ere in the Empire he made some glorious
patriotic speech. On a subject which causes many Canadians to explode,
often with ill-considered accusation of "the Yankees," our greatest
maker of pure and applied speeches seldom has a word to say. But he
knows. Sir George Foster knows our economic subjugation by the 12 to 1
method, even under a tariff. Alas! he hails from the Maritimes, a land
of great people, of constructive Canadians who have too often been in
absolute economic need of more of that sort of subjugation.

Then there was the never-dead dragon of high prices for everything,
which our St. George made no real attempt to spear. That is a long
story. It was his department which furnished the Food Controller, the
duties which the Trade Department could not discharge. Well remembered
are the evangelical injunctions of the Controller to consume perishable
and export other products; to live on garden truck grown in back yards
and corner lots so that grain and butter and bacon and eggs and oatmeal
might run the submarine blockade on the high seas. There was no fault
to find with this, so long as it was economy. But heaven knew what
armies of housewives, already desperate from lack of help, were
dragooned into making their kitchens amateur canning factories where
they wasted good fruit along with tragically expensive sugar in jars
that approximated the cost of cut glass. And after all the slavery and
the self denial, butter and eggs that were not shipped abroad because
there was no room in munition ships to carry them, vanished
mysteriously in the lower price season into some limbo known as
cold-storage, only to emerge when it suited the storage barons at
prices as high as were paid in Europe. No doubt there is an economic
philosophy in cold-storage just as there is in hydro-power. But we
have always supposed its virtue was in taking care of a perishable
surplus, so that when there is a scarcity the surplus can be released
at a reasonable profit.

Did the able Minister of Trade ever stoop to enlighten us with the
economics of this? If so, the recollection has faded.

There is at any time, whether in peace or war, a great function for the
Department of Trade to perform in the matter of what is the reasonable
cost of any commodity in general demand. But no Trade Department in
this country has ever done it. There is always plenty of time for the
consideration of new markets, the plotting of new trade routes a