on the plea that farming in Canada was a money-making business, and yet reconcile these men, once safely fixed on Canadian soil, to a condition of permanent economic serfage. The man on the land was to produce for a bare living, or less than a bare living, the raw materials of industry. To the traders, manufacturers, and financiers were to belong all the profits of the industry. The aim of all immigration propaganda was to create in one-half of Canada a race of peasants subservient to a race of business men in the other half. Such was the real reason for the flood of Ukrainians, Galicians, Mennonites, Doukhobors, with which the country was deluged during the Laurier régime. These people, at all events, would prove docile; starved and beaten in the countries they came from, they would not kick over the traces in their new country, where they were not beaten and only half starved. As for politics, they did not understand the English language; they were absolutely devoid of democratic instincts; and their votes were as cheap as dirt. Fifteen years ago, the British were not wanted as immigrants. They were too stiff-necked, too obstinate; their economic standards were too high; they would never fit in with the plan. And indeed, had none but aliens from Russia and Austria invaded Western Canada, there would be to-day no co-operation, no farmers' economic movement.

If it were possible to eliminate middlemen on the grain-selling side of the farming business, why should it not be possible to eliminate middlemen on the purchasing side? Many of the things needed were handled in great quantities by a host of small traders all over the country. But lumber, coal, flour, apples, agricultural implements could all be bought in large quantities, and distributed co-operatively through the farmers' elevators. This was a logical step, and it was the next to be taken. Timber limits were purchased in British Columbia, and saw-mills installed, supplying the grain-growers with lumber for their barns, their grain-bins, their houses, without the intervention of half-a-dozen middlemen. Apples were purchased by the train-load in Ontario or British Columbia and distributed direct to the consumer, at an enormous saving. Other staples were gradually added to the list-cement, sashes and doors, hardware and

builders' supplies, oil, salt, sewing-machines, type-writers, and so on. Anything for which there is a universal demand, and which is more or less standardised, can be and before long will be distributed through the Farmers' Companies in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Still greater economies and higher efficiency were bound to result if, instead of acting separately, they were all amalgamated into a single body. The final step was taken in 1917, when the Grain Growers' Grain Company, the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, and the Alberta Co-operative Elevator Company were all merged in a new body under the name of United Grain Growers, Ltd.,' with a paid-up capital of $5,000,000.

A few years earlier, the Canadian Council of Agriculture had come into existence. It did not spring into immediate spectacular prominence. Hardly any one foresaw the weight that would come to be attached to its pronouncements. Most people have only become aware of it in the course of the last two or three years. It was an outgrowth of the various Territorial Farmers' Associations, a committee formed from among their officers, for the purpose of sifting, discussing, and codifying any resolutions passed by local conventions concerning desired reforms which could only be brought about by Federal legislation. It was a new form of lobbying, a method long known and brought to a fine art at Ottawa; but it was lobbying by the pressure of opinion, not by bribery. The Council acted as political spokesman on behalf of the Grain Growers, standing strictly aloof from any ties with either of the old political parties. Farmers, as a class, were practically unrepresented in the Legislature. If we accept Mr Charles W. Peterson's data in his Wake up, Canada!', while farmers in 1918 made up 46.5 per cent. of the total adult population, their percentage of total representation (Provincial and Federal) was but 18.3. Business and professional classes, on the other hand, making up but 16.7 per cent. of the adult population, engrossed no less than 81.2 per cent. of the total representation. The lawyers alone, numbering less than 5000, monopolised 25 per cent. of the total representation. It is clear then that the Council of Agriculture performed a very necessary service in counterbalancing the inadequate representation of farmers in Parliament.

In the third year of the war, its influence had already become so considerable that Sir Robert Borden, when forming the Unionist ministry, found it advisable to include some of its leaders. Mr Crerar took the portfolio of Agriculture; Mr Dunning joined the Board of Food Control.

The most contentious issue, then as now, was of course the Tariff. By their own efforts, along the lines of business co-operation, the United Farmers had removed many a handicap; but the most serious of all could only be removed by Federal legislation, by a complete reform of the fiscal system. No impartial student has ever come forward to defend or even to excuse the Canadian Tariff. It transgresses every known canon of sound taxation. It has signally failed to accomplish the purpose for which it was supposed to be created. It was an economic blunder from the first; it has become a serious political danger. Introduced by the Conservative Party under Sir John A. Macdonald as a national policy of protection for infant industries, perpetuated by the Liberal Party under Sir Wilfrid Laurier as a revenue-producer, this hybrid system, which only produces revenue by accident in so far as it does not protect, and protects only in so far as it fails to produce a revenue, has succeeded in dividing the country into two sharply-opposed camps, of which Winnipeg is the dividing point, and has succeeded in nothing else. The infant industries of fifty years ago claim to be infant industries to-day and clamour for still higher protection. The possible benefits of protection, supposing there were any, are purely local in character and extent, for the object of the system is to secure the home market, that is to say, the farmer-consumers; while the farmers' market is not in Canada but overseas. One-half of the total population is thus taxed, with no counterbalancing advantage, in order to bolster up the prosperity of a few towns in the East. And as the general cost of living is artificially increased to the extent of 40 per cent. all round, the advantage to mechanics and labourers who form 37 per cent. of he total population is illusory. Their real wages would be higher in the United States. Regarded as a system of taxation, it will not bear discussion. It strikes with blind indifference alike at implements Vol. 235.-No. 466.

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of production, and at articles of consumption; and every dollar it brings into the State Treasury from a limited proportion of the population, costs the general body of consumers at least two dollars and a half.

But its greatest failure from a business point of view lies in its effect on the development of western farming. The aim and hope of the protected interests has always been to create a large clientèle west of the Great Lakes. This aim was illusory from the first. For, if a large clientèle did come into existence, if the prairies filled up to even 20 per cent. of their capacity, the western voters, being in a majority, would quickly seize the reins of power, and consign the robber tariff' to the limbo of hated tyrannies. And, if the prairies have failed to fill up as was expected, it is largely on account of the Protective system. For its effect has been, and must clearly be, to destroy any differential advantage in the production of food-stuffs that virgin soil possesses over the soil of older countries. Whatever part of the world the settler might come from, he found that, while the price obtained for his products in Canada was from 30 per cent. to 50 per cent. less than the price he would have obtained at home, every tool that he used in production, every article that he and his family consumed in the course of the year, cost him from 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. more. Small wonder, then, that the prairie populations are still largely nomadic, that, almost as fast as new people come, old-timers go, and that, while in the last ten years 1,250,000 immigrants came in from the United States, during the same period there were nearly 1,000,000 emigrants from Canada to the United States.

Here, then, is a pretty dilemma: if the West fills up, the Tariff will go, and if the Tariff does not go, the West will not fill up. The country, as a whole, will have to make a choice before long. The mind of the West is fully made up. Partly from interested motives, easy to understand, partly from a wide survey of all the facts of the case, the West is solidly in favour of a lower tariff, and will presently be in favour of no tariff at all, of reciprocity with the United States, and of Free Trade with Great Britain. For indeed, if, owing to the Tariff handicap, the West fails to fill up, Canadian manufactures in

general must always remain comparatively insignificant. Apart from a few which are to-day quite able to hold their own against outside competition, the remainder never can hope for an outlet beyond the home market. Excluded from the export market in normal times by their lack of coal, their bad strategic position, and the inferior quality of their products, they cannot expand except inside the Tariff wall; and the Tariff wall prevents any large increase in their home clientèle. It is not along that blind alley that Canada, as a whole, can hope to extend her material prosperity. Her real wealth lies in her untilled fields, in her vast stretches of virgin land, in the development of her almost limitless agricultural resources; and these must remain untapped for many years unless the Tariff handicap is removed.

With such or similar arguments, the Council of Agriculture has been approaching the Federal Legislature for several years past. Persuasion fell on deaf ears. The Tariff was sacrosanct; it was out of politics altogether; Conservatives and Liberals were alike wedded to it. The only Free-Trade members of the Lower House were the half-dozen farmer members from the West. Clearly the Tariff had to be dragged into politics again. Logic failing, there was no choice left but a recourse to the force of votes. Thus the Council of Agriculture, mouthpiece of the co-operative associations, after remaining aloof from politics for many years, was forced at last to enter the political field in opposition to both the old parties, as well as to the fusion of the two old parties, and to appeal to the electorate with a comprehensive National Platform.

Let us now pass to a short examination of that Platform, in such a way as to give the English reader some idea of the complex and divergent forces at work in Canadian political thought to-day. The first and foremost plank refers, of course, to the Tariff, and the farmers' demands are formulated as follows:

(a) An immediate and substantial all-round reduction of the customs tariff.

(b) Reduction of the customs duty on goods imported from Great Britain to one-half the rates charged under the general tariff; then gradual reduction so