CHAPTER III

THE TREND OF NATIONAL ENERGIES

Colonial expansion has given to the world new classes of international problems. The vital interests of a colonizing Power are extended far beyond its domestic boundaries. Thus, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century the large immediate problems of actual supremacy among the advanced nations were centered in China and South Africa and the lines of communication with those regions.

Great Britain was struggling to put down Boer rule in South Africa. Why? Was it because of the grievances of a handful of Uitlanders? Nominally, perhaps, the war could be explained as the result of such petty grievances. But fundamentally, the British and the Boers were fighting because the British imperial idea demanded a unification of authority throughout South Africa. It was not simply that the mines of the Rand or the pastures of the veldt tempted the greed of commercial Britain, or that the Boers sought to restrict the activities of the Uitlanders, although these obvious impulses added weight to the balance in favor of conquest. The larger, the more significant, motive of the Boer war was strategic. It was an attempt to wrest control from a pastoral and agricultural people, and it looked to the future development of a continent.

In Asia the ultimate aims were plainer. Sunward and seaward Russia was slowly pressing down from the north. Every year brought her closer to conflict with rival Powers which had established themselves in the continent. Russian progress was opposed on the south by Great Britain in India and Persia; on the east by Japan in Manchuria and Korea. Her ally France had a foothold in Indo-China, whence she might threaten the British flank. Germany, the great opportunist, a late guest at the colonial feast, ready to take whatever she could. find, was an uncertain factor, with her sphere of control in the Shantung

Peninsula, and her commercial activities in Asia Minor. China, sullen and defenseless, glowered at her masters. She had yet to learn how to play the cunning, dilatory game of the Turk, who had long postponed the evil day of his own reckoning by arousing the mutual animosities and suspicions of the rival Powers.

Before entering into the details of the Chinese question and the Boer War it will be well to consider certain minor colonial activities of the time, many of which had a more or less distinct bearing on the two great problems.

The central ideal of British colonial policy at the beginning of the century was imperial federation. How to knit the interests of the selfgoverning colonies more closely with those of the mother country, was the concern of British statesmen. The Boer war had strengthened the ties of sympathy. Colonial contingents from Canada and Australia had fought at the side of the English soldiers on the veldt.

But the colonies were not commercially as closely in touch with England as England desired that they should become. The United States, for example, got a large share of Canadian trade in spite of the preferential tariff rates extended by Canada to Great Britain. The fact was beginning to impress itself upon the English public that the colonies were growing away from England rather than toward her. This was not the result of inherent disloyalty; it came naturally out of an increasing spirit of independence, which was permitted by the very form of the governmental systems extended to the self-governing colonies.

Canada's Problems

The condition of the Dominion of Canada was somewhat depressing. The census figures of 1901 showed a total population of 5,369,666. Ten years before it had been 4,833,239, so that the gain during the decade had been only at the rate of about one per cent. a year, or about half the rate of the gain of the United States during the same period. In the Eastern Provinces the population had remained almost stationary, the chief growth being in the West.

Indeed, the fertile but undeveloped plains of the Northwest were beginning to promise a coming era of wonderful growth, by attracting farmers from the United States. Settlers were following one an

other in rapid succession to the valleys of the great Northwestern rivers. In 1900 about 390 binders were sold at Edmonton and Strathcona, and 260,000 pounds of binding twine were consumed in that region. The export of beef cattle from Manitoba and the Northwest Territories amounted in the same year to forty-seven thousand head, an increase of fifteen thousand head over the preceding year. Thus there were hopeful signs in the West that the incoming of a sturdy element from the States might offset the emigration of so many eastern Canadians to the States.

It should be remembered that Canada was not only undeveloped. It was even to a great extent unexplored. Practically nothing was known about one-third of the total lands included in the Dominion. Well down toward the center of the Northwest Territories were tracts as large as Great Britain and Ireland which had not been accurately mapped.

The material status of the Dominion being what it was, the most important public questions before the Canadian people were those of development rather than of administration. Better means of communication with undeveloped districts and the improvement of general transportation facilities were the first matters to be considered. Centralization of railroad interests in the United States aroused some concern in Canada, where the power of American capital was feared. A movement to bring the Canadian railroads under Government control, and thus avoid the danger of American interference, gained some strength during 1901, but did not arouse enough general enthusiasm to carry it to a vote. Perhaps the Canadians felt subconsciously that American enterprise and capital were just what the Dominion needed; that foreign capital should be invited, not repelled; that Canada's sovereignty over her own territory would not be endangered by the private investments of Americans.

Canada already had one Government railroad-the Inter-Colonial system of about seventeen hundred miles. The Government of Manitoba, moreover, in 1901 secured a 999-year lease of the railroad connecting Winnipeg with the Northern Pacific System and an option of purchasing the road at any time for seven million dollars. The object of this move was to break the freight monopoly of the Canadian Pacific, and give the farmers a chance to ship their wheat at reasonable rates.

THE GEORGIAN BAY CANAL

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In Manitoba, therefore, government ownership made a practical advance.

The great development in the grain country of the West was overtaxing the carrying capacity of the railroads. It seemed certain that a new road must soon be built across the Dominion, to parallel the Canadian Pacific and open up a vast region which was thinly settled only because there were no satisfactory means of reaching it by rail.

The much-mooted Georgian Bay Canal project was prominent in popular consideration. English capital showed signs of interest in the proposed waterway. The plan was to take advantage of one of the routes of the early voyageurs from Ottawa to the Great Lakes, going up the Ottawa River, across Lake Nipissing, and down the French River to Georgian Bay. The total canal system to be dug was estimated at not quite thirty miles, the rest of the route consisting of rivers and lakes in which comparatively little dredging would be needed to provide a twenty-foot channel. Engineers said that the system could be completed in five years, at an approximate cost of sixty-seven million dollars. With the moderate toll of fifty cents a ton, the canal would pay, it was estimated, about four per cent. on the money invested.

As a rule, there is no special advantage in speed in the transportation of such non-perishable products as grain and iron. It takes longer to send freight by water than it does to send it by rail, but water transportation is much the cheaper. In the spring of 1901 the lowest railway tariff quoted between Chicago and the Atlantic Coast was nine cents on a bushel of grain. By water, grain could be sent from Chicago to Buffalo for four and a half cents a bushel. It was figured that, by way of a Georgian Bay Canal, grain could be sent from Chicago. to Montreal for three cents a bushel. Such low rates would insure the success of the canal. Moreover, the distance from Chicago to Montreal by the Georgian Bay route was about 450 miles less than the distance from Chicago to New York by way of the Erie Canal. The distance from Montreal to Liverpool was about 450 miles shorter than the distance from New York to Liverpool. The shorter the route, the cheaper the cost of transportation. A very small reduction in rates would divert traffic to the cheaper route. There was, then, reason to think that Canada, by improving her water connection with the Great Lakes, could capture a great part of the carrying business of the Northwestern

United States. The prospect was not pleasing to United States carriers. The Duke of Cornwall and York, heir to the British throne, visited Canada, with his Duchess, during the fall of 1901, ending there his tour of the British Colonies. The incidents connected with the visit were all indicative of continued good-feeling between the Dominion and the mother country. The greetings extended to the Duke and Duchess when they landed at Quebec on September 16 were joyous and loyal. The royal couple examined industries, inspected public works, participated in social functions. They made an extended tour through the Western Provinces before steaming away from Halifax on October 21. Doubtless they carried back to England a new sense of the loyalty and devotion of Greater Britain.

The New Australian Commonwealth

While the Heir-Apparent closed his colonial tour with a sojourn in Canada, the nearest to England of the great colonies, he began it with a visit to the Antipodes, being present at the opening of the first Federal Parliament of Australia in May. The federal union of the Australian colonies dated from the first day of the new century. It was accomplished deliberately by the colonies themselves, after a decade of preparatory study and negotiation, and it was dictated wholly by the feeling that a greater future lay before Australia united than could come to any one of the colonies standing alone.

Australia, by the census of March 31, 1901, had a population of 3,771,715 persons, distributed as follows: New South Wales, 1,354,846; Victoria, 1,201,070; Queensland, 496,596; South Australia, 362,604; West Australia, 184,124; Tasmania, 172,475. In 1891 the total population of the same colonies had numbered 3,174,253. The gain by immigration during the decade was almost nil-about five thousand— though between 1881 and 1891 about 930,000 immigrants had entered the colonies. Clearly the population needed recruiting. The country. was rich; its undeveloped resources were great. Its wealth was mainly pastoral, agricultural, and mineral, but it offered a great promise to industry if labor unionism, which had secured an unusually strong position, did not frighten capital away.

On January 1, 1901, the Earl of Hopetoun was installed at Sydney as first Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth. After