spread the surface of Italy and Spain and Turkey and Greece and Austria over eastern Canada, and you would still have an area uncovered in the east alone bigger than the German Empire. England spread flat on the surface of Eastern Canada would just serve to cover the Maritime Provinces nicely, leaving uncovered Quebec, which is a third bigger than Germany; Ontario, which is bigger than France; and Labrador (Ungava), which is about the size of Austria.
In the west you could spread the British Isles out flat, and you would not cover Manitoba—with her new boundaries extending to Hudson Bay. It would take a country the size of France to cover the province of Saskatchewan, a country larger than Germany to cover Alberta, two countries the size of Germany to cover British Columbia and the Yukon, and there would still be left uncovered the northern half of the West—an area the size of European Russia.
No Old World monarch from William the Conqueror to Napoleon could boast of such a realm. People are fond of tracing ancestry back to feudal barons of the Middle Ages. What feudal baron of the Middle Ages, or Lord of the Outer Marches, was heir to such heritage as Canada may claim? Think of it! Combine all the feudatory domains of the Rhine and the Danube, you have not so vast an estate as a single western province. Or gather up all the estates of England's midland counties and eastern shires and borderlands, you have not enough land to fill one of Canada's inland seas—Lake Superior.
If there were a population in eastern Canada equal to France—and Quebec alone would support a population equal to France—and in Manitoba equal to the British Isles, and in Saskatchewan equal to France, and in Alberta equal to Germany, and in British Columbia equal to Germany—ignoring Yukon, Mackenzie River, Keewatin, and Labrador, taking only those parts of Canada where climate has been tested and lands surveyed—Canada would support two hundred million people.
The figures are staggering, but they are not half so improbable as the actual facts of what has taken place in the United States. America's population was acquired against hard odds. There were no railroads when the movement to America began. The only ocean goers were sailboats of slow progress and great discomfort. In Europe was profound ignorance regarding America; to-day all is changed. Canada begins where the United States left off. The whole world is gridironed with railroads. Fast Atlantic liners offer greater comfort to the emigrant than he has known at home. Ignorance of America has given place to almost romantic glamour. Just when the free lands of the United States are exhausted and the government is putting up bars to keep out the immigrant, Canada is in a position to open her doors wide. Less than a fortieth of the entire West is inhabited. Of the Great Clay Belt of North Ontario only a patch on the southern edge is populated. The same may be said of the Great Forest Belt of Quebec. These facts are 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 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 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 were serfs wearing an iron collar with the brand of the lord who owned them. With us no stigma is attached to work. Your menial expects to be a menial all his life. With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a competency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as he once was himself."
"Then you have no social classes?"
"Lots. The ups, who have succeeded; and the half-way ups, who are succeeding; and the beginners, who are going to succeed; and the downs, who never try. And as success doesn't necessarily mean money, but doing the best at whatever one tries, you can see that the ups and the halfway ups, and the beginners and the downs have each their own classes of special
