tion if the glib users of the phrase have the faintest idea what
they mean by it. It is a catchword. It sounds ominously deep as the
owl's wise but meaningless "too-whoo." English publicists who have
never been nearer Canada than a Dominion postage stamp wisely warn
Canada against the siren seductions of Columbia's republicanism.

If the phrase means that reciprocity might lead to annexation, Canada's
repudiation of reciprocity is sufficient disproof of the imputation.
If it means increased and increasing trade weaving a warp and woof of
international commerce--then--yes--there is an "Americanizing of
Canada" as there is a Canadianizing of the United States through
international traffic; but the users of the phrase should remember that
the country doing the largest trade of all countries with the United
States is Great Britain; and does one speak of the "Americanizing" of
Great Britain? If it means that in ten years two-fifths as many
Americans have settled in Western Canada as there are native-born
Canadians in the West--then--yes--Canada pleads guilty. She has spent
money like water and is spending it yet to attract these American
settlers; and they, on their part, have brought with them an average of
fifteen hundred dollars a settler, not counting money invested by
capitalists. If in the era between 1900 and 1911, 650,719 American
settlers came to Western Canada, and from 1911 to 1914, six hundred
thousand more--or say, with natural increase, a million and a quarter
in fifteen years; to counterpoise that consideration remember that in
the era from 1885 to 1895 one-fifth of Canada's native population moved
to the United States.

There is not the slightest doubt that within ten years the balance of
political power in Canada has shifted from the solidarity of French
Quebec to the progressive West; but that can hardly be considered as of
political import when two out of four western provinces rejected
reciprocity.

What, then, is meant by the phrase "Americanizing of Canada"?

Consider for a moment what is happening!

Twenty years ago the number of American and Canadian railroads meeting
at the boundary and crossing the boundary numbered some six. Ten years
ago in the West alone there were sixteen branch lines feeding traffic
into one another's territory across the border. To-day, if you count
all the American railroads reaching up from trunk lines north to
Canada, and all the Canadian spurs reaching south f