als found they could
obtain no tariff concessions from the United States! They had gibed
Sir John for committing the country to one transcontinental railroad.
They now launched two more transcontinental railroads--east and west,
not north and south. Subsidies were poured into the lap of steamship
companies to attract them to Canadian ports; and thirty-eight millions
in all were spent improving navigation in the St. Lawrence. Wherever
Clifford Sifton sent agents to drum up settlers trade agents were sent
to drum up markets. Then--as Sir Richard Cartwright acknowledged--the
Liberals were traveling in the most tremendous luck. An era of almost
opulent prosperity seemed to come over the whole world. Gold was
discovered in Klondike. Germany opened unexpected markets for copper
ores. Number One Hard Wheat became famous in Europe. Canadian apples,
Canadian butter, Canadian meats began to gather a fame of their own.
Canada was no longer dependent on American markets. There was more
demand for Canadian products in European markets than could be filled.
Then came the tidal wave of colonists. This created an exhaustless
market for farm produce within Canada's borders, and within three
years--in spite of the tariff--imports of manufacturers from the United
States doubled. American factories and flour mills and lumber mills
sprang up on the Canadian side by magic. In this era Canada was
actually importing ten million dollars' worth of food a year for one
western province, and the cost of living in ten years increased
fifty-one per cent.

III

Came a turn in the wheel! The wheel has a tricky way of turning up the
unexpected between nations. A new era had come to the United States.
Kansas was no longer feeding wheat to hogs. In fact, the decrease in
wheat exports had become so alarming that men like Hill of Great
Northern fame and James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, actually
predicted that there would come a day of bread famine in the United
States. The population of the United States had grown faster than the
country's production of food. There was an appalling decrease of meat
animals. American packers were establishing branch houses all through
Canada. As for metals, with the superabundance of gold from Yukon and
Nevada, there did not seem any limit to the world's power to absorb
what was produced. The almost limitless timber lands of the
northwestern states passed into the hands of the great trusts. B