1914-04-23

PETITION REJECTED.

Mr. SPEAKER:: With reference to the
petition of the Guelph Trades and Labour Council praying the Government to take over the road of the Canadian Northern Railway Company as a public work for the people of Canada and for other purposes, I have to say that as the prayer of the petition, if granted, would involve an expenditure of public money, it cannot be received.



QUESTIONS.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions to be answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)

Mr. DEMERS:: 1.	Has M. Ldandre Paradis, of St. Johns, Quebec, been appointed to a position under the Government of Canada?
2.	If so, to what position and whom did he succeed?
3.	What was his predecessor's salary?
4.	What is his present salary?
5.	Has the said Ldandre Paradis any contract with the Department of Militia and Defence?
6.	If so, can a civil servant be a Government contractor at the same time?


Mr. CODERRE:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Superintendent of the fumigation station at St. Johns, Quebec, and an inspector for carrying out the Destructive Insect and Pest Act. He succeeded Mr. P. H. Dupuis.
3.	At the rate of $75 per month for such time as he was employed at the fumigation station, which is kept open for about four months in each year.
4.	At the rate of $75 per month for such time as he may be employed at the fumigation station, which is kept opeen for about four months in each year.
5.	A contract for the supply of forage at St. Johns, P.Q., was made with Mr. L. Paradis, of St. Johns, Quebec. This contract expires on the 31st of August, 1914.
6.	No information.	.


INDIAN MEDICAL ATTENDANTS.
Mr. A. K. MACLEAN:: 1.	Who are the Government medical attendants of Indians for Kings county, N.S. ?
2.	What amount is paid annually to each of such attendants?
3.	What number of professional visits were made by each of such attendants, for the last

fiscal or calendar year of which there is available such detailed, information?
4.	Who were the predecessors of such medical attendants, and what amount did they annually receive for such services?


Mr. ROCHE:: 1.	Doctor George McNally, of Berwick, is medical attendant for the western half of Kings county and Dr. W. B. Moore, of Kentville, is attendant for the eastern half of the county.
2.	Doctors McNally and Moore are each paid a salary of $200 per annum.
3.	Doctor Moore, during the last fiscal year, attended 127 Indians. Returns are not yet to hand from Dr. McNally as to the number of Indians he attended.
4.	Previous to the appointment of the above mentioned doctors, Dr. H. M. Jacques was medical attendant for the whole county at a salary of $50 per annum. He did not attempt to do all the work, and in the year 1910-11 accounts amounting to $496.80, were paid. The total cost of attendance for that year was $546.80.


PLANTAGENET RURAL MAIL DELIVERY.
Mr. PROULX:: 1.	How many tenders were received by the Post Office Department for the conveyance of the mails on the proposed free rural delivery route No. 1, Plantagenet, county of Prescott?
2.	What are the names of the tenderers and the amount of their respective tenders?
3.	Is it the intention of the Post Office Department to establish said route in the near future?


Mr. PELLETIER:: The tenders will not be opened until the 8th proximo. The service will be established as soon as the necessary contract arrangements have been made.


LIEUT.-COLONEL CHARLES F. WINTER.
Mr. CARROLL:: 1.	What position does Lieut.-Colonel Charles F. Winter occupy in the Militia Department, and what are his duties?
2.	Has he within the past year been given instructions to do any work outside his ordinary duties? If so, what?
Mr. SAM. HUGHES:
1.	Military secretary.
2.	No.


ALDERSHOT, N.S., CAMP.
Mr. MACDONALD:: 1.	What are the names of the tenderers for
supplies furnished the various militia camps at Aldershot, Kings county, N.S., during the year 1913?	'
2.	What were the several prices quoted?
3.	From whom were supplies purchased and what was the price paid in each case?

Mr. -SAM,. HUGHES': Papers in reply to a motion are being sent in. *


HOMESTEAD ENTRY.
Mr. KNOWLES:: 1.	When was the entry of Harvey Rea
McVeigh for the S.W. 5 of 3-23-12, W. 3rd M., cancelled?
2.	When were instructions first isued by the Department of the Interior for a homestead inspector's report with regard to the improvements made on the S. W. J of 3-23-12, W. 3rd M., in connection with the application of Harvey Rea McVeigh for a refund of the moneys collected for the improvements made by him on the above land?
3.	What sum of money was so collected by the department for said improvements?
4.	On what date was such money paid to the department?
5.	Has the homestead inspector's report referred to in question No. 2, yet been received? If so, when?
6.	Has any money been paid to the said
Harvey Rea McVeigh on account of such refund? If so, how much?	.
7.	Has such payment been on account or in full?


Mr. ROCHE:: 1.	10th December, 1912.
2.	19th May, 1913.
3.	$165 has been collected from the present entrant.
4.	5th April, 1913.
5.	No. The land is situated north of the South Saskatchewan river, and the homestead inspector recently explained that on account of weather and the state of the roads it has been practically impossible to do any work in that country for some time, but that he would make his report as soon after the first of this month as weather and roads would permit.
6.	Yes, $50. It was represented that he was in urgent need of money.
7.	On account.
THE BUDGET:
Consideration of the motion of Hon. W. T. White (Minister of Finance) for the House to go into Committee of Ways and Means, resumed from Wednesday, April 22,


Right Hon.   S@: Mr. Speaker,'if the Budget, to which it was our privilege to listen some few days ago, had been confined to an exposition of the financial affairs of the country, it would have been my pleasure to have joined in the many encomiums pronounced upon that part of the hon. gentleman's deliverance and to have declared, and declared with perfect sincerity, that it was worthy of all commendation. Barring a
few thrusts which my hon. friend attempted at his opponents, and which his opponents at the present time can very well pass by, the expose of the book-keeping and the business of the Dominion which he presented, the liabilities, the assets and the resulting obligations, was clear, concise and to the point, and if my hon. friend permitted me,
I would offer him my heartiest congratulations.
But as to the othec part in which my hon. friend discussed the economic situation of the country, I must say that-and I shall appeal to the judgment of those who sit behind him-my hon. friend was, as to his facts and conclusions, singularly in error, and failed altogether to rise to a true conception of his duties and of his responsibilities.
My hon. friend stated, as he has done on more than one occasion in the House and out of it, that the economic situation of the country was satisfactory; that we had passed through a period of depression, but of slight depression only as compared with 1907, and that already we were sailing into calmer waters. He stated emphatically that there was no occasion for alarm; that we could well afford to wait in peace for the reaction, and that as regards the amount of reform he would make, it would be simply to tighten the screws upon a few items of the tariff and to make some semblance of reduction upon farm implements, a reduction so insignificant that it in fact adds insult to injury.
My hon. friend, with great complacency, relies upon the enormous resources of Canada. They are enormous indeed, especially in agricultural possibilities; tout my hon. friend, at all events, ought to know-and he is in a position to know more than anyone else in this House-that though the resources of Canada are enormous, and though we have yet hardly touched the fringe of them, at this moment in the eastern provinces agricultural production is not keeping pace with the requirements of the country. As to the western provinces, he knows also that agricultural development is rapidly coming to a standstill. He cannot ignore these facts; but still he turns his back upon the situation. We could not expect anything else, for he is one of those who three years ago so clamorously shouted: ' No change; no improvement; let well enough alone.' The man who-has not the energy to improve never will have the courage to reform

My hon. friend stated, however, that agriculture was the basic industry of all industries. If it is true, as I shall be able to prove later on, that at this moment agriculture is not returning what we have a right to expect from it, is not that proof that there is something ajar in the situation of the country which requires the attention of the Government; and if the Government fail to apply themselves to the task of remedying the situation, then it is also proof that they are not worthy of the confidence that the people have reposed in them?
I am well aware that nothing that I can say can convince my hon. friend, but I will place him face to face with a statement which came not long ago from his own side of the House. My hon. friend from Dundas (Mr. Broder), whom I regret not to see in his seat to-day, has a well deserved reputation in this House for being a shrewd and keen observer of what is going on in the country. Lately he addressed himself to this situation, and, within the hearing of my hon. friend, made the statement that agricultural production is in many respects not equal to the demand now pressing upon it. His words were:
The right hon. gentleman must realize that Canada is not producing the quantity of dairy produce that we might expect from it, an agricultural country. How can we justify this? Just last winter a gentleman sat down to his breakfast in the city of Ottawa and he had for his breakfast eggs from Russia, potatoes from Ireland, bacon from Denmark and butter from New Zealand.
Then the hon. member added pathetically:
That should not happen in this country.
On that list there was not one article of Canadian produce; it all came from abroad. No wonder that the hon. member for Dundas added pathetically, almost despairingly, that that should not happen in this country; but it has happened in this country; and it is happening at this moment. 'Tis true; 'tis a pity; and a pity 'tis, 'tis true. The hon. member for Dundas, who is a practical man, was not satisfied with pointing to the evil; he also suggested the remedy and immediately added these significant words:
That should not happen in this country. There is only one remedy and that is to get the people on the land.
These words were spoken within the hearing of my hon. friend the Minister of 'Finance, but what is there in his Budget to get the people on the land? There is not a trace of a thought in any word of his
[Sir Wilfrid Laurier.)
speech towards that object. This is the situation. My hon. friend the member for Dundas dilated upon what he had stated, and he made the statement and gave the proof also that in the last ten years the number of dairy animals had decreased in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Every one knows that the milch cow is the wealth of the farmer. We may have increased our wealth otherwise, but in that respect we have been losing wealth to a large extent in Ontario. According *to the figures given by the hon. member for Dundas, there was in the last decade, a decrease in milch cows of 33,784 in Ontario; 14,691 in Quebec; 2,552 in New Brunswick; 9,515 in Prince Edward Island, and 2,484 in Nova Scotia, a total of 63,026, Therefore at this moment, that particular form of wealth is decreasing and not increasing. The hon. member for Dundas might have gone farther and added that not only in dairy produce but in almost every other form of production the eastern provinces have not been keeping pace with the wants and requirements of the population. He might have modified his language and stated that the remedy for the situation is not only to get the people on the land, but that in the eastern provinces, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, the effort and the duty of the Government should be to get the people back on the land. It is a fact that at this moment the land is deserted, and that we have not now in the eastern provinces the same number of tillers of the soil that we had ten years ago. This is the problem which was facing my hon. friend. I do not charge the Government with the responsibility; I do not say it is the fault of the Government that this is the state of affairs to-day, but I charge them with the responsibility for their failure to deal with the situation which is staring them in the face. They cannot plead that they are not responsible; what are they in office for? What are the pledges they have given to the people? Their pledges were pledges of reform, so as to make the people more prosperous, but instead of being more prosperous the people are less prosperous than they were. I charge the Government with failure of duty at least in not attempting to relieve the situation.
It is a fact of which everybody is
aware that in every civilized portion of the world there is a tendency for the rural population to desert

the land and to flock into the cities. In this respect Canada is not peculiar bat suffers in common with every other land. There are general oases which affect the rural population everywhere, but also there are special causes almost everywhere which are peculair to the country, and which can be remedied by legislation. As to the general causes, I say frankly, that probably they also may be remedied; but as to the particular causes it is certainly possible to remedy these if we apply ourselves to the work. Sir, in Great Britain to-day population is leaving the land and flocking to the cities. The causes there are largely to be found in the vicious land laws, the remnant of the old feudal system, which they aTe trying to remedy. These efforts that are being made in that country to remedy, if possible, these old vicious laws and win back the people to the land, is a spectacle to arouse our admiration. But in this country we have no feudal tenure, thank the Lord! We are free from that evil, but still we are not keeping our population on the land. And if we are to seek a remedy for this lamentable condition of affairs, that remedy, as I shall presently show, is to be sought in the direction of an expansion of trade.
Such is the situation in the eastern provinces, and as to the western provinces we must always remember the primary factor that in those provinces there are 150,000,000 acres of land ready for the tiller. Of these lands only 18,000,000 acres are today under culture, leaving 132,000,000 acres of as fertile land as there is in any part of the globe, and yet, as my hon. friend knows, we are making no headway towards increasing the settlement of that country. My hon. friend in his speech the other day rejoiced that our immigration is keeping up its volume. Here are his words:
It is gratifying to know not only that the stream of new settlers continues to flow into the Dominion, but that there is also apparent from year to year a marked improvement in the class arriving due to restrictive regulations.
I take issue with my hon. friend upon this statement. True, the volume of immigration is not decreasing, it is keeping up as before; but the hon. gentleman is in error when he speaks of ' new settlers.' They are not new settlers for the land tha.t are coming in at the present time, but rather mechanics and artisans. At the present moment, as he knows, the number of people who settle on the land, and the acreage of land which goes under cultivation are decreasing year by year. In 1910-11, the homestead entries, pre-emptions, purchased homesteads and South African veteran homesteads were 63,830; in 1911-12, they were 52,553; in 1912-13, 43,552; and foT the year just ended the number was only 38,856. So, they are not new settlers who are coming in, but rather a different class of immigrants. The immigrants we desire in this country are farmers, farm labourers and domestic servants and instead of these we are getting artisans and mechanics who find no work and simply drift into the cities to swell the ranks of the growing army of the unemployed.
We are beyond all an agricultural country. But, if agriculture is at a standstill, there is a blemish upon the country lo which nobody can close his eyes, and that is the situation at the present time. For this situation there must be a cause. If in the older provinces, the people leave the land and flock to the cities, if in the new provinces the tillers of the soil no longer go upon the soil, then there must be some cause for it. Of course, a3 this question has been more than gnce debated in this House, various opinions have been expressed upon it. There may be occasion for honest differences of opinion; but there are men who are in a position to give us information upon the subject and whose opinion is more valuable than the opinion of any others, and they are the farmers of this country. The farmers who have been heard more than once, before the Government have stated what are the causes which have produced this result, and they have pointed out the remedy. So far as I have been able to inform myself by reading their memorial, those causes are two: first, the high cost of production and the next the insufficiency of markets. As to the high cost of production, more than once, and with unanimous voice, the farmers have declared what they wanted and have suggested the remedy which would afford them relief. They asked to have agricultural implements free from taxation. We have heard this question debated in this House more than once and have heard many opinions expressed upon it. When the farmer asks that the tools of his occupation should be free from taxation,, that they should not be made heavier in his hands than they naturally are, nobody can say that is an unfair demand. Everybody, whether he sits on this side of the House dr on that would agree with me that this is a perfectly natural demand, and one

which ought to be granted unless there is a paramount reason to the contrary.
It has been asserted on the floor of this House during this debate that the hardships which the settlers of the prairies suffer do not compare with the hardships which our forefathers in this part of Canada had to undergo when hewing out for themselves and their families homes out of the forest. I am disposed to agree with'that: I believe that the hardships of the men of the prairies to-day, are not to be compared with those of our forefathers in this part of Canada. But, Sir, because we can do nothing for the dead, is that reason why we should refuse help for the living? I believe it to be true that the settlers of the West do not suffer as great hardships as did those of a generation past in this section of the country; but, Sir, if it is in our power to remove from the tiller of the soil to-day a part of the burden which he has to carry, why should we not apply ourselves to it? The hardships of today affe not as great as were those of the past; but, Sir, there are hardships to-day also. There are members in this House who have in their desks letters from settlers of the western prairies enclosing notice sent from the agent of the implement maker telling the settler that unless his account is paid it will be collected by the sheriff. Such letters I have seen myself. It is a oruel hardship when a man i3 subject to such treatment; and if it be in my power to diminish and minimize this evil in any way, I will take the risk of attempting it whatever be the consequence to myself. Bit, when the farmers came to the Government and asked that their implements be relieved from taxation, the answer was that it could not be done. And what was the reason ? The reason given was that free implements means free trade. And, my hon. friend the Minister of Finance is responsible for that sentiment. It is a sentence to which he gave utterance evidently with some satisfaction, because he repeated it on more than one occasion in the course of his Budget speech, as well as in his speech on the Address. The Minister of Finance says that not only free implements, but that free food also, means free trade. I ask my hon. friend what does he mean by saying that free implements would mean free trade ? I say to him in all frankness, as friend to friend, that his expression is neither fact nor metaphor, it is loose and illogical. Free implements in 1914 mean free trade no more than did free

lumber in 1893 or 1894, granted under a Conservative Government. I tell my hon. friend the catch phrase * free implements means free trade ' is an appeal to the prejudice which we know exists in certain parts of this country against the very idea of freedom of trade. Even in this House the very mention of free trade is met by derisive laughter and jeers from hon. gentlemen on the other side. After all, Mr. Speaker, whatever may be the opinion on this side or the other side as to the benefits of free trade, it cannot be denied that there is only one country in the world today which has free trade, and that is the country which of all others, has shown itself above any other in commerce, in finance, and in the art and science of government In the fields of human speculation and human thought there are other nations which maintain supremacy over England. Germany is certainly ahead of England and of all other nations in philosophic research. I think that for precision and grace in literature, France can claim unmatched excellence. But in commerce, in finance, and in the art and science of government, the nation does not exist, and never has existed, which can compare with Great Britain-the mother of freedom of thought and of civil and commercial liberty. It seems to me, in view of the fact that that great nation has emerged from her protective policy of years, to a conception of the value of free trade, that the least hon. members can do is to reflect that perhaps there is something in free trade which has never been dreamed of in their philosophy.
The application of economic principles is not to be determined simply from theoretical conceptions. We on this side of the House; we, the Liberals of Canada, while we have upheld the cause of free trade-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: We have
always contended that the policy best suited to this country is not a protective tariff but a customs tariff for revenue purposes. I am well aware-and this is evidenced by the jeers which I heard a moment ago-that I have been taken to task in this debate and in many other debates for what is termed my economic and fiscal inconsistencies.
Some hem. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Wilfrid Laurier: I observe that I have struck a responsive chord in hon. gentlemen opposite. I have been accused Off having been at one time in favour of commercial union and of I do not know

how many other different heresies. The House is aware, Sir, that I never answered any such charges, not because I do not fully appreciate the courtesy and honour which was offered me by bringing my poor person into prominence, but because I never thought that my poor person was worthy of the honour of taking up so much of the time of the House. But there is one man in this House whom I will not allow to take such liberties with the truth, and that is my hon. friend the Minister of Finance. He knows that these assertions are not true; he knows that if they were true he would not for so long have pulled an oar in the boat of which I was in charge, and in which he and I together had to face, and to successfully plough through many an angry billow. The time came, however, when my hon. friend changed his mind. This is a free country, and he had a right to do so. Of course I am sorry-sorry for myself, but more sorry for him, because if any one changed his mind or his politics it was not I, but my hon. friend.
When we came into office in 1896 we found a protective tariff in force. A protective tajriff creates a factitious atmosphere, capital is invested and new industries are started and if you incautiously interfere with that tariff you may produce a financial crisis or a commercial panic which may bring serious disaster to the country. We had that in view; we have it in view yet. The Democrats of the United States, when they came into office two years ago, had the same thing in view; they did not tear the tariff all to pieces at once; they had to proceed cautiously so as not to do injustice to any class and so as to give relief to the consumers without hurting the manufacturers. I think I can say that in 1896 we ourselves did the same thing; we were able to give relief to the consumers and did no injury to any of the manufacturers. But to-day we are told a different story. When we brought in our tariff in 1896 we were at once told on the floor of this House that we would destroy the industries of Canada. As time went on and it was found that the tariff suited the needs of the people; and had produced a period of unexampled prosperity, the tune was changed and we were charged with having kept the tariff in its entirety. I say that there is as much truth in the one statement as there is in the other. When we are told by hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House that we did nothing to reform the tariff, let me remind them that we took the duty off many articles used by the farmer. We removed the duty upon binder twine, upon barbed wire and upon 180
cordage. We did more than that. When we introduced the Iritish preference we introduced a principle the effect of which is felt to this day. We introduced the British preference cautiously. We first reduced the duty on imports from the British Empire by 124 per cent, then by 25 per cent, and finally by 334 per cent of the general tariff; and the result has been that the British preference has kept the price of articles in this country, both those manufactured in Canada and those imported even from the United States, at a reasonable level, because it is a fact that while manufactured goods imported from the United States have to pay the general duty, the price to the consumer is fixed iby the price of articles imported under the British preference. We introduced a new principle the effect of which to-day is enormous. My friend Mr. Paterson, of lamented memory, said once, and I believe with perfect truth, that if the importations of 1911 had been under the tariff of 1896, the Government would have taken from the consumer of this country something like $8,000,000 more than we did take. Therefore, this is our justification for the policy which we adopted, the policy which we maintain and the policy which we propose to apply on the present occasion.
Now, Sir, we propose to deal with farming implements as with everything. else Is the duty on farm implements required for revenue purposes? Nobody will pretend that. Then, can the duty be taken off without any injury to the manufacturer of implements? I have yet to learn tha under present conditions the manufacturers of implements in Canada cannot compete with the American manufacturer in the home market. We know that he competes with the American manufacturer in England, in France, in Germany, in Hungary and in many other countries. If the Canadian manufacturer can meet his American competitor in England, or in France, or in Germany, or in Hungary, is there any reason why he cannot meet him on the soil of Canada? An objection has been made for which there is some ground, in that it has been said that it is not fair to remove the duty from the manufactured article because there is a duty upon the raw material. There may be something in that, but I believe that it is a sufficient answer to say that upon everything except coal there is as much duty upon the raw material in the United States, as there is



in Canada, and if there is as much duty on one side as on the other there is a parity of manufacturing conditions and the objection does not hold. As to coal, there may be an argument, but it is a notorious fact that coal is being gradually, nay rapidly, replaced by electrical energy. 'If, after all, these different elements cannot be conciliated, if we have to make the choice between one and the other, whatever may be the position taken by our friends on the other side of the House I say for my part; if we have to make a choice between one interest and the other interest I stand by the agricultural industry which, in the language of my hon. friend, is the basis of all industries, without which no other industry can flourish.
Then, Sir, we come to the other request which has been made by the farmers. They have represented that they are hampered by the cost of production; and that they are still more hampered by the insufficiency of markets. If there is one thing to-day which the farmers want, especially the western farmers, it is wider markets for their products. Their demand has been denied, rudely denied I may say. But there is one thing which the farmers have been given without asking for it and given with a plenteous hand; they have been given advice. The advice is given to them from all quarters on the other side of the House;	' Why don't you go into mixed
farming? ' How many times have we heard that during the present debate? It can be depended upon that the western farmers will go into mixed farming as soon as they find it more profitable than wheat raising. But we have the experience of the past all over this continent to show that on new soil, whether prairie soil or forest soil, the crop mostprofitableto the farmer has been wheat. We can follow the production of wheat from the earliest days of the discovery of this continent until the present time; first of all the New England states, in the province of Quebec, in the province of Ontario, in the Genesee valley, then in the state of Illinois, in the state of Minnesota; until now at last it is centered in the three prairie provinces of Canada. As soon as it is profitable for the farmer to go into mixed farming he will do it, but in the meantime he grows wheat. Last year he grew 200,-nno,000 bushels of wheat. Where is that wheat to go? At present he has only two markets, the home market and the English market. How much can the home market consume? Not 50,000,000 bushels. It is known from statistics that the proportion 
of consumption is five bushels per head of population, and therefore not 50,000,000 bushels will be taken by the home market. Up to the present moment the English market has not taken more than 50,000,000 bushels and where is the rest to go? The farmers of the West has to find a market for it somewhere. You tell him he cannot send his wheat to the United States, but even now he sends his wheat to the United States in spite of all obstacles. In the last two or three months of the last fiscal year, 2,000,000 bushels of grain were sent from Canada into the United States in the face of an adverse duty. But we are told by hon. gentlemen opposite: It is no use to try to open the markets of the United States to the western growers of wheat because the Americans are themselves exporters 'of wheat. What a fallacy. The Americans are growers of wheat, it is true; but they are not growers of our wheat and they must have it. Everybody knows that for the last ten years, more perhaps, but certainly for the last ten years, the American people have imported our wheat in bond to grind it in their mills for the European market? What the Americans are doing for the European market they will have to do for their own market also. We are told that the farmers of the West do not know their own business. At all events we can trust to them that they understand this question as well as their critics, and the monopolists who tell them that they do not know anything of their business and that they have a monopoly of intelligence as well as a monopoly of markets. There is another reason which 1 was surprised to hear advanced upon the floor of this House during this very debate. We have been told: Beware of the Americans; there is a sinister intent in their tariff to-day. The Americans have revised their tariff. Their new tariff provides that wheat shall be free from all countries except those having a tariff against their wheat and wheat products. We have been told: Beware, there is a sinister intent in this. I have only this to say, that the present American tariff is the direct inspiration 'f President Woodrow Wilson, and I do not hesitate to say, and everybody will agree with me, that with the advent of Mr. Wilson a new page has been turned in American history. If there was a time when it could be charged against American tariff legislation that it was hostile, you cannot charge that to the legislation which is inspired by Mr. Wilson; you cannot charge it against a man who to-day is risking his own popularity amongst his own party to keep intact the honour of the American people, to mainr

tain sacred international obligations, and to give to the trade of the world equal treatment with American trade upon a canal built with American money.
When hon. gentlemen charge there is hostile design in that tariff which was the inspiration of President Wilson, I say that such charges fail to reach the man against whom they are directed, and recoil to the confusion and shame of those who make them.
Against the removal of the duty on wheat, I have heard only one argument which has made the slightest impression on my mind, and that is the complaint of Canadian millers. Upon this subject, however, I speak with some diffidence because I do not profess to be competent to discuss the technicalities of this matter; but I have yet to learn from anything that come before me that the Canadian millers are not on a footing of equality with American millers either in the Canadian or the American market. I have not been able to discover what advantage the American miller would have over the Canadian miller if we had the American market? My belief is that the millers on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence-on the Welland canal and on the Lachine canal-can capture the market of New York against the Mississippi Valley millers because of their advantage in greater proximity to that market. I have nothing further to say on this point except, as I said a moment ago in reference to agricultural implements, that, if the two interests cannot be reconciled, and if we have to choose between them, I stand for the basic industry of this country and without which no other industry can flourish. That is the situation so far as one part of the question is concerned.
All the requests of the farmers have been met with a deaf ear and stern refusals, and as to the consumers the Government has not given them even a passing thought. When Parliament met some three months ago, the very first thing we, on this side, did, was to call the attention of the Government to the high cost of living. We did not press the Government, but we put them on [DOT]their guard by asking them to look into the matter and to provide some measure of relief. Our suggestion met with a very cold reception, and the Government has evidently remained callous up to this moment. If they are not impressed with the conditions in Canada as to the high cost of living they [DOT]are the only people in this Dominion who are not. Some days ago I read a lecture on thiis question by Professor Osborne of Mani-1801
toba University, and coming from such a source, you may well imagine that his opinions are not influenced by
4 p.m. party politics, his lecture being a mere economic discussion of the problem. This is how he opened:
That the cost of living In Canada to-day is exorbitant, there can be no question. The fact is in evidence on every hand. We see signs of it in every newspaper. A commission of investigation has been appointed in one quarter, an angry league of consumers is being formed in another, and the general pubuc may be said to be in a state of revolt on the question. A recent British investigation shows that the cost of living in Canada has increased fifty-one per cent in twelve years. Its nearest competitor in this regard shows an increase of only thirty-nine per cent. The condition has emerged finally in the appointment of a commission by the Government of Canada, but the best evidence of the fact lies in the struggle the large proportion of our population is waging in order to make ends meet. The number of dependents in our own midst is evidently alarmingly on the increase. Ten thousand free dinners are reported to have been given in Winnipeg on Christmas Day. It is admirable that the dinners should be given, but it is a shame that the majority of them should have had to be.
Who will dispute that? I am sorry I cannot give his arguments or statistics, but the conclusion to which he came was that if the cost of living is high, it is not because the producer is paid an abnormal price, but because of enormous profits that go into the pockets of combines and trusts. Speaking of the high cost of food, in so far as that high cost means higher profits for the farmer, nobody makes any objection. The price of food-stuffs commenced to increase some fifteen years ago when we had the commencement of that period of prosperity which synchronized-to, use the word of my hon. friend-with the coming to power of the late Administration, and with defeat of which the disappearance of prosperity also synchronized. Prices increased in those fifteen years, but everybody was satisfied that the farmer should get higher prices for his products. Times have changed; there are hard times now. Prices are just as high as they were, the difference is that they are going into the pockets of combines and trusts and not into the pockets of the farmers. Trusts and combines are the bane of these latter days. They are everywhere, but especially in protected countries, where they seem to find a congenial habitat, just as do microbes in dirt and darkness. In the United States they have combines in milk, in meat, in bread, in sugar, in all kinds of commodi-

ties, and Canada is following suit at a pretty lively rate. We have combines in meat, in bread and in flour. Bacon is an article of daily consumption, to toe found on the table of every consumer, and to-day bacon is sold to the consumer in England at 14J cents per pound, while in Toronto, Montreal and all the western cities of Canada it is sold for 191 cents per pound, or five cents more than in England. That five cents does not go into the pockets of the farmer, but into the pockets of the combine. So it is with flour. To-day flour sells in Canada for something like $5.50 per barrel, and in England the same flour sells for $4.70. These differences in price do not go into the pockets of the farmer, but into the pockets of the combines. I will be told -I am sure of it-that prices in England are lower because wages are low in England, while wages in Canada are high. I will be told that in England the working man is paid a starvation wage, but that in Canada he is paid such a wage that he can bring up his family in comfort and respectability. When it was suggested to the Minister of Finance that we might haVe free food, he at once objected with horror, and he said it could not be done, because in Canada we wanted to keep the wages of our artisans and our workmen up to the fair wage standard.
These are !his very words. Then he gave a concrete example. He said some time ago, in answer to myself, that he could not think of having free food because free food would afleot prejudicially some 7,000 establishments and the wages of some 50,000 operatives. I had better quote the words of my hon. friend on this point:
In addition to that, free food means that the policy of my right hon. friend affects in Canada, according to the statistics of the Tear Book, 6,985 establishments with a capital of $133,000,000, employing 52,000 men on wages, paying $14,000,000 in wages every year, using material to the amount of $175,000,000, and with an output of $245,000,000.
These are high sounding words. The figures sound big, but analyse them, and they are perfectly hollow. The reason my hon. friend says he cannot think of having free food is because if we were to attempt it we would affect the wages of 52,000 men who earn something like $14,000,000. How much is that for each one of these 52,000 men? What does it represent? It would mean for each $270 a year or $5.20 a week. That is the standard which my hon. friend says must toe kept up in the interest of the operatives of the country. Is my

hon. friend serious? Here are his own words, the statement and the figures which he gave-$14,000,000 divided among 52,000, operatives and it means $270 a year for each one of these operatives upon which to bring up his family in comfort and respectability.
What becomes of the theory of my hon. friend ? Delusion ! Oh, delusion it is. The theory that taxation increases wages is not justified, at least for the kind of products to which my hon. friend refers. Are we to be told that we are going to continue to pay two and three prices for food in order to have such wages as $270 a year? This is the condition to which my hon. friend has reference. It has been written that truth and justice will in the end prevail. Truth and justice have already come. When the prophet Balaam was called upon to curse the people he met in his path the angel of the LoTd, and in spite of himself he had to bless instead of curse. My hon. friend met in his path the angel of. truth, and from his own words he blessed where he wanted to curse, and he cursed where he wanted to bless.
We have in this country a condition of things that is a cause of anxiety to every wage-earner and to every mother of a family. But we have been told that this thing is to be preserved intact because if we touched it we would affect the wages of the operatives of Canada. Many people believed, and I am sure that hon. members on the other side of the House believed, that working men were paid a high wage, that they were getting $600, or $700 or $800 a year, but they are only getting $270 a year, and you have it from the mouth of the Minister of Finance.
In the face of such a condition, these figures teach a lesson and that lesson is that there is a great deal of fallacy in the theory which has long been prevalent, that taxation means high wages. These figures show clearly that it does not, and it is time-high time-that we should revise the tariff with a view of reducing the cost of living and relieving the wage-earners, and the mothers who have to bring up families upon this meagre income, from the incubus which has been upon them night and day, and which is a disgrace to the fair name of Canada.
We on this side of the House are not revolutionists; we are reformers, but we tell hon. gentlemen opposite that the tariff exists for the people and not the people for the tariff. The tariff is not immutable

like the laws of the Medes and Persians. The tariff has to be readjusted from time to time to bring it into harmony with changed conditions. It has to be readjusted periodically, because after the lapse of a certain period we know that changes in conditions have taken place and the tariff has to be readjusted in order to correct errors and to remove evil where evil exists.
But, I may be told that the tariff is of my own creation. The tariff was of our own creation; it suited the year 1897, but eighteen years have passed since and the time has come when we must have a revision in order to correct errors and to meet changed conditions. We were told the other day by the Minister of Finance that he was ready for and invited the challenge. We on this side of the House accept the challenge upon this one question, and, animated with the view that the time has'eome for a new revision of the tariff, I beg to call the attention of the House to this proposition, which I move;
That this House is of opinion that in view of the prevailing economic conditions of the country it is advisable to place wheat, wheat products, and agricultural implements on the free list; and that without doing injustice to any class, steps should be taken to alleviate the high cost of living by considerate removal of taxation.
Hon. GEORGE E. FOSTER (Minister of Trade and Commerce):	Mr. Speaker, at
this particular period of the debate, when the ground has ibeen very well gone over and everything winnowed out, it is not to be wondered at if my right hon. friend (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), who has just spoken, or that I, who am to follow him, should find it very difficult indeed to get enough material upon which to base a speech.
I do not know that I could in any more humane way let down my right hon. friend on the words which have just been uttered by him, and he will probably be in a position to return the compliment to me when I have made my few remarks. Two courses are open to me; one, make a review of the situation, the other to devote my attention to the remarks made by the preceding speaker and make as fair an answer as I can to him. Should I take the latter course, I am quite conscious, if I do it properly and do it tersely, that it will not be necessary for me to take up much of the time of the House; should I take the other, I am afraid I will have to trespass upon the patience of both sides of the House, and be open to the imputation of having left the remarks of my right hon. friend unanswered. Therefore, if the House will allow me, I will say a few words with reference to the remarks of my right hon. friend.
The motion moved by the right hon. gentleman is not quite so inclusive as many people in this country had been led to believe it would be. I remember reading a speech made by my Tight hon. friend in the city of Hamilton in which he took very much broader grounds than he takes today ; grounds in which he covered the necessities of the occasion as he saw them, in far more vigorous English than he has used here to-day. What has taken place which has reduced the broad, wide platform of my right hon. friend enunciated: as the foreword and motto from this time-on of the party that he leads? What has necessitated the paring down of that wider ground to the far narrower limits in which he has confined it to-day? I think we, who have been observers of what has been taking place, quite well understand some of the reasons why the motion of my right hon. friend is so inadequate to his lofty and wide professions. Perhaps my right hon. friend knows more about these reasons than I do; but 1 am inclined to think that none of us will be far away from a proper conclusion, if we arrive at a solution of this little problem somewhat in this way, that my right hon. friend leads a heterogeneous *army made up of many small battalions, each battalion being almost limited to the leader of the same, he being both the leader and the battalion itself. My right hon. friend has had difficulties facing him for the last three weeks, if not longer, and he has tried to cut the Gordian knot by putting on the table of the House a resolution in which he and his party-after all they have said, after all their declamations, after all their professions, after all their vehement assertions as to the cost of food products and as to the necessity for giving the homes of this country something cheaper in the way of food-stand for free wheat and free agricultural implements, but not for free food. That is not as broad a gage of battle as the Minister of Finance invited him to throw down. We certainly have the advantage on this side of being broader gauged in that respect and it is no doubt a disappointment to the Minister of Finance, as it is to all of us, that the field of battle has been brought down from a high and broad series of plains and hills, where you could have deployed in splendid style and carried on the battle in

not to lecture them. If hon. gentlemen on this side give their views, that is what men in this House are here for. The business of public men is to get the best information that they can and to give to the public the best information that they can after they get it; to interchange their views, one with another, for the common benefit and for the common interest.	Our advice to the western
farmer to go into mixed farming, which has been scouted by hon. gentlemen opposite, is the very thing which is taking hold of the West to-day from one end to the other. In all organizations in the West; in all bankers' meetings; in the meetings of any society; in all the agricultural associations and agricultural papers, the burden of the song, the advice and the counsel to-day is: We must change our methods and get into mixed farming. Why should we be objurgated because we express the same opinion here? What we are trying to do and what we ought to try to do in this House is to give the best information that we can and to interchange our views for the good of the country. I have no hesitation in saying that in this time of readjustment-for it is a time of readjustment all through the country-one of the biggest things in readjustment is that which is taking place in our great West to-day, and that readjustment is on the line of less exclusive wheat production for the sake of the sale of the wheat, and for more variety of industry and production in the West.
What my right hon. friend and his followers on the other side of the House are agreed upon is the assertion that this is a period of depression in Canada. There is no lack of unanimity among them in that respect. Some of them are so set upon having this little idea all to themselves that they resent any attempt on our part to show that there is any similar depression in some other country. This they vigorously deny; the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) was very wrathy in the thought that any one should suggest that any other country should have a bit of this depression at this particular time. He wants it all for Canada, and especially he wants it all for the West. We will agree, for the sake of peace and Quietness, that this is a time of depression as compared with the buoyancy of the past in the Dominion of Canada. But I take leave to point out what I think has already been pointed out: That there are many features of this so-called depression 
in Canada that are worth keeping in mind. What are they ? That after a period of unexampled expansion, extending over a long period of years, with very little break,
all the indicia of progress and virility and power are pretty nearly as striking to-day as they were in 1912 or 1913. Your revenue, which is an index of the business that is done, is $163,000,000 for the year which has just ended; only $6,000,000 less than it was in 1912. Turn again to another indication -the trade of the country. After an unexampled series of brilliant and progressive trade years, 1913 shows you a trade which is greater than 1912 by $200,000,000, and which is well up to, if not in advance of, the trade of 1912-13. But you go still further than that; you go down to what are the foundations upon which the nation rests

its great basic productive industries-and what do you find ? I believe that when the figures for 1913-14, marked by the depression so dearly loved and so expatiated upon by our friends opposite, are totalled up you will find that in our basic industries we have reached the largest output in the history of the country. You will find that our mines will show as compared with 1912 for 1914 some $14,000,000 worth 6i extra output, and you will find that our manufactures will show $20,000,000 extra output. You will find that our fisheries will show $4,000,000; that our forests will show $3,000,000; that our animal products will show $6,000,000; our agricultural products $101,000,000 and, as I said, our manufactured products, $20,000,000. Can you go back to any other period of the history of Canada or of any other country and show a silver lining like that to the depression which was upon the surface of the cloud? It cannot be found in Canada, it cannot be found anywhere else. That is in all the depressions you talk about in the very year in which you talk about it, all these great basic industries are producing by millions more than they did in any other year in the history of our Canadian nation. The depression is not a sign of inherent weakness; it is more like the case of a man of super-abundant energy who, for a time, has been putting forth superhuman exertions and is tired and his nerve force and his bodily vigour are somewhat dulled for the time being. All you need to do is to give him a rest and put him on a fair regime for a little while; the man's inherent vigour and vitality will break forth in still greater effort and be crowned with still greater results. A depression like that I am not going to lament over, and I present that

kind of a depression to my hon. friends for their sustenance and their comfort. It is perhaps not just the kind they would like, but it is the only one that the country can give them at the present time, and they will have to be content with it.
My right hon. friend thought he made a great point in proving that agriculture was on the decline by the declaration that there had been a diminution in homestead entries in the West during the last few years. But my right hon. friend, if he had gone back a (little earlier than that, would have found that these things are apt to occur; they are not inherent signs of decadence or of a downward tendency, they are a temporary thing, which, in the very mutations of social and national progress, always vary the landscape, sometimes throwing a shade of darkness, at other times breaking out into splendid light. From 1906 to 1908 in his time, homestead entries went down by 11,000. In the last period that he has quoted they went down by about 11,000. As a matter of fact about 600 less than in the preceding period to which I have alluded. Well it is worth while calling it to mind that I did not hear my right hon. friend in 1908 talking about the decadence of agriculture and proving it by the fact' that homestead entries in those two years had gone down by about 11,000.
I want to ask my right hon. friend a question. As leader of the Opposition, putting forth the facts upon which he based his case, has he been certain that the facts are correct? I allude to just one point. He was talking about the millers and the flour industry, and made the statement that flour sold in Canada for $5.50 per barrel, and was selling, in London and Liverpool for $4.70. Where does my right hon. friend get these statistics and that information? We had a statement made by the hon. member for South Cape Breton the other day which .conveyed a double inaccuracy. He declared, in order to make a point against the millers and to curry favour with the consumers, that flour was sold for $5.10 in Montreal, and that down in Halifax you had to pay $6.50 for it. That is a .strange statement when you come to think of it. The freight from Montreal to Halifax is exactly 25 cents a barrel; 25 cents added to $5.10 would make $5.35. I never believed that the Halifax people were so bereft of business acumen and ability as to pay $6.50 there for flour which they could have got in Montreal for $5.10 and carted down by the Intercolonial for 25 cents. He made the statement also
that flour which sold for $5.10 in Montreal was .sold in London for $4.18. My right hon. friend, wherever he got his information, was sadly out. He was not? Well,
I am not going to quarrel about the adjective, but I am bound to maintain that he was far out. I hold here the actual statistics and the prices of. flour in the different months. Canada spring patents in January are quoted in Liverpool at from $6.33 to $6.81. All through the month of January they ran about those even quotations. In February the .same quotations were followed pretty closely, $6.33 to $6.81, and the other patents in varying degrees.


Mr. A. K. MACLEAN:: Per barrel?


Mr. FOSTER:: Per barrel.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Is flour sold in barrels in England?


George Eulas Foster: It is sold in bags, and there are so many bags to the barrel, and the price here is the barrel price.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: The hon. gentleman may be right, but he should not be too sure about it.


George Eulas Foster: I think I am so .sure that I cannot help but be right. The Liverpool price is quoted on the, basis of a sack containing 280 lbs.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: How many pounds in a sack?


George Eulas Foster: So long as my hon. friend and myself are going to have a little tilt about .sacks, I am going to tell him that there are several kinds of sacks.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: You would make a good .sheep farmer.


George Eulas Foster: I would like to ask my hon. friend if he can answer a conundrum. Why are there more black sheep in Nova Scotia than white ones?


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: The hon. gentleman is .so efficient in his knowledge of sacks that I thought he would also be proficient in reference to sheep.


George Eulas Foster: If my hon. friend wants to get to the facts, the price quotation is based on 280 lbs., which may be all contained in one .sack. There are sacks that have 98 lbs., and sacks that run to 280 lbs., and sacks that contain 112 lbs. They run so many stone to the sack. As I stated before, the price is reduced to the barrel basis of 280 lbs.


Wilfrid Laurier: Is it higher
in England than in Canada?'


George Eulas Foster: Yes, for that kind.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I do not think
the figures from which the hon. gentleman is quoting reduced the cost from sacks to weight in barrels.


George Eulas Foster: If they are not reduced
from the sack to the barrel, then they are reduced to the sack price for 280 pounds. You can figure out the difference and you will still find that I am on the right side of the equation, and that the wrong figures have not been given.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Withdraw the
statement about prices, and go ahead.


George Eulas Foster: I will tell you what I will do: I will look at it again.


Wilfrid Laurier: The hon.
minister challenges my figures. I do not pretend to be an expert myself, but in some correspondence in the newspaper the other day I saw the statement that the price of flour in England is lower than in Canada.
I asked a friend to look into the matter- he is a very careful man, and I rely on his authority-and this is the information he sent me. He gives the price of flour in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and London, England, for the month of April in the years 1912, 1913 and 1914. In 1912, the prices were:	Toronto, $5.30; Winnipeg, $5.70;
Montreal, $5.50; London, $4.95. In 1913, Toronto, $5.10; Winnipeg, $5.70; Montreal, $5.20; London, $5.04. In 1914, Toronto, $5.30; Winnipeg, $5; Montreal, $5.40, and London, $4.70.


Mr. BORDEN:: Was it the same quality of flour in all cases?


Wilfrid Laurier: Yes, so I
understand. Moreover, I think it cannot be denied that bread and flour are cheaper in England than in Canada.


Robert Laird Borden: I would like to say to my right hon. friend that I was present when a delegation of millers from different parts of the country presented their views to the Government, and I put that very question to them. I said that it had been stated in the public press that flour was sold abroad at a lower price than in Canada, and they assured me that that was not the case. I have no personal knowledge of the facts, but they said the flour sold abroad at lower prices was of a quality that could not be sold in Canada.


Wilfrid Laurier: I do not know personally, but I got the information from a man on whom I can rely.


Mr. CARVELL:: Change the figures to
$4.40 a barrel and you will be all right.


George Eulas Foster: These little difficulties occur because the question has not been carefully studied beforehand. This was put in my hands just before I came in. I had the impression that the prices I have read were reduced to the barrel basis, but looking at it again I find that they are reduced to the 280 pound sack basis; so that you would have to take that proportion off from the $6.33 to the $6.81 to get at the barrel price, That would bring it to $4.80.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: 


George Eulas Foster: The question remains as to whether the prices which my right hon. friend has read are for the same grades of flour or not. That is the point. I have the best information I can get. I have here a list of the different grades of flour which I propose to give to the House: first of all, there is the top patent; then the second patent or bakers' flour; then first clear and second clear. The top patent is the highest grade of flour, and of that grade very little, if any, is exported to the old country. I think I am correct in my facts up to that. The second patent is a flour which is used by bakers, and a very small proportion of that grade is exported to the old country. In the month of January, for instance, only about 36 per cent of the total product of that kind of flour was exported. The kind of flour exported to Great Britain is the first clear. That is a strong dark flour which is almost Unsaleable in Canada. Our householders use only top patent flour, and the bakers use second patent, so that when you say flour costs the householder in Toronto $5.10 or $5.18 and sells at Liverpool or London at $4.18 or $4.20, you have got to be certain that you have your grades of flour lined up properly, because in all probability you are comparing first clear in the London or Liverpool market with top or second patent in the Canadian market.
The hon. member for South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll) said that Britain took only the best grade of flour, and so he came to the conclusion that the flour quoted in London at $4.18 compared with the flour sold in Montreal or Toronto at $5.10 or $5.18.


Mr. CARROLL:: No, I did not say that.
I said the very best flour was used for export, and that the statement that only the worst grades of flour were exported to England was incorrect. I gave statements to show that the very same kind of flour selling for $5.50 in Montreal costs only $4.18 in Liverpool.


George Eulas Foster: My hon. friend will find that he is wrong in that. 1
5 p-m. think he was challenged lor his authority, and he stated that he read from a statement in the Montreal Standard by a correspondent who did not attach his name. I am quite certain that if he will go to the proper sources of information he will find he is mistaken in saying that the best grades of flour aire exported to the old country. The opposite is the fact; it is the low grade flour that is exported to the old country. Of the first clear grade, about 90 per cent is exported to the old country, and but 10 per cent used in this country. Of the second clear, 90 per cent goes to the old country, mostly for feed purposes, and but a small proportion is used in this country, also for feed purposes. We must distinguish the flour quoted at Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and St. John, which is always either top patent or second patent if it is for bakers' use, ot blended if it is a family flour, from the flour exported to the old country, which is of a quality that our people will not use.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Is not our export flour made from a blended wheat?


George Eulas Foster: I am informed that blended flours are not exported from this country to any appreciable extent at the present time.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: I understand that almost nothing else is exported at the present time.


George Eulas Foster: My hon. friend will find that his information is not correct. After this digression on the technical point of the price of flours, I want to get back to my remarks in reference to the speech of my right hon. friend.
In talking about the influences which tend to attract people to the farms, the diversion from which was so much deplored by my right hon. friend, there are several which are working in the direction of attractions to the farm and the land. Amongst these influences none is greater than the question of good roads. In all
the foremost agricultural countries of the world, where they are striving to keep people on the farm and to attract them to the farm, the subject of good roads is receiving the greatest attention and in this connection large amounts of money are being expended. It is in that direction that much good is being done in the Dominion of Canada as well. But 1 would remind my right hon. friend that he has not been forward inhelpingthis present Government in its endeavour to have good roads constructed in the different provinces of the Dominion.
I believe that a forward policy on the question of good roads, carried out fully and carefully in the country, will do more than almost anything else to keep people upon the farms, to attract people to the farms and to make farming a more delightful and companionable occupation than it is at the present time.
In connection with that, good roads also includes electric railways and tramways and everything of that kind that can contribute to the quick carriage both of information and the products of the field from wqjeT^ they are produced to the centres of population where they are marketed. It is along that line that this Government has taken a forward step. My right hon. friend's party have not assisted this Government in aiding and helping the farmers in that direction in the way in which they should have done.
My right hon. friend had his play with my hon. friend the Minister of Finance, recalling the time some years ago when he and the Minister of Finance were paddling in the same canoe and he rather thinks it is to the disadvantage of the minister that he got out of that canoe. There are two remarks which I have to make in respect to that. When the Minister of Finance was paddling in the canoe with my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition, honest now, was not the leader of the Opposition telling the Minister of Finance-not Minister of Finance at that time: Do not have any qualms of conscience; I am talking free trade where I want to get votes, but-whisper it in confidence-go paddling along in that same old canoe with me and I will take care of the manufacturers. And to use a word of my right hon, friend, there is a synchronization in time, as to when the Minister of Finance left that canoe, when he began to get very suspicious as to whether or not his right hon. friend was not playing double with him and when he thought discretion was the better part of valour and that the canoe should be

left. I do not think I shall follow my right hon. friend any farther along the line of his remarks hut shall take np some new subjects in the time that remains to me along more general lines and I will possibly touch on some things that my right hon. friend has said.
My right hon. friend is looking for a policy -I sympathize with him very much in the difficulties which surround him-and is trying to find a policy that is practical and that will carry with it some few shreds of consistency. My right hon. friend's position is a hard one. He was opposed to the National Policy from 1878 to 1896, opposed to it tooth and nail and with every resort in his power. He came into power in 1896 and, despite all his professions of hostility to protection and its methods, he espoused the protective principle, embalmed it in his tariff, kept it there against assaults from within his own ranks and assaults from without, and up to the time of the dissolution of Parliament he maintained that principle of avowed protection in his tariff. In 1911 he took up the idea of the reciprocity pact with the United States Government, and he ventured his fortunes upon that. He went to the country upon that issue. Never in the history of Canada was an issue more clearly put before the electorate than was that issue in 1911. Never was there a more intelligent discussion of a public question on the hustings than in August and September of that year. Never was there a more emphatic reply to the issue which was raised than the reply given by the electorate in September, 1911. My right hon. friend remembers that defeat and finds it very difficult to go back to the reciprocity issue of 1911. He is disinclined to go back to the protective policy which he carried into effect from 1896 to 1911. Why? Not perhaps because he does not think that it embodies the right principle but because it does not differentiate him sufficiently from the party in power and therefore it is of no effect in the country for him to espouse that principle. It is a political policy that he is after and not a policy for the country. '
If it were a policy for the country it would be one of two; either the policy that he carried out for fifteen years, that he gave the seal of his approval to and under which he declares this country progressed with immense strides, or it would be a repetition and recall of the policy of reciprocity as set forth by the party in 1911. But my right hon. friend finds this last impossible in face of the great revolt of the electors. He finds 
the first impossible because it gives him no line of cleavage with the party in power upon the great issue of the country-the fiscal issue. Therefore, he is bound to look for a political and party tariff question in order to make an issue before the electors. So he catches on to this cry, .the most patent and the easiest.
Who does not like to have beefsteak, fresh and juicy, put on his table at twelve cents a pound rather than to have to pay eighteen cents a pound for it? There is a wide constituency in this country who would rather pay five cents less for a dozen eggs than five cents more. There are an immense number of people scattered from Vancouver island to Cape Breton who would like, if they could have it, to have their bacon for fifteen cents a pound instead of paying nineteen cents a pound for it. My right hon. friend, in his cogitations in his bed at night and in his walks by day, says: There is the biggest constituency to be tapped in this country. You just go to them with the propaganda that, if they put you into power, you will give them their eggs for five cents less a dozen, their beef for five cents less a pound, and all their food products at a reduction; and if you do not capture all of them, because there are a good many sensible people in this country, you will stand to capture quite a number of the unthinking crowd. We will make that No. 1 of our new policy. Then he says:	There is the
farming class, a large class, the dominant class, the basic class in this country. Every farmer would rather have free agricultural implements than to have to pay even a small tax upon them. We may not get all the farmers toy making an appeal for free agricultural implements, but we may get a certain number of them and shall have a wide constituency to which to appeal, and a splendid electioneering ground. We will make that No. 2 of our new party policy. Again he looks upon the West and says: The Grain Growers' Company, the Agricultural Association, the man who follows the plough and who operates the reaper, all would like to get their agricultural implements cheaper by the amount of the duty, if it could be done. We shall have a large operating ground there if we adopt the plank of free agricultural implements. My right hon. friend, if I am not misrepresenting him, came to this House and met his party with the firm view that free food, free agricultural implements, and free wheat should be the slogan with which they would next appeal to the electorate. My right hon. friend has had to omit the largest and widest part of this propaganda; but am I wrong cr

right in saying that, what my right hon. friend has pitched upon, is not a policy which he has based upon the needs of the country and the best interest of the nation at large, but the particular policy upon which he thought, under all the circumstances, he could combine his following as an appeal for party advantage and for party plans, if possible. That, I think, is a fair version of this matter. I doubt if my right hon. friend will succeed; in fact, I have no faith that he will succeed. Why? Because it is not statesmanlike ground, because it is not national ground; it is an appeal to section and class, and no appeal to section and class will be ultimately successful in this country, and no appeal to section and class is a national appeal in this country or will square itself with the national feeling and aims of this country. My right hon. friend says:	If it is to be
a choice between two, I will take the farmer and give him his implements free rather than take the manufacturing industry concerned with the making of agricultural implements in this country, and give it even a small protection.
I will take my stand between those two. He says the same with reference' to the wheat growers and the wheat millers, and he thereby differentiates between classes in the basing of a national fiscal policy which, if it has any solid basis, must have one of principle and not of expediency. By what methods of reasoning can he justify the basing of an economic fiscal policy upon simply the demands of one or another class without taking into consideration the whole nation, the whole pact of industry, the whole pact of production? My hon. friend from Westmorland (Mr. Emmerson) uttered a truth in his free trade speech the other night when he said, 'You cannot favour one and discriminate against another in this matter of tariff policy.' So my hon. friend made himself an out-and-out free trader. There he is consistent, if he has the courage to carry it out in his political work. But it is dangerous ground and weak ground to go upon to pick out two or three .classes for special favours in tariff matters and base your fiscal policy for the whole country upon ground of that kind. Why? Because in the first place, it is neither fair nor just, and, in the second place, it does not tend to security. A fiscal platform should be based upon something which has principle, so that the great mass of the people may know upon what they can depend. What dependence is there if you base a tariff upon picking
out this and that and the other for special tariff favours? Every other industry, going along on a certain basis, does not know at what moment there may be another picking out, another alignment for the same purpose which will interfere with their business. With such an alignment as that you produce a feeling of insecurity and a lack of stability in your tariff which will react upon the stability and development of the industries of this country.
In regard to free wheat, my right hon. friend uttered what almost every speaker on that side of the House has uttered, a statement something like this: The farmer asks free wheat; why not give the farmer what he asks ? Will the members on both sides of the House just let that settle into their minds, and see where it leads us ? The appeal is made that in a matter of fiscal legislation we must base ourselves upon this as a proposition: If any one interest asks a certain thing, then they know more about that thing than anybody else does; give them what they ask. Is that possible as a basis for fiscal legislation ? Is it possible for Canada to proceed upon that basis ? I say it is not; I say that the tariff of this country is inter-related, every industry almost with every other, and the very moment you admit the principle that, if one particular industry must have what it wants in the way of fiscal legislation because it wants it and has most to do with it, you will be on a basis as unstable as water and as liable to injustice as anything possibly can be, which will work for the downfall of any fiscal system based upon it. Let us see how far that goes. The farmer wants free wheat in the West. Why ? Because it will be to his advantage in the way of price. His business will be better, he thinks, if he has free wheat. He therefore says: My interest lies in the direction of free wheat; give me that on the fiscal calendar and I will make more money. The miller comes in and says: I have to do with the grinding of wheat; I know this business and know it perfectly; my interest lies in giving me a certain fiscal line on my wheat. Why do you not listen to the miller as well as to the farmer ? If you are going to single out one class and take the dictum of that class and base your legislation upon it, to be consistent you will have to do it with other classes as well. I believe the farmers of this country know that of all classes they are most interested in having a populous, prosperous and progressive country in which to conduct their operations. There is no industry more

tied to its habitat than is the farmer's industry. The broker is here to-day and there to-morrow; the small manufacturer, while, to a certain extent tied to a locality, yet finds it comparatively easy to change. But the farming community is settled upon its acres, thousands of miles away from a distant market, and its prosperity depends upon filling up the country with a population that consumes the farm products, it depends upon the establishment and maintenance of a good home market. Calculate the value of the products of agriculture in this Dominion, and substract the comparatively small amount of the exports, and you find that probably eighty per cent of what the farmers of this country produce is consumed within the bounds of the Dominion. So, the farmer is vitally interested in having the industries of the country at their highest level of efficiency and their widest range of distribution. And I do not think the farmer himself is oblivious to this; I take it to be true that from 1878 up to the present time the mass of the farming population has been absolutely in accord with the general protective policy of this country because it has brought to them a great and prosperous home market. Nor is the farmer averse to paying his proportion of the taxes involved.
I remember, not so many years ago, when the duty on agricultural implements was thirty-five per cent. That was reduced to twenty per cent under the Liberal Conservative regime. There was a reduction under the Liberal Government of two and a half per cent, and a further reduction was made by my hon. friend (Mr. White) a few days ago of five per cent. So, in coming down from thirty-five per cent to twelve and a half per cent-all but two and a half per cent of which reduction has been made by the Liberal Conservative party-if agricultural implements are to-day at the call of the farmers of a country whose policy is a policy of protection at no more than twelve and a half per cent, I believe the farmers do not object to paying that duty as their contribution to the revenues. For the farmers, as a class, have had very much done for them. Every Government, whether that of my right hon. friend or that of the party opposed to him, has had a favoured and favouring face towards the farmers. In the way of experimental farms and stations, in the way of education, in the way of experiments in seeds and everything else, hundreds of thousands and millions of money have been expended for the benefit of the agricultural, stock raising and

dairying industries of this country. There is not one class that has had so much attention paid to them-and rightly so-as have the farmers of this country. And they quite understand that.
Now, I wish to say this in connection with free wheat: My right hon. friend thinks is i* an easy thing to single out wheat and put it on the free list and not run up against
difficulties. My mind does not run in that way. This question has its relation to a great many other industries. In the first place, let us follow the matter up to see who will get the benefit of the increase in price supposing there is such an increase. The argument of my right hon. friend is: Give free wheat so that the farmers of the West can get a number of cents per bushel more by having the United States market opened to him. But if you have a country that has a surplus of 140,000,000 or 150,000,000 bushels of wheat and you open up the market of a surplus country directly alongside of it having a surplus of 180,000,000 to
200,000,000, what happens in the rush for the fall market? What happened in the rush for the fall market when the United States market was not open but the Liverpool market, the distant market, was open? On account of the quick sale of the bulk of the crop in the Northwest the market price of the wheat went below the normal and stayed there. This occurred in the year when the best wheat that ever was raised, and the largest percentage of good wheat that ever was raised, was harvested in the northwest. But change your market to Minneapolis and St. Paul, where for three months wheat has been coming in in steady streams from the more southern parts of the United States, seek that market at a time when the Dakotas, north and south, and Wisconsin come in, and bring in your 150,000,000 or 200,000,000 bushels of wheat from Canada's Northwest and I ask you, will not that have the effect of reducing the price of wheat during the time of that rush? And it is during the time of that rush that the man who raises the grain is getting the grain out of his hands and delivering it over to the man who buys and speculates in grain. My opinion is that free wheat and the rush to the market from the Northwest into Minneapolis and St. Paul will depress the price of wheat during the time of the rush market and the farmer will get less for his wheat than he otherwise would. The man who will reap the benefit is the buyer, the storer, the speculator who buys it at its lowest, keeps it and sells it when it goes highest. So, you can-

not carry to every farmer of the West the pleasing thought that he is going to get an increased price for the wheat he has raised, because he cannot keep the wheat on his _ farm and regulate it to the uniform outflow that will give him any chance to keep the market from breaking. So, as I say, the boon will not be to the farmer who raises the wheat, but, if there is any advantage, it will go to the buyer, the speculator, the storer of wheat in the later of the many stages of the grain on its way to the final market.
But in considering the question of free wheat you have to have in mind other interests than those of the man who raises the wheat; you cannot give free wheat without disturbing other interests as well. You either believe or you do not believe that if free wheat were given, the bulk of the wheat in the West would go over to the American side; it would be of no benefit to open up the United States market unless it did go to the other side. The hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean) is the greatest philosopher I have ever known. He first declared that if the wheat did not go to the United States, no harm would be done; he then declared that if it did go to the United States, no harm would be done, and he capped the whole thing by saying that it did not make any difference to him which way it went.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: No, no.


George Eulas Foster: Then I will leave out the
personal part of it and say that his assertion was that it did not particularly matter whether the wheat went one way or the other. I submit that that is not a statesmanlike characterization of the position. Is my hon. friend absolutely certain that the farmer who raises the grain will get the advantage of a single additional cent in the price of his product if free wheat is given?
. Mr. A. K. MACLEAN: I was arguing not about the price, ibut about a market for the increasing production; that is the most interesting side of the question.


George Eulas Foster: I will come to that later. The question as to whether or not under free wheat the farmer who raises the wheat will get higher prices is an important one. Is my hon. friend certain that he will? To a large extent it is a matter of opinion, a matter of reasoning. Neither the hon. member for Halifax nor my right hon. friend is able to say that the farmer will
actually get a better price for his wheat. It is arguable on the other side that under the circumstances which I have mentioned he will get a lower price for his wheat.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: My hon. friend will not deny that the British market will still be open to the Canadian wheat exporter if he does not get a better price.


George Eulas Foster: If the wheat goes to the United States it is certain that a great many important interests in our country will be affected-interests for the protection and guidance of which we have spent immense sums of money. My right hon. friend, when he initiated his transcontinental railway policy, declared that that policy was justified, no matter what the expense, because what we wanted was to get an outlet for the products of the West. Later, in Montreal, he declared that he would never rest until every bushel of wheat raised in the West went out via the port of Montreal. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on great transport lines in the West in order to carry our wheat over our own lines to our own ports, en route to the European markets, in whatever part of the continent that may be. If free wheat results in the grain being carried from the West down to Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, to that extent it takes away from the freightage upon our roads, upon which we have spent millions of money in order to carry out the products of our country. That is incidental, but such conditions would militate against the transportation interests of our country in so far as our great transcontinental lines are concerned. The adoption of free wheat would also run up against every other interest which is concerned in the handling and transporting of wheat-elevators, shipping marine, sea ports and Canadian ocean marine.
My right hon. friend does not feel absolutely certain, nor can he, that the Canadian miller, if free wheat is given and the wheat goes to the United States, will be able to carry on and extend his milling operations-for their extension is quite as important as their being successfully carried on. He is not able to say that the Canadian miller will be able to do this, but he thinks that he ought to. He believes that he will, but very careful thought must be given to the matter before you introduce such a change in your fiscal policy as will place so great an industry as the milling industry of this country in a position of peril.

A thought which has occurred to me just now is, I believe, one that is worthy of consideration. What is the whole trend of our commercial advancement and the upbuilding of our nationality? It is not the old-time idea of taking out the raw material which is of less value and disposing of it in a foreign market. The whole trend of our policy from 1878 up to the present time has been that we should throw all possible influences around what will conduce to the greatest amount of handling of the raw products that we raise in our own country. In so far as you encourage the idea that the raw wheat should be run off at a nearby market at an advantage on present prices, to that extent you strengthen the policy of taking one of the finest and most prolific of the products of this country out of Canada in its raw state and of taking with it the by-products which ought, to find their place in our own country. Is it not a fact that if the milling power of the great West could be used to the full extent of its present capacity, it would almost double the present market which is given to western wheat by the fnillers? If the milling industry is an industry which takes the raw product, divides it, separates it into portions and gives it for food and feed and for various otheT additions and helps to the other productions of the country, is it not the wisest thing for us to have all the wheat we can, milled in our own country and use and export the product rather than run it out of the country as raw material?


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Would the hon. gentleman tell us where Canada would sell this additional product of the mill?


George Eulas Foster: I will come to that later. So far as mixed farming in the old and in the new provinces is concerned, I do not know whether I am right or not, but I can see some features in the situation of the last two years in the western and eastern provinces which, to my mind, are due to certain causes. This depression has been less felt in the eastern than in the western provinces. Why? Because in the eastern provinces the home market has been more dense and more valuable; because in the eastern market there has been less speculation and consequently less waste and extravagance. You do not hear very much talk about depression from the farmers of the province of Ontario. Why? Because their products are varied; the salvation of the eastern provinces in these hard times has been in the varied nature of their products.
fMr. G. E. Foster.]
If there is not a high value for their barley, they use it in the production of stock and make up for it in that way.
They have various products which they can sell in the home market; and it is that variety of production and the greater density of the home market, with the comparative absence of speculation, that differentiates the situation in the East from the situation in the West. How are you going to get back to a proper readjustment in the West? You will get back to it in proportion as you introduce and strengthen those conditions; and not by legislation to any very great extent, hut by a reformation and a readjustment amongst the people themselves, you will cure the causes that have led to the present condition of things. Now, Sir, if it be true that the salvation of the West must be dependent on its going more and more into mixed farming, if you obliterate milling or weaken the milling industry of the Northwest, how do you act upon the greatest factor of mixed farming in the Northwest, and the feed that is absolutely necessary for raising the varied animal products that you should have in the West? So it seems to me that a policy which would militate in favour of drawing the raw material out of the country rather than manufacturing it to the greatest possible extent in the country itself, would not be in the best interests of the Northwest itself.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: If the United
States put wheat on the free list themselves we would be in -the same danger then?


George Eulas Foster: Exactly, and if a man burns down my house I am not fool enough to say I wish I had burned that down myself so that he could not do it. I look to our great West, we all look to it, to be the great centre of our country for many, many years to come. Everything which [DOT] tends to make easier the growth and export of grain for itself, as an exclusive industry, on the farm lands of the West, tends to impoverish and rob the virtue from the soil which is to compete in after years and after ages with the countries of the world in the products which come from that soil. Therefore I think that it looks very much like a nature cure which has taken place. There has been a rush to the sole raising of wheat. There is now a marked diversion towards mixed farming. The circumstances of the last year and of to-day will give an impetus to the mixed farming development of the West by the

very fact that the price of grain is approaching a point where it will be more profitable for a man in the West to put at least a certain amount of his grain growing capacity into mixed farming, to feed stock and raise dairy produce.


Mr. NEELY:: Would the minister tell us what we will do with the stock? Will we export it or will we put on an export duty? Our beef is exported now, as the minister knows.


George Eulas Foster: I would not like to credit my hon. friend with not knowing what to do with his stock when he got it ready for market. I think he would dispose of it very quickly. It is far better, that instead, for instance, of selling off his sucking pigs and his young calves that he should put them into the shape of the weightiest pork and the best beef and the best stockers before he sells them. That is all I am asking and that, I think, is good policy for this country. My hon. friend calls to my mind one of his arguments. He was arguing the other day that 25,000,000 bushels of oats went out of this country since the Underwood tariff came in force and he said that every bushel of oats had to pay six cents customs duty and that therefore on that 25,000,000 bushels just $1,500,000 less was received by the producer of the oats than if that duty of six cents had not been on. That is an easy calculation, easily done with pencil and paper, but does my hon. friend's practical sense follow that argument upon paper? If so I will put another phase of it to him. The former duty on oats, the season before last was fifteen cents per bushel. This year it is but six cents. Therefore the seller of that
25,000,000 bushels of oats by the reasoning of my hon. friend is just $2,500,000 better ofi than he would have been last year. The same kind of reasoning applies to everything that has been put on the free list or on the reduced list by the Underwood tari0. If you take wheat on which the duty is now only ten cents against twenty-five cents, if you take cattle, beef, everything, sum it up and you can just add to it the number of cents per pound or per bushel of duty that has been taken ofi by the Underwood tariff, and according to the hon. member, a perfect flood of money has rushed into that great Northwest and is now in the hands of the farmers. But my hon. friend says that you did not do that, that was 181
done by the Underwood tariff. I am not denying it, but is it therefore of any less advantage to the farmer o.f the West and how is it that to-day the farmers in the West are poorer than they were last year and have less money to send down to the East for manufactured products when the
25,000,000 bushels of oats put $2,500,000 cash into the hands of the sellers and they also received innumerable millions on the stock and other products that have gone to the United States under the Underwood tariff? I do not like to say that I do not subscribe altogether to the remarks of my hon. friend from Humboldt, but ,1 am bound to say to him that if his argument is right there are a great many things to be accounted for that he has not accounted for in his philosophy. My hon. friend from Halifax has asked: where will we get a market for our wheat.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: Oh no, I did not; the hon. gentleman was arguing that all the wheat which we grew should be ground into flour and I asked him to tell me where we would find a market for that flour.


George Eulas Foster: I have not argued that all our grain must be ground into flour.


Alexander Kenneth Maclean: You have made an elaborate argument.


George Eulas Foster: I am arguing for a policy which will give an impulse in the direction of grinding in our country as much of our wheat into flour as possibly can be ground. I make the same argument with reference to every other natural product of our country. My hon. friend from Halifax (Mr. A. K. Maclean) asked as to where we could get a market for our wheat and for our flour. He declared that Great Britain consumed a certain amount, of which we supplied a fractional part at the present time, and he did not think there was any chance for an expansion of the market in Great Britain, particularly for flour. Afterwards, when he was trying to meet the argument that if the wheat went across the border there would be nothing left for our own railways to transport, he declared that he expected to see in the near future the products of grain in different kinds going out in ever-increasing quantities over our own transport system via the Hudson bay and the St. Lawrence, and through St. John and Halifax. I can pose the same question to him that he posed to the House in the early part of his speech: 'Where do



you expect to get a market? Now, the question of markets troubles people to a certain extent, and yet there is a vast undeveloped market that this country has at hand. Let me for a moment refer to a table that I have prepared. It shows the value of wheat imported into the great wheat-consuming countries-not producing countries-and the total volume of flour imported into flour-consuming countries. It totals up to this: These great market countries-deficit markets, so to call them-imported wheat last year to the value of $844,-
954,000,	and of that amount Canada sent only $65,000,000 worth to fill that vast demand. Flour was imported into flour-consuming countries to the value of $82,171,000, and of that Canada sent only $16,161,000 worth. Taking wheat and flour together, there was a market of $727,000,000, of which Canada supplied $81,000,000 worth. There is, then, a vast market to which Canada can appeal with her good wheat and her good flour in competition with the world, and it is in competition with the world that she will have to sell her wheat and her flour whether at Minneapolis, Rotterdam, or Liverpool. There is also a vast unfilled market for farmers' products in this country, and for the products of our different industries as well. I think that the difficulty to-day is not to find markets for what Canada produces; and not that we do not get into the United States market, but is to be found in other directions. One thing is, I think, certain, and with that I propose to close my remarks: taking it by and large, the country which has a surplus of any product must seek its market in that country which has not a surplus of that product; and taking it by and large, it is not defensible that a country which has a surplus of 200,000,000 bushels of wheat should seek its natural or profitable market in a country that has a surplus of about the same quantity. It strikes me that it is something like this: Two farmers are travelling along the great road, each with an immense wagon load of wheat. One is Johnny Canuck and the other is Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam says: I have a large family of nearly one hundred millions of people; I have supplied them for the year with all the wheat and flour that they need, and now I am carrying on my truck to sell in the European market about two hundred million bushels of surplus for which there is no market in my own country. Johnny Canuck says:	I have a family o; about
eight millions of people, and I have sup-
plied them with all the wheat and flour they need for this year. I have a surplus of about 150,000,000 bushels which I have in my cart here and I am headed for the very same market that you are heading for, Uncle Sam, to sell my surplus product. Johnny Canuck thinks a moment and says: Why not you take this, Uncle Sam, then I can turn my steps and go home; buy my wheat from me? But Uncle Sam says:	I
have more than I want, and am looking for a purchaser myself. And so they haggle till a bright idea strikes Uncle Sam and he says:	Very well, Johnny, I will take
your wheat. I have quite a large family, and I will set some of them carrying your wheat down to the seaports; others shall mill some of it in their mills; I will set hundreds of thousands of people to work on that wheat of yours, all getting some profit out of it and adding to its value until at last it is sent to Liverpool and London, its ultimate market. But, Johnny, I cannot do that unless I get your grain at a price which will enable me to do it at profit to myself. That is, Uncle Sam will be the broker, the handler, the manager and the profit maker; he will act in that friendly way for Canada. But why should we not do that work ourselves? Then Uncle Sam says: In the back of my head I have another idea. We are great raisers of cattle, hogs, and sheep in my country. If I take your wheat I will manipulate it on its way to London so that it will make millions of pounds of the best feeding material for my stock, as well; and, Johnny, after I have done all that, and fattened my cattle and hogs for market whatever surplus I have will meet you in London and Liverpool when you go over there to sell your surplus products.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock.
Mr. MICHAEL CLARK (Red Deer). Mr. Speaker, the significant absence of any Government member at nearly five minutes past eight would almost seem to indicate that after the speech of the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) the Government was seriously contemplating resigning. Even now the only ministers to turn up are my good, genial friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. White), who is very attentive to his post, and my equally good friend (Mr. Rogers), who is very likely to leave us for a higher position across the Atlantic. The hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce has been living a good

deal of the last two and a half years at sea-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Mr. CLARK:: I mean actually at sea.
This afternoon he was still at sea metaphorically. I do not think that even the warmest of the hon. gentleman's admirers will consider that that very able gentleman did anything this afternoon to add to his great reputation as a debater and somewhat of an economist. His speech consisted in a few quips at my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), in which he is a past master, in his getting hopelessly fogged in figures concerning flour, and in the very moderate rehash of an argument extending to an hour and a half, an argument which took four hours previous to the reciprocity agreement of two and a half years ago, or the attempted reciprocity agreement. The minister himself said that there were two courses open to him; one was to discuss the speaker who had preceded him, and the other was to dwell upon the general financial situation and the general field of thought and discussion presented in the Budget. He chose the one of confining himself to a reply to my right hon. friend who preceded him. I shall, for one particular reason at any rate, take the opposite course. I propose to devote myself to what I think the people of the country are vastly more interested in than a duel between such veterans as crossed swords this afternoon. I shall devote myself to that which I believe the country is very much interested in and that is the general financial situation and the way that financial situation is dealt with in the Budget speech of my hon. friend the Minister of Finance. I ought also to say that my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce very courteously told me that he had a previous engagement at St. George's Society, and could not be here this evening. I shall all the more gladly only refer to his speech as it is necessary to do so in the general course of my remarks.
I want to follow the example which has been very general and congratulate my hon. friend the Minister of Finance upon the qualities which appear to me to have characterized the Budget speech which he delivered. It was a matter of very great regret that I could not listen to his speech; circumstances beyond my control took me into the West, but I read it with the utmost care and it appeared to be characterized by 181i
very great lucidity, very great candour, considerable inconsistency, and not more than the average of the fallacies that are sure to overtake any one who attempts to defend protection. There was another quality in the speech which was commented upon by my hon. friend the junior member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean). I take it that he formed his judgment as to that quality being present partly from the matter of the speech and partly from the manner of it. As I did not hear the speech I only got the impression from the matter. The quality to which I refer was the very great change from the previous speeches of the Minister of Finance in this House. The previous year when he was handling the condition of the country, as it was immediately bequeathed to him, good times, accompanied by surpluses and trade expansion, he spoke in tones which reached what I might venture to call a key of shrill falsetto. He was very well satisfied with the result of the last elections and with the condition of the country and that was the tone se spoke in. This year he was dealing with his own production and he struck a distinctly minor key better suited to the times.
I am glad the minister admitted, however, that we are having times of depression. I noticed that the admission has not been quite general on the other side of the House. No one has denied it but there has been a tendency on the part of hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House to seek for a depression in the ranks of theiT opponents. They have referred to our speeches as indicating some sort of pessimism on this side of the House. I do not know what is the actual state of mind of those by whom I am surrounded but I think it is not different from my own and I will say there is no pessimism on this side of the House which is in the slightest degree discreditable to us whether as good party men or good Canadians. There is no one on the other side of the House who has any more profound belief than I have in the greatness of the destiny of this country. There is no one on the other side of the House who is surer that his party is sailing in good water in this Budget debate than I am. Hon. gentlemen mistake us. We are not pessimistic about Canada. Our pessimism is about the present Government. I think that before I finish I shall be able to reveal the grounds of the pessimism and show that it is well founded.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce had a somewhat light and easy way of dealing with the depression of the country. He said


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this thing is just like a man taking a sleep and he will wake up again all light-meaning Canada. If he had said that the Government was asleep I should have been in agreement with him. It is not Canada that is asleep. The Minister of Trade and Commerce is rather drowsy and he has not got over the tropical seas and climes through which he has been sailing and the whole Government is asleep. Our pessimism is not on the ground of Canada but on the ground of the Government. The Minister of Finance, conscious of his position, differing as it does from that of former years, perfectly conscious and perfectly candid about it, takes refuge in the proposed universality of the depression. He says it is a cycle of bad trade and that we are in the cycle. I do not admit his contention. I do not think he can establish it. I shall take it as regards the United States. Even in the short time that the Wilson-Underwood tariff has been in operation it has produced a marvellous effect upon the condition of commerce in the United States, and has given an enormous impetus to the trade of that country. The other day 2,000,000 pounds of wool arrived in Boston harbour from our colony of Australia, a record for the port. What is happening to that wool? It is going into the factories of the United States; and I read in the Daily Chronicle of London that, as a result of that and other like imports, nearly all the factories of the United States are working overtime. The very moderate reduction of the tariff which has taken place in that country has given an enormous impetus to commerce there. At the very time when our trade is shrinking, if we judge by our trade returns, the trade of the United States is expanding. I do not admit, as regards our neighbouring country, the universality which the minister claims for this condition of depression, much less do I admit it with regard to the United Kingdom. In Great Britain it is notorious that for the last three years they have been passing through times of phenomenal prosperity. The pauperism last January was the lowest in Great Britain that has ever been recorded either in the aggregate of paupers or in the pauperism per thousand. These are facts and one could multiply them indefinitely to show that this condition that the minister admits is not world-wide, and does not apply to the two countries with which we in Canada are most intimately connected, which we most intimately resemble and towards the condition of which whether as to adversity or as to prosperity, we will 
most nearly approximate. I want to urge that our Government are in a very large measure responsible for the existing condition. They are face to face with that responsibility and they will have to face it before the people of this country.
In a recent debate my right hon. friend the Prime Minister referred to the legacy in regard to railroads that had come down from the previous Administration. He charged upon the previous Government the difficulties in regard to railroads with which this Administration is saddled. It is not a very noble method, when a man gets into a scrape, to blame the otheT fellow; but, if it is not very noble, it is very ancient; it originated in the garden of Eden, so that it is very human as well as very ancient. I do not want to minimize any force there is in that argument or in any fair argument of an opponent. I think I used sentences myself, during the course of this session, which would indicate that we had a considerable load of railroads for the size of this country and for the number of people in the country. But I think it is a fair reply to that argument of my right hon. friend; it is a fair rejoinder in the face of that argument to say that, if there was some legacy of railroads which was not as good as it might have been, that legacy was accompanied by a condition of tremendous prosperity in the country and by a surplus of some $50,000,000 or $60,000,000 in the treasury. There is nothing in the railroads of Canada to frighten the people of Canada, if the policy of the Government of Canada is right. Take the condition of that western country and our railroads. As my Tight hon. friend the leader of the Opposition pointed out in his speech this afternoon, we have tilled some six per cent of the possible arable land of Canada, and the Canadian Pacific railway has built up upon that fractional tillage a prosperity and a greatness almost beyond the dreams of human avarice. If the policy of the Government is wisely directed to an increase of the production of the wealth which is possible in western Canada, is there any Canadian so poor spirited that he sees any difficulty in making the other two railroads of Canada as prosperous? This is not the only thing that the previous Government bequeathed; they bequeathed to the country these railroads; they bequeathed to the country the prosperity and the enormous surplus to which I have referred. If they had not been defeated by the party opposite and by argu-

ments, which even Ontario will one day regret, which she is regretting now, we would have carried out a policy in this country which would have gone to maintain fully the prosperity which characterized the fifteen years, of Liberal rule. I charge it upon this Government that the defeat of reciprocity is largely responsible for the condition in which the country is found to-day. Just as the lowering of the tariff against Great Britain was followed by an enormous increase of our international commerce, by great land settlement, by increase of our wealth and of our prosperity, so a farther widening of our markets would have brought about a similar result.
I want to say farther that the hard times, which have been prevented by the extension of our markets, have been tremendously aggravated by the extravagance of the present Government. In my judgment, the expenditure of this country in the two and one-half years that this Government has been in power has gone up in a way that is reprehensible, indefensible and unnecessary. It has gone up in that way against the most specific and fair warnings that ever were addressed by an opponent to a gentleman in the position of my hon. friend the Minister of Finance. My hon. friend, the junior member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean), in his first Budget criticism, warned my hon. friend of his duty in this matter. The Minister of Finance was new to political life, he was new to the duties of his office and the junior member for Halifax warned him thit he was surrounded by colleagues who wouid characterize his Government as an extravagant Government, and in spite of that;, the . Minister of Finance neglected his first duty [DOT]and invited extravagance. His very first duty towards the people of this country was to keep a tight watch upon the treasury. He is the custodian of the national moneys. There are what are called the spending departments of the Government, but it is my hon. friend's duty in his office to be the watch dog of the treasury and to hold those spending departments off except for what is absolutely necessary. That is a very serious charge to bring against my hon. friend. I have charged him with inviting extravagance, or, if I have not, I charge him with it now, and I am going to prove it in his own words. I listened with great interest, as I always do when he speaks, to his Budget speech of last session, at the close of which he used these words:
I do not believe-
This was in spite of the warnings of my hon. friend.
-in a Government curtailing expenditure simply because it appears that on account of financial depression there might be a limitation of trade.
There is a specific declaration of policy on the part of my hon. friend. What does it immediately commit him to? If trade is limited-and twelve months ago he seemed to foresee a limitation of our trade -it meant a limitation of revenue, for our revenue is collected under a tariff, and its extent depends on the foreign trade of the country. Limitation of trade meant diminished revenue, and there has been only one course open to the minister, and that was to borrow money, and he has indicated in this Budget his intention to-continue that policy. I think myself that is most unsound finance, and I should be wanting in my duty both to my hon. friend and to the country if I did not state that opinion and the grounds upon which I base it.
I think it is most unsound finance to extend our borrowings in a condition such as that of Canada at the present moment. And that opinion seems to be .shared by those who lend money in the old country; because from the hon. gentleman's experience in that country I rather think they did not quite smile upon his most recent efforts in the direction of borrowing. My hon. friend justifies borrowing by a very old argument. He says we are using the money that we borrow to effect improvements, part of the benefit of which posterity will get, and therefore it is right that we should leave posterity to pay part of the cost. Well, the investors in the old country did not seem to have the .unlimited belief in my hon. friend's posterity that he himself has. Nor do I think there is any soundness in -his argument. I have never read of a posterity in the past that did not have enough trouble with its own finances, its own expenditures and its own times. I may not have as strong an imagination as the hon. minister's, but certainly I cannot imagine a posterity in a world constituted as this is that will not have trouble enough of its own. I think this is unsound finance and based on unsound reasoning. In this speech the hon. gentleman went farther and said:
We have a population to-day of eight millions, and it will soon be ten millions, fifteen mi' * lions, twenty-five millions.
Let me say to my hon. friend that the realm of figures is a very, very bad realm indeed, in which to introduce too much imagination. When the Minister of
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Finance, introducing too much imagination into the realm of figures, thinks of this country as having a population of twenty-five millions, in an administration like his he can always find a Minister of Militia who will immediately begin to spend upon the twenty-five million basis. And that is exactly what happened to my hon. friend. He stood at the treasury box of the country, of which he ought to be the guardian and watchdog, and he practically said: ' Come along; dip in.' And the Minister of Militia (Mr. Hughes) dipped in. My hon. friend the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Rogers) rejoices in his ability to spend money and in his department, as a spending department. I would like my hon. friend the Minister of Finance to consult the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster). In spite of the speech he made this afternoon, there are some good things about the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and I am sure if the Minister of Finance were to consult him about some of the things I am saying he would say I was preaching sound doctrine. I know he would, for when he went to South Lanark recently, he told the people that the cure for bad times was to be frugal, careful, and economical. I have no objection to the Minister of Trade and Commerce delivering advice like that in South Lanark; but he should know that advice, like charity, should begin at home, and I wish he would give that advice to the Finance Minister.
I wish to impress upon the Finance Minister that the farther he goes on this course the more he will find out that a nation, no more than a man, can spend and borrow and tax itself into prosperity. It has never been done in the world. I have referred before to my hon. friend's illustration of the Prodigal Son; and he knows that the Prodigal Son was not a success along that line. He spent himself into adversity, and I have known many people do the same. But no man or government can spend themselves into prosperity; it is contrary to reason and common sense. Borrowing as a policy, cannot be too strongly condemned, especially in a country like ours, in the case of a federal government. For the federal government is imitated by the provincial governments, and these by the municipalities, and the result is that we get into the position in which we are in Canada today a position of hard times in a country inhabited by a people who are capable of the greatest things but have the handicap at the present time of being the most indebted people in the world per capita, taking all their debts, municipal, provincial
{Mr. M. Clark.]
and federal. I think that statement is capable of proof past all possible doubt.
I would like to follow this a little farther in order to impress it upon the minis-' ter. I know that we never talk economy in this country; the extravagance of the present day, I have no doubt, will make my words sound very old-fashioned. But it does not trouble me to hold and to proclaim an unpopular opinion. I had the pleasure to follow the greatest man I am likely to look upon in this world when, twenty-eight years ago, he went down to defeat in an effort to give Home Rule to Ireland. It has taken twenty-eight years to give Home Rule to Ireland, but I do not think that even Sir Edward Carson will be able to prevent it much longer. It may take me even longer to succeed with free trade, but I know it will not take me nearly so long to succeed with my teachings with regard to economy, for when a man or Government spends too much, Providence steps in and sees to it that they do not get what they want to spend, and though they may run through one fortune, they do not readily get another. I desire to cite an article in the Statist of February last, which, I think, any one can read with great profit and which will explain exactly what we borrowed last year, what happened to our borrowings, and what the effect was upon the commerce of the world and upon Canada as a nation. In the debate on the address I referred to the fact-and the minister was good enough to agree with me-that when we borrow we do not borrow money but credit, and everything we borrow comes into the country in the shape of commodities. Now what actually happened with regard to the borrowings of Canada in 1913, according to this article in the Statist? We borrowed credit and immediately transferred that credit in London to the United States by buying goods from the United States with that credit. The United States did not immediately buy from Great Britain, but with the credit which we had transferred to them, the United States proceeded to buy coffee, rubber and other produce from Brazil, importing last year three times as much from Brazil as they sold to that country; they proceeded to buy tea, jute and other products from India, importing four times as much from India as they exported to India; they proceeded to buy silk and other produce from Japan, their imports from Japan being very much in excess of their exports to Japan.

I sum often called a theorist, tout this is not theorizing; these are the actual facts concerning the trade of these countries during the last year. Our original credit borrowed in London and transferred in this way was finally discharged by these three nations, Brazil, Japan and India, taking last year unprecedented quantities of wool, cotton and machinery from the old country -and so the circuit was made. I want the minister to think of that for a moment.
I have no reason to assume that he is not cognizant of the facts, but I want this House to think of them for a moment. What has happened ? Our borrowings last year-this ought to be extremely interesting to those who preach a national policy for the building of home industry-our borrowings last year promoted to an enormous extent the industries of the United States, to an enormous extent the industries of . Britain, to an enormous extent the industries of Japan, of Brazil and of India, and Canada was left with a debt and has the ' interest to pay on it. That is all that came to Canada for these borrowings last year; no promotion of the industry of Canada was made in the exchanges as between these countries. I think that these simple economic truths-and they are truths- ought to produce something to recommend to the minister my opinion that borrowing is an unsound line of policy.
I have been looking up some of the masters for the benefit of my hon. friend, if he would care to hear about them. I have been looking up some of the things that Mr. Gladstone said in a speech which I very well remember being delivered in Edinburgh in the year 1879, in which he laid down certain principles of finance. In that speech dealing with finance, and laying down these principles, he made the claim that the principles he was laying down were those that had built up the financial greatness of England in the beginning of its career; that they were the principles laid down alike by the Liberal and the Tory parties, and he claimed to have learned them from Sir Robert Peel. In laying down these principles he referred to Sir Robert Peel coming into power, not at a time of prosperity, as my hon. friend did, but in 1842, when Britain was in a state of adversity for which I think Canada has no parallel in her history. That was four years before protection was done away with in Britain. When Sir Robert Peel came into power in 1842, he found a deficit. I remember as if it were yesterday Mr. Gladstone on one occasion standing at his place at the table of the
House and saying: Shall I meet this condition by the miserable expedient of making provision by loans from year to year? Founding himself upon the high authority of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone laid down the principle that each year should as far as possible provide by taxation for the expenditure of that year. That was one of his principles of finance. He went on further to say that he himself believed- and this was another principle of finance- that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Minister of Finance, ought to aim at a surplus, for this specific reason: not only that it was necessary to avoid borrowing, but that an honest financier should always be endeavouring to wipe out the national debt. Mr. Gladstone laid it down a3 a sound principle of finance that a surplus should be aimed at as the main instrument for the steady reduction of the public debt of the country.
My hon. friend in answering the charges of extravagance which were brought against him last year in the Budget debate by the hon. member for Carleton (Mr. Carvell) and the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean) said: the charge is too general; why do you not particularize? I think we have come to a time when particulars are being given to the minister. My hon. friend the* hon. member for North Oxford (Mr. Nesbitt) did something in this line yesterday and I think I can particularize from an authority to whom even the Finance Minister would give considerable attention; I mean his chief in the Cabinet. I do not know how far it is within the recollection of hon. gentlemen that the right hon. leader of this Government said in the debate upon the naval resolution of five years ago that in his opinion at least half of the money spent upon the militia at that time might be diverted to the naval defence of the empire. If my hon. friend wants particulars he can take half the military expenditure of that time and put on several millions that have been spent since his Government came into power and he will get a good round sum in the way of detail with which to begin to practise economy in the handling of the moneys of the people of this country. He could, again, go to my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and "Commerce for advice on this subject. A short time ago the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce said that a great deal of money was being wasted on commissions in this county-commissions which were wasting a
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good deal of ink and paper in the printing of reports which were laid upon shelves and never read. It is too late to save the $60,000 to $100,000 that has been spent on probably the most useless commission that ever sat in this country, the National Transcontinental Commission; but these are some of the particulars that I would like to call to the attention of the minister. Let me point out that it is not part of our duty to supply the minister with these particulars; he is the watchdog of the treasury and ought to find them out for himself. He knows what is going on within the Government; it is his duty to know these particulars. I want on that point to . finish my quotation from Mr. Gladstone's principles of finance by quoting to the minister-I am afraid it will fall on deaf ears in this country, almost in the case of any government, but I will quote nevertheless -the words in which Mr. Gladstone laid down what he called the first principle of finance:
The first of them is, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer shall boldly uphold economy in detail; and it is the mark, gentlemen, of, I was going to say a chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer when he shrinks from upholding economy in detail. He is ridiculed no doubt, for what is called saving candle-ends or cheeseparings. No chancellor of the exchequer is worth his salt who is not ready to save what are meant by candle-ends and cheese-parings in the cause of his country. No chancellor of the exchequer is worth his salt who makes his own popularity either his first consideration or any consideration at all, in administering the public purse.
My hon. friend is so agreeable a gentleman and I am so fond of him that I hate to say what I am going to say now, but unless he improves his ways we will have to say one of these days that as the guardian of the public treasury he is not worth his salt and to say that will hurt me more than it will hurt him.
This has been a rather dry lecture, I am afraid, but sometimes it is necessary to give dry lectures; at any rate the minister will not charge me with bringing too much imagination into the realms of finance.
When we turn to the trade of the country I think there is ground for anxiety. I want to say that the last thing I think any patriotic man should do is to exaggerate any financial depression we have, and I do not think that that is the duty of an opposition. But equally it is wrong to hide evident truths from the public view and especially from the view of those who are responsible for the Government of this

country. Taking the twelve months, the minister is just able to show an increase of our trade, but if he had taken the last six months he would have had a report that the trade of the country is declining. That is the fact as to the external trade of Canada at the present moment; there is not the expansion and the buoyancy that there has been in our trade for sixteen or seventeen years past. I very mudh doubt if the conditions of our trade are such as to give the optimistic outlook which the minister endeavours to maintain. Our imports have declined; that, from my point of view, is not wholly bad; it is not bad so far as it indicates a decline in our borrowings. In so far as it indicates fewer people coming into our country, I think, it is bad. I notice that my hon friend the Minister of the Interior, speaking in Montreal the other day, admitted that during this year we may look for a falling off of fifty per cent in our immigrants. It is the same in regard to immigrants as it is in regard to building of railroads, if we do not know what to do with immigrants when they come I agree with the minister that they should not be brought; but it is a melancholy confession that in a country with two people to a square mile you cannot so frame a policy that these people can make a living on the finest area of land ever cultivated in this or any other country. Our exports during recent months have been declining, and this is wholly bad because it means production has been reduced to a minimum, and the country is living from hand to mouth.
There is another aspect of the trade of the country of which I thought the minister would have had more to say because trade matters have been very much in dispute in this country in recent years and we have arrived at a point when, having regard to matters which were forward in the last election and which have been occupying the minds of the people and of Parliament ever since, we as an Opposition have a right to ask: How are the alternatives of the Government coming along in the way of providing for an external trade for this country?
I think we have a Tight to ask that and in asking it I am founding myself upon the example of my hon. friends when they were in opposition. I looked up the other day a book adorned with the features of the present Prime Minister and called ' Facts for the People/ and I read in that this statement of fact for the people: The Laurier Government has not opened to Canada a single foreign market. Now, that is a shady kind

of a fact to begin with, because the moment the Laurier Government came into power they introduced the British preference which gave us a market, resisted by our friends at the time but lauded high now. Immediately, as the result of .the British preference we got a tremendous hold on the British market in which we have been doing an ever-increasing business. But in addition to that the Government went out of power, as we have shown again and again, endeavouring to provide another market and it does not lie in the mouths of these gentlemen to say that the Laurier Government has not provided us with a single market. But what have they done in regard to markets? Well, of course, we heard a great deal this afternoon about the home market as we have been hearing throughout the whole of this debate. Anybody would think that the party opposite created the home market. Every country has its home market for the staple lines of its produce. In every country, in spite of the Government, whether the Government be Tory or Liberal, as soon as people begin to trade they trade in the home market. It is the only market they have. I wish my friends opposite would study the history of trade in this connection. An interesting theory was propounded by the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. A. Thompson) yesterday. My hon. friend is coming along very nicely in his economic studies. He was one of a number of members who made special reference to myself and he formulated a theory of trade that I could not quite endorse, but which went a considerable distance in the direction of the truth. He said: It appears that every country is free trade to begin with and then becomes protectionist and then gets back to free trade again. I think if we should go back right to the origin of trade we would find that to begin with every country is more or less protectionist; they are at any rate in regard to the home market. When there was nobody but the Indian in this country and he went out each morning and caught a little fish or killed a little venison and came home to the tepee and shared it with the squaw and the papooses, you had the ideal of protection theory realized, you had the home market for home consumption-you had Canada for the Canadians. So I think my hon. friend in his evolutionary theory did not go quite far enough back. In regard to free trade there is no doubt that his theory is quite correct. I am very anxious to believe it, and it was consolatory to myself to know it was coming. I
regret that he should think Canada is only qualified as yet to be in the backwoods stage of her development and 1 am sure that he and those by whom he is surrounded will never be angry with me because I want to hurry up their evolution.
Do our friends really believe all they have been saying about the home market? Does the Minister of Trade and Commerce himself believe that the home market is of the tremendous importance that he seemed to indicate this afternoon? He recommends as a cure for western conditions the building up of a home market in western Canada. That was the first portion of the cure that this Government proposed for present conditions, that is their first alternative. They are continually mentioning the policy on which we went down to defeat two and one-half years ago. I wish my friends would reflect that there never was a people who had to be so patient with advice as the representatives of the West and those whom they represent have had to be during this Budget debate. There is apparently not a man in Ontario who could not run the affairs of the West with the utmost ease if we would only put those affairs right into his individual hands. If we were dependent upon the home market in western Canada, as these gentlemen advise, I want to ask the Government what would happen to their elevator policy. Mixed farming is the cure, the home market is the cure for the West. In other words, we are only to grow enough wheat for western consumption. Then I charge it upon this Government that they are the most foolish people on the face of this earth, because they are spending an enormous amount of money on elevators and they are threatening to spend $150,000,000 on the Hudson Bay railroad, all of which is based upon the presumption that Canada is going to have an enormous outside trade in wheat. So that one part of these gentlemens' argument is thoroughly destructive of the other part. I want to bring to the attention of our hon. friends who talk about the home market in the West as a cure for our conditions. The elevators and the railways under those circumstances can only become monuments of the folly of the present Government. I want to tell our hon. friends something about the home market as it exists in the West to-day. Day before yesterday, in the last Albertan that came to hand from Calgary, I notice a statement that 4,000 hogs had been shipped from Calgary to the Seattle market in one day. That has been going on ever since the Wi'lson-Underwood tariff came into operation. If that tariff had not given us a relief for those
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hogs, will our friends who preach the home *market tell us that we should never have produced those hogs, that we should have waited until we had built up a home market to dispose of them? The thing is absurd on the face of it. We dealt a couple of years ago with a grain blockade. Without the Underwood tariff we would have had a hog blockade. When I was at home ten days ago my people on my own farm were collecting a large number of eggs every day, and had received a letter from the merchant with whom they deal in Calgary dated the previous week saying: Send no more eggs at present, and our neighbours who deal with the same merchant had got the same message. So that I was up against an egg blockade. These hon. gentlemen who talk to me about a home market would suggest, I suppose that I should play battledore and shuttlecock with my eggs one week and send them to Calgary the next week. I wish people would be reasonable in talking. To speak: of the home market alone as of any use in a country containing 300,000,000 acres of arable land is to mock the farmer, to express distrust in Canada and its future, and to expose one's self to the ridicule of all thoughtful men. How much of a home market do hon. gentlemen opposite recommend for any province in this country? Let us see how much there is in that argument, and how it conflicts with their other arguments. We have 400,000 people in the province of Alberta, half of whom are in the towns and cities. Hon. members have expressed an opinion thoroughly in agreement with my own, that there are too many already in the cities and towns, but what does the home market theory really mean? It amounts to more cities and towns. That is one of the evils from which we are suffering, and the cure of hon. gentlemen opposite is to build more! Those are the economists who talk about the home market. I will give them facts from my own province in regard to the home market. The people of Calgary, according to the greatest beef men in the West-the men who buy and sell beef wholesale-are not able under this Government to eat beef in that town. They are eating custards instead, and then they cannot get through all the eggs we are producing. If they have stopped eating beef and eat only half the eggs produced, how would hon. gentlemen opposite, in the shoes of the Alberta farmer, like to have those preachments about the home market thrown at them?
Mr. BURNHAM:: Is it not true that the ideal condition of trade of this or any other country is a perfect balance between *all avenues of distribution?


Michael Clark: I am not a millenium producer. When we have a per-9 p.m. feet balance, we will all be angels and we will not eat either eggs or beef. What as to the other alternative of which hon. gentlemen opposite spoke so much about two and a half years ago, (but of which we do not hear so much to-day? I have here some words which the present Minister of Trade and Commerce used in a speech he delivered on the subject of reciprocity in this House two or three years ago. He said:
What are the distinctive features of this treaty and how far do they conform to the conditions of reciprocity? Suppose I am a maker of jack-knives of a certain quality and my hon. friend opposite is a maker of jack-knives of the same quality. I could send over to him and buy a dozen jack-knives and he could send over to me and buy a dozen jack-knives, and this might be called trade, but there would be reciprocity about it.
Of course all the gentlemen opposite who were in the House at that time cheered him to the echo. No possibility of reciprocity between the United States and Canada because it would be only an exchange of jack-knives! And then the minister went on to proclaim his alternative :
Two countries that show ideal conditions of reciprocity in trade would be the West India islands and Canada.
That was a very cleverly stated alternative policy on the part of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. In the same speech, using those powers of ridicule which, after all, do not carry a man very far, he gave a wonderful description of how two old fellows went down to Washington-estimable gentlemen but in no way very able- and got closeted with the Government authorities there, and of how they cut the telephone off and drew up the reciprocity agreement; and the minister showed how futile it would all be. But since that time, following out his idea of an alternative, he has been visited in Ottawa by no less than fourteen old or young gentlemen from the West Indies, accompanied by their wives. I do not know whether the telephone was cut off in this case but a treaty was made with the West Indies, and we wasted considerable time last session in the discussion of that treaty and other matters-that is,

the Government and ttieir supporters wasted time by presenting it to us, and they had to introduce the closure to finish up the work of the session. Well now, what about that alternative, the treaty with the West Indies, that ideal place for trade? My hon. friend from Carleton (Mr. Carvell) put a question on the Order Paper the other day asking for the figures of our trade with the West Indies for the last six months of 1912-prior to this wonderful treaty-and for the last six months of 1913, during which the treaty was in operation. The figures showed that where conditions were ideal for trade, and where a treaty had been made by those people who knew so much better how trade should be done than we did, our trade decreased with the West Indies by $600,000. That is the way they have been increasing the trade of the country. During the /Same period the people of this country have increased their trade not by tens but by hundreds of thousands of dollars with the United States, where we could only exchange jack-knives. Of course, we were told there would be danger to the empire in that trade. The real danger to the empire is from people who base the permanence of [DOT]the imperial connection on a wrong foundation, and they are the worst friends of the empire. If trade with the United States means annexation, we are annexed now. The condition of our people does not brook any longer this foolish talk. The people know now that it was foolish talk. Our friends opposite are great admirers of Britain and everything British. How did Britain regard the Wilson-Underwood tariff? In London, within a few weeks of that tariff coming into operation, there vras a meeting of the shareholders of a sugar company with large interests in the West Indies. The shareholders were told by the chairman that the company was going to do ever so much better trade in future because they had now free entry to the markets of the United States for their sugar from the West Indies. And yet gentlemen opposite, who admire everything British, coine here and weave the most ingenious and elaborate arguments to show the folly of trading with the United States, and the danger to the empire that comes from such trade. How would a business firm act in regard to this matter? I venture to think our individual citizens in Canada are as sensible as the individual citizens of the old country, and that, taking every legitimate advantage of the Wilson-Underwood tariff, they are forcing their business in
the United States. But we have got a Government in power-and that is what is the matter with this Government-"who are not up to the average of the individual citizen of this country in commercial intelligence.	'
Now faced with these conditions, faced with this condition of trade which barely shows an increase and faced with this commercial depression, what does the Government do in its Budget? It is notable that in the tariff changes which are made the minister refuses free wheat, (does his best by that to limit our export) puts a large line of duties on iron and steel (and does his best to limit our imports) therefore showing that he is a thorough believer in the home market argument although I must do him the credit of saying that he does not use it quite as much as others do.
I want to dwell upon the tariff changes and the arguments of the Minister of Finance for a few minutes, endorsed as they were by the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce. I was rather surprised to find that the somewhat extensive tariff changes were made. Free wheat, of course, my hon. friend was bound to deal with but the other tariff changes were rather a surprise to me for the reason that in the debate on the address my hon. friend had said that to alter the tariff in times like these could have no effect but to dislocate the industries of the country. He said that in the debate on the Address about three months ago, and I was therefore very much surprised when I saw that he had announced tariff changes. As to the dislocation of the industries of the country, with the unemployed that are flooding our towns, with factories closing down and the exodus from our western farms, I think there is considerable dislocation already. It is not causing dislocation of industries that the Government want to look to but the prevention of it; there is already too much dislocation.
Of course, I do not quite agree with him that this is not the time to change the tariff because if we are not to change the tariff when we are depressed the minister would offer a far stronger argument for not changing it when we are prospering. Therefore, as long as he is minister the tariff is eternal; he would never alter the tariff. I am very glad that he changed the frame of mind that he was in because it betokened a departure from financial sanity. Having got over this surprise, I was very much interested again when the minister proceeded to give us a brand new theory of

protection. He said that a protective tariff is a structure fearfully and wonderfully made-I am reading between the lines-and he further said that you have to look at the solidarity of the structure. That was news to my hon. friend the Solicitor General (Mr. Meighen). It surely conflicts with the original theory of protection. What is the original theory of protection? We have heard it again in this debate. It is that you must bolster up infant industry, that you must help infant industry. But according to the new theory, the minister himself contemplates all industries reaching maturity at the same time my hon. friend says that the industrial family are all infants. They grow in beauty side by side and you must not interfere with one of them until they are all matured. That is why you could not interfere with the tariff. Then he goes on and interferes with some of them but interferes with them mostly to put them upwards. He was so insistent upon this new theory that he betook himself to the creation of epigrams. He said, in a previous debate, that free food means free trade. He was replying to some remarks of my own in a particular speech and if I had not already spoken in the debate I should have wanted to ask him why he was so angry with me, or why he chided me so strongly, because I had said that President Wilson had torn protection up by the roots in the United States. They have practically free food in the United States, and if that means free trade it looks as if the minister's new epigram means that we must have free trade at once. According to the minister, this policy in the United States means free trade, and if that be true my hon. friend's epigram means free trade. I offer my very sincere thanks to the minister for his conception. I think I understand what he means. I think he means that once you give free trade along certain lines it will follow in others. I congratulate him upon seeing so clearly.
I cannot congratulate him, however, upon the position he took in his economic work on behalf of Canada. As Great Britain is a free trade country and, according to the minister's epigram, the United States is rapidly becoming a free trade country, he will have to go to Russia and Japan for his economic companions. I do not like to see my hon. friend taking a position like that for the great body of Canadians. Does my hon. friend see what he commits himself to there? Free food, says my hon. friend, means free trade. Well, now, would it be 
possible to turn back? Suppose we gave free implements, we could turn back instead of going on. Does not the minister know the position he implies when he says that free implements means free trade? He says that if you give the people of the East and the West a taste of this thing it will prove so nice to them that they will go on and put the whole policy into operation? I do not think he quite saw what he was committing himself to. The Solicitor General did not argue on this theory when he was arguing the question of agricultural implements. He argued the question of agricultural implements in his most able manner absolutely on the merits of agricultural implements, and he proved that there was good ground for a part of the policy embodied in the amendment of my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition.
I wish to offer some more congratulations to my hon. friend the Minister of Finance. I want to congratulate him on the fact that he did alter the tariff and he did it without the help of a tariff commission. Two years ago he indicated to Parliament and to the country that a tariff commission was absolutely necessary to the proper and scientific handling of the tariff. But I think he has, by his recent action,, taken a position in which we can ask him to acknowledge that he owes the Senate thanks for their action upon that particular measure. There would have been an enormous amount of money spent annually by the commission and I think my hon. friend owes the Senate his warmest thanks for their opposition in regard to it, not only because they opposed in a measure the commission, but because of the amendment which they introduced to the Commission Bill. What was their amendment? The-amendment was to the effect that in dealing with the tariff we should look to the-interests of the consumers as well as to-the interests of the producers. I want to-call the attention of the House to the fact that in his tariff changes the minister seems to have been absolutely innocent of the thought that there are either farmers or consumers in this country. The tariff changes, according to hi3 own showing in his Budget speech, have been carried out in the interests of producers of certain commodities. Take free wheat-to whose representations did he give weight and attention? To the millers? I give him credit for the painstaking work that he and his

helpers have dope but when he gave ns the particulars it was apparent that fifty per cent of the case that he presented to us was made up of information relating purely to the people engaged in the agricultural implement industry. Be has examined the hooks of these people; he has examined the condition of these people; he has found out that they are the bankers of the farmers. I wonder if it did not strike the minister that he ought to have examined into the financial condition of the farmers who are in such a condition that the implement makers have to be their bankers. What does that fact mean ? It means that the settlers are tied body and soul to pay not only for the implements but huge interest upon their cost from year to year, and that is one of the causes that has produced the condition of the West to-day. Surely further inquiry should have been made into the financial condition of these farmers.
In regard to the iron duties, the minister also examined into the iron industry. He does not seem to have seen the need of looking at the effect of this change in duty upon any one except those engaged in the industry of steel and iron. Yet my hon. friend pretends that the policy of which he is the exponent is a national policy. It is sectional, nothing but sectional and always sectional. My hon. friend admitted that in the very method by which he put his arguments on agricultural implements before the House. He enumerated every place in Canada where implements were made and, by the witty retort with which he met an interruption of the hon. member for Brantford (Mr. Cockshutt), he showed that in his own mind this protection is a local and a sectional thing. He hoped that he would be able to outlive the mistake of having overlooked Brantford in his enumeration.
There is no need, in my judgment, for a long argument upon the question of free wheat. That question was debated and voted upon in this House during the present session; but it is permissible and I think is my duty to look at the arguments by which the minister has satisfied himself that he ought to refuse free wheat. The arguments which have weighed most with him are very peculiar. In the first place he doubted, like my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce, whether the price of wheat would be raised, because he says that the price is fixed at Liverpool. This is quite true in a degree, but not the price to the farmer. It is a truth that has been very well known for a great many years.
Mr. Gladstone put forward that argument in regard to America. He once said:
It has been very well said, and very truly said though it is a smart antithesis-the American agriculturist has got to buy everything that he wants at prices that are fixed in Washington by the legislature of America, but he has got to sell everything at prices which are fixed at Liverpool by the free competition of the world.
That argument is only partially true today, because it was used thirty years ago. The fact to-day is the fact brought out by my right hon. leader this afternoon, namely, that the price which the farmer gets and the price which the consumer pays are both to a large extent fixed by the combines. This consideration explains what, the minister tells us, puzzled the people of Ontario during the last election. What puzzled the people of Ontario in the last election was how you could possibly benefit the producer and the consumer at the same time. It is a fact, capable of absolute proof, that you can do so. In my native county of Northumberland in England, for several harvests past, as soon as the wheat was garnered, the farmers in the northern part of that country received into their hands an average price of 96 cents a bushel for their wheat. That is under freedom of trade. It was proved to-day, not to the satisfaction but to the dissatisfaction of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, that in the same county of England where the farmers are getting into their hands 96 cents a bushel for their wheat as opposed to the bare 65 cents a bushel which the farmers in' southern Alberta and Saskatchewan get, flour containing Manitoba wheat is being sold cheaper than it is sold in Winnipeg. That is the fact. What is the explanation? The explanation is that, when you shut out competition and create combines, these combines give what they like to the producer and take what they like from the consumer. Last night my hon. friend from Haldimand (Mr. Lai or), who almost led one to believe that he is a lineal descendant of the good Samaritan and is spending his time giving away tomatoes these days, denied that there were any combines. Yet in reply to an interruption by my hon. friend from Strathcona (Mr. Douglas) he actually admitted that the farmer in Ontario is getting something like twenty -five and thirty cents a bushel from year to year for his tomatoes and that the consumer is paying some years something like thirty cents for two or three cans. 1 do not know how many cans of canned tomatoes you can get from one bushii oi tom a toes and a barrel of water, but there is a

tremendous spread of profit between the twenty-five or thirty cents that goes to the farmer and the enormous sum that is got out of that barrel of water. That is what is raising the cost of living to the poor people of this country. It is the combines that are doing these things. In a recent debate I advanced the argument to the minister that the high cost of living in this country was due to the tariff and the combines that arose under the tariff, and he replied to me in the course of the same debate that it was not a sound argument that the tariff .is the cause of the high cost of living, because the price has gone up more than the tariff in so many years. It was not quite a fair argument on the part of my hon. friend to deal with only fifty per cent of what I advanced. I never said that the tariff alone was responsible for the high cost of living; I said that the tariff together with the combines was, and I want to give a confirmatory opinion of my own. Mr. Woodrow Wilson said:
It is now no longer arguable that these combinations do not settle what prices shall be paid; settle how much the product shall be, and settle moreover, what shall be the market for labour.
The other argument which seems to have satisfied my hon. friend in refusing free wheat was a more peculiar one. He said, before you try the market to the South, you should wait until you get the Transcontinental railway completed East and West and until you get the Hudson Bay railway completed. Is my hon. friend serious when he asks us to wait until these railways are completed, which will be in the time of our prosperity to which my hon. friend is sending his borrowings? I endorse what my hon. friend from North Oxford (Mr. Nesbitt) said in regard to the Hudson Bay railway. I never said a word in its behalf on any platform in this country, and I myself have very little belief in the clearness of the economic thought of any one who seriously turns aside to avoid a market of 90,000,000 people and goes and builds a railroad where you have to navigate amongst the seals and icebergs in the hope that you will be able to dispose of your wheat.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: For two months in the year.


Mr. CLARKE:: I would not like to
send my wheat there for any months in the year; I have very little belief in the project. I know that both parties have supported this project, but I wish to put in a 
word for my own party, because when they were in power the case was altogether different. The Liberal party did foolish enough things when in power, but they never were foolish enough to prefer the Hudson Bay road to an assured market of a hundred million people. That market was not open to ns then, and the Hudson Bay road was an alternative to nothing south of the line. But to propose to the farmers of the West that they should wait for this railroad development is a very weak argument-certainly it is utterly unsatisfactory to my mind. I should say that the policy for people who want to do business and develop the country along wise lines is to try that which is at youir hand-try the market to the south and go on with that when you can. get it.
But this whole argument of the Minister of Finance was vitiated, as was that of the Minister of Trade and Commerce this afternoon, by the thought that all this fine dreaming, all this fine political weaving can be reduced to naught by the United States Government. The interruption was perfectly pertinent, I think, of some hon. member on this sido who asked the Minister of Trade and Commerce: What will you do when the duty is taken off wheat by the United States Government? We are absolutely at the mercy of the United States in that matter. They have proven that in the case of cattle. Everything that my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce advanced about the impossibility of trade south of the line was advanced with regard to cattle as well as with regard to wheat two years ago. And everything advanced with regard to cattle has been absolutely falsified by what has happened and the prophecies of hon. gentlemen opposite are discounted to that extent. We on this side of the House have the right to say that our predictions and the position we took two years ago have been absolutely justified; and I believe that if free trade in wheat were given we should be justified in that particular also.
I should like my hon. friend opposite to compare the dignified position which Canada occupied under the reciprocity treaty with that to which the people of Canada have been reduced by the attitude of the present Government. When we arranged reciprocity we made a treaty which was equally honourable to ns and to the United States, a treaty under which we should have

dealt on equal terms. But with a Government supinely holding their hands and incapable of doing anything, the Canadian people are, if you like, dragged into commerce by the scruff of the neck by a foreign Government. I give the people that thought as showing that the policy of the present Government is weakness itself compared with that of theisr predecessor.
There is a great responsibility resting upon my hon. friend yet in this matter, and upon the Government of which he is a member. I wish to impress this upon him. And the responsibility is all the' greater because it has been proven past all doubt by the action of the Conservative Manitoba Legislature that even in Manitoba there is no difference on this subject. I presume that the members of the Manitoba Legislature are aware what is the opinion of the people of that province. Yet my friends opposite come forward as exponents of what they call a national policy and tell the West not to look at things sectionally. What harm can it do the East if we get free trade in wheat? Of all the peculiar arguments I have ever listened to, the argument directed to the idea that you can hurt, for example, the manufacturers of agricultural implements by promoting the prosperity of the farmers is the most peculiar. Did ever any one hear such nonsense talked-you make prosperous farmers and you thereby ruin the manufacturers of agricultural implements. That is the true National Policy-build your farmers, and they will build your railways and youT manufacturers as well.
Now, I do not need to dwell long upon the question of free implements; I will just say that I think the Government have made a great mistake in the way they 'have handled this subject. They are very inconsistent in touching it at all. We heard something from my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce this afternoon about a political policy. I do not think that the Government in taking off a paltry five per cent from the duties on two lines of implements can be said to have acted absolutely free from political considerations. I do not think they believe that this change will affect the prices of implements one jot or tittle. This reduction has been given to save the face of my hon. friend the Solicitor General (Mr. Meighen) and the other Conservative representatives from western Canada-that is the whole object of this paltry reduction. Sound economics following the line of argument of my hon. friend's speech would teach that the only way to be sure
of decreasing the revenue from these articles-and if we are going to economize, we must decrease revenue and take less from the pockets of the people-would be to make the implements free; and the only way you can be sure of reducing the price to the farmer is to make them free, as Mr. Wilson has done in the United States. We are told that this will destroy the industry.
I do not believe it. Did the placing of cream separators on the free list destroy the industry on cream separators? There are splendid and flourishing cream separator manufactories in this country. Why? Because the moment you made these machines free to that extent you helped the dairy industry, and the dairy industry reacts upon the cream separator industry. And there you have exactly the proper method of developing an industry and increasing the prosperity of this country. My hon. friends who are protectionists are continually trying to build the prosperity of the country by poising the cone upon its apex. You must put the cone upon its base, and the apex will stand all right-it requires a juggler to do it the other way, not an economist.
Now, I wish to say something in conclusion about the iron and steel duties. I am bound to admit that while the placing of these duties on iron and steel like the reduction of the implement duties will not have much effect in Western Canada one way or the other, it is a very astute political move. As such it is a strange comment on the term ' national ' as applied to the protectionist policy. It appeals to Nova Scotia and to Ontario, and it has made its appeal in these directions in a way that is interesting to me as a free trader looking on. The very fact that it is an astute political move is the strongest condemnation of it economically; it is an unwise move economically just because it is not a national policy. The hon. Minister of Finance indicated, as have certain other speakers, that the iron and steel industry is next in importance to agriculture in this country. I do not agree with that; transporation, railways, is the next in my opinion. And this is where the mistakes come in of putting these duties upon steel and iron. It is sometimes said that protection is a good policy for a young country. Here is an interesting sidelight upon the study of the problem: the name of John StuaTt Mill was mentioned by the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Thompson) as giving his authority to that view. Well, I have somewhere a pamphlet containing

several letters from Mr. Mill, in which he expressed the utmost regret that in a moment of inadvertence he had given passing countenance to that opinion. But we do not need to depend upon authority for the settlement of that question; we are a young country; we have common sense, and we can settle it for ourselves. We can settle for ourselves whether the duties on steel and iron are good for a young country. Is there anyone who will get up in this House and deny that transportation to the farms and to the people of this country is next in importance to the basic industry of agriculture? I do not think any western member will. The Government and their supporters admit my views upon this matter; they say: we agree with you that railways are very important; let us promote the building of railways by making iron dear. Is that good logic? Is it common sense? You will promote the building of railroads by making iron cheap; if you put a tariff upon iron you make iron dear, and to that extent you put obstacles in the way of the development of a young country. England could afford tar better than Canada to have a tax upon steel and iron. England has now 20 miles of railway to every 100 square miles of the country; that means that no one in England is, on the average, more than two and a half miles from a railway. England, an old country, could much better afford, from this transportation point of view, to have taxes upon steel [DOT]and iron than we can. But, after all, what is the good of arguing with a Government that talks about building railroads by making iron and steel dear? What is the good of arguing with a Government that gives bounties or imposes duties in favour of the iron and steel industry, and then puts up its Solicitor General to talk for three hours and a half in favour of wooden trestles on railways? The way to promote the iron and steel industry is to use iron and steel, not wooden trestles. If I were the Solicitor General, I would not take a brief for wooden trestles; I would leave a wooden argument like that to wooden heads. The people do not want iron. I do not want any iron; what is the good of mere iron to me? I want nails; I want stoves and I want railways; I do not want iron. But you make all these things that I do want costly by putting duties upon steel rods; you make the things the people actually do want costly, and then you say that protection is a good thing for a young 
country. I am a young inhabitant of a young country, and I am reminded by these good things that are said to me of the labourer in the south of England, who, in the anti-corn law days, made the most effective speech ever made against protection. He went on the platform and said: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I he's protected; I he's starvin' and I am agin protection.' The men who make nails are already complaining. This particular industry of iron and steel is a good illustration of all the evils of the protective system. Cheap iron and steel would help the railroads; it would help shipping; it would help the making of cutlery; it would help the making of stoves; it would help the making of agricultural implements and all the things that a young country really wants, but dear iron operates the other way. Who does it help, this iron industry? The millionaires; granted. I mentioned this point before: Mr. Carnegie retired from the steel trust of America recently with a reputed income of $1,000,000 a month. Yes, it makes- the millionaire; it makes them Schwabs and Carnegies-there is no doubt about that. I have tried to show in the sentence I have just uttered that it does not help the consumers, and who are left as a special class- the labourers. The time is coming, and coming rapidly on this continent, when the people are going to see that the workingman is not helped by protection. I think a puncture was put in that bubble this afternoon by my right hon. leader when he analyzed the figures the Minister of Finance gave in regard to that and showed the miserable wages that are being earned on the average by the people engaged in the food industry. This idea of protection helping the workingman, shared by the Minister of Finance, as quoted by my right hon. friend, is an example of the persistence of an unfounded belief. So far as I have been able to examine the question I am unacquainted with a single fact in support of the contention that protection helps the workingman. A11 the facts I have been able to find point the other way. It is an old belief. I think in the very first speech he delivered in the House of Commons in 1841, Mr. Cobden, replying to a statement that free trade in grain meant the reduction of wages, used the following language, the simplicity and completeness of which cannot be improved upon:
We should, by free trade in corn, very much increase our trade. How can this be done, unless by an Increased amount of labour? How can we call into requisition an increased de-

mand for labour without also increasing the rate of wages?
That was the argument put in simple language by one of the greatest men that ever lived, though he never got inside a cabinet -perhaps that was because of his size- and I defy any one to meet that statement. That was a prophecy; how did it work out? Who was right? The fact is that in Britain the actual prices of labour rose after the repeal of the corn laws and the introduction of free trade faster than they ever have done in any civilized country in the world and they have risen until the labourers of Britain are the aristrocrats of European labour; they get higher wages, whether for skilled or for unskilled labour than are paid anywhere else on the continent. At that very time-I come now to another fact in this argument; I hope I am not wearying the House-at that very time Mr. Cobden pointed to the United States, long before there was any protection there, as the El Dorado of the workingman: as the place where the workingman should go to earn larger wages. Now, what facts have we got? That the -wages were miserably poor in Britain under protection and that at the time they were poor in Britain under protection they were high in the United States under free trade. Mr. Carey, who wrote a book called Past, Present and Future, said that one of the reasons given for the introduction of protection in the United States was that it would reduce the wages which were too high. That is to be found on record in that book. Compare that with the condition of wages in the United States to-day. Wages in Britain have gone up; nobody who knows the facts will deny that for a moment. What has happened in the United States? If you read Collier's Weekly of March 9, 1912, referring to the Lawrence strike, you will find that Collier's Weekly tells of the textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., denying themselves the common necessaries of life and taking lodgers into houses already overcrowded by their own families to scrape up money to return to their native land. That is one of the most highly protected industries in the United States-the woollen industry. If I had time I would like to have gone into this question a little more fully. An interesting book has been published-a little book which 1 know and have read- by Professor Nearing, of Pennsylvania University, on wages in the United States. The book has this very great merit for 182
any one who wants to find the truth upon the question, that it is a purely sociological study, and the tariff is never mentioned in it from beginning to end. What are the main findings of that book bearing on the question under discussion? The author sets out by quoting Professor Chapin to the effect that a New York artisan with a wife and three children needs $900 for a living wage for himself and his family. And how far do the United States conditions to-day, after high protection for sixty years, go towards the standard laid down by Professor Chapin? Nearing finds that, taking a line through the Rockies and north of the Mason and Dixon line three-quarters of the adult male workers of the United States of America actually earn less than $600 a year. Nine hundred dollars needed for a man, his wife and three children, three-quarters of the people in the industrial portion of the United States, according to this professor, upon less than $600 a year, or, in other -words, only two-thirds of a decent living wage! And yet the minister indicates his opinion that in Canada protection helps to raise the wages, that it gives a proper standard of living to the workingman. What are the further findings of this book? The author finds that westward the wages rise. We who know anything of Canada know that is absolutely true in Canada. Westward the wages rise. Well, that means that the farther you get from the centers of concentration of highly protected industries, the higher are the wages. These are rather peculiar comments from a United States professor upon the theory that protection raises wages. He finds what we absolutely know in western Canada to-day, that the highest wages are paid in the building trades and that is also true of eastern Canada. Now, protection cannot raise the wages in the building trade because we do not up to now to any extent, import houses. Bricklayers, he finds again, are much more highly paid than brickmakers. You cannot protect bricklayers in their business. You can protect brickmakers by a tariff on bricks, because you can import bricks; but the bricklayers are paid more highly than the brickmakers. We find that the men's unions are weakest where the tariff is highest. That is, the tariff strengthens the employer and -not the employed. These are the main facts of the book as I have collated them.
What about iron and steel? because I want to bring it before this House and the country and Parliament that this ministry


REVISED EDI1ION COMMONS
[Stage Direction]
has started to build up an iron and steel industry in this country corporable to the iron and steel industries of the United States. The iron and steel industry is the most highly protected trade in the United States. When we are following the had example of the United States I am determined that, so far as I am able to prevent it, the people of this country shall not go into it with their eyes shut. At a conference held in Pittsburg by the skilled labourers of America a petition was drawn up to President Taft. I shall tresspass for a moment on the House while I read what was said by the leading men in American labour unions about the United States steel corporation in its relations to labour. This petition alleges that the United States Steel Corporation
(a)	Is an illegal combination existing in defiance of the laws of the land. Its power and scope as a trust have been so often made manifest in its own circulars to investors and in magazines and the press, that no detailed evidence on this point is here deemed essential.
If government officials will, as they have done in the cases of the Standard Oil Company, and the Tobacco Trust, present to a competent court the facts which are public and notorious, the decision must logically follow that the United States Steel Corporation exists in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law. It is not to be doubted that the law and the courts can reach this monopoly even if its annual revenue is counted in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Its power of wealth must not be permitted to paralyze the arm of the law.
(b)	In this so-called 'great American industry,' founded upon the tariit enacted for the protection of American labour from the competition of ' the pauper labour of Europe,' it is speedily and effectually excluding American labour, skilled and unskilled, from its employment. It has almost wholly eliminated from numerous departments men who speak the English language. It has again and again advertised that ' Syrians, Poles and Roumanians are preferred ' as its employees.
(c)	It is accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars by exacting excessive prices for its product from the American public and enforcing an exhausting stint of toil from its labourers and by reducing the masses of its employees to a rate of wages insufficient to provide for the American standard of living.
(d)	It not only degrades laoour by low wages and a twelve-hour workday, but denies a day of rest by enforcing work seven days in the week, as was made clear in the revelations of the Survey.
(e)	Its products are made in reckless sacrifice of human life and human blood, the shocking details of which also appear in the Survey.
(f)	It tyrannically prevents the organization of its workers to elevate the standard of living.
(g)	It denies the right, recognized to workers by law, to form associations for the promotion and protection of the interests of the toilers.

(h)	It suppresses and prevents free speech and public meetings.
(i)	It boycotts American labour and insists upon submissive foreign labour.
(j)	It has enforced decrees of banishment from communities where it dominates.
(k)	It has in such communities exercised powers beyond the law and in defiance of law, denying to citizens rights fully guaranteed to them as American citizens.
(l)	It has both usurped and controlled the exercise of authority in local communities in its own name in violation of the plainest fundamental principles of law.
(m)	It is organized illegality, dominant and defiant, with no respect for legal right or human right, with brutal indifference as to human capacity for endurance and for deaths and injuries of its toilers.
(n)	Its continued existence and methods are a menace not only to labour but to the business men yet outside of its baneful power and influence, and particularly to the perpetuation of our Republic based upon the independence, character and sovereignty of the masses or our people.
Now, that is a charge that is brought by the heads of American labour against the steel trust of America; and yet hon. gentlemen come to this House, the Minister of Finance tells us that the national policy which is the son of the republican protectionist policy of the United States raises the standard of the workingmen of this country. In case this evidence should not be believed, let me say that in the case of the Bethlehem strike, within the area of this great steel trust, the Federal Council of the Christian Churches of America appointed a committee of investigation into the conditions prevailing in that industry and they found briefly this: fifty-one per cent of all employees had a twelve-hour day. In free trade Great Britain anything beyond a nine-hour day is unknown. They found that twenty-eight per cent of the employees worked regularly seven days a week. This agrees with Nedring absolutely. The committee went on to state in regard to the wages then the wage scale leaves no option to the common labourers but the boarding boss method, with many men occupying the one room. A man with a family takes in lodgers or the woman works. Immigrant parents are reported to send their little children back to the old country to be reared while the mother goes to work.
Mr. Speaker, I would have been lacking in my duty to the people of this country if I had not protested against these iron and steel duties as the first step in the direction of introducing into Canada what is the greatest industrial shambles upon the face of the earth. I support the amendment of my right hon. friend with the very greatest pleasure. I support it in spite

of the very thin fun that was poked at it by my hon. friend the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and which produced for a few minutes such hilarity upon the benches opposite. My hon. friend in poking that fun disregarded the terms of the amendment. He attacked the amendment as if it only dealt with free wheat and free agricultural implements. Why, it ended in favour of a reduction of the tariff all round-at least so I heard it read. Could you have a more complete division between the parties than the policy of the Government as I have examined it-at too great a length, I fear-and that amendment ? We are told that it is not a free trade amendment. Even I did not expect that; I had too much regard for history. The first really large step in the direction of free trade in Great Britain itself, was the repeal of the Corn laws. That was exactly equivalent to free wheat. President Wilson before the last election in America, so far as I have read his speeches, did not mention a single duty that he would interfere with. He attacked the evils of protection, and showed the road he was going. My right hon. friend is in excellent company on the tariff when he follows the example of Sir Robert Peel in 1846, and of President Wilson last year. I cannot see where the joke comes in in the fun of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and I do not think they will find it much of a joke a little later on. On its merits I believe the amendment would receive the support of every patriotic and thoughtful Canadian. I do not think any thoughtful Canadian, if he considered the subject in a non-partisan, unprejudiced manner, would see anything objectionable if free food were in the amendment. And who says free food is not in the amendment ? When you start to reduce the tariff, who is going to say where it will stop ? According to the Minister of Finance free trade is in the amendment, for he says free implements mean free trade.
Mr. MEIGHEN:: about it ?	What	do	you	say


Michael Clark: I	am	trying	to	saya good	deal	about	it.	I10 p.m. say that	it is	an amendment	
which will commend itself to a very large portion of the people of this country, and I think that a large majority of the people of this country would be in favour of radical treatment of the tariffs of this country. And I not only think, I think I know, that the more the people of this country get to know about 1821
tariffs along the line of what I have been trying in my feeble way to bring before this House to-night, the more they will be in favour of reductions in the tariff. In any case, we shall vote as a united party in favour of the specific policy of free wheat and of the specific policy of free implements and for a reduction of the tariff. The party opposite on the other hand stand for the maintenance of tariffs, and for the so-called National Policy. They stand for the introduction of a steel trust in this country, and for all the enormities of protection for combines as they have been exposed and found out in the United States, and as they are being deserted in that country. I would have voted for free food if it had been specifically mentioned. I agree with what Lord Macaulay said in Edinburgh in 1845:
If there be anything in which all peoples, nations and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been that the dearness of food is a great evil to the poor.
I agree with someone else who has said that taxes upon food are a crime against humanity. I have been called a theorist. There is nothing theoretical about protection, it is practical enough: millionaires and multimillionaires at one end of society and on the other hand the great masses of the people exposed to dear food, racking house rents, unapproachable clothing owing to price, thousands of unemployed,-and this is all true of Canada-falling immigration, falling revenue, farmers leaving their farms, falling trade and increasing debt-those are the accompaniments of the so-called National Policy in Canada at the present time, and every gentleman opposite knows it. I will tell the Government that building armouries will not cure these things. The amendment might have gone farther in specific terms without hurting me. If it had said free necessaries of life I believe the people would have stood for it, hut with sufficient reductions in the tariff we will get the free necessaries of life. The amendment as it stands would increase our commerce, it would help to smash combined and to reduce the cost of living. It would also be a step to raising the price of laborur. It is a policy of infinite good as compared with the supine, do-nothing or worse, policy of the Government and their supporters.


Mr. H. H. STEVENS (Vancouver):: Mr. Speaker, the occasion of the Budget debate

is, I understand, a fit and proper time to offer criticism of the policy of the Government and the administration of the financial affairs of this country during the preceding year. It is also the occasion upon which we look into the future and discuss the question of ways and means in regard to our financial and commercial policy. It is not my intention to follow the arguments of my hon. friend who has just taken his seat (Mr. Michael Clark) in so far as they referred to the expenditures of the Finance Minister during the past year. He characterized the administration of the Finance Minister as one of gross extravagance. On the contrary, I believe that the Budget speech of the Minister of Finance on the affairs of this country and the management of its finances has passed through the criticisms of hon. gentlemen opposite, and that it stands to-day in a very creditable position indeed. A very violent attack wa3 made by the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat upon the whole question of protection, and if we wanted a concise and brief argument in favour of railway protection in this country I would point to the last two paragraphs of the speech of my hon. friend.
He has drawn the most lurid picture in this House-I do not know his authority for it but I am taking his word-as to the condition regarding the iron and steel industry in the United States. A few moments ago he said it was a crime for this country not to allow its citizens to buy in the open market and that in so far as he was concerned it was his intention to buy stoves, rails, knives and this and that in the cheapest markets irrespective of the conditions under which they are produced. He knows perfectly well that if you are going to improve the conditions under which iron and steel are produced in the States one thing will follow in all probability and that is increased cost. I would like to know what the hon. member for South Gape Breton (Mr. Carroll) thinks of the iron and steel arguments which have been presented by the hon. member foT Bed Deer and whether or not he would like to hand the people of Sydney over to competition with the conditions which have been so luridly drawn by the hon. membeT for Red Deer.
I purpose taking up a little later other statements of the hon. gentleman and he will pardon me, if, for a moment, I digress and refer to some statements made by the
[Mr. Stevens. 1
right hon. leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier). In his remarks he stated that agricultural production is not equal to the requirements. In another moment afterwards he said that the greatest need of Canada for her farmers was larger markets. These are two sample arguments taken from the speech of my right hon. friend. Then, throwing the responsibility upon the present Government, he added:	This Government
has done absolutely nothing since it came into power in order to deal with this great problem which he characterized as the greatest problem of the age. I purpose drawing your attention, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, to what has been done, not by a mere statement of the condition of affairs but by giving the actual facts. In 1899 the Government of the right hon. leader of the Opposition spent $376,000 in the interests of agriculture; in 1905 the Government spent $651,000; in 1911 and 1912, we spent $1,646,000; in 1912-13, we spent $2,703,000 and in the present year, ended March 31, 1914, we spent $4,027,000. This money was spent by the present Government in the interest of agriculture, yet the right hon. gentleman says that this Government has done nothing for agriculture. But I do not base my case merely upon figures and I might add that these figures are absolutely authentic and taken from the departmental reports. I hold in my hand a large number of testimonials from various parts of the country and I will read extracts from a few of them so that my right hon. friend may know that not only the Conservatives of Canada but the citizens of Canada irrespective of politics, including some of our political opponents, compliment this Government on the efforts it has made in the interest of agriculture. The Hon. Walter Scott, Premier of Saskatchewan, speaking in Ottawa at the Canadian Club and in the presence of the right hon. gentleman himself, said
Hon. Mr. Scott dwelt at some length on the progress of the province he represented in the last seven years. Seven years ago 63,000,000 bushels of grain were produced. This year
230.000.	000 bushels. Seven years ago there were 900,000 head of stock; to-day there are
2.000.	000.
This is evidence of the progress of the West under the present Administration. We have been told by hon. gentlemen opposite that everything was going to the bow-wows, but we know from the statements of a gentleman like the Hon. Walter Scott and others that this is not the case. Now, I shall read a letter from the province of Nova Scotia in

which the Agricultural Society of Halifax county-
-do express our appreciation of the grant made from the federal appropriation for agricultural education, which has been used to assist in erecting a building suitable for ' short course instruction ' on the Middle Musquodoboit exhibition grounds. And that we also express our thanks to the staff of the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture for arranging and conducting in that building, the very satisfactory [DOT] short course ' on agriculture just completed, and that we as farmers express our approval of the co-operation of the federal and local departments for agriculture.
And so on. Then we have a speech delivered by the Hon. Duncan Marshall, Minister of Agriculture of the province of Alberta, also a Liberal Government, in which he compliments very highly my hon. friend the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Burrell) and says that he is working in cooperation with the Minister of Agriculture of the different provinces in a manner that means much not only for the success of agriculture but for its progress in future years.
Here is a resolution from the Yarmouth Agricultural Association along the same lines and I shall not detain the House oy reading it. There is another letter from Truro, N.S., which is along similar lines on behalf of a hundred and five teachers in attendance at the rural science school held m the Agricultural and Normal College, Truro, N.S. It says:
We, the undesigned, do hereby wish to express our appreciation of what has been done by the Dominion Government. We hope, in return, to instil some of the knowledge and enthusiasm which we have acquired at Truro into the pupils that attend our schools.
I have others along that line, but I do not wish to detain the House at the present moment. What I wish to say is that this Government has grappled with the question in a manner that the late Government never attempted to do, and while it takes some time to see results, yet I think what has been accomplished answers the criticism of the leader of the Opposition.
During the past three weeks we have been favoured with the criticisms and the observations of hon. gentlemen opposite and I have carefully listened to find out exactly where they stood in connection with the fiscal policy of the country. I was impressed by the fact that their policy was very much like Joseph's coat; it was a thing of many different colours. The main portion of the coat was blue, exceedingly blue, I think, for the hon. member who has addressed the House on this occasion used very doleful terms and pointed to a gloomy outlook. Then we had the scarlet of the
extremely radical, that element which looks upon every manufacturer, every captain d industry, every leader in transportation, as a veritable rogue, a man who is seeking to rob the country. These hon. gentlemen have not a kind word or a moment's consideration for that class. Then we have the white purity squad-the hon. member for Carle-ton (Mr. Carvell), the hon. member for Richmond (Mr. Kyte) and the hon. member for Humboldt (Mr. Neely) who were the chief critics of the Government with regard to allegations of corruption. We have also here or there an hon. member who is a wearer of the royal purple of the old National Policy. This is the only saving feature of the policy which has been brought before us by the leader of the Opposition to-day in the amendment. I would like to look for a moment at the amendment. It starts off with a reference to the prevailing economic conditions:
That it is advisable:
1. To place wheat and implements upon the free list.
This is a sop to the western farmers-Then it goes on with a very clever suggestion which is intended to allay any disturbance which may arise in the minds cf the manufacturers of the East:
And that without doing any injustice to any' class, steps should be taken to alleviate the high cost of living by considerate removal of taxation.
Reference has been made to vague definitions, but of all the vague definitions of expressions of opinion that I have seen, the vaguest is summed up in this amendment to the resolution. Let me give some of the opinions of my hon. friend opposite. The hon. member for South Renfrew (Mr. 'Graham), speaking at Hamilton the other day before an audience of ladies, had this to say:
It has been said that the Liberals are free traders and the Tories protectionists. I myself say free trade is out of the question. We must have revenue and the people pay a tariff much more easily than direct taxation. Stability of tariff is another thing that Sir Wilfrid has fought for.
On the same occasion when he was speaking to the men in the same city, he had this to say:
When Sir Wilfrid Laurier appealed to the people in 1896, he declared that the tariff would be regulated so that indebtedness would be wiped out and the people would show their prosperity by the jingling of dollars in their pockets. The tariff would be treated by Sir Wilfrid in recognition of the fact that the Government would be responsible to the people.


'2882 COMMONS
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There never was any desire on the part of the people to injure Canadian industries, but food that goes on the workman's table should go there untaxed.
We have the word of the hon. the junior member for Halifax (Mr. Maclean), of the right hon. the leader of the Opposition and of the hon. member for South Renfrew that food should go on the workman's table untaxed. As pointed out by the hon. Minister of Finance, it is perfectly clear that it is utterly impossible to disturb the tariff to any degree without interfering with the whole fabric of a reasonably protective tariff. If you have a tariff in a country, it must be one which protects the various interests in as just a manner as is possible. If you are going to put implements on the free list, then as the Minister of Finance pointed out, you must extend other concessions to the implement industry. By so interfering with one part of the tariff to any appreciable degree, you find yourself sooner or later interfering with the whole fabric of the tariff.
I desire to deal with some of the statements made by the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Clark) and I am sorry he is not in his seat, as I have under my hand some information that I think would be valuable to him. He has constantly posed as a particular student of political economy and he has entertained this House with many unsupported statements as to the effect of free trade in Great Britain, the United States and other parts of the world. I have already alluded to the picture which he drew a moment ago regarding conditions in the United States. I think, before I am through with my remarks, I shall be able to controvert successfully the statement he has made. Before doing so,
I wish to correct the impression conveyed to this House by the hon. gentleman a few weeks ago, which has been placed upon ' Hansard ' and gone out to the country as an accurate illustration of the condition of affairs. He said with very great force indeed, which is characteristic of him in his speeches, that during the last three year^ Great Jlritain had increased her manufactured exports by £70,000,000 and that that was a record that had never been equalled in the world. He went on to say that that was an argument in favour of free trade. The facts are these: In 1907, the British exports amounted to £426,000,000; in 1908, they fell off by £50,000,000 in one year and amounted to £377,000,000; in 1909, they remained stagnant at £378,000,000. From 1910 to 1912 they rose to £478,000,000, £Mr. Stevens.]
the increase being £61,000,000 in a period of six years instead of £70,000,000 in three years, as stated by the hon. member for Red Deer. Canada during five years has increased her total trade by $514,000,000 and her exports by $132,000,000; or in other words, the per capita increase in six years in British exports was $6.50, while the per capita increase in Canadian exports over the same period was $18.50. When my hon. friend picks out odd years and makes statements regarding the value of free trade, it is always well to examine his figures.
He made another statement on that occasion, which I wish to controvert. Picking out two years again, he stated that in 1883 Canadian trade was about the same as it was in 1896. These are the actual facts: From 1869 to 1873 we had a Tory government in this country, and the total trade for 1869 taking exports and imports together, was $130,000,000. In 1873 the total trade rose to $217,000,000, an increase of nearly 100 per cent. Then came into office the Liberal Government and immediately the trade fell off from $217,000,000 in 1873 to $153,000,000, in 1878. Again, came into office the Government under Sir John Macdonald with the National Policy, and our trade increased from $153,000,000 in 1879 to $239,000,000 in 1896; and in 1911, it had increased to $769,000,000, but in the following year the increase was over $210,000,000 in one year, or in the two years from $769,000,000 to $1,085,000,000. When the Liberal Government was in power before the adoption of the National Policy, the trade dropped off nearly 100 per cent; when the National Policy was introduced there was a continual climb, but the climb has been more rapid under the present Government than it was even during the palmy days of the Liberal Government, in spite of the fact that they perpetuated ouir fiscal policy.
We have heard a good deal regarding the home market, the Northwest, and so on. I would not presume for one minute to controvert the opinions of hon. gentlemen from the prairie provinces with regard to what should be done in that part of the country, but I want to make a few observations and I am sorry that the hon. gentleman for Red Deer has vacated his seat. He went out to the prairie provinces about eight or nine years ago. I take it from his own statements that he is a man of considerable business ability; at least he poses to be an authority on matters of finance and business.
I take it for granted that when he went out o the prairie country to engage in farming, to raise steers, as he says, he knew what he was doing. I assume that he knew

what the price of steers was and what his profit would be and that he would not have gone into the business unless he thought he could make a profit. At that time he could get from $42 to $45 a head for his steers, and this, it is to be supposed, was profitable business. But to-day he would get $80 to $91 for the same animal. And still he complains of conditions in the West. That is, he is making more than a hundred per cent more than when he went into the business; and still he says the business is in a languishing condition. Then he pleads for foreign markets. But what are the facts as given in this House the other day? Last year there was put on the market for consumption in Alberta $10,000,000 worth of beef. Of that $5,000,000 was sold to the British Columbia market and $4,500,000 to Calgary and Winnipeg, and the balance, $500,000, or five per cent, went to the United States. These are figures that cannot be controverted.
Now, reference was made during the remarks of my hon. friend to the tariff conditions in the United States. He said that during the early part of the last century the United States had practically free trade and that wages were higher than they are to-day under protection. Mr. Speaker, that statement is absolutely aside from the fact. Briefly, the history of the tariff in the United States is this:	The first tariff, a
revenue tariff and very low, was put on in 1779. In 1816, material increases were made. In 1824, led by Henry Clay, there arose a demand for a national policy, and a higher tariff was put into operation. In 1842, a protective tariff was introduced There was a reduction to twenty per cent under the Democrats, but this remained on the statute book for only two months, and then the protective tariff was put on. In 1857, the tariff was reduced to twenty-four per cent, which was called free trade, and remained there for a few years until the Civil War, when again there was an increase. So it went on until 1897, when, under the Dingley tariff, the duties were raised, as we all know, to the highest point. I shall not review in detail the tariff of the United States, but I merely quote these figures to show that the statement of the hon. member for Red Deer was absolutely inaccurate when he said that in the early part of the last century they had practically free trade in the United States. They have never had free trade in the United States since they
broke away from the mother country in 1776.
Now, I wish to make, as briefly as I can, in view of the lateness of the hour, some comparisons of free trade versus protection. I stand firmly on a policy of protection. My hon. friend from Red Deer can hurl all the abuse he likes at us; he can tell us we are lacking in common sense, and can give us the remarkable stories he works himself into in his speeches in this House; but the facts are the things upon which we and the country will base our conclusions, and I challenge him to produce at any time in his future speeches facts that will controvert the statements I shall give in the remarks I shall now make. I draw attention to the fact that Great Britain did not dare adopt free trade , to any considerable degree until she had control, practically, of the commerce and industry of the world. The hon. member for Red Deer, the champion of free trade in this country, knows that fact perfectly well. He knows also that the people of Great Britain would never have adopted free trade if they had thought there was the slightest competition. Germany and the greater part of Europe had free trade, or practically free trade, and the British leaders said: If we can put on free trade now that will form a precedent, and the nations of the earth will follow and we will keep them from building up their industries. That was the statement of Canning, Huskisson and all the other political economists of that day; it was the statement of the whole school of free traders in England. And their policy had that effect for some time. The hon. member for Red Deer quotes Cobden in this House. Let me tell him that after fifteen . years of free trade, from 1846 to 1861, Cobden admitted that free trade was an utter disappointment to the British people and suggested-and succeeded in introducing-a system of treaty making. This began with the treaty with France, which treaty resulted in the tremendous reduction of the manufacturing industries of France during the short time it existed. France learned a lesson during that period of free trade or reciprocity, and they wiped it out and have never had it since. And France is in a better condition than any other country so far as working conditions and the cost of living are concerned. From 1852 to 1860, practical free trade was introduced into England. That is, they call it free trade,
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but it is not free trade, and no country in the world has free trade. Why, in the year which ended on the 31st of last month, Great Britain took in $177,000,000 in customs duties, a large portion of which is on foodstuffs. Now, coming down to the period in which free trade was introduced, I desire to quote from Mr. Clive Day, an eminent writer on these subjects. He says:
If jwe measure the value of goods exported from 1800 to 1849 on official standards, we should find that they had increased from $120,000,000 to $950,000,000, or 682 per cent.
Now, I will give the exact figures as taken from the blue books. In 1800, the imports were $140,000,000 and the exports were $165,000,000, total, $305,000,000, an excess of exports of $25,000,000. In 1846, during the period of protection, this had increased to $369,000,000, and the imports to $723,000,000, a total of $1,092,000,000, or an increase of 500 per cent. That was a very creditable increase at that time. And I wish to observe that the exports during this period exceeded the imports1 by $354,000,000, which again is a very creditable story in connection with the trade of the country. In 1860 this rose to $1,825,000,000, caused by the large increase in imports as the result of the repeal of the Corn Laws and the importation of food into England. The imports in this period exceeded the exports by $223,000,000. Now,
I have a statement here of the trade of different countries. I have already given the figures for the early part of the century. During the latter part of the century the increase was 225 per cent, as against 500 per cent during the first part of the century. The greater increase was while it was a protective country, and yet according to the statements of the hon. member for Bed Deer it should have been going rapidly to the bow-wows.
Now, coming to the United States we find that in 1790 they had an export of $20,000,000 only; in 1912 they had an export of $2,171,000,000. Comparing the total trade of England for the last half-century with the period of free trade, we find that in 1840 the total trade of the United States was $221,000,000 and in 1912, $3,812,000,000, an increase of 600 per cent. That, Mr. Speaker, is a very creditable showing. What do you find in connection with Germany? I have been unable to get the figures with regard to all the German states prior to 1871; hon. gentlemen will remember	that at that time under
Bismarck the states of Germany were brought under one head and a national

policy was introduced. In 1872 the total trade of Germany was $1,843,000,000; in 1910 it was $4,192,000,000, or an increase of 230 per cent, which is a very credible increase. Again, this was under protection. The same thing applies to France and to other protectionist countries in general; I shall not quote the figures at this time.
In 1880 the exports of Gireat Britain exceeded those of the United States, France and Germany by £16,000,000. In 1908 the exports of these three countries were doubly as large as those of Great Britain; in other words, Great Britain, even a3 late as 1880, had the supremacy of the commerce of the world, but in 1908 the conditions had so changed that she had only half the export trade which those other three countries had. During the first half of the nineteenth century, under protection, the cotton trade of Great Britain increased 1,000 per cent, or more than tenfold. The hon. member for Red Deer, speaking in the House some time ago, -attributed any increase in the trade of Gireat Britain for the first half of the century to the development of the railways. If that applies to the first half of the century it doubly applies to the last half of the century, because if there has been development in railways it has been during the latter period. In 1800, 32,000,000 yards of cotton- were produced in Great Britain; in 1830 the output, under protection, had increased to 347,000,000 yards. In 1850 Great Britain produced more cotton than all other nations combined. She had two-thirds of the world's shipping and two-thirds of the world's coal production. Forty years ago Britain had over fifty per cent of the world's trade in firearms; this has decreased to less than ten -per cent at the present time. In 1911, after fifty years of free trade, .she lost her position of supremacy and controlled only sixteen per cent of the trade of the thirty-four leading nations of the world, Mark the change: when she adopted free trade she had two-thirds of the trade of the world; fifty years after free trade was introduced this had dropped to sixteen per cent. She entirely lost her place of supremacy.
I wish to deal with one or two industries in a specific manner. We have heard a great deal about the iron and .steel industry from the hon. member for Red Deer. He has pointed out that we should not adopt protection because of certain alleged objectionable conditions which obtain in the

United States. While that may be true, that is not what we are concerned with. What we are concerned in is what is the best fiscal policy for this country; it is our business to see that the conditions which surround the industries of our country are right. I shall not weary the House with very many comparisons, but, as briefly as possible, I wish to give a comparison of the conditions in certain nations. In 1840 the United States produced 290,000 tons of pig-iron. In 1900 this output had increased to
13,000,000, an increase of 1,840 per cent. In 1913 the output was, I think, 27,000,000 tons. In 1840 Great Britain produced 1,390,000 tons of pig-iron; in 1900, 8,000,000 and ten years later she produced only approximately the same amount. In 1840 Germany produced 170,000 tons of pig-iron; in 1900,
8.498.000	tons. This has increased by twenty-five per cent during the last few years. I could quote a large number of other figures, but the hour is late and I shall not weary the House with them at this time.
I must draw the attention of the House to what I deem to be ene of the tragedies of free trade in the old country. In 1860, when the duties were removed from the silk industry, in London alone there were
24.000	looms and 60,000 operators. By 1884 these were reduced to 1,200 looms and 4,000 operators, a reduction of about one-twentieth. In Coventry in 1861 the ribbon trade employed 40,600 persons; in 1884 the number was reduced to 10,000 persons. In Derby the number of employees was reduced from 6,500 to 2,400 persons, and in Manchester the trade was absolutely wiped out. In the year 1823 the output of manufactured silk in the old country was £6,200,000. By 1857 this had increased to £21,500,000, and after forty years of free trade it had dropped to £6,000,000, exactly where it wias at the beginning of the century. In the year 1912 the consumption of silk in Great Britain was £19,000,000 and tlhe imports £13,000,000; in other words, the silk industry, which produced over £21,000,000 worth of silk in 1857, had dropped in 1912 to where it was at the beginning of the century. That, I say, is one of the commercial tragedies of Great Britain, absolutely attributable to the policy of free trade. In the United States they produced in 1850 $1,800,000 worth of manufactured silk. In 1910 they produced $197,000,000 worth, or an increase of eleven hundred per-cent. That was done under protection. In 1850 wages in the United States in that industry were $300,000; in 1910 they had increased to $38,-
570,000.	Will any hon. gentleman say that a trade of that kind is not valuable to a country; that an industry of that kind is not desirable? Yet, under the free trade policy that my hon. friend from Red Deer talks so much about, this valuable business was practically wiped out in the old country.
I desire to refer very briefly to the cotton trade. It is well to remember a few facts in connection with the cotton trade in Great Britain. In 1721 the cotton of the world was practically all produced in India and China. Great Britain undertook to produce and manufacture cotton at home; she prohibited the importation of cotton goods from these countries, although at that time or shortly afterwards she controlled the Indian Empire and its production. She prohibited the importation of cotton goods into Great Britain, and speaking of the free trade policy of buying in the cheapest market, she paid more for her cotton manufactured at home than she would have paid for it under other conditions. What did she do? She protected the industry until the middle of the last century, with the result that last year Great Britain shipped $172,000,000 worth of manufactured cotton into India, which at one time was the chief cotton producing country of the world.
We find that early in the century, before protection was raised to a reasonable degree, the United States imported manufactured cotton, although they grew a large amount of raw cotton. We find that in 1850 the manufactured product was $61,000,000, and in 1910 this had been increased to $828,000,000, or an increase of 1,000 per cent in half a century. I wish to show very briefly how Great Britain, since the adoption of free trade, has lost her position of supremacy in the manufacture of cotton. We are inclined to believe still that she holds the premier position in the world in that regard. The figures of the consumption of raw cotton for last year are as follows: Great Britain consumed 19 per cent of the total production; the United States consumed 27 per cent of the total production; Germany 10 per cent, Russia 9 per cent, and Japan 7 per cent, and the rest was distributed in small quantities among other countries. I quote this to show that Great Britain has fallen from the place of absolute control of the cotton industry to the production of only 19 per cent of the manufactured cotton of the world.
We have heard a great deal about the question of taxation. My hon. friend from
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Red Deer a few moments ago referred to Great Britain as the El Dorado of the workingman in connection with taxation, cost of living and wages. I desire to place on 'Hansard' some very important facts in regard to this question. I have already stated that Great Britain collected $177,000,000 this year in customs taxes. In the year that Great Britain adopted free trade she collected $4.25 per capita in customs taxes. Last year she collected exactly the same amount, $4.25 per capita, in spite of the increase in population; so that although they have free trade in Great Britain to-day, the customs collections are exactly the same per capita for the country. But from 1904 to the present time she has collected on an average $80,000,000 per year from buildings occupied by manufacturing industries, or an amount equal to 15 per cent of the total manufactured imports of Great Britain. Consider that for a moment. Here is a taxation of $80,000,000 placed upon the industries of the country. Who pays it? It must be paid, it is paid by the people of Great Britain, it is paid by the consumers in other words. Great Britain could have collected the same amount of taxation by placing an import duty on manufactured goods, and thus have protected and helped her manufacturers. She put the tax on them by a taxation on the buildings they occupied. A more false basis on which to rest a fiscal policy I do not know. The taxes on farmers in Great Britain have increased during the last half of the century, or from 1860 to 1910, by 80 per cent; and to bear out that statement I wish to quote from a statement made by Lord Lucas, a Liberal peer:
Lord Lucas speaking at Hitchin, on April 7 last, said:
X am in a position to announce that it is the intention of the Government to make considerable grants out of imperial taxation to assist the rates in this country and it will be done in the coming Budget.
The Government recognize that the method by which a farmer is assessed upon practically the whole of his stock-in-trade is a very unfair one, and they will try as far as possible to alleviate this injustice by making a very considerable grant towards the rates in the country districts.
That is the statement of a Liberal peer made only a week or so ago. The statement has often been made that customs duties are a very expensive form of taxation to have because it costs a great deal to collect them. I examined very carefully for a number of years the cost of col-
lection in Great Britain of customs and the cost of collection of the excise revenue, that is the income tax and some other taxes such as the succession dues, etc. In 1913, Great Britain's customs revenue was $169,-
500,000.	The cost of collection was $4,200,000 or 2.4 per cent, which is recognized as a very low cost. The inland revenue contributed $410,000,000 at a cost of collection of $9,800,000 or exactly the same Tate, 2.4 per cent. But, in addition to merely collecting taxes, the customs officers do the clearing of vessels and many other duties which are indispensable and for which they would have to be employed in any case. I have heard many references to the income tax. My hon. friend from Red Deer is constantly stating that direct taxation is a system that should be adopted. He holds that taxation by a tariff is the most unjust system. I would like to refer him to a statement made by one whom he has set up as a veritable god. I refer to the late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who, speaking on a memorable occasion to which my hon. friend alluded a moment ago, in the Midlothian campaign in 1879, said:
This, at any rate, is clear-there was a clear stage upon which, on our responsibility, we were ready to repeal the income-tax, and it would have been done with fairness to every class of the community. The Tories came in: the income-tax since then has been raised from 2d. to 5d. in the pound, and when we will get rid of it I do not know. I hope it; but it will be perhaps in the days of your children and grandchildren.
That was Mr. Gladstone's opinion of direct taxation by the method of income tax which the hon. member for Red Deer recommends so highly to this country.
I wish to call attention to the taxation of various countries. The taxation of the United Kingdom is $19.86 per capita. The United States under protection, supposed to be heavily taxed and bearing the awful burdens of which hon. friends tell us, collected $10.25 per capita; Germany $10.58 and Canada $16.63 per capita. That was for 1912. In other words, the taxation of free trade England was 100 per cent, greater than that of Germany or the United States, the high protectionist countries.
Michael Clark: That, of course, is the federal taxation in the United States.


Henry Herbert Stevens: Exactly.


Michael Clark: My hon. friend understands that a great deal done under our taxation is done by our local governments.


Henry Herbert Stevens: 
Michael Clark: Does it say that in the report ?


Henry Herbert Stevens: Yes, that is from the report of the British Board of Trade Inquiry. They further say:
It may be noted also that wages in the United States are higher relatively to the cost of living, with the result that in times of depression earnings may suffer a considerable diminution before the level of actual privation is reached.
I could also quote from the Gainsborough Commission's report. When the hon. member for North Waterloo was quoting from that report the other night the hon. member for Red Deer sent a note over to the hon. member for Humboldt who afterwards pointed out that the report of that commission was totally unreliable. The Gainsborough Commission consisted of workingmen who visited Germany to investigate working conditions there. I shall not quote them. They carry out the statements which I have already quoted from the Board of Trade.
I wish to turn now to another phase of the question and that is pauperism and unemployment. We have heard a great deal regarding pauperism and therefore I would like to give some figures upon this question. These again are taken from the Board of Trade and I would commend them to my hon. friend for his consideration. Germany has 27,399 paupers in the workhouse as compared with a population of 64,000,000. Great Britain has 400,000 -paupers in the workhouse as compared with a population of 45,000,000. Great Britain gives annual relief to 700 out of every 10,000 of the population and Germany to 300 out of every
10,000.	The percentage of paupers in the two countries in 1903 was: in Germany, 2-7 and in Great Britain, 5 per cent; in 1909, in Germany 2-8 per cent and in Great Britain 7-7 per cent. The average for seven years was 2-1 per cent in Germany and 5-6 per cent in Great Britain, or over double. The hon. member for Red Deer told the House to-night that conditions in Great Britain were the best of any country in Europe.


Michael Clark: I never made that statement. The only reference I made to Great Britain as compared with Emope was as to the wages of skilled and unskilled labour and I said that they were the highest in Europe. That is veTy different from saying that the condition of the country is better. Of course, if it is correct, I would be prepared to say it, but I did not say it as a matter of fact.


Henry Herbert Stevens: In any case it does not alter what I am about to say in connection

with the conditions. My hon. friend has very frequently on the floor of the House pointed out that a most lamentable condition obtained in 1846. He has drawn most lurid pictures of the suffering and starvation of the poorer classes at that time. The Rev. J. A. Macdonald, of the Globe, whom my hon. friend knows very well, on August 28, 1909, gave a very interesting account of his impressions of a trip with the Press Conference to the old country at that time. He considered his statement very carefully before he made it, because he says :
The question has been asked so often that I have taken myself in hand to answer it. [DOT]
Then he goes on to give his impressions of the industrial conditions of Great Britain and I am going to read the article although it is somewhat lengthy because I recommend it to the study of the members of this House. He says:
It was not Lord Rosebery's speech, brilliant and striking though that speech was. It was not the face or message of any of the statesmen, or pro-consuls or scholars or heroes- Asquith, or Grey, or Haldane, or Morley, or Crewe, or Birrell, or Balfour, or Churchill, or Cromer, or Curzon, or Milner, or Roberts, or French, or Beresford, or Fisher-whose names gave distinction to the programme. It was not the mother of parliaments, or the glory of the church, or the shrined history of Oxford, or the liquid history of the Thames. It was not the splendor of Stafford House, with the charming Duchess at the head of the grand staircase, or the exclusive privileges of Aspley House, or the Lord Mayor's freedom of Mansion House, or the Archbishop's benediction at Lambeth. It was neither Aldershot, with the army, nor Spit-head with the navy . . . Frankly, the thing that impressed me most, the thing that stands out as the background of every reminiscence, was the bloodless, mirthless, hopeless face of the crowd. . . The pale and sunken faces of the nameless city crowd haunt one like a weird.
London, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh-each had its distinctive features, but everywhere the marks were deep of disease and degeneracy in body and mind and morals.
In some of the smaller places w7here industrial percentage is large, or the occupations unhealthy, the blood-poisoned workers present an appearance that to unaccustomed eyes is simply ghastly. Sheffield staggered all the delegates-it is a hive of industry.
The conditions of the poor may be "worse in other industrial centres of England, but certainly no delegate had ever seen the like in any white country overseas, or even imagined it possible within the limits of human nature.
What struck every observant delegate was the utter blankness of the faces which looked up at us-stooped shoulders, hollow chests, ash-coloured faces, ljghtless eyes, and, ghastliest of all, loose-set mouths with bloodless gums, and only here and there a useful tooth.
I consider that somewhat of a libel on the mother country but this is the statement

of the Rev. J. A. Macdonald over his own signature, and written, as he says, after taking himself carefully in hand. It is a statement of the conditions obtaining in the industrial centres of England under the free *trade policy which according to my hon. friend, should result in a very high condition of living indeed.
I observe that I must hasten along in my remarks as the hour is getting late and I shall cut out a great deal of what I intended to say. A great many hon. gentlemen opposite have denounced in most unmeasured terms the leading manufacturers and men of industry in this country. One would judge from the remarks which have fallen from their lips during the past week or two that these men were veritable robbers, that they had no interest in the country and that their only object was to. fleece the public out of their money. I am just going to draw attention to the importance of the manufacturing industries as a source of the country's wealth which merits our consideration. We find that the production of manufacturing industries in the year 1910 w is $1,965,000,000 of which about $200,000,000 was paid out in wages to workingmen. This is an ample indication of the value of the manufacturing industries of this country. I differ entirely with hon. gentlemen who denounce the manufacturer as a person whom we should avoid. I believe that the manufacturer, just as much as the farmer, has his place in this community and has -a business to carry on. I believe that the manufacturers, as I have met them, are just as estimable, just as moral, just as good citizens as you will find in any part of the country. Why should we be constantly debating the manufacturer on the floor of this Parliament? It has been said by the very highest authorities on political economy by such men as John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith and others, that a purely agricultural country could never progress to a very high place among the nations of the world. It is no reflection upon the agriculturist, the farmer, to say that from the very nature of his occupation, separated from his fellows by considerable distances, it is impossible to develop the social conditions necessary for the highest culture, education, or the development of art and science.
But an ideal country is a country which has manufacturers, which has transportation, which has commerce and which has agriculture as well. The possibility of developing these conditions obtains in Canada to-day in a very marked degree. No othor country in the world is richer in. natural resources than Canada. We have waterpowers and coal for the development-of industries and we also have the greatest area of fertile land probably of any country in the world, so that we have everything necessary to build up a very highly developed country. It is the duty of this Government and of all Govec-nmemts to .stand by a policy which will develop all these various branches of industry in this country.
I wish to speak very briefly in regard to this vexed question of flour and wheat.
I shall not touch upon the free wheat side of the question, because it has been so fully discussed already. According to the statements of some hon. gentlemen opposite, the millers are shipping flour to the old land for a figure less than what it can be bought at in this country, and the statement is made that flour which is sold in Montreal at $5.10 a barrel sells in the old country at $4.80 a barrel. The facts are briefly as follows:	We produce in Canada four cfr five grades of flour. First, we have the Top Patent, which is Ogilvie's Household, the Lake of the Woods Five Roses and such grades of flour. This grade is sold almost exclusively on the Canadian market. The largest shipping mill in Canada ships practically none at all of this grade of flour to the old country; out of a shipment of five or ten thousand barrels there might be 100 barrels of Top Patent flour, a practically neglible quantity. Of the second grade, which is No. 2 patent or Strong Bakers' flour, they exported 36 per cent. Then they have a third grade, No. 1 and 2 clear, of which 90 per cent is exported to the old country market. I have here a statement for the month of January, 1914, giving the prices which are being secured:

Grade.	Average bales return domestic business during January, 1914. f.o.b. Toronto	Selling Price to Importers at	Percent- age exported in J anuary, 1914jxT *3 J2 O '^'6 mA	Delagoa Bay	Glasgow ...	London	Copenhagen	Top Patent	518 459 451 3'91 3-16	5'45	5-64 5 16	18 36 90 90 802nd Patent	4 41 4'28 4 03 3'53	4'37 4'24 3'99 3'49	4'59 4 49 4'22 3 74	Blended	1st Clear	2nd Clear	
These are the actual figures of the output of the largest shipping firm in Canada. If we consider for a moment the statements of hon. gentlemen opposite, they answer themselves without any such statements as I have made. It was stated that this flour sold at $6.50 a barrel at Halifax. The hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce covered this point, but I will repeat it for the sake of making it perfectly clear, because he was interrupted at that moment and the trend of his argument was disturbed. The price in Montreal was $5.10 according to hon. gentlemen opposite. The freight to Halifax is 25 cents a barrel which means $5.35 in Halifax. The hon. member for South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll) stated that the price was $6.50 at Halifax and he held it up as a crime against the millers- that they were charging such high prices at Halifax as against Montreal. Let us look at the old country prices which I have just quoted and which are absolutely authoritative. $5.10, he says, is the price in Montreal, but he was quoting the lower grades. , The price of these in Montreal is $4.60 which, with 30 cents freight, makes the price $4.90 for export. If the statement made was true that we were charging $6.50 at Halifax, merchants could re-import that flour, pay the freight both ways and the duty, and still the consumer would get it cheaper. The arguments in regard to the export of flour are absurd on the face of them. We export the lower grades, while practically none of these top grades are exported. Our hon. friends opposite have been quoting the figures of the top grades in Canada and of the lower grades on the European market, thus confusing the whole question.
It may be well to draw attention to a condition which obtains in regard to the freight rates from here to the mother country. In 1911, the freight rate on flour was 8-9 cents per cwt.; in 1912, this was raised to sixteen cents. The Association of MilleTs at London, together with the transporta-
[Mr. Stevens. 1
tion companies entered into collusion, because they had a meeting no more than four mouths ago in London on this very question, to raise the freight rates on flour to such an extent as to constitute a very adequate protection for the millers of the old country as against the millers of this country. While they are supposed to have free trade and we are supposed to have free access to the old country market, they are just as well protected by this method as. our market is protected by our tariff.
The same principle applies to our beef. I think it was in 1884 that an embargo was put against our cattle in the old country. Sir Charles Tupper, who was shortly after our High Commissioner to the old country, investigated the whole situation with veterinary surgeons and others, and found that there was absolutely no reason why this embargo should be put on except to protect the farmers and raisers of beef in the old country. That is the return we get for putting on the British preference. We can hope for very little sympathy from the present Government in the old land in so far as so-called reciprocal relations iD trade are concerned. When they had the offer of reciprocity by giving some preference, they absolutely refused to do so, but placed an embargo against our flour and our beef which I consider to be totally uncalled for.
I intended to make a brief comparison of the tariff of President Wilson with our own tariff. I have gone carefully over the figures of the Underwood tariff and I find that about half the articles he has placed upon the free list have always been on the free list in so far as our tariff is concerned. I find also that our tariff is still quite as low as the American tariff, taking it all through on an average.
I wish to say, in conclusion, that it. seems to me the Government is wise-in fact I congratulate them upon it more than

upon any other point-in having declared themselves frankly and openly as sustaining the great policy of the Conservative party throughout the history of Canada. I believe this is no time to tamper with the tariff in a downward revision. We have a very moderate tariff. I find that even the hon. member for Red Deer in a speech in this House not very long ago referred to our tariff as being a tariff for revenue only and congratulated the late Finance Minister because he had maintained this as a revenue tariff. Now he says it is an iniquitous protective tariff and seeks to stir up the country against it. Yet for years he sat and supported the right hon. leader of the Opposition when, as head of the Government, he was primarily responsible for this tariff. I find on looking up the records, that the present leader of the Opposition himself was a protectionist in 1879 when the National Policy was introduced and that he declared himself in favour of protection. When he was in office he carried out that principle; and we know, and he knows perfectly well that should the country be so unfortunate as to return him to office, he would still carry on the policy of protection. That is plain in the very amendment he lays before us with its words ' without doing injustice to any class.' In other words: I will do the manufacturers no harm; return me to power and I will do no injustice to you, just as in 1896 I promised not to do you injustice and carried out that promise. They talk of the revision of 1897. Mr. Fielding himself said in his Budget speech on that occasion that he was not going to tamper with the tariff, but that all he was going to do was to remodel the forms of it. And that is all he did do; it was identically the same tariff except for the introduction of the British preference-a very questionable benefit. With this exception the tariff is identical with that passed at the instance of Sir John Macdonald in 1879. I am glad that this Government is determined to carry out this policy, for I believe that it is the only policy under which this country will prosper.
I wish to add a word before sitting down in connection with the statement made regarding the earnings of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and the Ogilvies Milling Company, which I have before me in the Annual Financial Review. I take it also from the Banking Annual. I find that the Ogilvies Milling Company earned last year 84 per cent on its capital. The profit on every barrel of flour ground by the Ogilvies Milling Company was 134 cents. When you quote the figures
showing $500,000 of a profit, some hon. gentlemen seem to think that a crime. As a matter of fact, I Tepeat, they earned a profit of 134 cents per barrel and 84 per cent on the capital of the company. And the Lake of the Woods earned, as I figure it out, 12 per cent on its total capital. Now, these are reasonable earnings, and such as no one should complain of. But you would think, to hear our friends opposite talk, that it was a crime for the industries of this country to be prosperous. For my part I am glad to see them prosperous. And I am glad the condition of this country is improving. I believe we have before us in years to come an era of prosperity that has not been equalled in the history of Canada. I do not mean that we are to have an era of speculative prosperity, but of real prosperity for the industries of the country, for the farmer, for the artisan and for all classes of our people.
Mr. GEORGE H. BOIVIN (Shefford): Mr. Speaker, at this late hour, when the members from all over Canada are patiently waiting an opportunity to express by their votes the opinions of their constituents upon the amendment presented this afternoon by my right hon. leader (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), I do not propose to delay the proceedings by making a long speech. I must, however, express my regret that the hon. member for Vancouver (Mr. Stevens) is unable to agree upon the question of free trade or protection for his native country with such great men as Asquith, Gladstone, Codben and Peel. But if I were to place these four on one side of the balance and the hon. member for Vancouver on the other side, I fear that they would prove to have the most weight. I congratulate the hon. member upon the able manner in which he repaired in his own mind and perhaps in the minds of his colleagues on his side of the House the enormous mistake made this afternoon by the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster). I wondered, when I heard him make the statement during his speech what the hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce would do if he had not the hon. member for Vancouver to put him on his feet every time he made a mistake. Also, I congratulate him sincerely upon the able manner in which he has repeated all the arguments we have heard here again and again in favour of protection and high tariff. And now, Mr. Speaker, I will proceed to repeat a few of the arguments advanced by many able speakers on this side in favour

of a revised tariff, free wheat and free agricultural implements. It would be impossible at this late stage to say anything very new upon the subject before the House, but what our friends opposite would considerably enjoy would be a speech or two from some Conservative members from Manitoba, Alberta or Saskatchewan who would come out openly against free wheat and free agricultural implements. They dare not speak in favour of the Conservative tariff policy, and they dare not vote against it. Some Conservative members from Manitoba should at least demonstrate to the Minister of Finance and his colleagues that the Conservatives in the Manitoba Legislature are not free traders. The Minister of Finance says that every one who is in favour of free wheat is a free trader, that free wheat means free trade. Some Conservative member from Manitoba should have taken issue with him and demonstrated that the Conservatives of Manitoba are not free traders. That should not be a difficult task, because no one believes that statement that free wheat means free trade, except the Minister of Finance himself. And I would say that even he does not believe it, if you bad not ruled a few days ago, Mr. Speaker, that such a statement would be absolutely unparliamentary. For that reason and for that reason alone, I place the Minister of Finance in a class by himself. It is for that reason only that I admit that he is the only person in this country who believes that the hon. member for Brandon (Mr. Aikins) who made a speech in favour of free wheat is a free trader. When that Conservative member for Manitoba has convinced the Finance Minister thait he has made a mistake, he will still have a more difficult task left, and that will be to convince the intelligent farmers of Manitoba and western Canada that they are not intelligent enough to know what they really want, and that it would be a terrible thing for them to have three markets in which they could dispose of their wheat instead of only two. The hon. member for Vancouver says he is a protectionist. I regret that in the arrangement of speakers it should be left to me to reply to his strong arguments not in favour of the people whom he represents, but in favour of the interests who placed our friends opposite in power. I am not able to reply to each and every argument as eloquently as many hon. gentlemen	upon	this side of theHouse have replied to them, but I will say	that	the	most,	eloquent

and the most convincing reply that he and the Minister of Finance could possibly receive was the applause of his fellow Conservatives, who made the walls of this old Chamber re-echo their cheers again and again when he told you, Mr. Speaker, that he had gone the Liberals one better on the road to free trade and reduced the customs duty on reapers, mowers and binders two and one-half per cent lower than the Liberal party had proposed to reduce it under the nefarious reciprocity agreement of 1911. I thought at the time that if a reduction of five per cent in the duty on reapers and mowers could create so much enthusiasm in the protectionist party behind him, that a reduction of ten per cent on all implements would have so gladdened the hearts of all his followers, with the possible exception of Sir Melvin Jones and the hon. member for Brantford, (Mr. Cockshutt) that they would be cheering yet.
I do not by any means contend that the Conservative party is a free trade party any more than I contend that the Liberal party is a protectionist party, but I do say that if it were not for the necessity of being unanimous; if it were not for the interests which placed them in power; if it were not for the interests which helped form the Cabinet; if it were not for the interests upon which they count to remain in power, their spontaneous and unbiased enthusiasm at the news of a tariff reduction; their absolute lack of applause at the news of a tariff increase, is absolute proof that they would be in harmony with us in our desire to help the Canadian farmer by giving him, at the lowest possible price, the plant which he requires, to' develop the great industry of agriculture upon which the whole superstructure of our other Canadian industries depend. They would, as we will before long, go one step farther and, give the western farmer an extra market and a higher price for his produce, thereby increasing his wealth and purchasing power, increasing the population upon our boundless western prairies, increasing the resultant demand for the products of our eastern industrial establishments, increasing the population of our eastern cities without driving our farmers' sons from the soil to the workshops; increasing the home market for the supplies of the eastern mixed farmer, increasing the demand for fish from the provinces by the sea and making instead of a divided Canada, a greater and more prosperous nation.
Since the beginning of this debate I have

listened attentively to every Conservative speaker; I have read those speeches which I did not have the pleasure of hearing and, with the exception of that of the ex-Minister of Finance, the hon Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) I have not yet found one which did not contain its quota of incense and flowers for the hon. Minister of Finance. He himself, of course, paved the way for all this praise by telling you, Mr. Speaker, that he knows something about a balance sheet when he sees one. Let me follow the good or bad example of hon. gentlemen opposite and compliment him upon not only knowing something about a balance sheet when he sees one, but of knowing how to make a good looking one when he needs one.
The hon. gentleman desired to show a surplus in this year of all years when a deficit might very properly synchronize with hard times and would be entirely justifiable. He began by keeping up the tariff as high as though everyone had money to burn, making the farmer and the labourer pay into the coffers of the Government his last cent in customs duties and then mortgage his farm in one case or beg for bread in the other and by this means collected from the people the sum of $163,000,000. He has spent, no one knows precisely how much, but he decides to charge to consolidated fund expenditure the sum of $126,500,000 and there remains a surplus of $36,500,000. His followers cheer unanimously; they shower compliments upon him to such an extent that a disinterested spectator would almost think that he had taken off his coat, gone out and earned the money and given it as an Easter offering to the people of Canada.
But what becomes of the rest of the expenditure, the public buildings built, the railway subsidies which include $15,000,000 for the Canadian Northern, now asking for more, the interest paid upon the public debt, the loans repaid, the advances made to the Montreal and Quebec harbour commissioners and the money spent in September last upon the ice-breakers in the Chat-eauguay river in the county of Chateau-guay? They would annihilate the surplus, eo he differentiates between these expenditures and the others and charges these to the capital account. In this way they do not count, but when Canada wants to know how much she owes, her bookkeeper and balance-sheet maker has to answer $502,000,000, nineteen million more than we owed at this time last year. We have had a prosperous year in spite of the hard times. We only owe $19,000,000 more than we did 183
last year. Allow me right here, Mr. Speaker, to say that if it had not been for the members of the Liberal party in the House of Commons and in the Senate during the past year; if it had not been for their untiring efforts to chase away the clouds that darkened and the lightning that brightened the horizon of the hon. Prime Minister and made him find an imaginary emergency where none existed, the head bookkeeper would have been obliged to charge $35,000,000 more to the capital account or practically wipe out his surplus, and our debt would have been $537,000,000, or $54,000,000 more than it was in March, 1913. The hon. Finance Minister would have been more worthy of praise if he had put the brakes upon some of the spending departments of the Government, notably the Department of Public Works, which spent $10,818,832.05 in 1911, and asks for $28,330,048.89 for the year which has just begun, and the Department of Militia, where furs and feathers, gold lace, automobile rides in Europe and other expenses Will cost this year $10,867,000, exactly $4,000,000 more than they did in 1911 when this great spending parity arrived in power and this without counting the $186,900 spent by the department under the head of Civil Government and $2,315,000 included in the public works estimates for armouries and drill sheds, a total of $13,368,900.
The words, ' dash away and spend the money,' were eliminated from ' Hansard,' but, what is worse for the people of Canada, they are put into constant practice by the Government. ' To spend or not to spend ' is never the question with hon. gentlemen opposite, and just so long as the people of Canada remain indifferent to their own interests and until they banish this Government from power, they will have to pay through customs and excise duties all the money that the hon. Ministers of Public Works and Militia may desire to spend.
With these few remarks upon the financial part of the Budget speech, allow me, before passing on to the method of collecting this vast amount of revenue, to congratulate once more the hon. Finance Minister and to shower upon him my share of flowers and incense, upon his ability to make a goodlooking balance sheet when he needs one.
Many of the Conservative speakers during this debate have ridiculed free trade. They have used several arguments against it, but the two most reasonable and most important arguments are that our infant industries require protection, and that our Finance Minister requires a tariff to pro-

vide revenue for t/he use of the spending departments of the Government.
Let us take the second argument first. Like my right iron, leader I believe we require a tariff for revenue purposes. The ministers of the present Government and many of the speakers opposite say that absolute free trade means direct taxation, and I am inclined to believe they are right. But is it any wonder they fear anything and everything that would lead to direct taxation? Just think of the Hon. Col. Sam. Hughes taxing every man, woman and child twenty-five cents to pay his expenses upon an automobile trip through Europe, one dollar to build a large drill-hall here or there, or two dollars to send the school children of Canada to camp. Just think of the Hon. Mr. Rogers taxing every man, woman and child one dollar or two dollars each to build a monument to the hon. Postmaster General, for instance. How long would they remain in power? Until the next general election but not a moment longer. The people pay these expenses by indirect taxation, they will continue to do so upon the ground that the Government needs the revenue. Let ru consider upon what articles this customs duty should be imposed. We agree that in collecting this revenue we should protect our infant industries. We have in Canada to-day many industries, some infants and some promising youths, some advanced in years but still in need of protection, but when those manufacturers prove to Canada and to the world that they can manufacture their products cheap enough to cotapete with the factories in the great republic to the south of us and compete with them in their own and foreign markets, we on this side of the House claim it is time to lift part of the weight from the shoulders of the Canadian farmer and allow him to go into the United States if he likes and buy a harrow, plough, rake or binder manufactured in Canada cheaper than he can get it at home without being obliged to place a sum representing seventeen or even twelve per cent of the purchase price in the hands of a customs official.
In 1911 our hon. friend the Solicitor General made a very good speech in favour of a reduction of the duty on agricultural implements. It was not to be a reduction of 5 per cent on binders and mowers; it was to be a substantial reduction. In moving for this substantial reduction, he said that the effect of the tariff on agricultural implements upon revenue was to benefit the

revenue of other countries rather than of our own country. He went on to say:
As at present constituted this is not so much a tariff for the revenue of Canada as a tariff for the revenue of Spain, as a tariff for the revenue of Austria. In Austria the manufacturers of binders and mowers are able to leap over a duty of some $33 on every binder, and yet they sell at a profit in Austria. It is, Sir, a tariff for the revenue of Roumania, a tariff for the revenue of Russia, a tariff for the revenue of Prance rather than a tariff for the revenue of Canada.
Further he said:
It means that this is an additional Chinese wall, if you may call it such, that this Government has seen fit, in violation of every principle of public honour and of its own, to hedge round the manufacturers of the articles I have mentioned, and which enables them to make a profit after leaping over these tariff walls of considerable height in all these countries.
To-day he is the Solicitor General. Today ho says that the Cabinet and the party behind the Cabinet must be unanimous, and for that reason he is willing to abandon the rights of his constituents in the constituency of Portage la Prairie and to say that a reduction of 5 per cent on reapers and mowers, in other words, that the knocking off of one or two bricks from the top of this Chinese wall is all that the western farmer requires. Does the knocking off of these two or three bricks from the top of this wall, does this reduction of 5 per cent mean that the farmers of western Canada are going to buy mowers and reapers cheaper than they are buying them now? There was a cheer of delight from the party sitting behind the Minister of Finance when he announced that the duty would be reduced by 5 per cent, but we have not yet heard the cheers or the echoes of the cheers of delight from the farmers of Canada who wanted free wheat, who wanted free agricultural implements of all kinds and who got nothing at all. I say that they have got nothing at all for two reasons. If they received the benefit of 5 per cent on reapers and mowers, as the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Turriff) said, it would only mean ninety cents a year to the most prosperous farmer. The Minister of Finance pointed out in his Budget speech that the only firms in Canada making reapers and mowers are the International Harvester Company, the Massey-Harris Company, the Frost and Wood Company, of Smith's Falls, and the Noxon Company, of Ingersoll. These concerns manufacture on both sides of the

line, and have practically a monopoly of the implement business so far as reapers and binders are concerned. They control prices on both sides of the line. Do you think, Mr. Speaker, that the American International Harvester Company or the American Massey-Barris Company is going to ship its goods here to compete with its Canadian branches? What will happen is that they will raise their prices in the United States to a sufficient figure to leave the Canadian price the same as it is to-day, so that the Canadian farmer, in spite of this reduction of 5 per cent, will be obliged to pay the same price he has always paid for his ploughs, his harrows, his rakes, his cultivators, his manure spreaders, his threshers, his reapers and mowers. But the Conservative politicians and campaigners will be able to tour through the West and say the Conservative Government has done something for the farmer reducing the duty on reapers and binders by 5 per cent. The reduction in agricultural implement duties may mean free trade. That is what the Minister of Finance said in 1911 about the reciprocity pact. I am sure, however, that if he considers himself a free trader because he has given this reduction on implements, the farmers of western and eastern Canada will say: From such free traders as this, O Lord deliver us. He is not a free trader, and in his Budget speech he repeated his declaration of allegiance to the tariff policy of Sir John A. Macdonald. He is in favour of protection for all Canadian industries, and, above all, protection for the basic industry of agriculture. We are all protectionists in a way. Protection does not always mean a protective tariff. We on this side of the House stand for that protection which protects, and not for the protection which kills. If refusing free wheat and free agricultural implements is protection for the Canadian farmer, I am sure that it is a protection which he does not appreciate and does not want. Let us for a moment imagine the magnates of any Canadian industry coming in a delegation to the office of the Minister of Finance and saying to him:	We are manufacturing goods
at such favourable prices that we can not only supply the entire Canadian market, but we want to send our goods outside of this country, and want your assistance to that end. What would these magnates think if the Minister of 183}	.
Finance replied: All right, gentlemen, we will put an export duty on your goods, or at all events leave on your goods the export duty that is already there ? I claim that the refusal of the Finance Minister to give free wheat to the Canadian farmer is equivalent to a refusal to removing the export duty on Canadian wheat which now exists. It is worse than an export duty, because when an export duty is imposed on an article, the money is paid into the coffers of our own country. But in this particular instance our farmers cannot sell their wheat in the United States without losing the amount of the duty. I claim that they are paying an export duty into the coffers of the American Government, and it is that duty which we are-asking the Finance Minister to take off,, because the Canadian farmer has more-goods than the home market requires. That, request has been refused. Did the Minister of Finance go to the farmers and ask them how much money they were making ? Did he examine their books ? No, he went to the millers and the railway companies and asked them if the Canadian farmer needed free wheat. In spite of the fact that every Canadian farmer wants free wheat, the railway men and the Canadian millers say he does not require it, and the Minister of Finance bows to their will. For the purpose of pleasing three or four rich and influential friends he turns down the request of the farmers of the western prairies. Why does he do so ? Is it really going to hurt our railways to give the farmers free wheat ? Is it not the desire of everybody in this House to encourage the right class of immigration, to people the western prairies with immigrants who will draw from Canadian soil the wealth that will make Canada great and prosperous. Is it not the wish of the railway companies that that immigration should flow in in great streams, so that they can transport the immigrants and their effects to the West and keep on transporting goods to them in the West. Those immigrants would begin by wanting material to build their homes, and they would end by buying the luxuries which they can afford when they get a decent price for their wheat, and cheap agricultural implements. Is not that the wish of every eastern manufacturer who knows that there is more money in an increased output and moderate profits than there is in a

high tariff with closed factories. 12 p.m. When the American market is open to the western farmer it does not mean that he will ship all his grain there. He will not be obliged to sell everything that he has to sell to the United States, but it will mean that he will have three markets instead of two: the home market, always the best; the English market, and the American market. The wheat which he will ship to eastern Canada and to Great Britain will be carried over Canadian railways from the West to the East. A great portion of that going to the United States will be for the New England states, not for the western states where they grow their own wheat. The population in the eastern states is dense and they will need our wheat for flour; and if freight rates are the same in Canada as in the United States-and if they are not they should be made the same-there is no reason why that wheat should not travel from West to East over Canadian railways. The Minister of Finance in the Budget speech made & comparison with the Underwood tariff. He says that in the United States the average tariff is twenty-six per cent, that [DOT]the average is the same on one side of the line as it is on the other. That is an argument for the hustings and not an argument for the Canadian House of Commons. The weak point is that it does not take the free list into consideration at all. He compares the average duty on steam locomotives, typewriters, pianos and gramophones in the United States with the duty which the Canadian labourer has to pay upon his 8>read, butter, meat and flour and then arrives at the illogical conclusion that the tariffs of Canada and the United States are the same. In one breath he says that it is wrong to revise our tariff to meet the tariff *of the United States. In the next breath he prides himself upon copying it and keeping the same average. For one reason he keeps the tariff on wheat and for the other he refuses to reduce the tariff on wheat. He talks about protection to the farmer. Protection to the farmer when he refuses to give him free agricultural implements? Protection to the farmer when he refuses to give him an extra market for his wheat? Does he mean protection for the eastern farmer? Does he, like the hon. member for Ohateauguay (Mr. Morris), consider that the western farmer does not deserve to be honoured by that name? Does he even give protection to the .eastern farmer? The eastern farmer is a purchaser of flour and he is a seller of the products of mixed farm-fMr. Boivin.]
ing. He cannot export to the United States or to western Canada, and he must sell his produce in his own market where it can be delivered to the people in good condition and it is only by increasing the population of western Canada that the home market can be increased and that the eastern farmer can be benefited.
To make my point more clear, let me say that the market for the eastern farmer, with the exception perhaps of the dairy products and the cattle which he ships away, for the products of mixed farming is the village, the town and the city of eastern Canada. The village, the city and the town of eastern Canada are, as a general rule, manufacturing centres. This year in the city, the village and the town in eastern Canada, the factories are closed and the men are out of work because there is no demand for their products by the western farmer. If the men are out of work they are unable to buy the produce of the farmer in the east. I say without fear of contradiction that if the western farmer is benefited, if the population is increased upon the prairie, the eastern farmer will be benefited by having a home market for his mixed farm produce and that everybody in Canada will be happier and wealthier. Adam Smith, who has been frequently cited on the other side of the House, once said:
The annual produce of land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means than by increasing the number of its productive laborers or the productive power of these laborers.
We agree with that statement and it is to increase the number of productive labourers in Canada, and to increase their productive power as well, that we are in favour of free wheat and free agricultural implements. We believe that from our fertile western prairies more wealth can be extracted and that this wealth so extracted from the virgin soil of Canada will make Canada a wealthy and prosperous country. We want to increase production because it means wealth and prosperity and happiness to our people. To do so we propose to remove the export duty which keeps our f&Tiner from selling in the United States market and we propose to remove the duty from the agricultural implements required to till the soil. We are in favour of a tariff for revenue and we are in favour of protection for every Canadian industry which requires protection but not for those which do not require it. We are blamed by hen. gentlemen opposite for having pro-

tected these industries during the past fifteen years. We gave them protection, for fifteen years and we will continue to give them protection if they can prove to us that they require it, and we will give them that protection without hurting the other elasses in Canada.
The Minister of Finance asked us to throw down the gauntlet. This afternoon my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition threw it down. I say to hon. gentlemen opposite:	Pick it up and hasten the
day when the people of Canada can decide between Borden and Laurier. The life of a man or party that never knew a failure would miss much. Such a life in mercy was not given to the party opposite. It has had its share of failures in the last seventeen years; it has had another failure in the present Budget speech which satisfies neither consumer nor manufacturer nor farmer. We met with one failure at the polls in 1911 when we attempted to stem the tide that later brought hunger and misery to many a home. Think of the spectacle the other day in the city of Montreal where thousands and thousands of unemployed assembled in response to a call of the mayor who had promised them employment. A photograph of these thousands of men seeking employment, ready to take a pick and Shovel at $2 or $2.25 per day, is an answer to the argument of' 'hon. gentlemen opposite who claim that onr country is prosperous and that we, the Liberals, are the only ones who are preaching that it is not prosperous. A more eloquent answer than that could not be given. We admit that in trying to stem this tide we met with a failure but as Edmund Vance Cooke puts it:
What is a failure? It's only a spur To a man who receives it right,
And it makes the spirit within him stir To go in once more and fight.
years is a task to which his ability is unequal, a task which he cannot accomplish.
The gauntlet has been thrown down. The hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Foster) has pretended that he did not understand the issue as contained in the amendment proposed by my right hon. leader. He has already commenced, true Conservative that he is, to distort the meaning of our policy in an effort to combat it more easily. It is the same old story, the same old guerilla warfare, but the people of Canada will not again be taken in by arguments levied at a policy which does not exist. They will read the amendment which pledges the Canadian Liberal party to free wheat, free agricultural implements for the fafmer, cheaper food for the labourer, and a reasonable protection to those Canadian industries which require protection.
The manufacturer from eastern Canada, who prefers a large output and reasonable profits to a high tariff and a closed factory, the farmer who wants an extra market for his wheat and cheaper agricultural implements to produce that wheat, the railway magnates who are anxious to transport thousands and thousands of settlers to the farm lands of western Canada, the labourer who wants steady employment and something more than dried bananas and dessicated cocoanut in his dinner pail and on his table, will all wend their way to the polls to register their votes with one slogan, with one thought uppermost in their minds: ' We'll send Laurier back to power.'


Mr. NESBITT:: I was paired with the
hen. Minister of the Interior. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. EMMERSON:: I was paired with the bon,. Minister of Finance. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. MARCIL:: I was paired with the
hon. Minister of Justice. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. MICHAUD:: I was paired with the hon. Minister of Marine and Fisheries. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. PERLEY:: I was paired with the
hon. membei for Russell. Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


Mr. NORTHRUP:: I was paired with the hon. member for Stanstead. Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


Mr. CHABOT:: I was paired with the
hon. member for Beauoe. Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.
Amendment negatived, main motion agreed to, and the House went into Committee of Ways and Means.
Progress reported.
On motion of Mr. Borden, the House adjourned at 12.38 a.m. Friday.
Friday, April 24, 1914.