions, through
which social esteem may more readily be won than by
commercial success. The country has already the
nucleus of an aristocracy. It is easy to imagine that
in the course of a few generations class distinctions will
be developed there, though they may never become so
pronounced as in Europe. The gulf that separates the
labouring from the shopkeeping class in England, and
the shopkeeping class from " those above " is being
reproduced in Canadian Society. The social organism
is developing itself there on much the same lines as here.
In Ottawa there is an exclusive "set," consisting, for
the most part, of wealthy vulgarians, which lives, or
imagines that it lives, in an atmosphere of social glory.
In Montreal and Toronto, and even in Winnipeg, there
are fashionable "quarters," inhabited by a "Society"
which tries to imitate thc manners and customs of the
rich and leisured classes of England. These " sets " have

THE MONARCHICAL IDEA 227
special columns in the local newspapers through which
the wider public are informed of the clothes that were
worn and the food placed on the table at this or that
reception. The average Canadian expresses his con
tempt for the "sets" and their doings. His mental
attitude towards them is quite as derisory as that which
he maintains towards contemporaries who have accepted
titles from England. But his scorn has no retarding
effect upon the movement towards social classification.
He is himself, probably, toiling night and day so that
his sons and daughters may attain to such a station
in life as will enable them, by means of his wealth, to
obtain access to circles which would not care to admit
him, and in which he would think it ridiculous for him
to figure. He may never have possessed a dress suit or
a silk hat. He may think the garb idiotic for a high-
souled democrat in a Land of Equality, where little
thought is taken as to what a man shall put on, and
where clothes which are worn by work are habiliments
of honour, visibly entitling a man to the respect of his
fellows. None the less he is rearing sons to whom
dress suits and silk hats will be a social necessity, and
daughters whose chief end in life will be to get into
" Society " by virtue of his money and a fashionable
wardrobe. Perhaps the matter may best be expressed
by saying that the dress-suit brigade, with its feminine
counterpart, though small at present in Canada, is
growing rapidly. An aristocracy chiefly of wealth, in
significantly of intellect and attainments, partly of official
dom and partly of snobbery, is in process of evolution in
every centre of population. With the development of
the country this element will inevitably gain in numbers

228 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
and in influence. Its outlook is towards aristocratic
England rather than towards the democratic States, Such
an element is intensely conservative in all constitutional
matters. It would strive hard to keep control of the
cable which anchors it to an aristocratic system. It
would be monarchical in sentiment.
Canada is not content, and is unlikely to remain so,
with her present measure of autonomy. Her ideal is
Canada a Nation, self-dependent and self-sufficing in
all matters, linked, perhaps, with thc Crown of England
and accepting the sovereignty of an Imperial figure
head for the sake of an historic idea and thc social
glory and picturesqueness of thc institution ; but not
being in any effective way ruled and governed by a
Sovereign in England or by any delegate of that
Sovereign. The future which most Canadians of British
blood imagine for themselves is that of an independent
kingdom, cither republican or under the British Crown —
preferably the latter — so they think at present ; a king
dom in voluntary alliance with Great Britain, but
co-equal with, and in no sense subordinate to. Great
Britain. This I believe to be a truthful interpretation
of Canadian thought and aspirations.
Our fellow-subjects across the Atlantic think in large
terms. Their ambitions are on a grand scale. They
live in a country of stupendous size — far larger, they will
tell you, than the United States. It is a superb region
to look upon. There is a spaciousness about its scenery
which seems to enlarge the mind and give impetus to
thc imagination of those who dwell there. This limit
less ambition and unconquerable sanguinity of the
Canadians may be referable in some measure to physio-

THE MONARCHICAL IDEA 229
graphic causes. Whatever thc cause, it is there. It
was and is present in the inhabitants of the United
States. Englishmen were wont to contemnit as American
" brag " and " bounce," Yet the United States has now
a population of nearly eighty millions, and is a world-
power, politically and industrially, as formidable as any
in the universe, Canadians see what has been done
to the south of thc 49th parallel, and they firmly
believe they can do as much, if not more, to the north.
Remind them that they are, after all, but a feeble folk
of some six millions, and they will tell you that their
country is at the beginning of a more remarkable
development than any known in human history — which
for most Canadians began with the revolt of the Thirteen
Provinces, They will affirm with unshakeable confi
dence that, within sixty years, their population will be
sixty millions. If you present them with statistics
which seem to show that, until quite recently, the
population for many years remained almost stationary,
despite what should have been the natural increase
of births over deaths, and notwithstanding a con
tinuous volume of immigration, they will reply that
they lost their population to the United States, and that
that loss has now ceased, because the United States are
filled. All the available land there, they will tell you,
is occupied, and neither in agricultural nor in industrial
pursuits is it possible for a man to obtain so good a living
as in the Dominion. Where, you will be asked, is the
overflow of the British Isles — aye of Europe ! — to go
to except to Canada ? Africa ? Why, Canada is being
traversed from end to end by discharged English soldiers
who served during the war, and would have settled on

230 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the veldt if the game had been worth the candle.
There is no emigration to South Africa — except
of Chinamen. It is a yellow and a black man's
country, not a white man's. Australia? Australia is
for the most part a desert. Life there presupposes
vast schemes of irrigation. Where in the world, except
in the Dominion, are there millions of acres of un
occupied land to which the people of Northern Europe
can and will go ? If you hint a doubt whether the
climate of Canada, particularly north and north-west of
the present inhabited strip, is not somewhat too severe
for human endurance, you will excite either the scorn
or the pity of your companions, who will not scruple
to let you know that, being an Englishman, there is of
necessity an undue proportion of insular foolishness in
your mental endowment. If, undeterred by contempt
or arrogance, and fortified by knowledge of what life in
the wilds really is, you cite facts, official and otherwise,
which suggest that a great white population would not
multiply and build up a permanent society in regions
which have hitherto maintained only nomadic Indians,
grading northwards and downward to thc Esquimo,
you will be told that Canada is producing a new type of
white man adaptable and fitted for the climatic environ
ment of the extreme North. When you think of
Canadians as a race, you will be compelled to admit that
there is force in the argument, for men and women of
greater weight of bone and more noticeable physical
hardness — and hardness of temperament — you will not
have seen in any travels in the old world, and certainly
not among any tropical races you may have known.
Should you suggest that the crux of the problem of

THE MONARCHICAL IDEA 231
populating Canada lies in the rearing of children, and
that your observation in the North-West and study of
the statistics indicate a lack of reproductive power, if
not also an abnormal infant death-rate, you will be told
that the evidence does not exist on which safe generalisa
tion on this matter can be made. Should you retort by
saying you are arguing on the only evidence available,
you will be referred to the extraordinary fecundity of
the French Canadians in Quebec ; and if you have been
in that splendid but, in winter time, fiercely cold and
forbidding province, you will be compelled to agree
that a severe climate and inhospitable country are not
insuperable barriers to an astounding racial increase.
Having conceded thus much, you will be over
whelmed with statistics of millions upon millions of
acres of available land accessible from existing settle
ment or shortly to be opened out by the construction of
the Grand Trunk Pacific — land which can be had for
nothing now and would easily fetch one hundred and
twenty dollars an acre if it were in the United States ;
land which will grow more per acre than any in the
United States, and will yield a more valuable variety of
wheat than can be grown anywhere in the world — even
on the plains of Manchuria. And you will be told that
these millions of acres are not within the far northern
belt, as to which some doubt may be entertained, seeing
that little is, in reality, known of it, except from ex
plorers, but are lands as good as those of Manitoba and
the Regina Plains. You may reply that you have seen
these lands, that you have " struck them " from three
far distant points on the Continent — from New Liskeard
on the Temaskamingue, from Prince Albert on the

232 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
North Saskatchewan, from Edmonton, far higher up
that river. You may say that it is a vast forest belt ;
that a few generations of men will have left their bones
there before any appreciable portion of the land is
cleared for cultivation ; that at such settlements as exist
you found thc farmers sick at heart because of the
" coldness " of the land, the liability to night frosts, the
isolation and hardships of their lot.
But nothing you can advance will affect the invin
cible confidence and optimism of your fi-iends. Was not
old Ontario covered with dense forest ? Is it not now
cleared, dotted with cities and towns, farmed from end
to end and covered with farm-buildings of brick and
stone ? Was not the land in Manitoba " cold " to the
early settlers ? Did they not lose heart — and regain it ?
Had not that been the uniform experience in Canada
wherever the tide of settlement overflowed the land ?
Had it not been demonstrated in practice that the clear
ing and cultivation of the land — the letting of the sun
light and warmth into the soil — had so far changed thc
climatic conditions as to make human life easier ? By
the fact of settlement and labour on the soil, cultivation
which at one time seemed to be impossible had been
made facile. The men who did it had become wealthy.
This had been proved to be the case in old Canada and
in Manitoba and the North-West, and the experience
would assuredly be repeated in the Farther North-West,
where possibilities are even now being converted into
realities by the yearly growing of wheat as far as eight
hundred miles due north of Winnipeg.
The argument is a summary of many conversations —
of five months' questioning, suggestion, and patientlisten-

THE MONARCHICAL IDEA 233
ing. It may at least serve to create an impression of the
argumentative resource of the average man in Canada.
He is a man of strong natural intelligence ; and, un
like many men in the street in England, his intellect
is not fuddled by drink or paralysed by anxiety as to
whether this or that horse will first pass the post. He
knows Canada and thinks of little else but Canada. His
mind is full of the vastness, the illimitable resources of
his country. He is feverishly desirous that Englishmen
should share his thoughts and should look into the
future through spectacles of Dominion make. Opposi
tion, criticism, doubts, fears, these do but stimulate his
enthusiasm about the ability of his country to run quite
alone, and cause him to redouble his efforts to impart
his faith to others ; but as to whether Canada, the fully
autonomous and great Nation of his dreams, will retain
the monarchical idea he is in reality indifferent. It is a
side issue of no importance to him. He is a man of
intense practicality of mind. So long as a monarchical
system and the presence of a representative of the
Sovereign do not stand in the way of Canadian develop
ment and are not in conflict with growing Canadian
ideals, material, political, and intellectual, Canada will
retain the system. Should causes of conflict arise Canada
would discard it without convulsive emotion, for the
"loyalty" of her people is to Canada first and to the
Throne only in a secondary degree.

CHAPTER III
THE IDEA OF NATIONHOOD
The English reader will now understand the ideas which
operate in the Canadian mind. He will have formed a
conception of the superb — I had almost written the sub
lime — self-confidence and hopefulness of the Dominion
population. Is it not inevitable that a self-reliant and
assertive race of men, who think on so bold and sweep
ing a scale, should aim at Absolute Independence ? So
far as I could form an opinion, nothing short of the
realisation of that ideal will content them. Few they
may be just now in numbers. But they are great of
heart, keen of brain, strong of hand. Are they not
subduing the earth — not an earth such as ours in England,
but one which for six months every year is frozen ten
feet deep into a solid rock, with ten feet of snow on the
top ? Have they not already subdued no mean portion
of it ? Are they not daily conquering difficulties which
would have overcome men of lesser breed ? Inured as
they are to hard conditions, conscious of what their fore
fathers have done, of what has been done in the colossal
State next door to them, and seeing immigration pouring
in at the rate of thousands each week in the open season,
they set no limits to the growth and power of their
Nationhood. Is it not natural that they should project
234

THE IDEA OF NATIONHOOD 235
their minds to a time when they will be a kingdom
equal in numbers and co-equal in constitutional status
with Great Britain ? We have some forty millions
in these islands; in the days of Elizabeth there were
fewer people in England than London alone now holds.
Canada thinks that she can easily maintain a hundred
and forty millions without encroaching on forest solitudes
shading off into the Arctic Circle. She is convinced
that, within a few generations — a moment in the life
time of nations — she will have a population at least as
large as ours. I am not discussing whether this thought
is justified, nor whether it will be translated into fact.
I am stating its existence as an incontrovertible result of
such explorations into the Canadian intellect as I have
been able to make. It enforces the argument that
Canada is aiming at Nationhood.
If that needs further support, let it here be said — super
fluously to the majority of readers, no doubt — that Canada
does not consist of six millions of people of British
descent. One-third of the population is of French
origin — a somewhat unprogressive but simple, industrious,
deeply-religious and wholly charming peasantry, tena
ciously retentive of their Gallic characteristics and dis
tinctively non-English in their mental outlook. These
are in alliance with us for the development of Canada ;
but they are French Canadians first and British subjects
afterwards — an attitude quite consistent with genuine
though not effusive loyalty to the Throne and the
Imperialconnection. Then there are the Canadians whose
ancestry on the American continent goes so far back that
they have become Americanised (the United States is not
America, but only a part of it) in temperament and

236 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
thought. These also arc Canadians first and British
subjects afterwards. Next, there is the great mass of
old and new English and Scotch immigrants who, in
various degrees, are undergoing the sometimes painful
process of Americanisation — that is to say, of becoming
good Canadians first and British subjects in a secondary
sense only, I almost despair of making the untraveUed
reader quite appreciate this point. He must have lived
in Canada to understand the subtle and elusive change
that comes over men's minds and political views upon
permanent transference from the conventional and
ordered and class-organised life of England to the freer,
rougher, more self-reliant existence which is thc rule in
this great Dominion. But the change is a psychological
verity ; and the result in moulding men's views in the
direction of Canadian Nationality is unmistakably ap
parent to any observer of political phenomena. Next,
there are German-speaking peoples, Scandinavians, Ice
landers, Russians — Jews and Slavs — Greeks, Turks,
Syrians, Italians, Finlanders, men of mixed stock fi-om
the United States by the thousand, Chinese, Japanese,
and North-American Indians. All of these are dis
tinctively, it might almost be said aggressively, non-
English ; and most of the races here mentioned are being
reinforced at a rapid rate. Canada is a country of mixed
peoples. It is a turbid flood of immigration which flows
to her shores. Another point : it should not be supposed
that the emigrants who leave our country have an over
mastering love of England. Why should they have ?
They are very poor and they are almost totally unedu
cated. They can read with some ease, can write badly,
and can "do arithmetic" of an elementary kind. But

THE IDEA OF NATIONHOOD 237
they have no education in history and literature such as
enables a man to take pride in thc achievements of his
race and feel himself a citizen of no mean country.
What has England done for the majority of them ? It
has given them a childhood in an urban or village slum.
It has fed them badly, housed them badly, clothed them
badly. Their parents have either died prematurely from
disease engendered by hardships and struggle with
poverty, or are housed in workhouses, or are otherwise
more or less dependent upon public and private charity.
They have felt the pinch of hunger. Their lives have
been a ceaseless, unsuccessful conflict with Want. They
have lived under the heel of the classes "above them."
They have known both the scorn and the patronising
pity of the rich. As members of the " lower orders,"
whose fiinction in the social system has been to labour
for and comport themselves with lowliness and reverence
towards their " betters " — which sometimes means
those who wax rich by exploitation of the masses — life
has had little indeed to offer them. So little material
welfare has England yielded them that the majority
have been able to keep body and soul together only
by dint of such toil and hardship as have made life in
England no longer worth having. They have left
England for that very reason — left it because they have
been told that by going to Canada they can get work
and bread, and live the life of self-dependent men.
They were partially disillusioned when they got there.
But that is another question. What, however, they were
not made to feel is that as poor labouring folk they
were the pariahs of the social system. Hard as they may
have to work, and poor as their rewards may be until

238 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
by hook or by crook they have saved up a little money
— and until they have learned how to use it — they
are able to hold their heads as high as anybody.
They are in a land where all men who work,
whatever they work at and whatever they gain,
be it little or much, are on a social equality. It
astounded me to discover how few people on the
emigrant ship had a thought of regret at leaving
England. Most of them had been extruded from that
pleasant land by economic forces which they had lacked
the strength or the good fortune to overcome. They
were the disinherited of England's working class ; and,
so far from having an affection for the country which
they had abandoned, they had a feeling of bitterness
towards it. " England ! " said one of them to me,
" England's a country for the rich man. It's no place
for the worker who does not want a pauper's funeral.
What chance would my children have in England ? A
worse chance than I have had — and for years past I
haven't had more than nine months' work out of every
twelve, and in the best of times haven't earned more
than 35s, a week, 7s. of which has had to go to the
landlord for two top rooms in a dirty back street."
" England," said another, " is not a country where a
man who is a man can live. If he doesn't touch his
hat to the squire and the parson and the whole brood of
gentry (he was an agricultural labourer), then woe
betide him, Thc chances are he'll lose his work. Any
how, even if he keeps his work, he can't earn enough to
keep his wife and children in good food and clothes.
And if he won't cringe and scrape and be humble, and
teach his children to do thc same, no coal or blankets

THE IDEA OF NATIONHOOD 239
will come his way. England's a class-ridden country,
and that's why I've come out of it quite as much as for
the chance of getting enough bread and clothes for my
family." Men who think thus are easily convertible
into "good Canadians" — into the citizens of a New
Nation which knows England only as a rich and dis
dainful relation, whose patronage is not needed. As for
Canadians themselves, their views ofEngland are coloured
by similar feelings, derived from fathers and grandfathers
who in one form or another felt the tyranny of " the
powers that be " in the village and the town, "In your
country," said one of them to me, in tones of acrid con
tempt, "a man daren't call his soul his own. Why did
my father leave England ? The squire struck him with
a whip because he didn't open a gate fast enough to
please him." The speaker was an old man. The
incident must have occurred early in the Victorian era.
It was idle to argue that no squire would dare to do
such a thing now, except under pain of being dragged
from his horse and rolled in the ditch. My friend was
still convinced that the poor man in England is little
better than a chattel. The point of view which is here
set forth may be all wrong. But it exists. And it has
a political bearing. Canada is an intensely democratic
country. The population is made up of people who
have cut themselves free from, or have, in an economic
sense, been pushed out of, societies in which the feudal
spirit survives ; and these people are bent on making a
Nation where the social ideal is that the measure of a man's
value is in what he can do, not in what he has at thc
bank, or in what clothes he wears, or into what class
he happened to be born.

240 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
These then are the materials — Foreign and English —
of which thc foundations of a great Nation are being
constructed. They are heterogeneous.
How else will they become homogeneous save by thc
impulse towards Nationhood ? Is not the ideal of Canada
a Nation the expression of that natural instinct which
impels men brought together from diverse subdivisions
of the human family to weld themselves into a political
entity ? By her system of education Canada is making
these races into an English-speaking people. But it is
beyond thc power of her statesmen, nor is it their in
tention, to convert them into Englishmen. Their ideal
is to make Canadians of them. The racial character
istics of thc Russian, the German, the Scandinavian,
and the Anglo-Saxon in Canada will persist, though they
blend the one into the other. What thc resultant type
will be, except that it will be English in speech, no one
can tell. Much will depend upon whether the immi
gration into Canada continues to be predominantly
Anglo-Saxon, about which there is a deplorable lack
of concern in Canada, as is proved by the recklessly
cosmopolitan character of her immigration policy. But
one thing can be predicted with certainty — and that is
that the type will not be English. If it were, Canada
might continue to be an English self-governing colony
on the present footing for centuries ; because it is not,
Canada will be, I suggest, an Independent Nation.
Even now a Canadian is as easily distinguishable from an
English immigrant as a Dutch peasant is from a German.
A recognisable type of man is in course of evolution in
the cities, thc forests, and on the plains. Hence a New
Nation is coming down the arena of the world  a

THE IDEA OF NATIONHOOD 24X
Canadian nation with the Anglo-Saxon strain, a per
manently strong element in the racial admixture, but,
nevertheless, not an English nation in Canada. Nation
hood implies absolute independence. That surely is the
teaching of history, at least in cases where, as in Canada,
there is a vast stretch of fertile earth which gives ample
room for racial expansion. Canadian statesmen, true to
thc people whose instinct they share, and responsive to
thc mental environment in which they work, have set
Absolute Independence before them as their goal. That
is, I suggest, the belief of the democracy of Canada.
Where then, it may be said, is their loyalty to the
Throne and the Empire ? The reply is, that movement
towards their objective is perfectly consistent with
loyalty, which, like most things of the collective mind of
man, is an elastic, indeterminable and variable quality.
The statesmen and people of Canada are not governed by
abstract feelings of loyalty or any reverence for the thing
itself. " You English people," said a Canadian to me on
one occasion, "often discuss the question — 'are Canadians
loyal ?' I wish you would tell them in your newspaper
that we don't think about the subject. Of course we're
loyal, we're not rebels. The present system suits us
while we're growing. Loyalty does not enter into our
minds when we consider our growth and the future that
growth will bring. Wc don't think about loyalty. We
go on in our own way, and are too full of our own affairs
and progress to ask ourselves whether we are loyal or not.
Why should you English people worry about it ? " My
friend was a politician of some importance. His attitude
seemed to me to be typical of that of the new Canadian
Nation. Statesmen and people are going forward not in
Q

242 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
obedience to the formulas of loyalty and the sign-posts
set up by constitutional wiseacres, but in harmonious
activity with the mysterious, dimly-perceived, and almost
inscrutable laws which govern the development of human
societies, the growth of small communities into mighty
States.

CHAPTER IV
NATIONALITY AND FISCAL FREEDOM
In an earlier chapter it was asserted that Canada regards
her present fiscal freedom as the foundation-stone of
an ultimate independence. Sir Wilfrid Laurier has
definitely declared that the Dominion would never
surrender her fiscal autonomy. In this, so far as I
could judge, Canada is wholly with him, irrespective
of party. It is the very essence of her status as a self-
governing community. It is the vital part of the
National Idea. How, then, is it consistent with an
organisation of the Empire as a fiscal entity ? What
arc the factors in Canadian thought and political practice
which have to be taken into account in any consideration
of that matter ? These questions I propose to examine.
Though unwilling to abandon one jot or tittle of her
fiscal freedom, Canada is open to consider a commercial
" deal " with Great Britain, as with any other country,
or with any other part of the Empire. That is as far
as the official pronouncements on the subject have gone,
and, to the best of my judgment, that is as far as the
people of Canada are willing to be led, either by their
own statesmen or by English opinion. Would such a
"deal" be influenced by Imperial, in the sense of
sentimental, considerations ? A negative answer must
243

244 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
be entered, not only from such appreciation of Canadian
thought as I have been able to form, but also for reasons
of a practical character which will be sketched later on
in this essay. The matter would be approached and
handled as a business transaction, determinable solely by
considerations of profit and loss. This would be the
case whichever party — thc Liberal or Low Tariff, or
the Conservative or High Protectionist party — was in
power at Ottawa. In Canada politics is synonymous
with hard business. Political action, in matters of trade
at least, is regulated there by self-interest alone — real or
imaginary. Two dilemmas have to be considered.
The first, or business, dilemma is this : how could
Canada frame a tariff which would protect her manu
facturing industries against British competition and
yet at the same time enable British manufacturers,
in return for preferential access for Canadian food
stuffs into the English market, to compete with those
Canadian industries in the Dominion market ? The
second, or political, dilemma is : how could Canada
retain her fiscal independence and simultaneously
become and remain part of a system by which thc Empire
would be a fiscal entity for offence and defence against
other commercial nations ? And there is a third dilemma
— an Imperial dilemma — assumingthat thefirstand second
could be overcome. It arises from thc fact that in no
conceivable case would Canada tie her hands for all time.
If she entered into any system on the basis of an Imperial
fiscal entity she would reserve her right to withdraw
if at any time she conceived that it suited her individual
national interest to do so. The other great Colonics —
nascent Nations like herself — would, presumably, make

NATIONALITY AND FISCAL FREEDOM 245
the same precautionary reservation. If Canada, or any
other great Colony acted upon it, the Imperial fiscal
entity would be an entity no longer. The edifice
would collapse. That is the Imperial dilemma. And
from it there can be no escape so long as Canada stands
by Sir Wilfrid Laurier's declaration that Canada will
not take any course which carries with it any loss of
fiscal independence.
On the basis of what can be learned by any one of
the condition of commerce and internal politics in
Canada to-day, let us see what would be likely to
happen if Canada were part of an imaginary fiscal
entity Empire. Assume that the experiment of over
coming what in the preceding paragraph is termed the
Canadian business dilemma were undertaken by Sir
Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal party — the party now
in power. Their policy is to make manufactured articles
less costly to the consumer than they now are under a
Protectionist system. If this practical end could be
attained by entering a scheme of Imperial fiscal entity.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals would be the most
likely people to take that road — subject, of course, to
the reservation of full fiscal independence. What
would be the result ?
Thc manufacturers, who are allied with the Conser
vative or High Protectionist party, and profess the
loftiest Imperial sentiments, would necessarily be shorn,
by the effects of British competition, of the exorbitant
profits they are now able to extract from the consumers
of their protected shoddy. They, and the thousands of
workmen who would be displaced by this competition,
would clamour for the downfall of the arrangement, just

246 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
as they are shrieking now for the abolition of the
existing preference, on the ground that British com
petition is making the woollen and cotton industries of
the Dominion unprofitable. They would become
furious champions of the fiscal independence of Canada.
They would assert that Canada was shackled in her
"all-round" development as a manufacturing as well as
agricultural community. They would set their class
and sectional interests above any advantage which the
agriculturist might be obtaining from the preference his
products received in the market of the Empire ; and,
inasmuch as, in all probability, the railway com
panies would relieve the agriculturist of that advantage
by still greater rapacity in the matter of freights, the
task of detaching the farmer from the Imperial fiscal
system would not be insuperable.
If he could not be detached, the manufacturing
interests of Eastern Canada would be pitted against the
agricultural interests of the West. There would be
two Canadas, each divided against thc other, not one
Dominion with its common commercial interests and a
single fiscal policy. Then again the manufacturers
exercise great political influence even within the Liberal
party. Sir Wilfrid Laurier has to work with them as
far as may be. If he did not bend to them they might
break him. Their organisation pretends to be non-
political, but as a matter of fact it exists to extort from
this party or from that the utmost measure of Protection
against British and other competition which the people
of Canada will bear — and they will bear a great deal, so
long as agriculture is prospering.
It was because of their power that Sir Wilfrid

NATIONALITY AND FISCAL FREEDOM 247
Laurier, who is a Free Trader in principle and a taxer
of imports only because direct methods of raising revenue
are impracticable in the existing state of Canadian
opinion, was unable to frame the low tariff promised in
the programme on which he was returned to power in
1896. What he could not accomplish directly he
achieved by indirect means — namely, the preference of
33i PC'' cent, on British imports. He thus, by a side
stroke, relieved the Canadian consumer from the op
pressive exactions of thc local manufacturer, subjected
the Canadian manufacturers to a healthy competition,
and turned the tables on opponents who had twitted the
Liberal Party and himself with disloyalty to the Empire.
They could not resist the preference, because to do so
would have exposed them to the stigma of "disloyalty"
which they had sought to fasten upon him ; and the
Conservative party, as such, cannot complain about
it now, though their manufacturing friends do so
without stint. These, then, are some of the practical
political difficulties in thc existing state of Canadian
opinion, which stand in the way of the Dominion
casting in her lot with an Empire on thc basis of fiscal
unity. Assume that the Conservative party were seated at
Ottawa. Would the difficulties be less ? Imagine Mr.
R. L. Borden — an able and courteous gentleman, who
in many respects would be an admirable Prime Minister
 drawing up the schedule of a tariff which would at the
same time protect the Canadian manufacturer against
thc British and yet enable the latter to compete with the
former in the Dominion market. One of his strongest
supporters is, say, a soap-boiler — a bad soap-boiler, who

248 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
has waxed rich and become able to contribute freely
to campaign funds because he has been in a position
to foist an indifferent soap on the Canadian people
at a long price. How is Mr. Borden to reconcile him
to a reduction of the duty on British soap ? He will
be able to argue with great effect that the Canadian con
sumer will get the best British soap made, at a price lower
than that which he has hitherto paid for the skin-
scarifiers of his friend's offal-pot. He may plead that
in exchange for this the agriculturist will be getting a
preference in thc English market, and thus will be able
to afford to use more soap. He can point out also that it
is still open to his friend to make as good a soap, or a
better, than the British boiler, and to sell it at a price as
low — or even lower, and thus sweep the Britisher out
ofthe field. What reply will he receive ? He will be
urged, with threats, to leave soap alone and turn his
attention to lollipops. The protected lollipop manu
facturer will protest with the like emphasis, and recom
mend Mr. Borden to try it on Jew's-harps. And so on
throughout the whole list of dutiable commodities. Mr.
Borden would be assailed with threats of revolt on every
side. Even if — dexterous and persuasive party-leader as
he is — he succeeded in framing a schedule, and matters
were carried to such a stage with the Imperial Govern
ment that it was accepted as a fitting exchange for a pre
ference on Canadian food-stuffs, how long could it remain
in force ? Those whom the schedule left with no pro
tection would be bitterly envious of those who had a
little ; those who had a little with those who had
much ; and those who had much would be still in
satiate. It would be a case of confusion worse con-

NATIONALITY AND FISCAL FREEDOM 249
founded. The Conservative party would go to pieces.
Here, then, lies the impracticable nature of the
policy ?
Carry the argument a step further : the British
manufacturer would not be silent and inactive. On
what principle would the duty be fixed on iron and steel,
cottons and woollens, lead, knitting-needles, and syrup
of squills ? It does not matter what commodity is taken
for the purposes of argument ; syrup of squills, what
ever that medicament may be, is as good for controver
sial use as garter elastic or tipped or untipped corset
wires. Unless there were a uniform ad valorem duty
on all manufactured imports, how is it possible to
determine what is an equitable duty as between one
order of British manufacturer and another ? If the
British maker of syrup of squills has a ten-cent barrier
against him in the Canadian market, why should thc
manufacturer of lamp-wicks have a barrier represented
by twenty-five cents ? And why should the manu
facturer of saltpetre have no barrier at all — on the
assumption that the present schedule would remain in
force so far as he is concerned ? If the Empire
were a fiscal unit, it is scarcely possible that British
manufacturers would suffer these relative duties to be
determined by Canada alone, or by the Colonies severally.
They would bring pressure to bear upon the Imperial
Parliament to secure re-adjustments of the tariff to
thc advantage of British manufacturers as against their
rivals in the Colonies. This difficulty is quite clearly
apprehended in Canada — necessarily so, in a country
where politics resolve themselves into a sordid fight over
the tariff.

250 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Even if a uniform ad valorem duty on British manu
facturers could be agreed upon in Canada, and as between
Canada and Great Britain and the rest of the Empire, a
disruptive struggle could not long be avoided. The
Canadian manufacturers would not be content until
the duty were raised, and the British manufacturers
until it were lowered. What a bone of contention to
throw into a possible Federal Parliament ! And here
let it be said that I found no desire in Canada for
representation in such a House.
Walking one day with a member of the Dominion
Parliament along the lawns which surround the
Legislative Buildings on the lofty bank of the Rideau
River, I broached thc old suggestion, as a possible means
for the better organisation of the Empire, of the
admission of Colonial members to Westminster. Why
should not the British Colonies and India be represented
there, as the French Colonies were in the Paris
Chamber? Did Canada desire such representation ?
My friend was thoughtful for a moment, as though
weighing the matter in his mind. Then he threw his
arm westward and northward over the magnificent
panorama of river, valley, and Laurentian hills, and
quietly asked me : " Have we not enough to do here ? "
I had just come from the Pacific Ocean. In a flash there
passed before my vision the vast stretches of mountain
and plain, lakeland and river vale through which
I had journeyed ; and I realised the eloquence of
his gesture and the force of his answer. I saw
anew the narrow rivulets of population flowing westward
and northward through this great domain ; the populous
cities which are destined to become as great as those ot

NATIONALITY AND FISCAL FREEDOM 251
the old world, the little towns growing swiftly into
cities, the many hamlets which in due time will be
towns. Before my mind's eye there arose a spectacle ot
the Canada of the future — a great human concourse,
reproducing, alas ! thc evils of all societies through
out the ages. What a field for statesmanship, for
political activity of the higher kind. What scope for
the energies of ambitious and public-spirited men !
Well might my friend ask — " Have we not enough to
do here ? " Indeed, men who enter public life in Canada
already have their hands overfull, for with the de
velopment of the country there is also a corresponding
accumulation of ineradicable human evils. Canadian
problems are even now serious enough and difficult
enough to demand the powers of the best intellect thc
Dominion can produce. To what complexity they may
arrive when the country is filled with human beings
may be left to the imagination. Canadian patriotism
and public spirit will be engrossed in Canadian
affairs. There will be little mental energy to spare for
sitting in an Imperial Parliament and grappling, say,
with the problem of redistribution of seats in these
islands, or the disestablishment of the Church in Wales.
Canadians care nothing for such things. Why
should they? Have they not enough to do in their
own country, now and hereafter, without hankering
after sitting space in Westminster? Their aim is to
concentrate on Canada, to preserve a spirit of detach
ment from non-Canadian affairs, to be free and great and
strong of themselves— free to sever the cord that binds
them to England, should English affairs be so managed
as to enmesh them in doubtful policies, and yet free, as

252 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
an entity among the nations of the world, to put forth
their strength for themselves, and possibly for England
also, though only by their own free will. When
one reflects on these things, the dream of a Federal
Imperial Parliament in London dissolves like a morning
mist.

CHAPTER V
TREATY POWERS AND IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENT
Canada seeks to obtain for herself the right of making
Treaties with Foreign Powers. That in itself is a diffi
culty in the way of Imperial fiscal unity, for, by sharing
fiscal unity with the rest of thc Empire, the Dominion
would be debarred from making separate commercial
treaties with other States suchas she thought would be
advantageous to herself. How many people in England
realise that Canada desires this treaty-making power —
nay, not only desires it, but is determined to get it in
due course, and if the Nation grows as Canadians
expect it to grow, will undoubtedly get it, whether
Great Britain makes such a concession of its im
perial rights gracefully or grudgingly ? Politicians in
England, with insular concentration upon English
affairs, may rub their eyes at such a question.
" Canada make treaties with foreign Powers ! why !
Canada is a colony ! She can make representations
through her Ministry and the Governor-General, but
treaties with other States can be negotiated only by
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs." That
is so — at present. But Canada does not wish it to
continue to be so. She has no great love for the
253

254 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
British Foreign Office. She thinks she has often
been " given away " by Foreign Ministers in London.
It was the British Foreign Office which allowed her
to be jockeyed out of the desirable territory which
is now the State of Maine — and by a trick of
map-suppression, which no honest man in the
United States can palliate, much less justify.
The Foreign Office has repeatedly sacrificed Cana
dian interests to conciliate the United States Govern
ment, whose hostility has been so consistent as
to convince Canada that the settled policy of her
neighbours has been to coerce her into joining the
Union. The latest instance is that or the Alaska boundary
decision. Whether rightly or wrongly, Canadians
think that the Foreign Office either wilfully or
stupidly so mismanaged the negotiation that Canada
was bound to lose her case. The form of arbitra
tion was not to Canada's liking. She was disgusted
— the term is not too strong — to find that the United
States jurists who were accepted by Great Britain
as members of the Tribunal were men who, as sen
ators, had derisively pronounced against Canada on
the issues of fact and treaty interpretation which
were involved. It is idle to attempt to persuade a
Canadian that Lord Alverstone's decision in favour
of the United States — a decision given as President,
with a casting vote in an otherwise equally divided
Tribunal — could only have been reached on the strict
merits of the facts — that it was a strictly juridical
verdict, entirely uninfluenced by considerations of
international politics. He will assert an unshakeable

TREATY POWERS AND DEVELOPMENT 255
conviction to the contrary. He is no respecter of
high judicial personages and reputations. He places
no credence in that unchallengeable superiority of
character which Lord Alverstone possesses — a superior
ity which made it impossible for Englishmen to do
aught but have implicit faith in the integrity of thc
decision as a piece of juridical and intellectual work
manship. He is familiar with crooked courses in the
public life of his own country. He is accustomed
to look for sinister motives and influences in the do
ings of political and even of judicial personages in
the Dominion. It is contrary to his mental habit
to think that a higher standard can prevail in any
other country than his own. He is intellectually in
capable of believing that a great judge who has also
"been in politics" could deal with a political matter
solely as a jurist, untrammelled by broad international
considerations such as might be present in the minds
of the statesmen who selected the judge to discharge
thc juridical function. Certainly he is incapable of
realising the offensiveness of his imputation, that Lord
Alverstone decided as he did, not on the strict justice
of the facts and the rightful interpretation of
treaties, but because the Government which ap
pointed him secretly instructed him — this is the in
sinuation — that such a decision must be reached as
would enable the Government to keep the peace with
the United States, even though Canadian rights
were sacrificed. He shuts his mind against reason
ing of this kind. He is equally oblivious of the
point that Lord Alverstone's decision was in accord
ance with the verdict of the two United States

256 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Commissioners, who were men of judicial eminence
and high character ; and his scorn for the United
States in political matters is such that he utterly
refuses to believe it to have been possible for those
Commissioners to have swept out of their minds
the knowledge and opinions which induced them
to pronounce against Canada when speaking as
senators, and to have approached the matter anew
and without bias when they were appointed as
jurists. He will not see that as their work as jurists
was done on fuller evidence than that on which
they spoke as senators, the conclusion at which they
arrived at Paris was necessarily less assailable than that
which they had advanced on imperfect evidence such
as was open to them when they spoke at Washington
in circumstances of lesser responsibility. In brief, he
imputes bad faith. He insists that the decision was
what it was because Great Britain thought more of
cultivating the goodwill of the United States than of
securing justice for Canada. He will go farther, and
rail generally against the Foreign Office for truckling to
the great Republic. This view is universal through
out Canada. There is ill-suppressed bad feeling on
the subject. Whether the Canadian idea is right
or wrong is immaterial to the present purpose.
It exists and is ineradicable by reasoning on facts
available to every student of diplomatic affairs. Can
adians shut their minds firmly against such reasoning.
They reject it with the emphatic statement that if
they had had the making of the treaty, the result
would have been different, and they assert that the right
to regulate their foreign affairs must therefore be con-

TREATY POWERS AND DEVELOPMENT 257
ceded to them. They intend themselves to carry on
such negotiations with foreign States as their circum
stances may require. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, ever alert in
interpreting the mind of the Nation, has himself said
that they might "request treaty-making powers,"
and the declaration was received with profound satis
faction. The Canadian view of this Alaskan matter is so
described as to suggest that it will be found to have had
a profound influence upon the development of Canadian
Nationality ; for it is fi-om this Decision that the " re
quest " for treaty-making powers has arisen. It will be
apparent that the demand foreshadows absolute inde
pendence. If it were conceded, and on modern theories
of our Colonial relationships it could be resisted only by
persuasion and argument, and never by force, by what
ties would the Dominion be linked to Great Britain ?
The shadowy sovereignty of a British Emperor ! It is
a large question, at present in its initial stage, and
therefore disregarded by English statesmen and people,
who have a complacent habit of ignoring contempor
aneous historical causes. But it is a subject that calls
for elucidation, for if there is one thing which ex
cursions into the Canadian political intellect teach
with some certitude, it is that Canada is filled
with the ambition to become equipped with the full
rights of Nationhood. It may be doubted, however,
whether Canadians realise the significance of their
desires. They do not understand how completely they
are dependent upon Great Britain for defence against
foreign aggression, though the difficulty they had
in finding men to man the defences of Halifax and
R

258 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Esquimault should have taught them something.
Canada feels that the Monroe doctrine may secure her
from any attack from Europe ; but she has no concep
tion of the risk of aggression by the United States which
is implied by the very assertion of the doctrine, notwith
standing qualifying declarations which are supposed to
safeguard existing rights on the American Continent.
Still less does she appreciate her inability to defend
herself against the United States. She has no navy, no
fighting force other than a rough and ready militia.
Nevertheless, there lies aback of the Canadian brain
the idea that in due time she will have fitted
herself to repel attack from any quarter whatsoever ;
even now, such is the spirit of her people, the idea ot
present self-sufficiency in matters of defence is widely
prevalent. It is a remarkable illusion ; but it is by
virtue of such delusions that small nations grow into
great. They believe in themselves, and from that belief
the power of accomplishment is born. One would
think that the prudent course would be for Canada to
contribute to thc upkeep of the Imperial Army and
Navy proportionately to the population and the local
interests at stake ; but the Canadian political mind is
not developing on these lines. It is taking a direction
of its own- — one leading to Nationhood, with the full
assumption of all the rights, responsibilities and burdens
of a Nation. This seems, in homely language, like
putting the cart before the horse 1 Englishmen may
think it a trifle absurd. They may remind themselves
of the frog that inflated itself in the belief that it
could out-size the ox. But Englishmen should not
forget that, though Canada is now a country of only six

TREATY POWERS AND DEVELOPMENT 259
millions, she may soon be sixty, and ultimately a hundred
millions. So astounding a development is not outside
the range of the possible, even of the probable. The
land is there. That is incontrovertible. And every
year that passes piles proof upon proof that it is cap
able of sustaining an enormous population. As for
the character of that population, these chapters will have
failed in one of their purposes if they have not shown
the English reader that it is as hardy, as capable,
as ambitious and as self-willed — and perhaps as cross-
grained — as that which lies to the south of the 49th
parallel. If development proceeds on its present lines we shall,
then,see Canada an independent Nation, great in numbers,
in wealth, in commercial power — an equal may be of
ourselves. Indeed, so enormous is her territory and so
bright her prospects, both as a manufacturing and agri
cultural region, that she may well surpass us from these
natural and unalterable causes, just as the United States
has done. Would such an equality and a conceivable
numerical and other preponderance be a source of weak
ness to Great Britain, assuming the absolute independence
of Canada ? Perhaps not. The chances are that it
would be a source of strength in the councils and rivalries
of nations. Influences and tendencies in Canada and
the other great Colonies, which now seem to be disruptive,
may, in the end, give to the Anglo-Saxon races the
dominance of the world. The number of a priori
friendly Powers with whom Great Britain could make
offensive and defensive alliances would be enlarged.
Such an alliance has been made with Japan — not
withstanding a feeling in Northern Europe that it

26o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
savours rather of the compact Francis I. made with
Solyman, and may cloak bad faith towards the European
family of Christian nations. A formal alliance is
often spoken of as likely between the United States
and Great Britain. It is at least possible that thc future
may have this in store. How much more easily think
able is it that Canada as an independent Nation,
under a British Emperor, should be in treaty-alliance
with us ? And the South African and Australasian
hegemonies also ? Imagine a Canada with fifty millions
of white people. South Africa with twenty-five, Austral
asia with twenty-five ! — each a still growing Nation,
each independent and owing a nominal fealty to a
British Emperor, and each linked to Great Britain by
formal alliances. Each would have an army and navy
of its own, and each would have world-wide interests,
for thc commerce of each would be with the universe.
That of Canada certainly would be, for, on thc in
dustrial side, Canada hopes to manufacture for the world
and, to some slight extent, docs already invade the
English market with factory products ; and, on thc
agricultural side, she looks across the Pacific for a market
for her cereals. Japan is beginning to be a wheat-
eating country. Wheat, a Canadian will argue, will
displace rice in Asia. It may not do that ; but
the Far East is assuredly a great prospective market for
thc cereals of the North-West. Canada's interests lie
Asia-wards as well as towards Europe. A mighty
nation, midway between East and West, and com
prising the largest and most favourable wheat-grow
ing region in the world, would have a huge com
merce to protect, important interests to defend. A

TREATY POWERS AND DEVELOPMENT 261
navy and an army would be essential to her national
preservation. Excluding the United States, here, then, is a vision of
three new and ever-growing Nations in treaty-alliance
with Great Britain, linked also with Great Britain
and with each other by the nominal overlordship
of a British Emperor. Individually and collectively,
thev would be of great wealth and strength, in men and
in all the resources that make mighty and unassailable
communities. The political fashion of the age is for
something imposing — something that fills the imagina
tion. Is not this ideal magnificent enough and fascinat
ing enough for the imagination of the boldest Imperial
ist ? Is it not, as an ideal, as fine as that of a fiscally-
organised British Empire ? If it is not it is less
difficult of realisation than a system based on mutual
preferences ; and for the reason that such a system
contains within itself such strong disruptive influences
that it might not endure, while that of a fanjily of
independent Nations, whose relationship to the parent
state and to each other was defined by treaties of alli
ance, could be the result only of natural growth, and
would therefore last. The one would be a forced
development. It would be cramped by the limitations
of the intellects of the statesmen who brought it
into being ; and what those limitations are we all
can judge. It would be a thing of bonds and fetters
— a device of props and barriers, enclosed by an
Imperial ring-fence staked in nothing better than
the shifting sands of economic expediency and thc
mutations of party strife in England and in the
Colonies. Its fall sooner or later would be certain.

262 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
The other would be the result of natural and national
forces such as are now in active operation in Canada
— a growth, a progression in accordance with thc in
scrutable laws which govern the rise of new States,
the expansion of small communities on great areas into
powerful Nations. It would at least have the unques
tionable advantage of leaving the hands free. The old
country and the new Nations would be at liberty each to
follow what it conceived to be its best interest, com
mercially and politically. It would be open to Great
Britain either to maintain or depart from her present
fiscal system with a single mind for the welfare of her
own population only. Each of the new Nations would
still be free to protect its industries as it chose, to give
preferences to Great Britain in partial recompense for
the absence of fiscal barriers in Great Britain, or to
act with full justice by conceding to Great Britain
the like freedom to enter its market as Great
Britain gives to the Colonies. And all the new
Nations would be able to deal with each other on
similar principles. This is what they would wish
to do. It is what they are beginning to do now, as
is shown by the preferential arrangements between
Canada and Australia and South Africa. Canada, at
anyrate, is taking time by the forelock, for she is
already so adapting her fiscal system as to fit it for
her coming development as a nation which exports
manufactures as well as food-stuffs. There is the
analogy of the United States to guide us. She may
eventually out-rival the United States as much in
manufacturing as she now does in wheat-raising.
Whatever her fiscal system may be — whether she

TREATY POWERS AND DEVELOPMENT 263
becomes still more Protectionist or the Free Traders get
the upper hand, or whether preferences lead event
ually to unrestricted trade within the Empire — her
industries will grow because she has the land, the
iron, the coal, and unlimited motive power in in
numerable water-courses. Given her growth into a
populous Nation, the world will be her market in due
course.

CHAPTER VI
CANADA AND THE ENGLISH FISCAL SYSTEM
Early in 1905 nearly every Canadian desired to know
whether Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions were finding
favour with the English people. The ex-Colonial
Secretary was the idol of the hour. On the hoardings
of the streets the wayfarer was besought to wear a
" Chamberlain " hat — a rakish type of " bowler " which
seemed to sit somewhat uneasily over an eye-glassed
countenance having a grotesque resemblance to the
distinguished statesman. In the tobacconists' shops
you were offered a " Chamberlain " cigar, gorgeously
enwrapped, and with a gold embossed portrait in the
centre of the label. " Chamberlain " collars and ties
were on sale at the " stores " ; and in the public room
ofthe "hotels," where manners arc free, one was almost
certain to find a half-drunken cattleman discoursing
volubly upon " Loyalty " and " Preference," " Joe
Chamberlain" and "Little Englanders." It was
eloquent testimony to the power of Mr. Chamber
lain's personality, the intense interest which his ideas
of Imperial re-organisation excited in thc colonies.
But it indicated only a passing phase of Canadian
opinion, for, as time went on, one saw less of Mr.
Chamberlain's portrait and heard less of his name.
264

CANADA AND THE FISCAL SYSTEM 265
Mention of his speeches sometimes caused irritation.
People had been annoyed by suggestions that Colonial
loyalty and the maintenance of the Imperial connec
tion were contingent upon the success of his policy.
One of the newspapers expressed this mood with true
Colonial frankness, by asking Mr. Chamberlain to leave
the Colonies alone : who had given him authority to
speak for Canada in such a matter ? Canada wished
to mind her own business ; she objected most strenu
ously to being made to share in the party strife
which broke out in the Old Country, despite Mr.
Chamberlain's urgent appeals for non-partisan treat
ment. Adulation gave place to criticism, and by the
summer Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions had ceased
to interest. He had captivated the Canadian ima
gination for a time by a golden prospect of profit ;
but once the people realised that he had not thc
power to gratify the expectation he had raised, they
had, as an Ottawa politician said, " no further use for
him." The phrase is brutal but singularly illumina
tive. One needs to have lived in Canada to appreciate
its force. It is the final allocution in the commerce of
daily life, and signifies as no other form could do the
mental outlook of the man who utters it. When a man
" has no use " for some other person or something which
that other proposes to him, it means that he can see no
chance of "making a deal" advantageous to himself.
Hence he thrusts the thing from his mind. The
formula is a defensive barrier — a sort of verbal chevaux
de frise — against further argument. Mr. Chamberlain
had infected the Canadians at first with his own

266 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
sanguine confidence of success ; but as soon as they
saw the English Democracy was not behind him they
" had no further use for him." This was their mood
since he was unlikely to succeed in obtaining a pre
ference for Canadian food-stuffs. The English people,
apparently, would not revolutionise their fiscal system to
put money into the pockets of Canadian agriculturists.
Canadians themselves did not wish that they should do
so if the struggles of the poor in England would
thereby be increased. It was not a living issue for
them. Hence they ceased to talk and to think
about it. It was for the English people to decide. It
would be time enough to bother about it when the
English nation had fought out the controversy to a
definite issue. To any formal and official proposals
Canada would give eager attention ; but until they were
forthcoming she would mind her own affairs. If Canada
were called to a Colonial Conference she would go into
it with an open mind and free hands ; but meanwhile
Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions were put on the
shelf. Memory of them lingered chiefly in the minds of the
professed politicians in Session at Ottawa ; and these
were far more desirous of discovering the state of English
opinion than of disclosing ideas of their own. They
had, in truth, little to reveal except that it would be a
good thing for Canada if her food-stuffs could be given
a preference over competing nations in the English
market. When asked what Canada could do in return,
except at the sacrifice of her protected manufacturing
industries, the utmost they could say was that it might
be possible to devise a tariff which would still preserve

CANADA AND THE FISCAL SYSTEM 267
those industries and nevertheless give England easier
access to the Dominion market. But they would not
give concrete instances of commodities in regard to
which a tariff could be so framed as to accomplish two
opposite purposes — protect a Canadian manufacturer
against British competition and simultaneously allow
the British to compete in the Canadian market on equal
or nearly equal terms. Discussion invariably broke down
at that stage.
A public, accustomed to daily assurance that
" Canada is with Mr. Chamberlain to a man," will
find it somewhat hard to believe that opinion
in the Dominion is what is here described. But
the plain truth is that Canada has " no use for "
Mr. Chamberlain until he shall have converted the
English people. That process proved to be so tedi
ous to them that they grew weary of the subject and
dropped it.
The reader who has grasped the idea of Canadian
Nationality will already have apprehended that Canada
will become an exporting manufacturing as well as
agricultural country. She may be a second United
States. Need the prospect alarm us in England ? Some
will argue that we should then have to protect our
selves against her. Why so ? We do not now protect
our industries against the competition of the United
States and of Europe. Our trade with the world con
tinues to expand and our manufactures to thrive despite,
or perhaps because of, such competition. We are a
free-trade country, not from any stubborn adherence to
theory or blind love of abstract doctrine, but because the
majority think it to our advantage to be Free Traders.

268 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
An addition to the number of competing nations
would not of itself affect the position. If it is profitable
for us to carry on our national business on free-trade
principles now, presumably it would still be so then. As
suming the Protectionist system to prevail in the Colonial
Nations as in foreign countries, we should still be the
only free-trade nation in the world. Why should it
be feared that we should be less well off then than
now ?
The free-trade system is good or bad for us inde
pendently of whether other nations think it good or bad
for them. We should be, as the Colonial Nations would
be, entirely at liberty to vary our practice at any time.
If a Colonial kingdom or foreign State traded unfairly
with us by " dumping," we should be free to retaliate
by whatsoever means it was to our advantage to use.
Such retaliation against any other State has nothing to
do with free trade. It is a measure of discipline.
Whether " dumping " is in reality a disadvantage to
the nation which is dumped upon, and whether any
" Retaliation" would be effective, arc issues which would
have to be fought out on concrete instances; but
assuming that the disadvantages of thc one and the
effectiveness of the other are provable, England would
still be free to defend herself.
Her fiscal independence, which is surely as vital
to her as this attribute is to Canada, would stand.
The Colonial kingdoms would be in a like case. Each
could become a free-trading nation if it thought fit, or
free trading only with Great Britain and with other
free-trading Colonial kingdoms. By leaving affairs to
develop naturally, each of the component parts of the

CANADA AND THE FISCAL SYSTEM 269
Empire would retain liberty to follow its own line of
self-interest ; and so long as England remains a free-
trade country there is always a probability that the
Colonial kingdoms may eventually conclude that it
may also be for their advantage to become Free
Traders. Our present system is an outgrowth of Protection,
and of preferential trading with Colonies. We grew
so much that our fiscal suit burst at thc scams. It
is possible that the Colonies will also outgrow Pro
tectionist garments. If they do, the world will have
advanced some distance towards that universal free
trade which everyone recognises would be advantageous.
There is a free-trade party in every country and in
every colony. Even in Canada it is not altogether
negligible. There are thoughtful Canadians who pre
dict that the Labour party — now in its infancy but,
in so democratic a land, surely destined to exercise a
predominant influence in Dominion politics — will also
be a free-trade party. But this is to look a long way
ahead. That, however, is exactly what should be done.
The fiscal-entity policy, with inter-Imperial " scientific "
tariffs, and similar " scientific " tariffs between the
Empire and the rest of the world, is rooted in the
assumption that the Colonies will always be highly
Protectionist, that Protection against other manufac
turing nations is vital to the continued prosperity of
Great Britain, and that Protection is a sort of per
manent law — or at least a method that will endure —
outside Great Britain. There is ground for the con
trary assumption — that other manufacturing nations,

270 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
and the Nations which will arise in what are now
our autonomous Colonies, will outgrow Protection,
just as wc in England have done. Whichever as
sumption be taken as the basis of our national conduct,
thc fact remains that self-interest and that alone will
determine the question in Great Britain. We shall
remain Free Traders, or revert to Protection, accord
ing to our estimate of the relative advantages and
disadvantages of the two systems for the people of
Great Britain. We should not imperil the welfare
of the people of these islands artificially to stimu
late the progress of the Colonies, any more than
the Colonies would now modify or abandon their
Protectionist systems to enhance the welfare of
the people of Great Britain. We could not afford
to do that any more than they could. The Colonies
would act only in the interests of their own popula
tion. They do so now, and they would do no less
when they had attained to Nationhood. The talk
of commercial self-sacrifice between different parts of
the Empire for the common good of the Empire may
be stirring rhetoric. But self-sacrifice does not enter
into trade either between nations or individuals. Busi
ness transactions imply the elimination of that quality :
trade is the negation of the idea of self-sacrifice.
It is the apotheosis of the idea of self-advantage. In
its political bearing it is the self-adjustment of the
interacting economic forces known as supply and
demand — forces too vast and complex in their inter-rela
tion for the intellects of statesmen. Their interference
with them, even for the single and unavoidable
purpose of raising revenue, does but dislocate and

CANADA AND THE FISCAL SYSTEM 271
check trade. When their activity is carried to the
point of serving sectional commercial interests they
inflict injustice upon those of their own people who
are outside the favoured and protected circle ; and
they provoke tariff wars with other nations. When
they seek to make the currents of trade subserve
theoretical col\stitution-making or other purely politi
cal ends, they are attempting a thing which is beyond
their mental powers and the executive capacity ot
Governments. At the best they can but erect barriers
to the free intercourse of peoples — mere temporary
obstructions ; for the needs and self-interest of man
kind are a force which cannot be controlled by any
State or federation of States. That Canada, the future
Nation, will subject the needs and self-interests of her
people now and in the future to the limitations that
would be inherent in a system of inter-Imperial
organisation based on trade preferences, there is no
ascertainable evidence. Such evidence as there is in
Canada of the tendency of public thought points
in the opposite direction — that of not surrendering
her fiscal independence in any way, whether to Great
Britain standing by herself alone or in association
with other Colonies. So far from showing a dis
position to give it up, Canada, as we have seen,
wishes for treaty-making powers in order that, among
other things, she may independently conclude com
mercial treaties with Foreign States ! And in this
attitude, so far as can be judged, she will be imitated
by other Colonies which, like herself, are working
their way towards Nationhood. In these circum
stances prudence demands that Great Britain should

272 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
continue her course of enlightened self-interest in
commerce, and hesitate before she incurs the risk
of enhancing the cost of food and all other com
modities to the crowded, struggling proletariat of
these islands.

CHAPTER VII
SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION
"Religion is the chief bond of human society." The
aphorism suggests the paraphrase that religion is the
bed-rock of Imperial unity. What is the condition of
religion in Canada as a factor in Imperial problems?
On that issue, of politics rather than of religious belief,
an effort may be made to marshal the leading facts
and impressions of travel. The subject is one of almost
baffling intricacy. We have in Canada not one race but
many. The French, not the English — a Catholic not
a Protestant Power — discovered and colonised this part of
North America ; at least, that broad and noble tract of
it between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes. Theirs
was pre-eminently an ecclesiastical or a missionary rather
than a military or commercial invasion ; and, both racially
and religiously, permanence was given to it by the
splendid zeal of their priests, as well as by the eager spirit
and fine courage of their explorers and the high endur
ance of their early settlers. The result all men know.
One vast province, Quebec, is peopled almost exclusively
by men of French origin ; every other province has a
sprinkling of French ; and, on the outskirts of civilisation
everywhere, there is a belt of half-breeds with French
blood in their veins. The French population, which in
s 273

274 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
Quebec province alone numbers 1,648,898, is Catholic
to the backbone. It is more fervently and intensely
Catholic than the people of rural France, the reality of
whose faith is strangely underrated in England by travellers
of insular mind who know only Paris or Boulogne, and
derive their ideas of an " irreligious nation " from the
anti-clerical activity of the political class. Any appre
ciation of Roman Catholicism in Canada should there
fore be based on the fact that thc French Canadian is a
devout and not merely nominal son of the Church, His
piety and his mental attitude are those of the seventeenth
century rather than of the twentieth. The priest in
Canada exercises an influence on the individual and on the
family which is greater than that of any other minister of
religion, and greater than that which is wielded in France.
A parallel might be found in rural Italy, in Spain, or in
South America, Be that as it may, it is an influence
which does not admit of verbal measurement. One result
of it is that in "the competition of the cradle" the
French Canadian far out-distances the British Canadian,
The injunction to be fruitful and replenish thc earth is
an essential part of the moral and religious code. What
Mr. Roosevelt terms " race-suicide " is a thing abhorrent
to the Catholic mind and to the French people in the
Dominion. Hence the latter are increasing rapidly in
numbers ; and with that increase the Catholic Church
grows in power. It is a militantly aggressive Church,
in politics, proselytising, education, benevolence, and in
every avenue of social life. Its power in Canadian
politics is part of the history of the Dominion. Reference
to the latest instance — that ofthe Schools Question in the
newly-made autonomous provinces — is scarcely neces-

SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION 275
sary. It will be more effective to say that in no part of
Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and as far north
as travel is practicable, will the inquirer be out of reach
of the organisation of this Church, His mental im
pression will be that it is omnipresent in the Dominion,
In every large city its churches occupy thc finest sites
and are the most imposing in structure and ornate in
design. Wheresoever two or three huts are gathered to
gether, there will be seen the tiny church of the Roman
Catholics. In every foreign settlement there is a new
edifice. No vantage ground, great or small, seems to be
unoccupied. The cumulative effect of observation,
apart from statistics, is that the Roman Catholic is thc
dominant Church of Canada. The traveller who looks
back upon his wanderings and concentrates attention on
the religious phenomena, will find that his chief mental
image is that of a golden cross towering above dome or
steeple as though in defiant challenge to the world ; and
the next visual recollection will probably be that of men,
women and children streaming into church for Mass —
men, be it noted ; and as many men as women. Other
churches will come into view. But these have weather
cocks on their steeples — a grotesque emblem of variability
of doctrine ; and in these only a small minority of the
worshippers are men. It is true that the Protestants of
the census outnumber the Roman Catholics. Never
theless, the Roman is the first Church ofthe Dominion.
Its vitality is unquestionable. It has more influence,
political, social and moral, than any other ; and in
politics more power than all the other denominations in
combination. The cynical may suggest, as a possible
explanation of the tenacious hold of the priesthood over

276 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
the people, that the religious orders advance money to
lay-members of the faith at 2| per cent, interest. Some
French farmers and traders are indebted to their religious
organisations in this way. As the mercantile interest
rate on approved securities in Canada to small farmers and
the like ranges from 6 per cent, (usually it is 8 per cent.),
there is financial advantage in being a good Catholic.
This may be a slight contributory cause of thc supremacy
of the Roman faith. But it certainly is not the main
cause. That is to be found in the historical development
of Canada, the racial composition of the people, the ability
and zeal of thc priestly class.
Does this Church constitute a factor in favour of
Imperial unity or not? It does, because, under the
British Crown, its adherents are absolutely assured of
non-interference in their political and other activities.
That assurance might be weakened if Canada were an
independent Power ; for there is a strong and bitterly
hostile Orange clement which pursues the Roman
Catholic Church in Canada with implacable dislike.
Any reader who may have followed the Separate Schools
Question, from thc Manitoba controversy of a decade
ago imtil the passing of the present Autonomy Act,
creating the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta,
will not need to be furnished with evidence. On the
other hand, it would be impolitic to expect that the
loyalty of French Canadians to a Protestant Sovereign
would be of an effusive character. It exists, beyond
question ; but it is not bred in the bone. It is not a
constituent of the blood in the same sense as the loyalty
of the English Protestant settler. It is professed and
cultivated — and with all sincerity — chiefly because it is

SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION 277
of itself thc main safeguard of religious and civil liberty.
But whatever the motive, the practical effect is the same
— a vital and operative loyalty to the British connection.
The Church of England in Canada, which should be
the pre-eminent factor in the maintenance of Imperial
unity, in so far as religious faith and practice govern
that issue, is preceded in numerical importance by the
Methodists and the Presbyterians. She stands fourth on
the list. The figures from the last census are : —
Roman Catholics . . . 2,228,997

MethodistsPresbyterians .
Church of England
Baptists
Lutherans
CongregationaUsts
Jews Salvation Army

916,862 842,301
680,346316,714 92,394 28,283 16,432
10,307

Over two hundred thousand persons are comprised in
various sects and " freak religions"; but it would be a
waste of time to analyse the figures. Thc present
population of the Dominion is about six millions. At
the census of 1901, it was five million three hundred
and seventy-one thousand three hundred and fifteen.
There are various causes which account for the poor
numerical standing of the Church of England. The
first in importance is that the Dominion, outside
Quebec, is largely peopled by men of Scotch descent.
It would be superfluous to do more than allude to
the historic and economic factors which led to the
depopulation of great tracts of the Highlands. Deer
have replaced men. The descendants of many of the

278 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
expatriated families are on the American Continent.
Canadian Scotchmen are to be met with everywhere,
from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Slope. The
Highland regiments employed in the American Revolu
tion were given land grants in Eastern Canada. Lord
Selkirk colonised the Red River Valley with Highlanders
early in the past century. The original settlers in the
West were predominantly Scotch, The majority of the
Hudson Bay posts, North and West, were held by
Scotchmen, Hence Presbyterianism was first in the
field. Where it was not — the Red River and As
siniboine Settlements are cases in point — and where
thc Church of England established herself in thc Scotch
Colonies, she lost most of her Scotch adherents when a
Presbyterian minister came on the scene. Distinctively
English immigration followed, and with it an extension
of the Church of England organisation from thc East
into the West, But the extension was not sufficiently
rapid and energetic. That, however, is another issue.
The second — perhaps it should be the firsts-cause of
the relatively backward position ofthe Church ofEngland
in Canada is to be found in the inability of the Church
in England to retain her supremacy among the people of
England. Excluding qualifying considerations such as
thc reader will be able to supply for himself, the generali
sation is roughly true that the Church of England is
the Church of the well-born, the cultured and the
prosperous classes, while the dissenting Churches are
those of people who do not emphasise their claims in
these matters. The Church of England is an aristo
cratic as well as a democratic Church — necessarily so,
as an institution, because of her status as an integral

SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION 279
part of the Constitution ; the dissenting Churches are
pronouncedly democratic. Now the English immi
gration into Canada has never been and is not now in
any sense aristocratic. It has been composed in the
main of people who were desperately poor. Except in
parts of Manitoba and at Calgary and in thc ranching
country, there are very few Englishmen indeed who
come from the middle or higher classes. The English
in Canada are labouring people, the human output of
the rural cottage and the town tenement. This is
tantamount to saying that they belong to the classes in
which Dissent has had the most, and the Church of
England the least, success. The majority of those who
belonged to any religious organisation at all brought
with them the principles and practice of Dissent rather
than those of the Church of England, In other words,
the Church of England in England has not sent out
English Churchmen to the Church in Canada. The
immigration has been an immigration of dissenters or
indifferentists rather than of Church people. There has
been, of course, a Church of England element in the
immigration ; but this element had less virility than the
dissenting bulk, because, in England, it had been
accustomed to endowed churches, whereas, in the
Dominion, every church has to be self-supporting.
The English Church, in common with the dissenting
chapel, does not live on the proceeds of benefactions in
past ages, but on what the worshipper draws out of his
pocket. Consequently, the stray Churchman who goes
to Canada as an immigrant has to discard the habit or
thinking that the English Church which he may attend
will continue its services, regardless of whether he puts

28o CANADA, THE NEW NATION
ten cents or a dollar into the plate ; and it takes him a
long time before he learns that, unless his dollar is forth
coming with regularity, the bell must cease to ring.
But he docs learn in time. The unfortunate fact, how
ever, is that few new arrivals are susceptible to the
lesson, while the majority of the immigrants are, from
previous associations in England, readily subject to the
influence of dissenting ministers, who are most active in
securing immigrant recruits to their congregations.'
The inability of the Church in England to make
Churchmen of the democracy of England is a funda
mental cause of the weakness of the Canadian branch of
that Church as a link in the chain that holds the Empire
together. Now thc immigration from thc British Isles
into Canada alone is at the rate of fifty thousand a year
or more. For the year ending June 1904, the figures
were : English and Welsh, 36,694, Scotch, 10,552,
Irish, 3,128 — total, 50,374. The numbers rise
yearly. Should not the remedy for the weak
ness of the Canadian Church of England be foimd in
England ? To urge greater zeal upon the clergy of
Canada may be fair and reasonable, though observation
goes to show that these gentlemen have little reserve of
strength to put forth. They are overwhelmed by their
task. The most effective help that can be given them
is such as will change the denominational character of
the immigration. If England will send to Canada fifty
thousand Church people instead of dissenters, or a large
instead of an insignificant proportion ofthe fifty thousand,
the Church of England in thc Dominion may be saved
from defeat in the denominational struggle. (Dthcrwisc,
the Church of England will continue to be outpaced,

SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION 281
and will become proportionately less effective as an
instrument for the continuity of traditions which should
help to give permanence to the Imperial tie. How the
denominational change in the inflow of immigration is
to be made is a matter for the Church of England in
England. If the hierarchy and clergy of that power
ful organisation are unequal to the task, the Church of
England in Canada will be, even more noticeably than
is the case at present, the Church of a coterie, not of
the people of the Dominion. The subject is one which,
on high political as well as on religious grounds, should
actively — and immediately — engage the intellect of the
Church. Canada is on the eve of great material develop
ments. The enormous areas of her cultivable land are
only now becoming known even to Canadians them
selves. English people have as yet but a feeble idea of
the extent and realisable resources ofthis spacious domain.
The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
will make accessible a new cultivable zone from ocean
to ocean which of itself must be reckoned in millions of
acres. The present immigration from the British Isles
is but a rivulet in comparison with the mighty stream
which will flow thither in years to come, despite the
rigours of the Northern winter and the hardships of thc
pioneer's life. The pressure of population will drive
countless thousands into Canada from the Old Land.
This influx will make a Nation at least as populous and
wealthy as that which lies to the south of the 49th
parallel. Assuming the Church of England to be what
it ought to be, and what every publicist would wish it to
be — one of thc determining factors in Imperial unity —
should not thc statesmen of the Church in England de-

282 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
vise such plans as would leaven present and prospective
immigration with members of that Church ? It is not
a question of money gifts to the Church in Canada but
of sending recruits.
It should not, however, be inferred that the dissenting
communities in Canada are likely to be less serviceable
than the Church of England as bonds of Empire. Their
historical roots are in English soil. They are factors in
inter-Imperial politics as well as in religion. Should
they combine — and some observers think that such a
combination is inevitable — their political influence would
be enormous. The ideal of a united Protestant Church
of Canada has captivated the imagination of many.
Possibly the Church of England in Canada, thrown as
she is entirely on her own resources, and failing effective
help from England in the form of a flood of immigrant
English Church people, might cast in her lot with the
movement towards unity and dominate it by virtue of
the beauty and religious significance of her ritual, to
which the services of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and
Congregational Churches in Canada are approximating.
That speculation may be new to the Church in England,
but it is not novel in the Dominion. If actuality could
be given to it the advantages would be great. Much
" overlapping " and competitive waste of effort would be
avoided. One would not find three or four churches in
a little town, and not one of them filled. The war of
sects would cease. But this thought need not be pursued.
Time will bring its own solution ofthe problem before the
Churches in Canada; and that solution will determine the
extent to which the religious life of the Dominion will
be a cohesive force in the organisation of the Empire,

SOME TENDENCIES IN RELIGION 283
The population of Canada, — the population now
there, that which is crossing the Atlantic week by
week, and the countless shiploads yet to come —
forms the best material imaginable for religious effort.
If we except the great cities already existing and yet to
be, it is a population which for several generations will
be thinly scattered over vast regions, clearing forest lands,
irrigating arid tracts, draining swamps, cutting into
rock formations for minerals, and otherwise — amid the
silences of Nature, the excessive heat of the summer
sun and the rigours of a semi-Arctic winter — doing
the rough work of subduing what remains of the
primeval world. It is these things — the absence of dis
tractions which militate against religion in old civilisa
tions — which have made the Canadian population
essentially religious in temperament. So long as they
last it will remain so. The church or chapel on the
prairie, in the forest clearing, in the mining settlements,
in the bushlands of the far North and North-West are,
and for generations must be, the chief, indeed the only,
centres of social life. These, and these alone, afford re
laxation for lives of arduous toil. They are the only
outlet for activities — mental, emotional and artistic —
which lift men above the level of mere labourers burrow
ing, as Kingsley once wrote, like vermin in the earth's
hide. No one who has not lived in Canada among her
pioneering people can know how deeply the place of
worship is appreciated, how instinctively those who lead
isolated lives in these sparsely inhabited regions turn to
it as a means of bringing themselves into association
with the wider and deeper thoughts of the race from
which they have sprung. Amid the feverish distractions

284 CANADA, THE NEW NATION
of life in the old land, religion may have been of trifling
import : in Canada it is everything because, without it,
life is little else but a hard and incessant conflict with
natural forces — a conflict waged, in innumerable cases,
far from human companionship and embittered by a
feeling of exile.

THE end

COLSTON AND COY. LIMITED, I-RINTERS, EDINBURGH

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 03229 0703

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