trial war and social upheaval.

Hitherto no statesman has arisen in Canada who remotely sensed the
impending evil, much less made an effort to avert the doom that has
come like a cloud above the well-being of every modern country. The
man who makes it a national policy in Canada to attract the settler to
the soil rather than to the city hovel will in the future annals of
this great nation be rated above a Napoleon or a Bismarck.[1] This to
me is the crux of the very greatest and most acute problem confronting
the Dominion's future destiny.

II

In a country where organized labor numbers only 176,000 out of
7,800,000, labor problems can hardly be set down as acute. They do not
split society asunder as they do elsewhere. I am glad of it. I am
glad that in Canada up to the present labor is only capital in the
inchoate. I should be sorry if the day ever came when labor was the
serf, and capital the robber baron, as--let us frankly acknowledge--it
is elsewhere.

In this connection three points should be emphasized. Whether they
should be praised or blamed I do not know; but the points are these:

The Senate in Canada being appointed for life has acted as a breakwater
of adamant and reinforced concrete against all labor or capital
legislation that has arisen from the passions of the moment. More than
once when labor or capital, holding the whip handle in the Commons,
would have forced through hasty legislation as to compensation, as to
liability, as to non-liability--the leaders in the Commons have said
frankly in caucus to the Senate: We are dependent on the vote for our
places here. You are not. We are letting this fool bill through, but
we are letting it through because we know you will kill it. Kill it!

In the next place, "the twilight zone" between federal and provincial
power in matters of labor has proved an unmitigated curse. When the
syndicalists of Europe, known in America as the Industrial Workers of
the World, succeeded in tying up railroad construction and almost
ruining the contractors of two transcontinental systems in British
Columbia a few years ago, endless delay in terminating an impossible
situation occurred through the province trying to throw the burden of
dealing with the matter on the Dominion, and the Dominion trying to
throw the burden on the province. Both province and Dominion were
afraid of the labor vote. The losses caused during that three months'
strike in the constructi