de restrictions across the border.
That was after the United States had declared war. The high priest of
protection himself invented a phrase "economic unit" to express North
America. He wanted markets to find their own levels by their own
routes. He no longer had any fear of Canada being Americanized.
Canada's nationhood was already defined in the trenches more than ever
it had been in tariffs. In Sir George's phrase the food producers of
North America were to become one vast international group. When Foster
was "Yea" to Macdonald in 1887 and 1891, before he became "Amen" to
Chamberlain in 1903, this economic unity was called continentalism,
which to Foster was the mother of annexation, and Free Trade Liberals
were traitors to the Empire.

Economic unity, however, meant far more than Sir George intended it to
mean. He admitted the principle of free-trade only in production. In
spite of tariffs North America became, not only a vast group of
producers, but a huge family of consumers. Every Victory Loan raised
money that was spent in once more paying wages and buying materials for
war production in Canada. Every time that money went round the circle,
prices for many of the staple commodities went higher. The Department
of Trade registered a tremendous increase in the cash value of exports
even when the bulk value changed very little. The more loans "put over
the top," the more money there seemed to be. The more hazardous
shipping became through submarines, the greater the scarcity, and the
demand--and the price paid. Sir George witnessed this phenomenon: the
fewer producers left by conscription on the land, in the mines, in the
factories, the more Canada was able to export--in cash values.

This must have given a good Tory economist loss of sleep. No man could
have analyzed the paradox more ably than Sir George. But so far as we
can recollect, he published no illuminating bulletins from his
Department to tell us about it. How we should have enjoyed his master
mind elucidating the phenomenon of a continent being gradually denuded
of goods and flushed with money; of prices inexorably mounting; of
money hungering for goods; of fabulous wages for munition-making and
anything else that could be scaled up to meet the competition unloading
themselves into Victory Bonds at a sure profit, and the surplus into
commodities most of which were not made in Canada and must therefore
come from the United States. What a