No labourer will work for another if he can get land of his own for nothing. Every labourer is not, however, a good farmer, and thus no-rent land, or land of extremely low price, implies a low average of production. This was very amply illustrated in much of the land I saw. The farmers were making a living upon it for themselves and their families, but the living was often at a very low standard of comfort. Yet I saw sufficient to lead me to believe that, if a stream of immigration of more or less skilled cultivators by some means took place, the productivity of the country would increase rapidly, and that the farmers would be able to some extent to overcome, and in any case to provide for, the inequalities of the seasons. I thought that as immigration increased the price of land would advance, and that the necessity of increased production would be brought home to the farmers, if only through the diminution in the external prices of their product through increased production. When I returned to the East I communicated these impressions to some of the leading financiers. I pointed out that the application of capital to the North-West would facilitate immigration, and consequently would contribute to the increase of the area under cultivation. To my surprise I was met by the utmost scepticism. The country was quite undeveloped, they said, when it is developed it might be worth their attention. Some of them paid a visit for the first time to the North-West soon after, and this visit led to modification of their views of the country and its prospects. Yet caution has always been necessary in financing the West. The enthusiastic optimism of many Westerners did not afford a basis of security sufficiently tangible to permit the investment of funds held in trust for others. CHAPTER XXV CANADA IN 1897-1901 Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass, And the wildest tales are true, And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass, And the deuce knows what we may do But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, THE excitement about the gold discoveries in Southern British Columbia in 1895 was as nothing to the fever which spread with vigorous contagion when, in the autumn of 1896, the discoveries on the Klondyke came to be known. In British Columbia the gold was buried in mines in chemical combination with other metals and in refractory ores. It could not be recovered without arduous labour even when the gold-bearing ore was actually in hand. In the Klondyke all was different. A stroll by the river produced a fortune in pure gold. To stoop down and pick it up was the easiest thing in the world. Not only the spirits of avarice and gambling were excited, the spirit of adventure was stimulated, as it had been in 1849. The gold trail was an old trail, but the trail for gold which led to the frozen North was a new trail. The wildest tales might be true. The gold lay to be picked up at the end of the trail. What did it matter if the trail were long and dangerous? So much the more adventurous the journey. The first discoveries were registered in August 1896. In the following spring the rush into the Yukon began. Adventurers from all parts of the world poured into the country, some of them seeking gold, others seeking to prey upon the gold seekers. There were two principal routes to the Yukon-one by steamer from Seattle up the coast of British Columbia and Alaska, then up the Yukon River to Canadian territory; the other by the Stickeen River and over the White Pass to the Stewart River, on which were the Klondyke claims. Some adventurous persons attempted to go by another route, by that, indeed, which had been recommended to me the previous year by the Hudson Bay Company, viz., the route by Edmonton, down the Mackenzie River, and then across the mountains to the Stewart River. This proved a very disastrous route, and many gold seekers lost their lives upon it. The reasons for the disasters which attended those who attempted this route were probably that the gold seekers were not experienced in travelling in wild countries, that they had insufficient resourcefulness, and that they went in too great numbers to avail themselves of the expert means of transportnamely, by Indians across the mountains. The other routes were more readily adapted to the pressure of numbers, but the main rush was by the White Pass. Unfortunately I was unable to see this remarkable sight. I should have liked to do so. The effects of the new gold discoveries upon the general economic situation in Canada were the stimulation of local trade in the centres nearest to or in communication with the mining regions, this stimulation reacting upon the supply centres in the East, and the outbreak of a mania for speculation in mining shares. Farmers utilised their reserves and townspeople devoted their savings towards the purchase of stock in mines, of which they knew nothing and could know nothing. Capital which might have been invested in agriculture or in industry was frittered away in fatuous attempts to discover gold. Mining in the Yukon was carried on, to begin with, in a costly way by amateur miners. A few fortunes were made by rich finds, more were made by selling supplies at high prices to the mob of prospectors and miners who thronged into the camps. By far the larger number of these returned disappointed. Gradually the mining assumed another character. Companies with large capital worked the fields systematically, and some of them were for a time able to pay good dividends. In later years the advance of prices and the increase of wages in the industrial centres rendered gold mining less profitable. Only the richer fields could yield sufficient to induce either labour or capital to venture into them. On the whole, the gold discoveries in the Yukon, as well as those in Southern British Columbia, bestowed an evanescent and doubtful benefit upon the country. The beginning of an important immigration from Central Europe in 1895 has already been noticed. This movement proceeded at an accelerated rate in 1896 and 1897. The immigrants came for the most part from Galicia and Bukovina, then provinces of Austria. The chief reason for this movement was the congestion of the peasant population in Galicia. The great plain which lies immediately to the north and east of the Carpathian Mountains is occupied by people of Ruthenian extraction, speaking Little Russian and belonging to the Uniate Church. This church is composed of those members of the Orthodox (or Greek) Faith who adhered to the short-lived reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches never fully authorised by ecclesiastical authority. The congestion of population on the Galician plain resulted in depression of wages for agricultural labour and in the rise of rents for the peasants' holdings. An active propaganda carried on by the railways and the steamship companies informed the Galician peasants of the existence of no-rent lands in the Canadian West, and the offer of extremely low rates for transport to these lands induced them to embark for them. The peasants were very poor, many of them had little more than sufficient to pay for their passage, but they were industrious and frugal. If it did not connive at the emigration the Austrian Government did nothing to impede it. The congestion was indeed troublesome, the people were of a race different from that of the bulk of the people of Austria, they occupied a frontier province, and they might soon become discontented with Austrian rule. It was better to allow a certain number of them to go; those who remained would be better off than they were before the emigration, and better off than they could be without it. Thus for several years the Galician immigration into Canada numbered from 4000 to 6000 per year. Ere long the effects of the emigration from Galicia began to manifest themselves there. Wages increased and rents declined. Then the Austrian Government began to interpose checks upon emigration. Meanwhile some 40,000 Galicians and Bukovinians had emigrated to Canada. They came at an opportune moment. New railways were being projected in the North-West, and these people were available to build them. Employment upon railway construction was an advantage to them. They saved the greater part of their wages, devised spontaneously a system of co-operative credit, took out homesteads, bought stock and agricultural machinery, and established themselves with incredible rapidity. The system of cooperative credit organised by the Galicians was very simple. When a Galician was ready to begin work upon his homestead, he obtained the signatures of forty or fifty of his friends who were already established. These signatures on a folio sheet of paper were appended to a note for one or two hundred dollars, drawn at three or four months. Such notes were readily accepted by the banks. They were discounted, and the proceeds employed for the purchase of seed. The first crop was generally potatoes. These were planted about the third week in April. Before the end of June the potatoes were ready for digging, and before the note for the seed was due the potatoes were sold and the funds were deposited. The implement makers also accepted these joint notes for machinery and the merchants for supplies, and thus, by means of frugality and punctuality on the one hand and credit on the other, Galicians immigrating without means quickly established themselves. I was told by bankers that the notes of the Galicians were always met. The Canadian and British settlers clamoured for Government credit instead of organising for themselves a joint credit system. The consequence was that by means of political pressure a system of Government credit was instituted with priority of lien for advances. Liens were piled upon liens until these became so numerous that even when a settler had established himself he was unable to borrow in the open market because owing to these liens his credit was gone. He became thus entirely dependent upon Government credit, and in course of time the investment of private funds through the banks was discouraged. When the Galicians began to arrive, and for eight or ten years after the beginning of the migration, they were too poor to build houses, and they therefore adopted an expedient not unknown in some of the impoverished regions of Eastern Europe. They made dug-outs for themselves. I have seen many of these dug-outs in the North-West, and I have been in some of them. They were customarily about five feet deep on a slight rising ground, with a trench round them to prevent their being flooded. The walls of the dug-out were usually neatly squared off, shelves being sometimes cut out for household utensils. The roof was composed of poles cut from any standing timber in the neighbourhood. These poles were placed close together, and then covered with clay in such a manner as to make a watertight roof. The Galician families lived in these makeshift abodes until they were able to build houses upon their homestead lands. When they were able to do so, they obtained permits to cut timber on areas owned by the Government, unless there was suitable timber on their own homesteads. They went in groups to the timber areas, cut their logs, and hauled them to the sites of their houses. Although the Galicians have a strong sense of the advantages of individual ownership, and have therefore no idea of becoming communists, they have an equally strong sense of the value of co-operation. I received from an authentic source the story of a Galician family. |