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MtaOCOfY RCSOIUTION TIST CHAtT 
 
 (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No 2) 
 
 •d APPLIED IIVV1GE In, 
 
 165 J Eoat Moir Sire. 
 
4^^- 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL FUTURE 
 OF CANADA 
 
 B. E. WALKER 
 
 ■Q cr\ 
 
r r f " 
 
 V^sl lA 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL FUTURE 
 OF CANADA 
 
 Ai)DRi:ss iiv B, E. Walker, at the I IDtii Anmal 
 
 J.'AN^UET op The Chamkkk *>p Cummrkck of ihk 
 
 State op New York, IIIth Novkmhek, liios. 
 
 As aCanatiian, gratt'ful for what I Irariictl (hirin;.; several 
 years spent in \e\v York in the serviee of the Hank i>f wliieli 
 I am now tlie President, I thank tl.i' Clian;l)tr of Co^miieree 
 of the Statu of New York, amf)n^ tlie nienif)ers of whuli I 
 recognize many old friends, for the graceful eomplinient they 
 are paying to Canada, and I am also deeply sensible (if the 
 very great honour conferred upon myself in being asked to 
 speak for my country on this occasion. 
 
 Just about one hundred years ago you had a population 
 of seven million people. To-day in Canaila we have a ] Ji>ula- 
 tion of seven million peoj)le. and yet the first settlements in 
 Nova Scotia and (Juebec were made practically at the same 
 time as the first settlements in M.issachusetts. New York and 
 Virginia. It is true that nature, except perhajis in New 
 England, presented a much sterner front of opposition to the 
 settler in Canada than in this country, and it is also true that 
 the British races cf)ming to Anterica were bent on securing 
 immeiliate results from trade and agriculture while the Frencli 
 
Hvrc liriailiinn nl v:i>t ilnl.iTV altll(nit;li .Umn liltlr lo scilirc 
 or til jiiiipl, it ; liui ilif chief iVMM.ii iiir llu rxtninpliiiary 
 ililliriimi ]M till- poimlatiun of tlic twn inunlncs ilocs not lie 
 mainly In tlu'si' fads, vital as tluy w.ti'. The .linct result 
 was that when French Cana.la passcl into tiic possession of 
 the Hritisli tlure uer, ahout lurty Hritisli colonists in Xorth 
 America to m,, I niicli ci.Ioiiisi, ami altniist all the British 
 colonists were in that part which eventually he-ame the 
 L'niteil States. Tie i'tiport iiit lait, however, was Mie 
 forming of one nation oin of Mie thirteen eolonies, the first 
 great act of fi lera 'nn l-i the newer parts of the worM. 
 The thirteen separate.l inms w'lh their rivalries, even animos- 
 ities, miKht have reliellcl successfully aKainst (Ireat Urituin 
 but they would have Kiven ,, very ilim'rent account of them- 
 selves had it not been for the great act of federation. In 
 twenty years by the l.onisinna purchase you had .stretched 
 to the I'.iciHc, this anil aiiotlier event in Canada ending all 
 hope of French ICmpire in America, and by the middle of the 
 last century you had secured the entire area out of which the 
 present forty-six States have Iiccn created. Vour new nation 
 had for its leaders in public ojiinion some of the greatest states- 
 men Ame-ica has ever produced, and in that generation when 
 the cry of the French Revolution for liberty and eciuality was 
 ringing throngh many countries you openeil the doors of a 
 great section of the Temperate Zone to the distressed peoples 
 of Europe. 
 
 I. nmi, 'ration may have seemed slow to the new republic 
 at first, jut b,- l&iO there had set in that extraordinary tide 
 of humanity moving steadily in ever-increasing numbers to 
 the United States which, however you may now value it, is 
 not likely to .stop. 
 
 Turning to iny own country, eighty yeais after you had 
 
cnmmcncf.l yiinrixporiment tlicn' wiTr (uf si-paralr stniR- 
 giiiiK ciilnnies cast of Lake SupiTiur, t'ach a conii'tctc ficvcrn- 
 ment in itself. The only attempt at union had iiren made 
 hy U pi r and Lower Canada, liut this had not Ijcen 
 successful. There were on thi f'acilic coa.st two eoloniis, 
 mere remote and somewhat forlorn outposls of the Hritisli 
 Empire and not in '.ouili 'vith the eastern .-oliinies. 
 Between, that is from Like Superior to the coast, lay wliat 
 has been called the Creat l.one Land, those mighty stretclies 
 of prairie and mountain wdiich arc now attracting the 
 notice of the world, but which were at this time held 
 absolutely beyimil the control of the settled Provinces by 
 the Hudson Bay Company. 
 
 And if the political difTiculiies in the way oi union were 
 great the geographical ditKculties seemed greater. These 
 were the days when you were anxiously examining the 
 reports of the engineers, surveyors and naturalists wlio hn ! 
 searched your plains and mountains for a route for your first 
 transcontinental railroad. How were we to imagine a con- 
 nection between Upper Canada and the prairies tlirough 
 whf.t we then thought was a hopeless wilderness of rock 
 north of Lake Superior, and how cross, beyond the ,irairies. 
 that Province which in derision had been described as ,i 
 sea of mountains? 
 
 But the whole land from the .Atlantic to the I>acilic was 
 British, and we did not even then lack' men with vision who 
 dreamed of a British nation to be made out of what had been 
 sa, d in North America. As early as 17Sn that intrepid 
 opponent of the Huil- jn Bay Company, Alexander .Mackenzie, 
 had made his canoe journey from Montreal to Lake Athabaska. 
 and from there down to Arctic waters and back up the great 
 river \vhich bears his n.-me, and in 17»;J, after travels in the 
 
Peacu River country, he l,a,l n'm- .,n ov.t thr n»,untains nn.l 
 'lown the rivrrs nf HritisI ('..Inmliia unlil, r.acliinK tin- watiTS 
 nf the I>,-iri(K' hi' |.aim.'.| .,„ a r.n k that, to iis, immortal 
 si'iitcnoi': ".M.xan.liT Mackc-iizir l,.mi Cana^la l,y land, tlio 
 twi-nty-sfc„n.l of July, orir tliousan.l MV.'ti luin.lrcl and ninety 
 three." When in his retirement Sir .\lexan<l<r Mackenzie 
 wrote his hook, he tol.l En^lap.! t., ImiM a tra.le route throuwh 
 British .\orth .\merica to the I'aeule an.l to take eare nf her 
 trade on the North I'aeihc, otherwise Russia and tlu^ United 
 States would own the whole coast. 
 
 And there were not wanting' many others, (;reat citizen! 
 suchas Josei.h Howe, who told his sceptical fellow-countrymen 
 in Nova Scotia in the fifties that some of them would hear 
 the whistle of the locomotive in the Kooky Mountains, and 
 would go to the Kioific from Halifax in five or six days and 
 would som day trade with China and Japan ; or travellers like 
 Professor Hind, who also in the .ifties presented to eastern eyes 
 the vision of a great city on the Red River where Winnipeg 
 now stands, and who jaw in imagination the white cloud of 
 the locomotive as he looked down from the hills upon the 
 beautiful valley of the Qu'Appelle. 
 
 There must naturally have been those, also, who thought 
 the racial difficulties quite as great as the political and 
 geographical difficulties. Could we make a Bntish nation 
 with so large an admixture of people of French origin? The 
 Canadians of British descent, many of whom have since 
 learned the French history of their own country from your 
 Parkman, did not know how passionately the Canr.dian of 
 French descent loves Canada, how proud he is of its wonder- 
 fully romantic past, ur how thoroughly his thoughtful leaders 
 have recognized that, being cut ofT forever from France, with 
 which he is now scarcely even in harmony, he confides abso- 
 
lutcly in hisriKhts ui„Irr th, li -iIiHti irown lur tliat lull ni.asur.- 
 of tivil iin.l reliKidus lil,. rty iin.ssary i,, I, is pri-s.'tit happinoss 
 and his future pn.sp, rity Uliin «.■ ioiisi.l.rcd the <,th.T 
 Canadians wo fouiil ,!„■ lliKlilan.lcr in Neva Sc.tia. in 
 UppiT C.-.tiada and in isi.lattd 5p.,ts in tlii' fur-trading wvst, 
 diuKint; as liu ,],„■. still in Cap,. Br.inn an.l „n thr St. i-awn-nif 
 in Ontarici t<, I la.lic spcfi-ii and his Hi^hlani' . <i„nis. 
 
 until we sa> that wi- ar< iii.,ri- llijjhland in sunir p;. ••. , Can- 
 ada than in l!ic hills ..i S.mland. and the oilier Canadian 
 Sco' 'inien who were everywhere and who , ven ,i,nv in 
 Oniariu need not lose the hreadth of aee. nt for want of a 
 fellow Stot to crack a joke with; an.l the Hnjilish Canadians 
 also everywhere, particularly in far liritish Columbia and 
 Vancouver Island ; in,l the Irish ami Welsh in lesser nuniliers, 
 and some of Gc lan an.l other descent but all strongly 
 British in sentin ..,; and foremost of all the United Empire 
 Loyalists, t'le ilescen.iants of the men who jjave up everything 
 for their King and, leaving your land, s.iught homes in the 
 unbroken forests of Upper Car an.l Xova Scotia, .Now 
 that their praises have been sunj .,y an American historian 
 I need not hesitate to mention them with honour merely 
 because they .lifltered from the other greatdieaned colonists 
 who also took their lives in their han.ls for what they .leemed 
 the best cause. 
 
 We hail no dark-skinned people or subject races, except 
 the few Indians whom we understoo.l ami wh.ise claims we 
 have always respected. After all, this was not l.a.l material 
 out of which to buil.l a nation, and whatever the future might 
 have in store for thein, it was a vain imagination to think that 
 they could ever be anything but British. We had watched 
 you keenly and surely often with an envious eye, recognizing 
 the enormous value of your federation, but concluding 
 i 
 
that in some details we, if we could do it at all, would 
 do it differently. And so the Fathers met and the plan for the 
 federation of Canada inside the British Empire came about 
 in I8G7. We concluded to give certain more or less deHnite 
 but restricted powers to the Provinces, placing the residuum 
 of power in the federal government, and thus reversing your 
 system. In this way Banking, to which I shall refer, is 
 controlled entirely by the Dominion Government . The British 
 North American Provinces then existing, except Newfound- 
 land, all came into the Confederation within a few years, and 
 in 1870, but not until then, we at last secured the great 
 prairies of the west from the Hudson Bay Company. Under 
 the agreement made when British Columbia came into 
 Confederation we were to build a trans-continent. d railway 
 connecting the Atlantic with the PaciHc, and some of 
 you know the trials and tribulations we experienced before 
 the great enterprise was finished in 1880. Xeariy twenty 
 years had elapsed after the Act of Confederation before we were 
 ready to ask tlie foreigner to come and spy out the land of the 
 West an<i, if it seemed good, to stay. Settlement was slow 
 at first, but the sons of Ontario farmers and many from the 
 Maritime Provinces began to take up the land, and tales of its 
 wonderful fertility began to receive a tardy acceptance from 
 a critical worid. Some of us ventured to say before 1890 
 that the first great movement of the land seeker into that coun- 
 try would take place in the United States. It seemed that 
 they alone would understand as quickly as our Eastern 
 Canadians the value of the country (and as it now turns out 
 they understand it much better); that at the moment when 
 the pressure of eighty or ninety millions of people caused the 
 price of farm lands to go beyond the possibilities of ownership 
 for the men without capital, and the American farmer, used 
 to owning his land, must in many cases be only a tenant or a 
 
renter, they, the American people of the West, would begin 
 to go into our country. All the forces of nature were on our 
 side, but nature takes her own time. Nature, however, was 
 greatly aided by the high intelligence and great energy of the 
 Hon. Mr. Sifton, one of your gue.sts to-night, who as Minister 
 of the Interior put the facts before your Western people in 
 several campaigns of advertising. The movement lias now 
 begun and into the extensive areas represented by our unoc- 
 cupied lands this great colonizing force will co.ninue to press 
 its way as long as any cheap lands are left. The movement 
 from Great Britain and from European and Asiatic countries 
 is also fully under way, and we liave aIre:Ldy in a small ilegree 
 some of the immigration problems which trouble you. 
 
 If those here to-night are to understand the responsi- 
 bilities which fall upon the population already in tlie 
 country by the coming of the iimnigrants we must multiply 
 the number of our people by twelve or thirteen in order to 
 make a comparison with your nation of eighty or ninety 
 millions. If we do this we tin.l that our immigration of 
 over 250,000 in the fiscal year 1907-8 is c(|ual in your 
 case to an immi /ration of about .3,000,000 in one year. 
 No proportionate responsibility, therefore, has e\er fallen 
 upon the United States, especially if we consider the exacting 
 demands of the modern immigrant as compared with the land 
 seeker of thirty or forty years ago wlio trekked with a prairie 
 schooner hundreds of miles into the unknown and did 
 not expect much in the way of immediate comfort. The 
 greatest difficulty in all new settlements is of course trans- 
 portation and we are building railroads at the rate of a 
 thousand or more miles per annum, equal, relatively to popu- 
 lation, to twelve or thirteen thousand miles per annum in the 
 United States, but hardly sufficient for our needs, when con- 
 sidered in respect to the great areas being put under settle- 
 
ment. In the last ten years our railroad mileage has increased 
 from 1 n.584 in 189,S to 22.4.52 in 1907, All railroad building in 
 the U est ,s being done by three great compa.iies, and in a few 
 years we shall doubtless have three completely equipped 
 transcontinental railroad systems, truly a remarkable aceom- 
 phshment for seven or eight million people. Next to 
 tran,sportation, adequate banking is one of the most im- 
 portant requisites. The number of bank branches in 
 Canada is 1,900. m comparison with about G40 ten 
 years ago, Multiplie.l by twelve this would mean •» gOO 
 banks in the United States, and the fact that we are so abund- 
 antly supplied should check somewhat the silly statement 
 frequently made in the Western States, to the effect that small 
 communities are better serve.! by individual and local banks 
 than by the branches of large banks having their head ofKces 
 m the monetary centres. The growth in railroads and banking 
 wdl suggest without further <letail how great has been the 
 strain of providing new towns, new schools, churches, teach- 
 ers, doctors, lawyers, trading people of all classes, the early 
 stages of manufacturing and all the other accessories of civil- 
 ization. The history of the settlement of your great West 
 shows in a large way what we are doing in a smaller degree. 
 Statistics are wearying things, especially after dinner 
 and in any event there is not time enough at my disposal 
 in which to enter upon the various phases of industrialism 
 which have lately shown surprising growth in Canada 
 ansing largely out of this Western settlement, I can' 
 however, indicate this growth in a few words by the figures' 
 of our foreign trade. In 1899 our imports were S149,346 000 
 our exports .S1.50.:!2I,000 and our total foreign trade $299.-' 
 667,000, In 1908 our imports were .5341,931.000. our exports 
 $273,002,000 and our total foreign trade 8614,993,000, a 
 
Browth of over 100 per cent, in ten years. For the first five 
 years of the period in ,,uestion our exports moderately exceed- 
 ed our imports. For the last five our imports largely exeee.l 
 our exports. You will understand better than some Euro- 
 peans that we eannot build railroads an,l in a general way 
 put a new country in a condition fit lor settlement without 
 mortgaging the future. And this may be a good time to say a 
 few words without offence, I hope, regarding the relations of 
 the United States to our foreign trade and also to the foreign 
 buying of our securities by which the difference between 
 our imports and our exports must be met. In the last ten 
 years we have bought from Great Britain to the extent of 
 $099,047,000, from the United States Sl,4;iO,S,J2 000 and 
 from other countries 8271,4.30,000, in all $2,:m:.m 000 In 
 the same time we have sold to Great Britain to the extent of 
 $1,174„3S5,000, to the United States $747,290,000 and to other 
 countries .$22.i,o4.5,00U, in all .?2,14,S,22U,000. It use.l to be 
 thought that while nations settle their accounts with bills of 
 exchange and other forms of money, in reality they only 
 exchange goods with each other; and also that if one nation 
 bought from another very largely in excess of its power to pay 
 m goods it must look to the nation it was buying from so 
 largely to buy the securities which must be sold to pay the bal- 
 ance. But apparently we have changed all that Great 
 Britain takes our products far beyond our purchases from 
 her, and buys our securities as well. You sell us 60 per cent 
 of our imports, but buy only li, per cent, of our exports and 
 rarely buy our securities. It is true that we are improving our 
 purchases from England, and that you are improving vour pur- 
 chases from us and even occasionally taking an interest in 
 our secunt.es, but I invite your deepest, most broad-minded 
 and wisest consideration of these most striking figures and 
 I ask you whether you think it is likely that trading relations 
 
so one-sided can continue forever. Beyond a peradventure 
 if you do not open your doors a little more liberally to us, so 
 that we can more nearly pay you in fnoris instead of always 
 drawing on London for the purchase price of what she has 
 bought from us in order to pay you, you will leave us no 
 alternative but to keep up our tarifi walls until we 
 can create at home almost every manufactured thing you 
 sell us on the one hand, while on the other we seek trade 
 preferably with any nation which takes pay in goods so as 
 to lessen our payment of actual money to you. Believe 
 me, my dear friends, I am bold enough to say these things 
 because some one should say them and because you of all 
 bodies in the United States are the one to which they should 
 be said. 
 
 I have already spoken quite too long and I shall trespass 
 further on your patience only for a few minutes. I was 
 particularly requested to say something regarding our banking 
 system, but I have so recently spoken to the American Bankers 
 Associatii-i regarding yours that I hesitate to refer to the 
 subject again, further than to add to my remarks at Denver 
 regarding what Alexander Hamilton had tried to do in 
 banking for the United States, the fact that when you threw 
 his system overboard we picked it up and based our Prst 
 charters largely on the charter of the first United States Bank; 
 and that we ha^■e clung to this, building it up to suit our 
 purposes, until we have a system which, whether suitable for 
 other countries or not, admirably serves our purposes both 
 as to the individual and as to the nation as a whole. The 
 dilTerence between the two countries stated in the smallest 
 compass is that instead of about 17,000 individual banks we 
 have 30 banks with 1900 branches, and these banks being 
 few in number, and each large in capital and importance, they 
 
arc. tru.stcl i„ manaRe their own reserves, to issue cre.iit notes 
 to hoW the deposits of the Government-one l^einj; seleeter! 
 as the chief banker for all important Government business- 
 and to open branches even in foreiKn countries, thus .levelop- 
 mg not only a local but a jjreat international force in the 
 finances and trade of the country. 
 
 And now let me set out in a few words some of the reasons 
 why we have faith in the future of Canada. We have a 
 eountry about the same size as the United States proper 
 that ,s without any of its outside possessions. It used to be 
 thouglit that for all practical purposes much of it was too 
 fns.d to be worth anythmg. just as thirtv vears ago it used 
 to be thouglit. even at Washington, that one-third of the 
 United States was too arid or too bad othenvise for settle- 
 ment. Xeither the one statement nor the other is true 
 What is true is that the world is being startled by cereals 
 grown further an-l further north, which actually seem to 
 impnn-e in quality the further north you go. The prairie 
 provinces as yet produce only about 200 million bushek 
 of cereals, an<I I am not going to be so foolish as to 
 estimate what they will yield in the future, but clearly 
 the quantity will eventually be enormous. Once we 
 should have said that our timber was irexhaustible 
 but now we know that that is true of no country in the 
 world. But this much can be said that, if we are willinK 
 to learn the lessons in forestry now being taught in our 
 Universities and in our forestry journals and by the experience 
 of our lumbermen, there is no reason why we should not 
 have most extensive forested areas from which great national 
 wealth can be drawn for all time. We own more fishing 
 waters than any other nation, although too many of our 
 fnends wish to fish in them. We have iron, nickel, copper and 
 coal enough to rank with the greatest nations in this respect 
 
and while we are only about the eighth nation in gold, we 
 begin to look important in silver with the Cobalt camp turning 
 out about $1,000,1)00 a month. The intensive farming in 
 Ontario has resulted in our becoming one of the great dairy 
 countries and our importance in breeding horses, cattle and 
 other domestic animals is well known. In manufacturing, 
 whde our figures are trifling compared with vours. we are 
 making great strides, partly as the result of the naturally 
 enlarged markets in Canada, but also because we are beginning 
 to seek a share, in some branches of manufactures, in those 
 markets which are open to the world's competition. No 
 one can at present estimate the extent in horse power or 
 the value in money of our water powers, which probably in 
 these respects exceed those of any other nation in the world. 
 We have a land most of which receives at least the average 
 rainfall, with a summer climate almost everywhere which would 
 please the most fastidious and a winter climate which to the 
 native-bora at least is a thing of beauty and a joy forever We 
 share with you the great lakes, and we have at least twelve or 
 fifteen great river systems any of which should be remarkable 
 among the river systems of the world, besides unnumbered 
 smaller lakes and rivers. Finally we are a contented people 
 with a f...e birth-rate, with hardly any illiteracy, loving law 
 and order and insisting on it in every mining camp and on 
 the rudest frontier line. We hope to build up a nation as free 
 as any m the world, with our own peculiar institutions with 
 a share of some kind in the British Empire, and with relations 
 with your great country which should through the coming 
 ages be of benefit to both nations materially, intellectually 
 and ethically.