Historical Articles Archive

The markets of the world are in a strange condition at the present time. Prices have reached a level that they have never reached before. Wages Are abnormally high, and there is a disposition on the part of most working people to keep one eye on the clock. People everywhere are complaining loudly about the high cost of living, but it is worth observing that extravagance and improvidence are marked characteristics of the majority of the people of this country at the present time. People are...

Recently one of the leading Toronto daily newspapers devoted two editorials to urging the people of this country to take advantage of the export trade with Great Britain opened up to them through the Empire agreements in Ottawa last year. The writer of the editorials particularly emphasized the possibilities open to the Canadian farmer through these agreements. As he phrased it “The Canadian farmer has the ball at his feet. Can he be induced to kick it and score a goal?” This...

Two correspondents this week discuss the editorial position of “The Farmer’s Advocate” with relation to the tariff question. One asks why we do not go the length of advocating absolute free trade as being in the highest interests of the farming community of Canada; the other maintains that a high protective tariff system is the boot-strap by which a nation may lift itself into a state of prosperity and affluence. The position of “The Farmer’s Advocate”...

Every farmer has a host of unpaid farm hands to whom he gives never even a thank you.Long before he gets out of bed, unless he gets up with the gray dawn, these hands are “on the job,” and if the farmer could compute the amount in dollars and cents that they save him in a year he would be amazed. The trouble is that he can’t see it with his two eyes, and so it never occurs to him that it exists. On the contrary, so stupidly, blindly unimaginative is he, sometimes, that if...

Of late, the papers have been full of most heart rendering appeals for aid to the poor-famine stricken people of China. It seems to me that our protectionist politicians ought to take this situation to heart. Why should not the food growers in China be protected against outside competition? Anyone who happens to have a supply of food in the drought stricken area can make a fortune out of it and he might fairly reasonably say, according to protectionist philosophy, “Patronize home...

Not long ago I saw in one of our dailies a very good cartoon in which “Food” and “Wages” were standing on a high scaffold with a ladder leading therefrom, Each of these worthies was pointing to the ladder and urging the other to “go down first.” Food, wages, transportation and manufacture seem so inextricably interwoven in their welfare and existence that it is difficult to say what the future holds out in the way of profits and prices. Primarily the...

A greater political surprise was never sprung on the Province of Ontario than that of October 20, when a Government was unmistakably defeated, and yet no party gained a victory of ample proportions to place it in command. Prior to the election there were no accusations against the Hearst Government of sufficient seriousness to make its return doubtful, and practically everyone looked for Sir William Hearst to be returned to power, though with a considerably reduced following in the...

Practically ever since the Harding Administration came into power a fight has been going on between the manufacturers and financial interests in the United States and the farmers as represented by the Farm Bloc. In this fight the interests of farmers in this country are identical with those of the Big Interests across the line. Farmers in this country want to be allowed to ship their surplus farm products across the border without any tariff restrictions. The Farm Bloc in the United States...

The forthcoming election on October 20 is fraught with many possibilities, and it is of unprecedented importance to the voters of Ontario. We have had many interesting elections, but none gave greater promise of affecting the future Government of this Province more than the one to be staged next Monday. Past contests have usually featured two parties where politics was the main issue, and the “sovereign” voter was impressed with that fact. There is an awakening now. Farmers are...

  The Trusted Pilot Who Weathered The World-Wide Storm, When the Fair-Weather Sailors Quit Bennett Rode out the Gale   A Liberal Government ushered in the Great Depression into the farms and factories of Canada, and went out of office in 1930 leaving the Dominion practically defenseless in the face of the greatest economic storm in history. The Liberal Government was not responsible for the world-wide depression, but it was directly responsible for the hopelessly...

We hear another “sound of a going in the mulberry trees” in a movement that stirs young farmers to go on a crusade to awaken the youth of the land to the need of building a new Canada. Other groups have attempted something of the same sort, in the past, but not in just the same way young leaders are working. Agriculture is in a dangerous situation, they say. It is “divided in its loyalties, confused in its politics, a victim of vast new forces which it has failed to...

Every Ontario woman has a chance within the next month to render an outstanding service to her country, to her own community, and to every child. Will she grasp the opportunity, or will she leave it to someone else, and perhaps thus lose the benefit for herself and for the whole province? On October 23rd the Ontario Government asks the people to again express their opinion on the question of Prohibition. The questions on the ballot paper are: - “Are you in favour of the continuance...

If this country ever needed sane thinking and right living it is in this year, 1919. Sobriety of life and thought will be just as necessary, too, in the immediate future, and it was in response to this feeling that the editorial was written which appeared in the issue of September 4, and entitled “The Provincial Political Arena.” For the same reason, W.C. Good’s friendly comment on the editorial, which appears in this issue, is much appreciated. While we cannot agree with...

There is an insistent demand at the present time among Western farmers for the restoration of the Wheat Board. Mr. H.W. Wood, for the Canadian Council of Agriculture, while addressing the agricultural committee of the House of Commons recently, said that Western farmers were particularly hard hit by the fall in prices and that something must be one to assist the to get a higher price for their wheat. Western farmers were particularly hard hit by the fall in prices and that something must be...

There is little use attempting to persuade ourselves that the new United States tariff bill, which has recently come into effect, and which takes the place of the Emergency Tariff, will not have an injurious effect on the trade of this country. There is nothing to be gained by minimizing its effect on our commercial activities and on prices, but, at the same time, we should not be guilty of the mistake of magnifying the harm it will do us. It may be, as a good many people say, that the...

  HOW BENNETT and STEVENS LOST OUR MARKETS Ruthless shutting out of foreign goods was the burden of Mr. Bennet’s trade plan of 1930. That part of his promise was actually kept. As Hon. H. H. Stevens, Minister of Trade and Commerce, said when the new 1930 tariff was introduced: “Our idea is that nothing hereafter will be imported except what cannot be grown or manufactured or otherwise produced at home.” The part of Mr. Bennet’s promise that was not kept...

The increase in soil productivity, if such is ever made, must depend largely on the four following factors, cited by C.R. Barns of Minnesota Agricultural College, viz: (1) A liberal and persistent use of fertilizers; (2) the careful selection of seed, which, if persisted in year after year will of itself result in a great increase in yield; (3) a systematic rotation of crops; (4) better cultivation and tillage. The first of these factors involves the keeping of all the live stock possible,...

Conditions for farmers this year are more encouraging than they have been in some years. Debts incurred during the boom period are gradually being paid, and with the tendency of the prices of things farmers buy to come down and the price of what they have to sell to go up there is every justification for the increased optimism one meets at the present time. After the slump in prices came there was a natural tendency to spend as little money as possible. This year in driving through the...

NO; the school-teacher has not been of much account. In the rural districts she has, perhaps, been a leader, socially, but she has not been of very much account. If she had been, or, rather, if her office had been considered so, trustees would have “tumbled over themselves” trying, first to get the best woman available for the place, and then to give her a salary commensurate with the importance of the work she was expected to do. Twenty years ago teachers in Ontario taught...

In discussing the political situation last month we urged that a new national policy be adopted- one that would focus attention on our primary industries; that would so direct our trade, labor, financial and educational policies as to make these industries sufficiently attractive to our young men, in comparison with the secondary industries or professional life, that they would be attracted to them. It was our contention that this was the surest way to relieve unemployment and eventually to...