Canada: the Empire of the North | Page 4

the magnet
that will attract the immigrant to Canada. The United States wants no
more immigrants.
And the movement to Canada has begun. To her shores are thronging
the hosts of the Old World's dispossessed, in multitudes greater than
any army that ever marched to conquest under Napoleon. When the
history of America comes to be written in a hundred years, it will not
be the record of a slaughter field with contending nations battling for
the mastery, or generals wading to glory knee-deep in blood. It will be

an account of the most wonderful race movement, the most wonderful
experiment in democracy the world has known.
The people thronging to Canada for homes, who are to be her nation
builders, are people crowded out of their home lands, who had n't room
for the shoulder swing manhood and womanhood need to carve out
honorable careers. Look at them in the streets of London, or Glasgow,
or Dublin, or Berlin, these émigrés, as the French called their royalists,
whom revolution drove from home, and I think the word émigré is a
truer description of the newcomer to Canada than the word "emigrant."
They are {x} poor, they are desperately poor, so poor that a month's
illness or a shut-down of the factory may push them from poverty to
the abyss. They are thrifty, but can neither earn nor save enough to feel
absolutely sure that the hollow-eyed specter of Want may not seize
them by the throat. They are willing to work, so eager to work that at
the docks and the factory gates they trample and jostle one another for
the chance to work. They are the underpinnings, the underprops of an
old system, these émigrés, by which the masses were expected to toil
for the benefit of the classes.
"It's all the average man or woman is good for," says the Old Order,
"just a day's wage representing bodily needs."
"Wait," says the New Order. "Give him room! Give him an opportunity!
Give him a full stomach to pump blood to his muscles and life to his
brain! Wait and see! If he fails then, let him drop to the bottom of the
social pit without stop of poorhouse or help!"
A penniless immigrant boy arrives in New York. First he peddles
peanuts, then he trades in a half-huckster way whatever comes to hand
and earns profits. Presently he becomes a fur trader and invests his
savings in real estate. Before that man dies, he has a monthly income
equal to the yearly income of European kings. That man's name was
John Jacob Astor.
Or a young Scotch boy comes out on a sailing vessel to Canada. For a
score of years he is an obscure clerk at a distant trading post in
Labrador. He comes out of the wilds to take a higher position as land

commissioner. Presently he is backing railroad ventures of tremendous
cost and tremendous risk. Within thirty years from the time he came
out of the wilds penniless, that man possesses a fortune equal to the
national income of European kingdoms. The man's name is Lord
Strathcona.
Or a hard-working coal miner emigrates to Canada. The man has brains
as well as hands. Other coal miners emigrate at the same time, but this
man is as keen as a razor in foresight and care. From coal miner he
becomes coal manager, from manager {xi} operator, from operator
owner, and dies worth a fortune that the barons of the Middle Ages
would have drenched their countries in blood to win. The man's name
is James Dunsmuir.
Or it is a boy clerking in a departmental store. He emigrates. When he
goes back to England it is to marry a lady in waiting to the Queen. He
is now known as Lord Mount-Stephen.
What was the secret of the success? Ability in the first place, but in the
second, opportunity; opportunity and room for shoulder swing to show
what a man can do when keen ability and tireless energy have
untrammeled freedom to do their best.
Examples of the émigrés' success could be multiplied. It is more than a
mere material success; it is eternal proof that, given a fair chance and a
square deal and shoulder swing, the boy born penniless can run the race
and outstrip the boy born to power.
"Have you, then, no menial classes in Canada?" asked a member of the
Old Order.
"No, I'm thankful to say," said I.
"Then who does the work?"
"The workers."
"But what's the difference?"

"Just this: your menial of the Old Country is the child of a menial,
whose father before him was a menial, whose ancestors were in servile
positions to other people back as far as you like to go,--to the time
when men