The Saint Paul globe., 1897-10-07
THE FUTURE OF CANADA.


Sir Wilfred Laurier has given deeD
offense to our jingoists, who are also
protectionists, by a little speech mad
by him at banquet in Montreal Oil
the future of the Dominion. Hitherto,
he said, the United States have at
tracted the liberty-loVing immigrants
from the old countries, but "a new
star Of liberty has risen in the West
which will defect the tide Of immigra-
ton from the United States to Can
ada Whereupon Indignation blazes i'll
the columns of several of our Repub-
lican contemporaries, one Of which re-
marks that the Democrats tried, dur
ing the last four years, to defect the
current of immigration so as to checi.
the progress Of the United States and
increase that of the Dominion Mo-
mentary forgetfulness is observable
here of the recently inaugurated policy
of opposition to foreign immigration
by it's party.
But, after making all due allowance
for the natural fervor of the premier.
of the Dominion government in speak
ing of the future of his country, and
regarding the situation and prospects
of each dispassionately, there is much
to warrant the expectations he in
dulges. We suspect that the great in
ducement that has brought to our
shores the vast volume Of foreign mi
grafton was not altogether a love OF
liberty offered by the United States
in larger measure than the immigrants
had at home. It was the opportunities
for material welfare that melted the
movement Uncle Sam was rich enough
at one time to give any one farm who
wanted it, and he was not at all mig
gardly in his donations. What with
homestead and timber culture grants
a family could obtain land enough to
make one of the little principalities in
the country whence the most of our
immigrants came. The lure Of land
owning, made possible practically with
out cost, appealed irresistibly to the
Iandless of foreign countries who occu-
pied and worked the land as tenants
for the most part by sufferanee OF
their landlords.
This inducement is we'll nigh ex-
hausted. The line of aridity has been
reached and trenched upon. LanG
grants to railways have used up mil
lions of acres of the domain which
must now be purchased at prices more
or less reasonable. Meantime oppor-
tunities for labor in our industries have
narrowed even more rapidly than
have our opportunities for getting land
For several years the labor marke'
has been congested by the hundreds
of thousands attracted to our shops,
mills and mines by the loudly pro
claimed policy of this government to
tax consumers for the express pur
pose Of enabling higher wages to be
paid in the industries and to save our
workmen from the ''pauper-wage
leveP' of Europe 1t is hardly to be
wondered at that millions were draw.
here by that lure. The reports of the
commissioner of immigration bear tes-
timony to the deterrent effect on i'm
migration of the exhaustion Of free
land and of the congestion of the labor
markets. Excepting for the check
| caused by the panic Of 1873 we have to
go back thirty years to find lower
number than 100000, the number of
immigrants in 1897.
Meantime the resistless force of In
creasing numbers presses upon Eu-
ropes populations and compels migra-
| tion. To these Canada offers her ill
| ducements. They are not to be de-
spised. Vast ranges Of fertile land
to be had practically for nothing; a
mineral wealth just being developed
with the Kootenai at one end and
| Klondike at the other; a stable cur
rency that remained undisturbed dur
| ing all the throes that shook ours; a
government that insures peace and
good order everywhere; an Indian pol
| icy that has kept peace where ours has
nroyoked bloody outbreaks, are no
slight inducements. But what we re-
gard as being fully as influential as al
the other inducements is the reversal
of the policy that has held sway there
for thirty years, patterned after our
own paternalism that taxes all to make
a few Weather, and the adoption OF
one moving rapidly to the condition
where men can have that dearest and
most valuable of their rights, the free
exchange of the products of their labor
for that of others.
rIIIEAcE RooKS TN MICHIGAN