bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Trends in Collective Bargaining: A Study in Causal Analysis
Authors: Logan H. A.
Published: June 2006

Apart from its legal aspects, and legislative promptings and permissions, collective bargaining on this continent is pretty much of a single piece. The international trade unions play out their bargaining offers and techniques in Canada as in the United States, with little attention to the boundary line. In this paper on trends, therefore, I have chosen to move freely over the whole movement rather than limit the study to Canada where in fact little of the pioneering has been done.

Expansion. Collective bargaining on this continent is enjoying rapid growth after marking time or even falling back for a decade in the 1920's and early 30's. In the United States, the year 1933 marks a dividing point in time. But the longer history of trade union development has in fact been characterized by a series of up-surges followed by slow-downs or flat periods. These have been affected in some measure by business cycle conditions, but the sequence of prosperity and depression is not always the central and frequently not a very revealing feature in their explanation. One needs to consider the unevenness of trade union advance in relation to many matters such as changing attitudes toward recognition by employers, attitudes of different governments as expressed through legislatures and courts, periods of war and cost-plus contracts, the social and political philosophy of the men who give leadership to the two sides, the Carnegies, Girdlers, Fords, Gompers, Hillmans, and Lewises. Above all, one must examine its different rate of progress among different industries and trades. With respect to the last, one must examine the areas of early conquest and the special additions made from time to time. This paper attempts to examine only two or three strands of causation.
Problems of Legislation Relating to Collective Bargaining
Authors: Midanik S.
Published: June 2006

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the main problems involved in collective bargaining legislation and to indicate how they have been dealt with in Canada. The study is confined mainly to provincial legislation, since the Dominion Industrial Disputes Investigation Act deals with conciliation machinery, and not collective bargaining, and the validity of the Dominion Trade Union Act has been strongly impugned by the courts. The discussion will be -confined to five main headings: (1) the right to organize; (2) the right to bargain collectively; (3) the bargaining unit and the bargaining agency; (4) the extent of the duty to bargain; (5) administration.

The Right to Organize. The first main problem is the question of the right to organize. I use the term “right” advisedly, for lack of a better. The developed liberalism of modern times does not seek to define the rights of citizens in terms of strict indefeasibility. Everyone, at common law, has always been free to organize or join a trade union, so long as its purposes did not violate the criminal law. Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan declare that it shall be lawful for employees to organize and join a trade union; Ontario substitutes the term “collective bargaining agency” for “trade union,” the former term, by definition, excluding company unions “dominated, coerced or improperly influenced by the employer.” The rest of the provinces recognize the right of both employers and employees to organize for any lawful purpose. In connection with this latter group, if the word “lawful” means not criminal—then it is superfluous; if it means lawful, as not being in restraint of trade, the declaration is of little value, since most trade unions have objects, such as strikes, pickets, etc. which are in restraint of trade.
Business Efficiency in the Canadian War Effort
Authors: Petrie J. R.
Published: June 2006

It is not easy to establish a set of working standards with which to appraise the efficiency of Canadian business in the war economy. The industrial revolution through which this country has been passing for three years has changed the pattern of our economy to such an extent that profit, the conventional yardstick of efficiency, ceases to be significant.

The rules of the game have been rewritten and are still under revision. Free private enterprise is hardly free, nor is it altogether private. Most of the business done today is on government account and under government control. Government is engaged in the largest business enterprise in Canada's history. It owns $865,000,000 of the new plant that has been created for war production, or about 80-5 per cent of the nation's total new productive capacity. Its 1943-4 war budget of $4,490,000,000 exceeds the 1939 national income.

Government is the nation's greatest order-placer, employer, and producer. Canada's war production is estimated to reach a new peak of $3,600,000,000 in 1943. This figure represents a 75 per cent increase over the total net value of Canada's manufactured products, mining output, and construction projects in 1938, the last full year of peace.

The pre-war pattern of the Canadian business system has become so interwoven with government business, government controls over wages, man-power, raw materials, tools, power, and prices, that it presents a difficult analytical problem. None of the factors involved is constant, and the pattern will undoubtedly continue to be one of transition.
Agricultural Man-power
Authors: Haythorne G. V.
Published: June 2006

During the past year, agricultural man-power in Canada has assumed a new importance. With a growing recognition that food is a vital weapon of war and the realization that the farm working force has been seriously depleted during the past three and a half years, the problems of farm labour have been forced into the foreground.

It was natural perhaps, during the first years of war, when munitions, aeroplanes, army vehicles, and ships were in such great demand; when men were needed in large numbers for the armed forces; and when surpluses of many essential farm products existed, that farm production should be considered of secondary importance. Today, the situation has changed. The relative importance of food has sharply increased. Not only have the surpluses of bacon, dairy, and poultry products disappeared, but the requirements of the Allied Nations for these and other provisions have greatly expanded. To contribute her share in supplying essential foods and fibres to the Allied Nations and to meet home requirements, Canada must have adequate farm man-power.

It is proposed in this paper to deal with the subject of agricutural man-power largely from an economic point of view. In making this limitation, it is realized that the economic considerations cannot be divorced arbitrarily from other ever-present social factors. These latter factors cannot be ignored, and will have to be considered, at least indirectly, in several parts of the discussion. The main economic aspects of agricultural man-power covered here might be briefly indicated. In the first place, the nature of the present farm man-power problem will be outlined. The extent and character of the existing farm working force will be analysed and the sources of additional labour discussed. The mobilization of this man-power through measures introduced by the federal and provincial governments will be reviewed. Finally, some problems for the immediate and long-run future will be raised and discussed.
Agriculture's Share of the National Income
Authors: Hope E. C.
Published: June 2006

The great increase in the construction of index numbers of economic data, particularly of prices, since the turn of the century, has increased our knowledge of the mechanism of the economic system. One of the earliest uses of index numbers of prices was to measure the long time movements of the general price level. Later, index numbers of prices were used a great deal in studying the movements of the business cycle. Within more recent years they have been used to study changes in the relative positions of different types of economic activity.

The world-wide depression of the 1930's stimulated the use of index numbers of prices in indicating the relatively unfavourable position of agriculture. As a result of the widespread use and study of index numbers of prices in this period, the “Parity Prices for Agriculture” slogan was born. The acceptance by the Government of the United States of the parity principle, based on price ratios, as a basic government agricultural policy has had a profound influence on the thinking of the farmers of Canada. Within recent years the distressing position of agriculture in the Canadian economy has resulted in a widespread demand by the farmers for parity prices for agriculture.

Recent research on national income in Canada and the United States has enabled estimates to be made of the total national income and break-downs of some of its more important parts. In Canada three agencies have computed these estimates, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, the Bank of Nova Scotia, and a special committee for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations. The yearly levels of national income as computed by these three agencies do not agree exactly, as one might expect due to somewhat different methods of calculation, but the general trends correspond fairly well.
The Western Progressive Movement and Cabinet Domination
Authors: Morton W. L.
Published: June 2006

“Group Government” was the principle of political organization put forward by Henry Wise Wood, president of the United Farmers of Alberta, 1915-31, at the time that body entered politics in 1919. By the phrase, Mr. Wood meant that political organization should be on an occupational, or functional, basis and that political action by economic groups should replace political parties. As such, the idea had affinities with the doctrines of pluralism and even corporativism. When applied to representative and parliamentary institutions, however, it raised those constitutional issues which are common to multi-party and coalition government. Fundamentally, that is, it came into collision with the principle of cabinet unity. Group government, however, encountered an immediate constitutional problem in the prevalent form of the domination of the legislature by the cabinet, and to this aspect of the matter, the present paper is addressed.

The farmer's movement which followed the slackening of the wheat boom of the first decade of this century was, in its political aspect, a revolt against the party system. The ground for this revolt was that the parties were controlled, it was alleged, not by the rank and file of the voters, but by the party organization, the professional politicians. This small group was in turn said to be controlled by the “interests,” upon whom the parties were dependent for funds. It followed that the parties existed to serve, not the people, but the “interests”; it also followed that there was no difference between the two traditional parties. Hence the need for a people's nonpartisan organization, which would sweep away the old parties, curb the “interests,” and make the will of the people effective. The validity of this analysis need not be examined here; the effect of these beliefs is what concerns us.
A Pure Theory of Money
Authors: Littler H. G.
Published: June 2006

In this paper an attempt is made to work out mathematically a pure theory of money. The method employed is to consider only those operations which are fundamental to all monetary economies. These fundamental operations are spending, saving, and investing and any relationships which can be shown to exist between them must, therefore, be valid for all economic systems employing money.

The quantities dealt with in this analysis are purely monetary ones: no considerations of value arise. The resulting equations, therefore, express relationships between different quantities of money or between different money flows.

We shall first investigate the operations of spending and investing and then consider the operation of saving.

In order to simplify the problem, we shall consider first an economic system of a restricted type and then later remove the restrictions in order to achieve generality. We postulate that this simplified system operates under the following two restrictions: (a) no investment is made except by an industrial unit; (b) there is no taxation.
The State and Collective Bargaining
Authors: Logan H. A.
Published: June 2006

Dominion Order-in-Council 1003 passed in February of this year promises to be epoch-making in labour relations in Canada. It commands the parties to bargain collectively, assists them to reach agreement, names and enjoins against both employer and workers certain practices opposed to wholesome bargaining relations, and sets up a special Board judicial in character to administer and enforce the Order. Following as it does in the wake of a half-dozen provincial statutes reaching toward the same general purpose, its appearance calls for a review of state policy with respect to collective bargaining in modern industrial society. What are the trends? And with what particular phases of the movement has the State concerned itself across a century and a half? What is to be the future status of collective agreements at law?

The attitude and behaviour of the State may conveniently be considered in three phases which are only roughly separable in time. In some countries all three have been experienced while in others progress has been made only to the second. There is considerable difference in opinion in fact whether the change from the second to the third represents the true path of social advance. The first phase is found in the earlier nineteenth-century outlook and practice of State opposition to collective bargaining (a condition which in some countries continued well into the twentieth). The second involves the withdrawal of opposition but where collective bargaining is regarded as outside the State's responsibility. Trade unions and employers' associations are treated as voluntary autonomous associations having important dealings with one another, but collective agreements have no status as contracts; neither in negotiating or enforcing, in assisting or in interpreting does the State lend its authoritative hand. The two collective parties are left to work it out for themselves without benefit of sovereign authority. Third we find the phase of positive State participation, operating as the case may be (1) through compulsion in labour disputes seen in its fullest in Australia; (2) through making collective agreements enforceable at law and thus making the parties responsible for performance, practised for many years in Sweden; (3) through compelling the parties (and particularly the employer) to negotiate with a view to forming agreements, the classic example being the United States since the middle 1930's; and finally (4), in addition to this last, through assuming a responsibility for assisting them to reach agreement and provide adequate machinery for interpretation and enforcement, these being the heavy tasks of government under the Canadian Order.
Canada's Internal Security
Authors: Phillips Lester H.
Published: June 2006

May 8 and 9, 1945, were officially proclaimed V-E Days in England. On the latter day in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Mr. Herbert Morrison, as Home Secretary, announced certain revocations of the Defence Regulations which had been in effect since the outbreak of war in 1939. He stated that in accordance with the government's declared policy of relaxing war-time restrictions as soon as changes in the war position made this possible or desirable, advance consideration had been given to the question of what Defence Regulations could be dispensed with on the termination of hostilities in Europe, with the result that as of May 9, by order-in-council, eighty-four of the Defence (General) Regulations were revoked entirely and another twenty-five in part. He added that he was happy to announce the sweeping away of these limitations, the relinquishment of the exceptional powers entrusted to the Home Secretary, and the return to traditional British freedoms.

In Canada, on June 14, 1945, an order-in-council was passed establishing an inter-departmental committee to examine the Defence of Canada Regulations “with a view to the revision thereof, including the variation, modification and revocation of the same.” The inter-departmental committee so established was to report to the President of the Privy Council and make such recommendations regarding war-time regulations as it considered appropriate, and consistent with the vigorous prosecution of the war against Japan.

The precipitous surrender of Japan hastened the relaxation of the provisions for Canada's internal security. Twelve of the Defence of Canada Regulations, among which were most of the regulations directly affecting civil liberties, were revoked by order-in-council of August 16, 1945. A month later, on September 14, forty-four of the remaining Defence Regulations were revoked and four others revoked in part or amended. The net result of these two orders-in-council was to remove most of the restrictions on liberties normally enjoyed by individuals in peace-time, but continuing in effect upwards of forty Defence Regulations, including some of those relating to enemy aliens, to protection of property, and to custody of Japanese persons, and those Regulations containing administrative and procedural provisions. It is therefore timely to present a survey of the nature and extent of Canada's Defence Regulations, and to assay their value in preventing sabotage and controlling subversive activity.
Arctic Survey Part VII. Administration of the Canadian Northland
Authors: Lingard C. C.
Published: June 2006

The Canadian Northland embraces both the Yukon and the North West Territories, a total area of 1,516,758 square miles. The Yukon Territory, which forms the extreme north-west portion of the mainland of Canada, extends northward from British Columbia to the Arctic Ocean and eastward from Alaska to the District of Mackenzie. The North West Territories, which have diminished in area time and again during the last seventy-five years, today embrace the vast mainland portion of Canada lying north of the sixtieth parallel of latitude between the Yukon Territory on the west and Hudson Bay on the east, together with the islands in Hudson and James Bays and in the Arctic Archipelago.
Notes on “Patents in Relation to Monopoly”
Authors: MacKeigan I. M.
Published: June 2006

In recent years no form of property right has been subject to more serious criticism or evoked more strenuous defence than the right conferred by a patent of invention. In Canada, which has so far been a patent-dependent economy, i.e. utilizing largely imported patents, it has taken somewhat longer for the issues to be brought into sharp focus. Dr. Fox's paper serves as a rallying-point for the defence. As one of the leading authorities on Canadian patent law and as an outstanding industrialist of St. Catharines, Ontario, with practical experience in marketing patented articles on both the domestic and international markets, his views deserve respect. Any apparent presumption in taking issue with some of Dr. Fox's statements and conclusions is justified only by the fact that his subject was not confined to patents but raised implications respecting legal and economic aspects of monopolies and restraints of trade and respecting some general principles of public administration and enforcement of criminal and regulatory laws affecting business.

Dr. Fox suggests that the abuses of patents which have been the subject of much discussion and criticism in the United States and other countries with reference to the activities of domestic and international cartels cannot and do not occur in Canada. He claims that the remedies provided by the Canadian Patent Act, the Statute of Monopolies, and the Combines Investigation Act prevent such abuses from arising. He suggests that because these supposedly adequate remedies have only very rarely been invoked such abuses do not exist in Canada. His vigorous exposition of this theme is supplemented by well-deserved encomium of the Canadian patent system in its technical aspects and by a perhaps less deserved condemnation of all who suggest that patents, like corporations and other law-created instruments of trade and commerce, can sometimes be misused.
New Zealand in the Post-War World: Reconstruction Problems of a Vulnerable Economy
Authors: Belshaw Horace
Published: June 2006

In this paper it is proposed to discuss the post-war economic problems of New Zealand, not so much because of their intrinsic importance, as because they raise questions of some general interest and fairly widespread application. It is not intended to pursue an elaborate statistical enquiry and as far as possible the facts selected will be confined to those having a direct bearing on problems and policies.

As elsewhere, the nature of these problems will be determined by the “fundamental” characteristics of the economy, the changes which have occurred during the war, and the nature and intensity of the forces which impinge on it from the world at large. The nature of the response to those forces will be greatly influenced, of course, by the prevailing political attitudes and the sort of administrative machinery and techniques to which the country has been accustomed.

Production and Trade. Since New Zealand is a small country with a population of less than 1,700,000 people, and with a comparatively simple economic organization, its problems tend to be sharp in outline, and readily amenable to analysis. Production is highly specialized. On the average of the ten years prior to the war somewhat over 60 per cent of the value of physical production was provided by farm products (when processed). About 53 per cent of the value of all production consisted of grass land products, in respect of which New Zealand has enjoyed unique comparative advantages.
Urban Developments in the Niagara Peninsula
Authors: Watson J. W.
Published: June 2006

The expansion of the Niagara Peninsula has occurred with its advance from a frontier of conflict to one of contact. Lying at the western extremity of the Hudson-Mohawk, that “greatest of all routes of continental migration,” it forms a major land bridge from New York to Ontario, and exerts the same attraction today, when it has become one of the chief international regions linking Canada with the United States, as it did in the mid-nineteenth century, when it formed part of the great overland route drawing immigrants to the West, or even earlier, when it was itself a pioneer zone. At the same time it is a prime water link between west and east, and, being used both by American and Canadian, has helped to bring them together, first in the commercialization of the St. Lawrence, and later in its industrialization. As a result it is one of the few districts of Canada able to show a continued native growth, together with a “pull on the northern margins of the neighbouring states at all comparable to that of the numerous urban and industrial regions of the United States.”

Thanks to these advantages, its population has increased fifteen times in the last 120 years, with an expansion in recent decades only exceeded by that of the early pioneer influx (see Figure 1). Its problems, therefore, are associated with growth, and with the attempts to work out a series of integrations with each new stage of development, in order to preserve equilibrium in expansion, and create new organizations of settlement and society. Its chequered history, especially as represented in the urban centre, has shown the varying success with which these issues have been met.
Problems and First Experiments of Social Research in Quebec
Authors: Falardeau Jean-Charles
Published: June 2006

Let it be clear at the outset that the title of this paper should not be interpreted too broadly. The Quebec dealt with here is not the whole province but the region and the city of Quebec. So far as social research is concerned, no general account will be given of the numerous investigations and studies, more or less related to what is specifically meant by social research, which have been carried on by French-Canadian scholars during the last few decades. I refer particularly to the valuable contribution made in recent years by the economists and human geographers of L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales of Montreal to research work in Canada, notably in the highly interesting series of studies on Notre Milieu, published within the last three years under the directorship of M. Esdras Minville. The more immediate concern of this paper is to discuss the origin and the first experiments of one institution, which in my opinion represents something specifically new in the province, the Department of Social Research of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Laval University.

At the School of Social Sciences of Laval University in Quebec, which last December became officially an autonomous and full-fledged Faculty of the University, a Department of Social Research was founded in the autumn of 1943. Its staff consisted of a few full-time professors and its general aim was to carry on social-research projects and studies of significance to the French-Canadian milieu. The Department was favoured from conception to birth and during its infancy by the fruitful guidance of an expert and great friend, Dr. Everett C. Hughes of the University of Chicago, formerly of McGill University. Professor Hughes came to Quebec in September, 1943, to help shape the new institution as well as to outline the first general projects to be undertaken. During the past year, additional valuable assistance was given us by Dr. C. A. Dawson of McGill University, Dr. Carl C. Taylor of the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Léon Gérin, the venerable French-Canadian sociological pioneer, and a few other individuals.
Competition and Welfare
Authors: Ellis Howard S.
Published: June 2006

Economic theory has been powerfully advanced within the past decade by its new interest in national income and effective demand, and by its attention to the bearing of such magnitudes as savings, investment, consumption, and money holdings upon the aggregate employment of resources. After the first impact of a revolution, however, the signs of continuity with the past are bound to re-appear. In the field of economic doctrine it may be confidently expected that continuity will be established by exploration as to how particular equilibrium conditions—under the diverse situations of competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and the like—help to account for the behaviour of those large aggregates with which the “modern” theory has too exclusively dealt. With equal confidence one may expect that this synthesis of Marshallian and Keynesian theory will cast new light upon the problems of economic policy.

Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to await the full fruition of this cross-fertilization of ideas: its main features are already indicated in a very substantial field of agreement as to policy in all but the most extreme wings of economic thought. The language of popular discussion in America epitomizes this field in two cardinal ideas—the necessity of government action to secure full employment and the desire nevertheless to preserve a private enterprise system. To extremists on either side these ideas represent incompatibilities. But the effectiveness of economics and of economists in the current scene is primarily conditioned upon the elaboration of policies compatible with both of these cardinal requirements.
The Special Nature of Canadian Federalism
Authors: Scott F. R.
Published: June 2006

Since the end of hostilities in 1945, Canada has been undergoing a rapid constitutional change. The power to make laws on many vitally important matters, which on the outbreak of war in 1939 became vested in the national Parliament either under the emergency doctrine or under the specified jurisdiction over defence, has now almost entirely passed back again to the provincial legislatures. The process of decentralizaton is slower than the former centralization, but it is well under way. A shift in legislative authority is thus in process, affecting such subjects as production and investment control, labour legislation, rent restriction, regulation of prices and wages, man-power distribution, and other essential elements of economic planning. The War Measures Act ceased to be in effect on January 1st, 1946, and the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act which replaced it is being continued on a purely temporary basis. While further prolongation of the latter act may be sought on the theory that the war emergency is not yet over, the mere lapse of time will bring increasing doubt as to its constitutional validity. Sooner rather than later Canada will revert to all the constitutional limitations on the national government which existed in 1939; the one exception is unemployment insurance, the first and only transfer from provincial to federal legislative power made by formal amendment since 1867. The various taxation agreements between the central and local governments, some of which have been renegotiated on an individual basis, have not shifted the legal power to levy taxes but have merely produced a voluntary abstention on the part of some provinces in respect of certain forms of taxation.
Statutes, Orders, and Official Statements Relating to Canadian War-Time Economic Controls
Authors: Stewart Sheila I.
Published: June 2006

The statutory basis for Canada's war-time economic controls and programmes is to be found, in the main, in a number of orders-incouncil issued under authority of the War Measures Act of 1914 and, only occasionally, in acts of Parliament. Even in those cases when the control agency derived its powers and responsibilities from an act of Parliament (e.g., the Department of Munitions and Supply) many of the more important operations of the agency in question were conducted by controllers who derived their powers from successive orders-in-council. The detailed regulations of the various war-time controllers and administrators in turn were usually promulgated in the form of additional orders-in-council or in the form of administrators' and controllers' orders. Thus, while the statutory powers and responsibilities of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board—the operations of which touched upon almost every section of Canada's economy—were derived from less than half a dozen basic orders-in-council, the hundreds of regulations governing the conditions of production and distribution applicable to specific industries were issued in the form of board orders and administrators' orders and, less often, in the form of informal directives.

Apart from the latter type of measure, all the various war-time orders and regulations were printed in Canadian War Orders and Regulations (now Statutory Orders and Regulations) or, previous to October 1, 1942, in Proclamations and Orders-in-Council, both issued from the office of the Privy Council. Such orders and regulations have run into the tens of thousands during the war years. The student of Canada's war-time economic controls approaching this subject for the first time would find it difficult to select from this mass of printed material, much of it dealing with minor administrative procedures or appointments, the more basic or significant regulations.
Some Longer-Term Factors in the Canadian Balance of International Payments
Authors: Watts G. S.
Published: June 2006

Thinking on balance of payments matters has been dominated for so many years by particular day-to-day problems that a reconsideration of longer-run factors seems clearly to be a timely topic for discussion. Admittedly, in times like these, this type of study has severe limitations: of necessity it has to be largely speculative, and one can certainly not expect it to yield a blueprint for the future. Nevertheless, it is the aim of this paper to suggest that a careful study of current and prospective developments is more rewarding than might appear at first sight; that it discloses or emphasizes a number of important enduring tendencies that are bound to have a decisive influence on our balance of payments for a long while to come; and that a realization of them will provide some bearings in a realm which nowadays involves all too large an element of dead reckoning. Needless to say, owing to reasons of space it will not be possible to do more than sketch the principal changes and suggest some tentative conclusions.

The first of these trends, and perhaps the most important so far as the domestic economy is concerned, is the rebirth of natural resource development. Such development was, for many years, the main dynamic behind Canada's growth; however, it was in large measure inhibited for the better part of a generation except for a few specialized instances, first by the depression and later by the war. In spite of several recent spectacular discoveries, it is doubtful whether the full potential impact of these developments on our future balance of payments is adequately appreciated. Possibly the long interval of stagnation and reverses has tended to make Canadians rather cynical about favourable reports even when well substantiated. Admittedly nothing is easier than to be dazzled by thoughts of future riches; at the same time, however, a balanced appraisal of future prospects involves a realization of potential strengths as well as calculable risks. A good many of the projects referred to below are in their early stages and fall in the realm of the engineer and the geologist. But a general pattern of their magnitude and significance is beginning to emerge that merits the economist's attention.
The Canadian Agricultural Price Support Programme
Authors: Booth J. F.
Published: June 2006

Much of the activity relating to the support of agricultural prices in Canada is conducted under the authority of the Wheat Board Act and the Agricultural Prices Support Act, but the programme in its broadest sense involves other legislation and a variety of government policies. Part of this programme originated in the inter-war period and earlier years. This paper, dealing with various aspects of the programme, is introduced by a brief outline of background developments.

Governments, both federal and provincial, have traditionally been concerned in the main with activities aimed at increasing efficiency in the production and marketing of farm products. These have included experimental and scientific research; efforts to improve the quality of plants and animals; the introduction and enforcement of grades and standards for marketing; and extension work designed to acquaint farmers with useful information as it became available.

During the First World War this pattern of activity was enlarged. At that time the federal Government took over control of the marketing of wheat. It gave to a body known as the Board of Grain Supervisors authority to fix the prices and to market the crops of 1917 and 1918. This proved to be the forerunner of a development that has since come to occupy an important place in government activity.
The Role of Support Prices in a Full-Employment Economy
Authors: Johnson D. Gale
Published: June 2006

In both Canada and the United States the agricultural programmes that attempt to support or raise the level of farm prices were conceived during the inter-war period of readjustment and depression. Now that we have had ten years of full employment and high-level incomes in our respective economies, it is perhaps time to reassess the role of support prices.

The reassessment that I propose to make is based on the assumption that we will be able to maintain full-employment economies most of the time and that if a depression should come, it will be relatively mild and of reasonably short duration. Fear of war, war, and preparation for war are likely to lead to a full-employment economy for some time. It may not be too much wishful thinking to believe that if the happy era should come when war no longer serves as an impetus for aggregate demand, our economies will be guided by competent monetary and fiscal leadership and will be able to maintain a fairly even keel. The mild recession which the United States experienced in 1949 and which had almost ended before the fateful attack in Korea offers some support for, though obviously not confirmation of, this view. In any case, we should clearly separate in our thinking and in our actions the problems of agricultural price policy as they relate to conditions of full employment and to conditions of depression.
Emergency Powers and Civil Liberties
Authors: Clokie H. McD.
Published: June 2006

No apology need be offered for continuing the discussion of either civil liberties or emergency powers, exhausting and exhausted as the topics may now seem to have become. The very fact that such wide interest has been aroused by the agitation conducted by defenders of civil liberties in recent months indicates a growing realization that there is something at stake here requiring careful consideration and alert watchfulness. Whether one views civil liberty as flowing from numerous aspects of a well-balanced constitutional system of government, as the present writer does, or as the special area of distinctively designated fundamentals laid out to-protect individual rights, as many of the most vocal libertarians seem to do, every person must recognize the peculiar and intimate relation subsisting between civil liberty and constitutionalism. The preservation of the liberty of the subject is the distinguishing feature of all systems properly called constitutional and marks them off quite definitely from all forms of arbitrary government, no matter how the latter may be designated politically, socially, or economically. And at the present time no one can fail to observe that the unregulated and uncontrolled exercise of emergency powers constitutes one of the most serious threats to civil liberty as long understood and that it poses a most difficult problem for the constitutionalist.

It is unnecessary to enter here upon any consideration of the nature or elements of civil liberty; still less is it necessary to embark on a defence of liberty or to ask why freedom matters. Liberty has been claimed on so many grounds —religious, rational, economic, national, and ethical—and has spawned such a volume of defences, from Milton's Areopagitica to Laski's Liberty in the Modern State, that one is entitled to assume that adequate exposition has been made and the goal denned in general terms acceptable to all sharing the historic concepts of western civilization. Nevertheless, it ought to be noted that the very same sources from which libertarian doctrines emanate are also quite frequently the springs of its repression, namely, some religious dogmas, some economic doctrines, some national cults, and social gospels of various types.
Town-Country Relations and the Problem of Rural Leadership
Authors: Burnet Jean
Published: June 2006

The country town, like the country village, has usually been considered not only as a part of the rural community but as its centre. The existence of division and even antagonism between town and country has not been ignored, but it has been discussed as something which ought not to be. This has been the result of at least two errors into which sociology frequently falls. One of these is forgetting that many of its easy dichotomies, such as that beween rural and urban communities, are merely logical constructs. They are tools which are at times useful in the analysis and interpretation of data; they are not immutable truths. The second error is setting sociology up as a normative rather than a scientific discipline. General sociology is beginning to outgrow this, but rural sociology is still strongly disposed to describe the ideal rather than the actual. In point of fact, throughout the United States and Canada, especially in times of rapid social change, the town of a few thousand people and the farming district around it have not formed a single community; they have been distinct and often hostile social entities.

The town-country rift is especially wide on the frontier because of the different speeds with which the two types of community respond to new social conditions. On the farming frontier the small town is the representative of the old order of things, the rural community the representative of the new. In the early Canadian settlements, this fact was made very evident by the gathering of British government and military officials in the towns. The farmers in a recently settled region are pressed toward radicalism by the demands of the new environment and by temporary necessities arising from frontier conditions; they are cramped by the old system, and begin to strive for reform. The townsmen are farther removed from the situation to which the old ways do not provide a tolerable mode of adjustment; they are, to a greater extent than the farmers, in the position which Veblen ascribed to the leisure class, a position “sheltered from the action of the environment.”
Bentham's Ideal Republic
Authors: Peardon Thomas P.
Published: June 2006

Seldom read today, Bentham's Constitutional Code (1820-1832) nevertheless ranks among the most significant political treatises of the last century. It contains an extended statement of the ideas of Philosophic Radicalism on the eve of their partial victory in the Reform Bill of 1832. It must be nearly, it may be actually, the last work of any important figure of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. At the same time it is one of the first works in which through the fog of doctrinaire radicalism there can be seen fairly clearly the characteristic features of the contemporary state with its extreme centralization, its myrmidonian corps of bureaucrats, its elaborate administrative apparatus, and its miscellaneous services to the public. There are few books of a century ago in which the contemporary political scientist, provided he can overcome initial hurdles of style and manner, ought to feel more at home, if only because he will find there the twentieth-century student's interest in institutions and the emphasis on administration that plays so large a part in the study of government today.

The Constitutional Code may be regarded as Bentham's view of the best possible commonwealth—a Utilitarian Utopia. Like all Utopias it was the product of disappointment with the here and now. It is well known that Bentham turned to systematic consideration of constitutional questions only after repeated failure to persuade the rulers of England to accept his legal reforms and especially his Panopticon scheme for a model prison.
Implications of Canadian Iron Ore Production
Authors: Wansbrough V. C.
Published: June 2006

For the purposes of this paper it is proposed that we should assume, for a short time, the role of the prospector, and take a look for ourselves at one particular Canadian mineral resource, iron; and having done so, should then, more dangerously, assume the mantle of the prophet, attempting to forecast what that metal may mean in the economy of Canada during the years immediately ahead.

As everyone here will know, the amount of iron produced in the course of the astonishing and proliferous mineral output of the last fifty years, has been small, sporadic, and, for certain periods, non-existent. Now, for the first time in Canadian history, we stand on the verge of a great age of iron production, which will certainly have a profound influence on the economic development of this country, of the North American continent, and quite possibly beyond. In addition, iron production, on the scale which can now be reasonably expected, may well prove to be the greatest single factor in redressing our financial and trade imbalance with the United States, and in tipping the scales towards the accomplishment of the long-awaited St. Lawrence Deep Seaway. The purpose of this paper will be to attempt to give some factual underpinning to these large assumptions.
Freight Rates and Regionalism
Authors: Currie A. W.
Published: June 2006

The freight rate structure is the price list at which railways sell their services. It is distinguished from the pricing systems of businesses other than public utilities by the degree of its differentiation or discrimination. Freight tolls are not based on cost except in a general way but on value of service. The carriers charge low rates on raw materials and basic commodities, the products of farm, forest, mine, and sea which will not stand higher rates and still move in volume, and they collect relatively heavier tolls on manufactured articles and general merchandise which are better able to bear such tolls. This differentiated pricing arrangement was devised to enlarge railway revenue by encouraging the movement of freight, the widening of market opportunities, and the settlement of the country. Though calculated chiefly to meet the financial requirements of the railways, the system aided business and advanced national interests. During the last twenty years, however, the conditions of transportation have so altered that a complete re-examination of the entire pricing system of railways is now required.

The need for this re-examination can be seen most clearly in terms of the historical development of the Canadian freight rate structure. During the period 1885 to 1915 railways benefited from improved technological efficiency, rapid growth in the volume of their traffic, and increasing density per mile of line. The gains from these changes went chiefly toward generous dividends on Canadian Pacific stock and capital re-investment in railway property. In addition, some important reductions in rates were granted. For the most part, these did not take the form of scaling down substantially all rates but of cutting the tolls on basic commodities and the rates to various sections of the Dominion.
Some Aspects of Recent Freight Rate Discussions
Authors: Moffat Robert E.
Published: June 2006

The provision of a satisfactory transportation system is absolutely indispensable if Canada is to survive as a national unit. Without a transportation system which moved, relatively cheaply and conveniently, vast quantities of the country's primary products over long distances, it would be literally impossible for great sections of Canada to support its present population. In this context, modern transportation really means railway transportation for no other form of transportation can possibly transport such commodities as wheat, coal, and lumber over the distances and in the volumes which are involved in Canada.

For this reason, there has never been any difference of opinion as to the absolute necessity of providing the Canadian railways with sufficient revenue to enable them to continue to provide satisfactory transportation service. There have, however, been serious differences of opinion as to whether or not the present freight rate structure does yield to the railways enough revenue for that purpose and as to the source from which any additional revenue should be secured if it is decided that it is necessary. There have also been differences as to who was to be given the responsibility and authority to decide these issues.