iterally be damming the springs of
her national literature. Canada considers her population too small to
support a purely national literature. Not so reasons Belgium of
smaller population; nor Ireland; nor Scotland. The fault here is
primarily in the copyright law. A book published first in the United
States gains international copyright. A book published first in Canada
may be pirated in the United States or England; and on such printed
editions no payment can be collected by the author. The profits in
England and the United States were lost to authors on two of the most
popular books ever published by Canadians. [1]

[1] Charles Gordon's _Black Rock_, pirated from his own publisher, sale
half a million; Kirby's _Chien d'Or_, sale one million.

CHAPTER V

WHY RECIPROCITY WAS REJECTED

I

If American capital and American enterprise dominate Canadian mines,
Canadian timber interests, Canadian fisheries; if American elevators
are strung across the grain provinces and American flour mills have
branches established from Winnipeg to Calgary; if American implement
companies and packing interests now universally control subsidiaries in
Canada--why was reciprocity rejected? If it is good for Canada that
American capital establish big paper mills in Quebec, why is it not
good for Canada to have free ingress for her paper-mill products to
American markets? The same of the British Columbia shingle industry,
of copper ores, of wheat and flour products? If it is good for the
Canadian producer to buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the
highest, why was reciprocity rejected? Implements for the farm south
of the border are twenty-five per cent. cheaper than in the Canadian
Northwest. Canadian wheat milled in Minneapolis enjoys a lower freight
rate and consequently a higher market than Canadian wheat milled in
Europe, as sixteen and twenty-two are to forty and fifty cents--the
former being the freight cost to a Minneapolis mill; the latter, the
freight cost to a European mill. Why, then, was reciprocity rejected?

From 1867, Canada had been intermittently seeking reciprocity with the
United States. Now, at last, the offer of it came to her unsolicited.
Why did she reject it by a vote that would have been unanimous but for
the prairie provinces? Though the desire for reciprocity with the
United States was exploited politically more by the Liberals--or
low-tariff party--than by the Conservatives--the hig