The rush to the wheat-fields of the Canadian Northwest is easily understood. For twenty years Europe poured a great stream of intelligent, industrious farmers into the United States to take advantage of the free and arable lands. Not a few from eastern and central Canada crossed the line to the south for the same purpose. With the exhaustion of the more easily acquired lands, the tide turned more northward, and while the movement has not yet attained, and probably never will reach, the flood-tide witnessed in the agricultural immigration into the United States, the same forces are at work, and the same results will be achieved.

In the days when the grain area of the United States filled up with people, wheat was fifty cents a bushel or less, and “dollar wheat” was the dream of the grain-farmer. The dream has come true, and this increase in value has given the movement strength enough to overcome serious climatic differences and remoteness from markets; or, in brief, it has equalized the line of greater resistance. In the last ten years perhaps 750,000 people from the United States have gone to Canada, most of them seeking homes. On the whole, this immigration has been of a very desirable class, and it is estimated that these people have taken with them to their new homes an average of about a thousand dollars in money or property for every man, woman, and child, or total assets of about $750,000,000. Many a prosperous farmer, with perhaps a hundred and forty acres of land in Iowa, Illinois, or other good farming States, has thought about his family, and realized that at his death his property would have to be sold in order that each might get his share. He has found that by selling his valuable but comparatively small farm at a good figure he would have enough to improve and stock at least six hundred and forty acres of the Canadian Northwest, thus giving him ample land at some time in the future to divide among his children and leave each one with a workable portion. Canada has welcomed these settlers, as well she might. They have willingly become Canadians and are good citizens. Their influence will in time add insensibly to the force at work for the economic unification of the North American continent, though in the meantime they are as good Canadians as immigrants in the United States are good Americans, even in the first generation.

There is possibly about $2,000,000,000 of British and other European capital invested in Canada, but it takes little active part in influencing the country politically or otherwise in the direction of its progress. As a rule, the English send out their money in hopes of larger earnings than would be had at home—and to escape the income tax; France, for the income received therefrom; both people investing in listed securities rather than industrial adventures. It is not quite the same with $350,000,000 of American money that has found its way into Canadian investment. Much of this money is engaged in enterprises based upon Canadian trade, protected by Canadian tariff, benefited by Canadian bounties, and competitive with American capital at home. The force of this influence, taken with antagonisms of similar character originating south of the Canadian boundary, and the active aid of certain high-tariff enthusiasts in the United States, enabled the anti-reciprocity party in Canada to score over those in favor of closer commercial union between the two countries. It might not be comforting to the pride of Canadians to know or to have it said just how far these influences went in deciding the political fate of the dominion at the moment, and it might detract from the quality of the self-gratification of the English to know how this so-called manifestation of Canadian loyalty was really brought about. It is equally true that those in the United States who worked so long and so ardently for greater freedom of trade with Canada, believing it would result in great good for their own country as well as for Canada, are not inclined to cheerfulness when they realize just how much of their defeat they owe to the antagonistic influence of their own fellow-countrymen, directors of American industries which have grown into perhaps too great power in the nation through the willingness on the part of the American consumer to contribute liberally, so that all branches of human endeavor might prosper together in the general advance of the nation. Just how far the reaction in favor of reciprocity has gone in both countries since the last Canadian election, it is impossible to say. It is reasonable to assume that none who voted in favor of it has changed his opinion, and it is a matter of public and private record that a goodly number of those who voted against it in Canada have changed their opinion since the smoke of battle cleared away and it has been possible to put a true value on the injudicious or untrue statements of politicians, be these of an allegedly humorous character or not. This question of the economic unification of North America is a living issue which will disappear from the national life of the two English-speaking countries only with a fulfilment of a commercial union virtually complete. When President Taft authorized his secretary of state to offer complete free trade to the Canadian Reciprocity Commissioners as a basis for negotiation, he was not suggesting the impossible; he was merely ahead of the times, for some day one of his successors in the White House will have the honor of carrying the suggestion into practical effect.

The period of great development in Canada began in the decade from 1891 to 1901, when the foreign trade of the country increased by about $170,000,000, or, in other words, doubled itself. In the following decade it increased by nearly $384,000,000, or nearly doubled itself again. A few figures show most strikingly how during the last twenty years the new Canada was begun and came into her own, for her foreign trade progressed as follows:

Years

Exports

Imports

Total

1871

$74,173,618