rom trunk lines into
the United States, and all the great trunk lines having subsidiaries
like the South Shore and "Soo" crossing the border, and all the lines
having international running rights over one another's roadbed, there
are more than sixty railroads feeding Canadian traffic into the United
States and American traffic into Canada. This explains why of all the
export grain traffic from the Northwest forty-four per cent. only goes
from Canada by all-Canadian routing, while fifty-six per cent. comes to
seaboard over American lines; and all this is independent of the
enormous American traffic through the Canadian "Soo" by the Great
Lakes, in some years, reaching a total five times as large as the
traffic expected through Panama. One can not contemplate this constant
interchange of traffic without recalling the metaphor of the warp and
the woof, of the shuttle weaving a fabric of international commerce
that ignores dead reciprocity pacts and an invisible boundary. Yet
England does three-fourths of the carrying trade for the United States
across the Atlantic. Spite of high tariff on one side of the ocean and
no tariff on the other side, spite of eagle and lion rampant, British
ships weave like busy shuttles across the silver lanes of the sea an
invisible warp and woof that are stronger than cables of steel, or
political treaty.

So much for lines of traffic between Canada and the United States!
What of the traffic carried?

American imports to Canada have doubled in three years; or increased
from two hundred sixteen million dollars' worth in 1910 to four hundred
fifteen million dollars' worth in 1913; and instead of the war causing
a falling off, it is likely to cause an increase; for Canada's
purchases from Europe have been cut off and must be supplied by the
United States. Of the imports to Canada, two-thirds are manufactured
articles--motors, locomotives, cars, coffee, cotton, iron, steel,
implements, coal. At time of writing exports from the United States
now rank the United Kingdom first, Canada second, Germany third. When
you consider that Canada's purchasing power is that of seven million
people, where the United Kingdom's is forty-five and Germany's
sixty-five million, the significance of these comparative ranks is
apparent.

From Canada to the United States, exports increased from $95,000,000 in
1910 to $120,000,000 in 1913, not because Canada's producing power is
so much smaller than her buying p