The Canadian Commonwealth Part 2

[8] Canada's subsidies to steams.h.i.+ps vary from year to year, but I do not think any year has much exceeded two millions.

[9] This is including Labrador.

[10] Under crop in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta 16,478,000 acres.

Area surveyed available for cultivation 158,516,427 acres; land area, 466,068,798 acres.

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

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

[13] Canada, mineral production for 1911 stands thus: copper, $6,911,831: gold, $9,672,096; iron, $700,216; lead, $818,672; nickel, $10,229,623; silver, $17,452,128; other metal, $322,862; total, $46,197,428. Non-metallic production 1911: coal $26,378,477; cement, $7,571,299; clay, $8,317,709; stone, $3,680,361; in all, $56,094.258.

CHAPTER III

THE TIE THAT BINDS

I

It is easy to understand what binds the provinces into a confederation.

They had to bind themselves into a unity with the British North America Act or see their national existence threatened by any band of settlers who might rush in and by a perfectly legitimate process of naturalization and voting set up self-government. At the time of confederation such eminent Imperial statesmen as Gladstone and Labouchere seriously considered whether it would not be better to cut Canada adrift, if she wanted to be cut adrift. The difference between the Canadian provinces and the isolated Latin republics of South America ill.u.s.trates best what the bond of confederation did for the Dominion. The _why_ and _how_ of confederation is easy to understand, but what tie binds Canada to the Mother Country? That is a point almost impossible for an outsider to understand.

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

Certainly, England sends Canada a Governor-General every four years; but the Cabinet of England never appoints a Governor-General to Canada till it has been unofficially ascertained from the Cabinet of the Dominion whether he will be persona grata. Canada gives the Governor-General fifty thousand dollars a year and some perquisites--an emolument that can barely sustain the style of living expected and exacted from the appointee, who must maintain a small viceregal court.

The Governor-General has the right of veto on all bills pa.s.sed by the Canadian government; and where an act might conflict with Imperial interests, he would doubtless exercise the right; but the veto power in the hands of the Imperial vicegerent is so rarely used as to be almost dead. Veto is avoided by the Governor-General working in close conference with the prevailing Cabinet, or party in power; and a party on the verge of enacting laws inimical to Imperial interests can be disciplined by dismissal from office, in which case the party must appeal to the country for re-election. That means time; and time allows pa.s.sion to simmer down; and an entire electorate is not likely to perpetrate a policy inimical to Imperial interests. In practice, that represents the whole, sole and entire power of England's representative in Canada--a power less than the nod of a saloon keeper or ward boss in the civic politics of the United States. Officially, yes; the signature of the Governor-General is put to commissions and appointments of first rank in the army and the Cabinet and the courts.

In reality, it is a question if any Governor in Canada since confederation has as much as suggested the name of an applicant for office.

On the other hand, Canada's dependence on England is even more tenuous.

Does a question come up as to the "twilight zone" of provincial and federal rights, it is settled by an appeal to the Privy Council. Suits from lower courts reversed by the Supreme Court of Canada can be appealed to England for decision; and in religious disputes as to schools--as in the famous Manitoba School Case--this right of appeal to Imperial decision has really been the door out of dilemma for both parties in Canada. It is a s.h.i.+fting of the burden of a decision that must certainly alienate one section of votes--from the shoulders of the Canadian parties to an impartial Imperial tribunal.

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

II

What, then, is the tie that binds colony to Mother Country?

Tangible--it is not; but real as life or death, who can doubt, when a self-governing colony voluntarily equips and despatches sixty thousand men--the choice sons of the land--to be pounded into pulp in an Imperial war? Who can doubt the tie is real, when bishops' sons, bankers', lawyers', doctors', farmers', carpenters', teachers' and preachers'--the young and picked heritors of the land--clamor a hundred thousand strong to enlist in defense of England and to face howitzer, lyddite and sh.e.l.l? Why not rest secure under the Monroe Doctrine that forever forefends European conquest? It is something the outsider can not understand. President Taft could not understand it when his reciprocity pact was defeated in Canada partly because of his own ill-advised words about Canada drifting from United States interests.

Canada was not drifting from American interests. In trade and in transportation her interests are interlinking with the United States every day; but the point--which President Taft failed to understand--is: Canada is _not_ drifting because she is sheet-anch.o.r.ed and gripped to the Mother Country. We may like it or dislike it. We may dispute and argue round about. The fact remains, without any screaming or flag waving, or postprandial loyalty expansions of rotund oratory and a rotunder waist line--Canada is sheet-anch.o.r.ed to England by an invisible, intangible, almost indescribable tie. That is one reason why she rejected reciprocity. That is why at a colossal cost in land and subsidies and loans and guarantees of almost two billions, she has built up a transportation system east and west, instead of north and south. That is why for a century she has hewn her way through mountains of difficulty to a destiny of her own, when it would have been easier and more profitable to have cast in her lot with the United States.

What is the tie that binds? Is it the hope of an Imperial Federation, which shall bind the whole British Empire into such a world federation as now holds the provinces of the Dominion? Twenty years ago, if you had asked that, the answer might have been "Yes." Canada was in the dark financially and did not see her way out. If only the Chamberlain scheme of a tariff against the world, free trade within the empire, could have evolved into practical politics, Canada for purely practical reasons would have welcomed Imperial Federation. It would have given her exports a wonderful outlet. But to-day Imperial Federation is a deader issue in Canada than reciprocity with the United States. No more books are written about it. No one speaks of it. No one wants it. No one has time for it. The changed att.i.tude of mind is well ill.u.s.trated by an incident on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, one day.

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

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

The Canadian statesman did not answer at once. He pointed across the Ottawa, where the blue s.h.i.+mmering Laurentians seem to recede and melt into a domain of infinitude. "Why _should_ we want Imperial Federation?" he answered. "We have an empire the size of Europe, whose problems we must work out. Why should Canadians go to Westminster to legislate on a deceased wife's sister's bills and Welsh disestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit to plunder the fit?"

It will be noticed that his answer had none of that flunkeyism to which Goldwin Smith used to ascribe much of Canadian pro-loyalty. Rather was there a grave recognition of the colossal burden of helping a nation the area of Europe to work out her destiny in wisdom and in integrity and in the certainty that is built up only from rock bottom basis of fact.

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

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

The Duke of Connaught turned and looked the fussy lip-loyalist over.

"What's good enough for Americans is good enough for me," he said.

An instance of the absence of flunkeyism from the Dominion's loyalty to the Mother Country occurred during the visit of the present King as Prince of Wales to the Canadian Northwest a few years ago. The royal train had arrived at some little western place, where a contingent of the Mounted Police was to act as escort for the Prince's entourage.

The train had barely pulled in when a fussy little long-coat-tailed secretary flew John-Gilpin fas.h.i.+on across the station platform to a khaki trooper of the Mounted Police.

"His Royal Highness has arrived! His Royal Highness has arrived,"

gasped the little secretary, almost apoplectic with self-importance.

"Come and help to get the baggage off--"

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

Yet that trooper was of the company that made the Strathcona Horse famous in South Africa--famous for such daring abandon in their charges that the men could hardly be held within bounds of official orders. He is of the very cla.s.s of men who have forsaken gainful occupations in the West to clamor a hundred-thousand strong for the privilege of fighting to the last ditch for the empire under the rain of death from German fire.

"How can Canadians be loyal to a system of government that acknowledges some fat king sitting on a throne chair like a mummy as ruler?"

demanded an American woman of a Canadian man.

"Well," answered the Canadian, "I don't know that any 'fat king' was ever quite so fat as a gentleman named Mammon who plays a pretty big part in the government of all republics." He drew a five-dollar bill from his pocket. "As a piece of paper that is utterly worthless," he explained. "It isn't even good wrapping paper. It's a promise to pay--to deliver the goods, that gives it value. It's what the system of government stands for, that rouses support--not this, that, or the other man--"

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

He might have explained that Canada has had a system of justice since 1837 never truckled to nor trafficked in, but he knew in his heart that the loyalty was to a something deeper than that. He knew that many republics--Switzerland, for instance--have as impartial a system of justice. He might have descanted on the British North America Act being to Canada what the Const.i.tution is to the United States, only more elastic, more susceptible to growth and changing conditions; but he knew that the Const.i.tution was what it was owing to this other principle of which law and justice were but the visible formula. He might easily have dilated on excellent features of the Canadian parliamentary system different from the United States or Germany. For instance, no party can hold office one day after it lacks the support of a majority vote. It must resign reins to the other party, or go to the country for re-election. Or he might have pointed to the very excellent feature of Cabinet Ministers sitting in the House and being directly responsible to Commons and Senate for the management of their departments to the expenditure of a farthing. A Cabinet member who may be quizzed to-day, to-morrow, every day in the week except Sunday, on the management of affairs under him can never take refuge in ambiguous silence or behind the skirts of his chief, as secretaries delinquent have frequently taken refuge behind the spotless reputation of a too-confiding President. But the Canadian explained none of these things. He knew that these things were only the outward and visible formula of the principle to which he was loyal.

III

A few years ago the mistake would have been impossible; for there was, up to 1900, practically no movement of settlers from the British Isles to Canada; but to-day with an enormous in-rush of British colonists to the Dominion, a superficial observer might ascribe the loyalty to the ties of blood--to the fact that between 1900 and 1911, 685,067 British colonists flocked to Canada. Not counting colossal investments of British capital, there are to-day easily a million Britishers living on and drawing their sustenance from the soil of Canada. And yet, however unpalatable and ungracious the fact may be to Englishmen, the ties of blood have little to do with the bond that holds Canada to England.

This statement will arouse protest from a certain section of Canadians; but those same Canadians know there are hundreds--yes, thousands--of mercantile houses in the Dominion where employers practically put up the sign--"No Englishman need apply."

"I've come to the point," said a wholesale hardware man of a Canadian city, "where I won't employ a man if he has a c.o.c.kney accent. I've tried it hundreds of times, and it has always ended the same way. I have to break a c.o.c.kney's neck before I can convince him that I know the way I want things done, and they have to be done that way. He is so sure I am 'ownley a demmed ke-lo-neal' that he is lecturing me on how I should do things before he is in my establishment ten minutes. I don't know what it is. It may be that coming suddenly to a land where all men are treated on an equality and not kicked and expected to doff caps in thanks for the insolence, they can't stand the free rein and not go locoed. All I know is--where I'll employ an Irishman, or a Scotchman, or a Yorks.h.i.+reman, on the jump, I will not employ a c.o.c.kney.

I don't want to commit murder."

And that business man voiced the sentiment of mult.i.tudes from farm, factory and shop. I'll not forget, myself, the semi-comic episode of rescuing an English woman from dest.i.tution and having her correct my Canadian expressions five minutes after I had given her a roof. She had referred to her experience as "jolly rotten"; and I had remarked that strangers sometimes had hard luck because "we Canadians couldn't place them," when I was roundly called to order by a tongue that never in its life audibly articulated an "h."

IV

Before digging down to the subterranean springs of Canadian loyalty, we must take emphatic cognizance of several facts. Canada, while not a republic, is one of the most democratic nations in the world.

Practically every man of political, financial or industrial prominence in Canada to-day came up by the s.h.i.+rt-sleeve route in one generation.

If there is an exception to this statement--and I know every part of Canada almost as well as I know my own home--I do not know it. Sifton, Van Horne, MacKenzie, Mann, Laurier, Borden, Foster, the late Sir John Macdonald--all came up from penniless boyhood through their own efforts to what Canadians rate as success. I said "what Canadians rate as success." I did not say to affluence, for Canadians do not rate affluence by itself as success. Laurier, Foster, Sir John Macdonald--each began as a poor man. Sifton began life as a penniless lawyer. Van Horne got his foot on the first rung of the ladder hustling cars for troops in the Civil War. MacKenzie of Canada Northern fame began with a trowel; Dan Mann with an ax in the lumber woods at a period when wages were a dollar and twenty-five cents a day; Laurier with a lawyer's parchment and not a thing else in the world.

Foster, the wizard of finance, taught his first finance in a schoolroom. And so one might go on down the list of Canada's great.

Unless I am gravely mistaken the richest industrial leader of Ontario began life in a little bake shop, where his wife cooked and he sold the wares; and the richest man in the Canadian West began with a pick in a mine. I doubt if there is a single instance in Canada of a public man whose family's security from want traces back prior to 1867.