The "Orientals" make good citizens, the Chinese particularly. They are industrious, clever workers, especially as agriculturists, and they give no trouble. The great drawback with them is that they do not stay in the country, but having made their money in Canada, go home to China to spend it.
Most of the alien element that goes to Canada is of good quality, and ultimately becomes a very valuable asset. But the problem Canada is facing is that they are strangers, and, not having been brought up in the British tradition, they know nothing of it. The tendency of this influence is to produce a new race to which the ties of sentiment and blood have little meaning.
It is a problem which Britain must share also, if we do not wish to see Canada growing up a stranger to us in texture, ideals and thought. It is not an easy problem. Canada's chief need today is for agriculturists, yet the workers we wish to retain most in this country are agriculturists. Canada must have her supply, and if we cannot afford them, she must take what she can from Eastern Europe, or from America, and very many American farmers, indeed, are moving up to Canadian lands.
There is always room in a vast country such as Canada for skilled or willing workers, and we can send them. But the demand is not great at present, and will not be great until the agriculturist opens up the land. And the agriculturist is to come from where?
Certainly it is a matter which calls for a great deal of consideration.
IV
The Prince made the usual round of the usual program during his stay, but his visit to the Grain Exchange was an item that was unique.
He drove on Wednesday, September 10th, to this dramatic place, where brokers, apparently in a frenzy, shout and wave their hands, while the price of grain sinks and rises like a trembling balance at their gestures and shouts.
The pit at which all these hustling buyers and sellers are gathered has all the romantic qualities of fiction. It is, as far as I am concerned, one of the few places that live up to the written pictures of it, for it gave me the authentic thrill that had come to me when I first read of the Chicago wheat transactions in Frank Norris's novel, "The Pit."
The Prince drove to the Grain Exchange and was whirled aloft to the fourth story of the tall building. He entered a big hall in which babel with modern improvements and complications reigned.