smallest of the American colonies. For the same reason that
reciprocity failed between Canada and the United States--because when
Newfoundland would have come in, Canada was lethargic. Nobody was big
enough politically to seize and swing the opportunity. Because when
Canada was ready, Newfoundland was no longer in the mood to come in;
and nobody in Newfoundland was big enough to seize and swing an
opportunity for the empire.

It was in the nineties. Fish had fallen to a ruinous price and for
some temporary reason the fishing was poor. There had been bank kiting
in Newfoundland's financial system. She had no railroads and few
steamships. Her mines had not been exploited, and she did not know her
own wealth in the pulp-wood areas of the interior. In fact, there are
sections of Northern Newfoundland not yet explored inland. Every bank
in the colony had collapsed. Newfoundland emissaries came to Ottawa to
feel the pulse for federation. The population at that time was
something under two hundred thousand.

Now Canada has one very bad British characteristic. She has the John
Bull trick of drawing herself up to every new proposal with an air of
"What is that to us?" At this time Canada herself was in bad way. She
had just completed her first big transcontinental. Times were dull.
The Crown Colony of Newfoundland did not come begging admission to
confederation. No political party could do that and live; for politics
in Newfoundland are a fanatical religion. I have heard the warden of
the penitentiary say that if it were not for politics he would never
have any inmates. It is a fact that out-port prisons have been closed
for lack of inmates, but long as elections recur, come broken heads.
So the Crown Colony did not seek admission. It came feeling the Ottawa
pulse, and the Ottawa pulse was slow and cold. "What's Newfoundland to
us?" said Canada. One of the commissioners told me the real hitch was
the terms on which the Dominion should assume the Crown Colony's small
public debt; so the chance passed unseized. Newfoundland set herself
to do what Canada had done, when the United States refused reciprocity.
She built national railways. She launched a system of national ships.
She nearly bankrupted her public treasury with public works and
ultimately handed her transportation system over to semi-private
management. Outside interests began buying the pulp-wood areas. Pulp
became one of the great industries.