Evening Star Newspaper, December 16, 1934, Page 90

the world. Forty years ago it produced only $1,000,000 worth of gold. Last year with more than $60,000,000, it stood sec- ond in the world’s production. Soon it will stand first. Three-quarters of the gold is in Ontario. With it is silver, The government of Ontario, building & rail- way to the northern sea as a sort of dem- onstration, found itself using rocks full of silver as ballast. On this rose all the sudden glory of Cobalt and Porcupine and International Nickel. WITH these economic changes came ' the great utility corporations and municipal franchise companies, all pay- ing toll to the province. In Canada, un- like the United States, all municipal governments and institutions are under the control of the province. Ontario itself, through its Hydro-Electric Com- mission, generates and sells power. Quebec takes toll from those who do. Enormous sources of taxation are thus opened to' the provincial treasury. Through its power over licenses it han- dles the whole of the liquor business, the complacent Dominion having for- bidden private import. The Dominion still levies its customs and excises, but the provinces, with their commission stores and hotel licenses, add what the traffic will bear. Prince Edward Island, where the peo- ple prefer good liquor at moderate prices, alone keeps prohibition. To liquor is added gasoline, The un- foreseen powers of the province enable it to gather a harvest from motor licenses and a gasoline tax; its obvious duty compels it to build vast highways. The province, not the Dominion, is be- coming the great traffic manager; the province has the truck and the crowded bus; the Dominion the freight car, the half-empty coach and the lonely Pull- man. With all this has come—or came until the slump—great individual wealth. Even the rich die, and the provinces, not the Dominion, sweep in the in- heritance taxes. The Dominion has the power, but not the will, to use it; it is understood that death is a provineial matter. A provincial register counts the dead.. A provincial assessor values be- longings. All of this means that the Canadian provinces have turned into economic empires. Look at Ontario. It spreads 1,000 miles from east to west and 1,075 miles from north to south. In the north its coast runs along the mournful shores of the James and Hudson bays—a wil- derness lashed by the Northern sea and buried under ice; on the south the peach trees of Niagara bloom in the latitude of Northern Spain. It has an area of 412,000 square miles—greater than France and Germany combined. It has its ports and harbors along all the Great Lakes except Michigan. It has gold and silver, huge deposits of copper and more nickel than all the rest of the world. It has a quarter of a million square miles of forest; water power to nearly 7,000,000 available horse- power, of which more than 2,000,000 is developed by turbine installation. Be- fore the slump its revenue had gone beyond $60,000,000 a year, of which only about $2,500,000 represented its subsidy doie. Contrast this with the humble budz:t of 1869, with a revenue of $2,200,000, of which the chief source was subsidy. '/\s ONTARIO, so with Quebec, a giant of equal and similar resources. In the West, beyond the middle wilderness, the three provinces—Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan—count as one, a vast grain empire, with a mineral hinterland, Beyond the Rockies British Columbia, with the best climate and resources of all, awaits its illimitable Pacific future. Even the maritime provinces moan of what they might be if let alone. For the moment all the provinces are held motionless in the economic dislo- cation that has gripped the whole world, intensified in their case by the added dislocation that they have set up. Each blames the other. The maritimes call commission after commission to hear them rehearse the litany of their sor- rows—their vanished ships, their unused coal, their uncaught fish. They blame the greed of central Canada and are de- termined to turn into something, just what they don’t know. In Central Canada the taxpayers, half bankrupt and with their property hardly worth its annual tax, blame the mari- THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., The New and Old Montreal. ~—Prom an Etching by Paul P. Berdanier, through courtesy of Kennedy & Co. times and blame the west. Ever since the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pa- cific began, central Canada has had to pay the price of admirality in land grants, money grants and freight sub- sidies. But for the future the west would look like a poor investment and the mari- times a mistaken charity. In the west the farmers of the grain empire, with prices crashed, look on themselves as the victims of a confidence trick and blame Eastern Canada. In all of this the Dominion govern- ment, which ought to lead and guide and save the country, is hampered at every step by its lack of economic control and its inability by lapse of time and custom to use what it has. In an act of magni- ficent folly it gave away to the clamorous provinces, in 1930, all the public land, minerals and resources of the northwest. This utterly crippled any comprehensive scheme of immigration and land settle- ment. Its power over banking is exclu- sive only as far as circulating legal tender goes. Its control of credit is traversed by the huge credit institutions of the provinces—trust companies, loan com- panies, the financial houses and the stock and produce exchanges. Its control of transport is crippled by the provincial lordships of the soil and of water power; the St. Lawrence sea way—a national, or, rather an inter- national, a world project, rightly or wrongly one of the huge things on the continent—cannot move an inch without provincial approval. The Dominjon controls navigation, but the provinces control water power; in other words, one owns the apple and the other owns the skin. Neither can eat it. The federal government doesn't even own its own home. Ottawa is in Ontario. It must keep as dry or as wet, as sabba- tarian or as sinful as Ontario wishes it to be. It can see a film if Ontario thinks it fit to see; if not, not. THE Dominion government runs the post and delivers the letters; it looks after the weather admirably. It has a bureau of statistics second to none in the world. It arrests and hangs crim- inals. It has excellent experimental farms and several first-class hotels. The courts having awarded it the air, it can fly over the provinces, though it can’t land. But the economic life of the country it does not control. It runs a huge rail- way system on the principle of some- thing for everybody, adding deficit to deficit in the mock name of a National Railway Co., which, if it were a railway company, would have been hopelessly bankrupt long ago. For unemployment and national recovery it hands out money to the provinces to spend. What is being done or attempted nationally in the United States will be done, if at all, in Canada by the provinces. Meantime the Dominion deals with the provinces through their premiers \ Yule Tree Regulations Modified HE Federal Government has recognized the approach of the holiday season by an- nouncing new regulations concerning the ship- ment of Christmas trees. Shipments may be made from a number of areas formerly quar- antined because of gypsy moth infection, while other areas heretofore unrestricted are placed in the barred zone. Generally speaking, trees from cultivated nurseries, accompanied by nursery certificates that they are free of in- fection, may be shipped, but large areas still are barred from shipment of trees gathered in their natural habitat. The increasing intensity of gypsy-moth dam- age in Northern New England has necessitated the extension of the areas designated as gen- erally infested to considerable parts of Oxford, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Lincoln, Knox, Waldo and Hancock Counties in Maine; parts of Car- roll and Grafton Counties in New Hampshire, and two townships of Windsor County in Ver- mont. A similar situation in Southern Con- mecticut has resulted in the addition of three townships of New London County to the gen- erally infested area. All these sections have heretofore been in the so-called lightly in- fested area from which forest-grown Christ- mas trees could be shipped interstate under inspection and certification. In the meantime, scouting in Northern Ver- mont showed that certain sections of the regu- lated areas are apparently not infested with the:ypcymothatthhume and they are ac-_ those The includes Orleans County and parts of Essex, Lamoille and Addison Counties, Vt. ‘The brown-tail moth has spread northward and westward in recent years, especially across Western New Hampshire into Vermont. The revision brings the quarantine up to date in much of the Southern two-thirds of New Hampshire, and several towns in Caledonia, Orange, Windham and Windsor Counties, Vt. Dncmm 16, 1934. . much as with sovereign states, by con- claves of ambassadors. The big men of the country—any, if not most of them now prefer provincial careers. The Taschereaus and the Davids and the Fer- gusons 50 years ago would all have sat at Ottawa; not now. The provinces have fostered the idea that no change can be made without their consent. This is a doubtful propo- sition. The act of 1867 had no general amending clause. The only method of amendment was by a further (imperial) act. This was done several times on addresses from the Commons and the Senate; in legal form the power was plenary and without limit. But the legal form changed to legal fiction, and the statute of Westminster ‘a1 1931 ended it altogether. Hence the provinces claim that there is no power above them to alter or control their rights. It is the negation of the existence of a com- mon state. But there they sit, immov- able. Some provincial premiers even refuse to come and discuss the matter. This economie separation, which is a reflection of what is happening all over the world, is pressing hard on Canada; it will press harder with every passing decade. It is not the fault or the failure of any particular set of men. The fault lies with the times and with the people of Canada, not with the government. The people have let themselves contract from the great hopes and the common aspira- tion of early days, when the East built the West and people at least talked of a nation. Now they are all province men. Are there any “Canadians” left? The Prime Minister, Mr. Bennett, is one, and I am another. Outside of us two, who else? Cattle Disease Fought ANG'S disease, which in epidemic form is & serious problem for dairy farmers, is being fought vigorously by the Bureau of Animal Ine dustry in co-operation with the various States. Tests are being conducted in 22 of the States and experts anticipate that at least 15 per cent of the cattle will react. Where infected enimals are found they are slaughtered, with the farmer being compensated at the rate of $20 for grade cows and $50 for thoroughbreds. Early Frosts Harmful ARLY frosts during August have served to - cut the wheat crop of Cenada, and the effects of the freeze, coupled with the continu- ing poor conditions brought about by drought, served to bring a considerable reduction in the harvest. The potato crop also was small and the poor condition of the pastures, also blam- able on the drought, reduced the output of dairy products, SICK HEADACHES were driving me CRAZY! @ Isuffered intensely from sick headaches for years—until I wished my head would open to relieve the pain. Nothing seemed to help the constipation that caused them. hen I was visiting my sister-in-law in Tacoma she gave me her favorite medi- cine, FEEN-A-MINT. I feel duty bound to let you know whata help FEEN-A-MINT has been. It cleansed out my system won- derfully—the poisons left me. And it keeps me so regular t I am a new woman. It doesn’t cramp or gripe a person either, T’ve told all my friends about it. The easy, pleasant way to combat constipation Typical of hundreds of unsolicited letters in our files! Over 15,000,000 men and women have found that FEEN-A-MINT is the easy, ’Iflnnt way to combat constipation and all its attendant ills. It is thorough and at the same time gentle. Pleasant to c——ehldm thew n like their favorite gum. you chew it, it works more flnomghly flun ordinary laxatives. Try it and see—15 and 25¢ at any druggist’s. FEEN-A-MINT THE CHEWING-GUM LAXATIVE