AFFAIRS IN CANADA.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1921, Page 11

AFFAIRS IN CANADA.

TRADE WITH UNITED STATES. LOCAL INDUSTRY SUFFERS. ? TOO MUCH CLASS AND PARTY. Vancouver, Jan. 12. The merchants and manufacturers of :Canada are becoming increasingly alarmed at the tremendous trading which is being carried on between Canadians and the United States. It has been computed that luxuries and other nonessentials purchased last year from American sources by Canadians reached such a figure that had the same goods been produced in the Dominion their manufacture would have found mploynrent for some 350,000 men for the whole 12 months. The Canadian persists in purchasing from the United States newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, hundreds of classes of patent medicines, drugs, and perfumes, hundreds of thousands of pairs of American shoes, suitings galore, and expensive fashionable ladies’ wear. It has been pointed out rather bluntly by Canadian financial experts that these goods could be produced in Canada, but retailers continue to stock up with imported articles, giving the consumers no alternative but to buy the foreign articles* It is also admitted that the people themselves do not demand Canadian or British goods, but now the various Boards of Trade of the Dominion are pushing an campaign to persuade Canadians to patronise their country, and, failing that, to ask for British manufacture. THE EFFECT ON EXCHANGE. This year the people of Canada may buy a thousand million dollars’ worth of United States products, and sell that country Canadian products to the value of half that sum. If they do, they will also continue paying 15 to 20 per cent, exchange on all the money they send, and the obligations they assume in settling these accounts. For some years past finance Ministers, bank managers and other experts have been advising the people not to buy so heavily from the United States under the present conditions. They have not clearly shown the people how to avoid it. Consumers buy goods as they find them, few considering it worth while to inquire into their origin. By what process of instruction, or what kind of organisation can the people of Canada be induced to follow the counsel of their financial advisors in this matter, is a question now being voiced in many parte of Canada. It is useless denying the fact that many Canadians are rapidly becoming Americanised, and the influence of the “movies.” the constant reading of fiction '’emanating from American publishing houses, and the intermingling factors in this transformation of the national characteristics of the real Canadian. It ig not so noticeable with the resident of Canada who hails from Great Britain, Ireland, or the overseas Dominions of the British Empire. To one who has travelled extensively in Western America it is frequently difficult- to distinguish be--1 tween the Western Canadian and the average American from the Pacific Coast States, their nasal pronounciation and figures of speech being identical in many respects. But whenever any argument arises in which America and Britain are compared the Canadian instantly uncovers his unshakeable confidence in John Bull and all his' immense Empire, the Canadian generally putting his American cousin beyond all doubt of the British North American’s patriotism toward the Motherland.

EMIGRANTS TO PALESTINE. Eighteen Jewish farmers, pioneers in the Lipton district of the Province of Saskatchewan, will pull up stakes this spring and move east to become pioneers in Palestine, according to letters received by Winnipeg relatives. “We wish to go from Goluth (strange lands) and return home,” was the main reason given by one of the writers. With the departure to Palestine of four Jewish families from Winnipeg and a similar number from other western points this autumn and winter, and the impending exodus of the whole Ockar Society, numbering 30 families, this spring, Western Canada will have contributed more than 200 immigrants to the old-new Jewish homeland. LAWYERS IN POLITICS. The Liberal-Progressive Party of Canada has been complaining that the Ottawa administration is dominated by lawyer-politicians, and contending that Canada should not be governed by lawyears, but by a goodly percentage of farmers, who represent the staple industry of the Dominion. Now the Hon. Arthur Prime Minister of Canada, himself a lawyer by profession, has come to the rescue of his colleagues. Addressing the Benchers of the Eaw Society of Manitoba at Winnipeg Mr. Meighen said there was nothing so unbecoming, nothing so unworthy of public life, as the practice, never so common as now, of seeking to attach prejudices to public men merely on account of their calling. Canada was passing through a period something resembling an enigma, but there was a greater tendency to class consciousness to a belief in class interest and to a reliance on class organisation than in any previous age. There was too much organisation and inter-organisation in Canada, but he did not refer to the Farmers’ Party specially. Individuality was well-nigh forgotten, and the air was thick with assertions of class rights. “I wish we had to-day more plain Canadians,” he said, “men and women who depended for success upon themselves, on the excellence of their own work, on individual courage and enterprise and thoroughness, and who reasoned out their convictions on public questions in the good old way as citizens of Canada and not as members of any class or group. “One of the manifestations of the spirit I refer to is the revival lately of the very old practice of fanning prejudice against the part which lawyers have taken in public life. That lawyers have taken a very* large part is undoubtedly t rue — a part indeed far out of proportion to their numbers. That has been true of every democratic country in the world. I don’t think it is true of this country or any other country where lawyers have been prominent in public life, that they have obtained the prominence through anything in the nature of class organisation. They have indeed been divided —about evenly divided—in political* opinion. and the fiercest battles of democracy have been conducted under leaders who were trained at the bar. .None of any sense would suggest that a man should receive public confidence on the ground that he is a lawyer or anything else? He should receive public confidence because he has earned it as a man and as a citizen, arid because he is equipped to discharge public duties, The lawyer is no better than anyone else, but in point of equipment his training has usually been considered an advantage, and often has proved so ”