as Canada found herself?

II

Without any brief for or against Socialism as a system, it may be said
that for many years Socialism will play little part in Canadian
affairs. In areas like Germany, where the population is three hundred
and ten per square mile; or France, where the population is one hundred
and eighty-nine per square mile; or England, where the population is
over five hundred per square mile; or Saxony, where the population is
eight hundred and thirty per square mile--one can understand the claim
of the most rabid and extreme Socialist that the great proportion of
the people can never by any chance own their own freehold; that the
great proportion of the toilers are not having a fair chance in an open
field; but in Canada where there are millions of acres untaken, where
the population is not quite two to the square mile, it is impossible to
raise the cry that every man, and any man, can not have all the
freehold he is manly enough to go out and take. The grievance becomes
preposterous and a joke. There is more land uninhabited and open to
preemption in Canada than is owned in freehold. There are more forests
standing in Canada than have been cut. There are more mines than there
are workmen, and only the edge of Canada's mineral lands have been
explored. There are more fish uncaught than have ever been hooked. I
have heard soap-box orators in Canada rant about the plutocrats
gobbling the resources of the country; and I have gone to their offices
and shown them on the map that any man could become a plutocrat by
going out and gobbling some more, provided he had brains and brawn and
gobbled hard enough instead of gabbled; and I have been answered these
very words: "But we don't want that. We want to inflame the masses
with hatred for the classes so that the laborer will take over all
industry." When I have pointed out that there are "no masses" nor
"classes" in Canada--that all are laborers, I have been met with a
blank stare.

The case is a standing joke in one province of a man who as an agitator
used to rave at "the British flag as a bloody rag." The police were
never quite sure whether to arrest him for treason or let him blow off
steam and exhaust. They wisely chose the latter course. Prosperity
came to the town. The man sold his small bit of real estate for
something under a hundred thousand. He didn't stay to divide his
unearned increment among his fellow agitators. He hied him to