y? Surely three great
transcontinental systems for a country with a population not larger
than New York State were enough. So argued the East, and a great many
conservative people in the West. Better make haste slowly, especially
as it was becoming more and more evident that Canada would have to come
to the aid of two of the transcontinentals or see them go bankrupt.

Then something happened. In fact, two or three things happened.

The population, which had remained almost stationary for half a
century, jumped two million in less than ten years. Immigrants began
pouring in at the rate of four hundred thousand a year--they were
coming literally faster than the railroads could carry them.

It sometimes takes an outsider's view of us to make us realize
ourselves. Do you realize--they asked--that your three grain provinces
alone are three times the area of the German Empire? Here is a grain
field as long as from Petrograd to Paris and of unknown width north and
south. You have 480,000,000 acres of wheat lands. (The United States
plants only 50,000,000 acres a year to wheat.) You are cultivating
only 16,000,000 acres. If there is a grain blockade now, what will
there be when you cultivate 100,000,000 acres? Yes--we know--you may
send Alberta grain west by Panama to Liverpool; but even with half
going by Panama, can the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence route take care of
the rest? We hear about a constant shortage of cars; of elevators
bulging with grain every September; of miles of lake cargo carriers
waiting to get in and out of their berths every October before
navigation closes. Do you know--they asked--that you have five times
more traffic--seventy-two million tons--going through your canals than
is expected for Panama? Do you know your rail traffic has jumped from
36,000,000 tons in 1900 to 90,000,000 tons in 1912? If you sent
200,000,000 bushels of wheat abroad in 1912 and 158,000,000 bushels in
1914--a poor year--what will you send in 1920 with twice as much land
under wheat?

Two other comparatively unpondered facts were the hammers that drove
the argument for a Hudson Bay route home and forced the Canadian
government, irrespective of party, to back the project. The two facts
were these--of Canada's agricultural exports eighty per cent. went to
Great Britain. In spite of Canada spending a billion on her
transportation system, look at the fact well--it is a poser--only from
thirty-two to forty per cent.