prophetic commentary it would have
made on the "buyers' market" which followed the armistice. What
wonderful reading it would have made if Sir George had issued replies
to those commercial newspaper editors over the border who rushed
jubilating into print to say with fabulous statistics that Canada was
now the heaviest customer that nation had. How we should have liked to
hear officially from the Minister of Trade how Broadway was infecting
the country, luxuries reeling in argosies over the dry land to Canada,
and Canada buying herself bankrupt on the exchanges; and that though
there were powerful economic reasons for it all, we had better enlist
in an army of economy instead of being conscripted later by the
super-tariff on luxuries and the luxury tax.

But the Minister of Trade confined himself to growling that we should
all wear patches and old clothes. Which was one good reason why many
people did not. It was easy for Sir George to wear patched trousers if
he felt like so doing. He would have been merely picturesque, like
those ragged prophets of old. Most of us still had to invest in some
sort of decoration. Anyhow a large number of people had the money to
spend; and the more they spent the more they approved of self-denial in
other people.

This problem of American penetration is big enough at any time here.
The Department of Trade is the place where it is most clearly
understood. We are constantly warned about the danger, not only to our
Canadian dollar, but to our national independence if we persist in
importing motor cars, fashionable footwear, party gowns and lingerie
and hats, art furniture, home decorations, phonographs, moving
pictures, and magazines. But we go on doing it; because Canada,
whether in war or peace, fails to produce a great many things that
people like to have and to wear and to go about in; and for those that
she does we are charged the foreign price plus the duty and more; so
that in many and many a case it has been found more economical to buy
the article from catalogue, paying the duty and the express charges.

Has Sir George ever enlightened us about this? Has he ever tried to
inform the Canadian manufacturer that if he expects to hold our
allegiance even under a more or less protective tariff, he must refrain
from charging the consumer all the traffic and more than the consumer
will stand? We fail to remember; even when we recollect that on thus
and such an occasion somewh