aggregate daily capacity of
the furnaces of the Dominion was then 445 tons.

At the revision of the tariff in 1897 the bounty system was greatly
extended, and under its aegis two great modern iron and steel
plants--one at Sydney, N.S., and one at Sault Ste. Marie, O., came
{420} into existence. Modern furnaces have also been established at
North Sydney, Hamilton, Welland, Midland, and Port Arthur, and in 1908
the output of pig-iron from all these plants was a little over 600,000
tons. A large proportion of this pig-iron is converted at the Sault
Ste. Marie and the Sydney plants into steel rails, for which the
constant extension of the railways furnishes a steady market.

Next to iron and steel the most important manufacturing industries are
the textiles. Both woollens and cottons were manufactured in Canada in
small quantities before Confederation. A small woollen mill was
established at Coburg, Ontario, in 1846, and even earlier than this
there were woollen mills in Nova Scotia which had made the province
notable for their Halifax tweeds. In 1908, however, the woollen
industry generally was not in a flourishing condition. Of the 157
mills in existence when the census of 1901 was taken, 28 had
disappeared before 1908, and several of the 129 that remained were
closed either permanently or temporarily. The value of the woollen
goods produced in 1908 did not exceed seven million dollars.

The cotton industry, which is well organised and financially strong,
has its largest centres at Montreal and Valleyfield, Quebec. The
mills, of which there are about twenty-three, are large, modern, and
well-equipped, and the value of their output is more than double that
of the woollen mills of the Dominion.

The industry which ranks next in importance is probably the manufacture
of farm implements and {421} machinery, which is located at Brantford
and Hamilton. Hamilton is also the centre of the manufacture of
electrical equipment, stoves, wire, steel castings, hardware, and many
other products of metal. At Montreal are the Angus shops, which rank
with the finest on the North American Continent, at which locomotives
are built for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 1908 the Grand Trunk
Railway established similar shops on a correspondingly modern scale for
locomotive building at Stratford, Ontario.

Shipbuilding was an important industry in the maritime provinces and
Quebec in the old days of wooden sailing ships; but wi