Crookes to assume a given increase of population during the
intervening period and no change in the existing conditions of wheat
cultivation and consumption, and also to limit by hard-and-fast lines
the sources of supply. It is to the manner in which Sir W. Crookes has
limited and underestimated the wheat resources of Canada that we now
propose to take exception; and it is difficult to understand how, with
ample means of information available, he could have committed himself
to the statements he has made. What does he say about Manitoba? "In
the year 1897 there were 2,371,441 acres under cultivation in
Manitoba, out of a total of 13,051,375 acres. The total area includes
water courses, lakes, forests, towns and farms, land unsuitable for
wheat growing, and land required for other crops." Now, the facts are
that the total area of Manitoba is 73,956 square miles, and if from
that area 9,890 square miles of water surface are deducted there
remain 64,066 square miles, or 41,002,240 acres of land, so that even
after making due allowance for forests, towns, etc., there are nearly
three times the number of acres available than are given by Sir W.
Crookes. Attempts have been made in vain to find out whence these
figures were obtained, but there is apparently no clew; and while it
is not to be supposed for a moment that the figures were purposely
misstated, surely the important conclusions drawn from them deserved
that some attempt at least should have been made to ascertain their
accuracy. Sir W. Crookes claims to be indebted to the official
publications of the Government of Canada, but it is certain that none
of them ever contained the figures used by him.
"The most trustworthy estimates," says Sir W. Crookes, "give Canada a
wheat area of not more than six millions of acres in the next twelve
years, increasing to a maximum of twelve millions of acres in
twenty-five years." Who prepared these estimates, and upon what are
they based? Were they prepared by the same authority that supplied Sir
W. Crookes with the figures of the area of Manitoba? If so, we may
well dismiss them at once; but supposing that these estimates are, as
far as the rate of increase is concerned, perfectly correct, and that
the wheat area of Canada will be only twelve million acres in
twenty-five years, there would still remain at least twelve million
acres in Manitoba alone available for wheat. It is no exaggerated
estimate to say that from sixty to seventy per cent of the land
available for cultivation in Manitoba is well adapted for the
production of wheat. Sir W. Crookes says that his area of Manitoba of
13,051,375 acres includes water courses, lakes, forests, towns, etc.
Now, the water area alone of Manitoba is 6,329,600 acres, so that
after deducting this area and the 1,630,000 acres already under wheat
and making due allowance for the other conditions mentioned, he would
have us believe that wheat-growing in Manitoba has already nearly
reached its limit, which all who know anything about the province will
unite in saying is absurd.
Now let us turn to the Northwest Territories, where, according to Sir
W. Crookes, there is practically no amount of land of any consequence
available for wheat, and let us remember that the same authority
limits the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million acres.
The area of the three provisional districts, with which alone we will
deal, is as follows, viz.: Assiniboia, 57,177,600 acres; Saskatchewan,
69,120,000 acres; and Alberta, 63,523,200 acres (these figures being
exclusive of water surface), making a total of 189,820,000 acres. Some
of this large area is possibly not particularly well adapted for
agricultural purposes, but a careful examination of all available data
on the subject justifies one in saying that fully one half is suitable
for successful wheat cultivation, while in eastern and southern
Assiniboia there are some 20,000,000 acres, in the valley of the
Saskatchewan 14,000,000 acres, and in northern Alberta 15,000,000
acres that are especially adapted for the production of wheat as a
staple crop. The area is so large and settlement at present so sparse,
that it is impossible to do more than give its capabilities in general
terms, founded on the opinions of experienced men who have traveled
over it. Professor Saunders, Director of the Experimental Farm at
Ottawa, than whom there is no better authority on the subject in the
Dominion, told me that, from what he saw of the country in driving
over it, he became more and more impressed every year with the vast
area of good land in the Northwest, and no practical man has ever
traveled through those regions but has been amazed at the prospect of
their capabilities.
But we have not yet reckoned with the rich and fertile province of
Ontario. This province has a land area of 140,576,000 acres, of which
11,888,853 acres were under cultivation in 1898, and of this latter
quantity 1,437,387 acres, or twelve per cent, were in wheat, being an
increase of 163,860 acres over the wheat area of 1897, and of 62,573
acres over the average of 1882-'98. According to the census of 1881
there were nearly 2,000,000 acres in wheat in 1880, but, under the
influence of an unremunerative market, the area declined year by year
until in 1895 there were but 967,156 acres so employed; since then,
however, stimulated by a more profitable price, the area has increased
by 470,471 acres, and an increase of twenty per cent upward is
reported in the area for 1899. Fall wheat in this province is a very
successful crop, having averaged in the last two years twenty-five
bushels and twenty-four bushels per acre respectively, while the
average for the period 1882-'98 has been 20.5 bushels per acre, so
that nothing but a continuance of good prices is needed to largely
increase the production of wheat in Ontario. In no part of the
province, where agriculture is possible, has wheat failed to grow, but
the area is so large that it would be unwise to put into figures the
extent available for wheat cultivation, it being sufficient to show
that a very large portion, if not indeed the whole, of the twelve
million acres to which Sir W. Crookes has limited Canada could, other
conditions being favorable, be supplied by Ontario alone.
The "trustworthy estimates" quoted by Sir W. Crookes limit, as has
been stated, the wheat area of Canada to a maximum of twelve million
acres under cultivation in twenty-five years; whence the estimates
were derived or on what grounds they are entitled to be considered
trustworthy there is no information; but is it of any consequence? Let
them come from whatever source they may, are they not perfectly
useless? The progress of wheat cultivation during the next twenty-five
years does not depend upon any mathematical ratio of progression, but
on the course of certain events absolutely unknown at the present
time. The point is that Sir W. Crookes adopts these estimates and
gives out to the world a statement, on the strength of them, that, in
addition to the 3,500,000 acres at present in use, there are not more
than 8,500,000 acres in Canada available for wheat cultivation--a
statement calculated, if believed, to seriously damage Canada's
prospects of settlement, and a statement that is as much at variance
with the actual facts as it is possible for such things to be. Is it
fair to the country for a man of such high standing and reputation to
make such unfounded assertions? Five minutes' real consideration of
the question would have convinced him that there are more than that
number of acres in the province of Manitoba alone. The figures already
given, which have been prepared from the most reliable available
information, go to show that there are upward of seventy-five million
acres of land in Canada especially adapted for the production of
wheat, and this estimate is confined to those portions of the country
which may be considered as essentially wheat-producing areas; and no
account has been taken of the vast extent of land, not only in the
provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and in the Northwest Territories,
but also in the otherwise unnoticed provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, that is not
only suitable for the production of wheat, but on which a large
quantity of wheat will undoubtedly be grown, which, entering into home
consumption, will increase the exportable surplus.
I am well aware that there are a number of people who will say that my
figures underestimate the resources of the country, but I would rather
that it were so than indulge in figures that seem too extravagant to
be realized; and if, in the future, it appears that the wheat area is
larger than I have stated, then so much the better for Canada. I do
not mind how much evidence can be brought to increase my figures, as
long as I am satisfied that they can not be truthfully reduced.
It is not intended to accuse Sir W. Crookes of deliberately
misrepresenting Canada, but rather of almost criminal carelessness in
the preparation of his case; but it is intended to accuse Mr. C. Wood
Davis of the former offense and of intentionally garbling extracts
from an official handbook issued by the Canadian Minister of the
Interior in order to decry that country's wheat-bearing capabilities.
By taking a line here and there which seems to serve his ends, and by
leaving out everything that would have a contrary tendency, Mr. Davis,
in his article in The Forum, makes it to appear that, according to the
Minister of the Interior, the greater part of the Canadian Northwest
is not only incapable of producing wheat, but is actually unfit for
settlement, and summarizes his extracts by saying, "Available data do
not show that any part of the Canadian districts named, except
southern Manitoba and the eastern half of Assiniboia, is adapted to
wheat culture, while they do show that over the greater part of these
vast regions neither summer heats nor rainfalls are sufficient." This
statement is false in every particular. The official handbook from
which Mr. Davis professes to quote says of Manitoba that there are
thirty-seven million acres available for active farm cultivation,
giving therefore no warrant for the limiting of the wheat area to the
southern part of the province. Mr. Davis quotes a line here and there
about southern Alberta in order to convey the impression that that
part of the country is good for nothing, whereas, while it is
essentially a ranching and dairying country, producing a most
luxurious and nutritious growth of native grasses, with a bountiful
supply of water for irrigation purposes, by which means most
satisfactory crops of grain and fodder are produced, it has never been
contended that it is particularly well adapted for wheat-growing; but,
on the other hand, Mr. Davis carefully omits all mention of northern
Alberta, and has no room for the following remarks about it which
appear on the same page of the handbook: "Northern Alberta is
essentially an agricultural district; ... the principal advantages of
the district will insure settlement by immigrants who desire to engage
in grain farming.... The rainfall in northern Alberta during the
summer months is sufficient to insure good crops." Concerning the
district of Saskatchewan, Mr. Davis quotes a remark about some of the
wooded portion being unsuited to the immediate requirements of
settlement, as if it applied to the whole district, and deliberately
omits the following: "The southern half of the district"
(Saskatchewan) "is traversed from east to west by the Saskatchewan
River, and the valley of this important stream, with the country
immediately adjacent thereto, has long been famed as a desirable field
for immigration." With reference to precipitation, Mr. Davis has so
garbled his extracts as to convey the impression that the handbook
states that over the greater part of the Northwest the rainfall is not
sufficient for the pursuit of agriculture, whereas what the book
really says is, "So far as the Canadian Northwest is concerned, out of
about two hundred million acres of land between the Red River of the
North to the Rocky Mountains, available for agricultural and pastoral
purposes, not more than about one fourth, or fifty million acres in
all, require the artificial application of water."
Mr. Davis's attempts to prejudice the interests of the Northwest by
remarks on the severity of the climate do not need serious attention;
the experience of the inhabitants and the annual production of the
country speak for themselves, and it is well understood that mere
thermometer readings afford little indication in themselves of the
nature of a climate, and that temperatures unendurable in some
countries are enjoyable, salubrious, and advantageous in others. It
seems difficult to believe that Mr. Davis ever wrote the following
sentence, but having written it, it would be well if he would take it
to heart: "Truly 'honesty is the best policy' in the employment of
statistics, whether by scientists, by plain people, or by
professional statisticians; while the ability to eschew bucket-shop
methods, to read correctly, to state facts and to state them clearly,
and to criticise with intelligence and entire fairness, is especially
desirable."
Sir W. Crookes is not content with reducing Canada's wheat resources
to an insignificant minimum, but he must also retard as much as
possible the development even of the small area that he admits to
exist, for he says: "The development of this promising area
necessarily must be slow, since prairie land can not be laid under
wheat in advance of a population sufficient to supply the needful
labor at seed time and harvest. As population increases so do home
demands for wheat." To say that prairie land can not be laid under
wheat in advance of population, and that as population increases so do
home demands for wheat, are mere truisms, but it is incorrect to say
that therefore the development must be slow. The rate of development
depends entirely upon the rate of increase of population, and that
increase depends upon the price of wheat, and the area of production
will increase concurrently with the demand. According to Mr.
Davis--and we will assume that his figures are in this case
correct--the population in the United States in fourteen years from
1871 increased forty-four per cent and the cultivated area one hundred
and twelve per cent, and, if that was the case, no estimates, however
trustworthy, could have provided for such results.
It has been perfectly true, as Sir W. Crookes says, that as the wheat
area of Manitoba and the Northwest increased, the wheat area of
Ontario and the eastern provinces decreased, but this was in
consequence of the continued low price of wheat, which led the farmers
of Ontario to turn their attention more and more to dairy and mixed
farming, substituting hay and root crops for wheat and barley, until
the province became a dairying rather than a cereal-producing country;
but that this was a movement to suit the times, and that the area
available for wheat is no less in consequence, is evidenced by the
rapid increase in the wheat acreage in the last two years. The farmer
produces what pays him best, and it is certain that before Sir W.
Crookes's failure of the wheat supply comes to pass prices will have
been such that every acre of land suitable for wheat and that can be
spared from other uses will have been taken advantage of; and if this
is not the case, then some other staple for food will have been
substituted, which will necessarily change the whole economic
situation as viewed at present.
It is also true that "thus far performance has lagged behind promise,"
but the reasons for this are the same, and in the low values we find
a ready explanation of the apparent lack of progress. What inducement
has the immigrant had of late years to take up land for, or the farmer
to grow, wheat that he could hardly sell for the actual cost of
production? And yet Sir W. Crookes would argue that because the land
has not been utilized for this particular purpose the land can not be
there, and that land upon which wheat once was grown, but which is now
employed for other purposes, can never again be included in the
wheat-bearing area.
Progress may appear to have been slow, but it has kept pace with the
demand, and in any case has been considerably more rapid than Sir W.
Crookes allows. He says, "The wheat-bearing area of all Canada has
increased less than 500,000 acres since 1884," whereas the actual
increase since 1880 has been over 1,100,000 acres, and since 1890
upward of 760,000 acres. The area under wheat in Canada in 1898 was
3,508,540 acres, so that Sir W. Crookes only allows for an increase of
2,500,000 acres in the next twelve years. Perhaps it will not be as
much, but if it is not, it will only be putting the predicted day of
famine still farther away, and will prove nothing more than the fact
that the state of the market has not warranted any more extended
cultivation.
The statements made by Sir W. Crookes about the wheat acreage in the
States are as incorrect as those about Canada, for he says, in his
letter to The Times of December 8, 1898, that "the whole wheat acreage
in the United States is less than it was fifteen years ago," whereas
the official figures for 1897 and 1898, which were before him at the
time, told him that the wheat acreage in 1897 was 3,000,000 acres in
excess of the average of the preceding fifteen years, and in 1898 was
in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 acres in excess of any year in the
history of that country. Do not the fluctuations in the wheat acreage
of the United States in recent years prove conclusively that they were
solely the result of the movement of prices, and had no bearing
whatever on the question of exhaustion of land? Under the depressing
influence of an unprofitable market, the wheat area fell from
39,900,000 acres in 1891 to 34,000,000 acres in 1895, but, under the
stimulus of a substantial appreciation, increased again, in three
years, to 44,000,000 acres. If, in spite of a rising and remunerative
market, the area had remained stationary or shown signs of decrease,
it would have been in order to call attention to the fact as
indicating exhaustion; but when, in immediate response to a rising
market, the area increases by leaps and bounds, the question of
exhaustion becomes less and less one of actual probability, and more
and more one of theoretical possibility. A precisely similar line of
reasoning is applicable to the fluctuations in the province of
Ontario, and goes to show just as clearly that the decrease in area
has had absolutely no bearing on the wheat-producing capabilities of
the province.
"A permanently high price for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that ere
long must be faced," says Sir W. Crookes; but, with due deference to
so great an authority, I believe that the day of a permanent high
price for wheat is yet far distant. There will be appreciations
undoubtedly, but the sources of supply as yet undrawn upon are so
great that it will be long before those appreciations are of any
prolonged duration; but in the meantime they mean periods of great
prosperity to the farmer and therefore to the world. Is a higher price
for wheat such an unmixed calamity, after all? Has the average
consumer of wheat benefited by the low price of wheat of late years in
proportion to the hardships endured by the producer? I think not. Let
those who are qualified by literary and scientific knowledge point out
if they will the possibility, or even perhaps the probability, of at
some period in the future the time coming when there may be, if
present conditions continue to exist, a scarcity in the wheat supply,
and urge as strongly as they like the advisability of taking steps in
good time to prevent such a calamity; but nothing is to be gained by
frightening the world with predictions of evil based only on a series
of unfounded assertions, mathematical calculations, and "purely
speculative computations." When, if ever, the day of scarcity will
come is unknown. That it is yet far off appears to be tolerably
certain; but it is sufficient for the purposes of this article that it
should be understood that Sir W. Crookes's statements concerning the
wheat area of Canada are absolutely unreliable and incorrect, and that
there are millions of acres of good wheat land waiting for occupation
by the surplus population of the world, which, when under cultivation,
will assist in deferring for many years the threatened day of famine.
* * * * *
Dr. Sven Hedin, in his account of travel through Asia, mentions
as the most remarkable feature in the central region of internal
drainage (in which the rivers drain into inland lakes) "the
process of leveling which goes on unceasingly. The detritus which
results from the disintegrating action of the weather, and the
more or less mechanical agency of the wind and water and gravity,
is constantly being carried down from the mountains all round its
borders toward the lower parts of its depressions, and being
deposited there. In this way the natural inequalities in the
configuration of the ground are being gradually smoothed away."
Mr. Curzon refers to the same phenomenon in the central districts
of the Pamirs--the process being the exact reverse to that where
the streams hew out deep ravines in their course to the sea-going
river.
BEST METHODS OF TAXATION.
BY THE LATE HON. DAVID A. WELLS.
PART III (_concluded_).
The universal and admitted failure of the general property tax to
attain good results and the great difficulty, indeed the
impossibility, of reducing it to a form in which it can operate with
efficiency and an approach to justice, must lead to its abolition and
the gradual substitution of other and more simple taxes. However well
adapted to a community in which the taxable property was in evidence
and easily assessed for purposes of taxation, it becomes antiquated,
unequal, and inquisitorial in a people where credit and credit
investments have been highly developed, and where the greater social
activities, whether in commerce or industry, transportation or
production, are conducted by corporations issuing various kinds of
securities, none of which can easily be reached by a taxing authority
away from the center of incorporation. To undertake to include these
securities, evidences of debt, or obligations in a general property
tax is to invite evasion, put a heavy inducement on concealment, and,
whenever effective, to give rise to shocking inequalities of burden.
The widow and orphan, whose property is in the hands of a trustee, pay
the full tax; in any other direction the holder of stocks or bonds,
money or notes, escapes according to the elasticity of his conscience.
The very exemptions recognized by law give an opportunity for new
evasions, based upon analogy or upon some technicality under which the
business is conducted. Bonds of the United States, the legal-tender
notes, or money are beyond the reach of State authorities for the
purpose of taxation. In the same category come also all imported goods
in original packages, in the possession of the importers, and all
property in transit. These exemptions alone amount to thousands of
millions of dollars, and the tendency has been to increase the number
of items exempted. But every such exception under the law adds to the
burdens of the honest taxpayer, and every evasion of taxation also
renders his charge the greater. Here is not distributive justice, but
concentrated injustice.
Another large proportion of the personal property owned by the
citizens of the State is of the most intangible character, and in
great part invisible and incorporeal, such, for instance, as
negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, State,
municipal, and corporate bonds, and, if actually situated in other
States, exempt from taxation where they are held; acknowledgments of
individual indebtedness, and a number of similar matters. All property
of this character is, through a great variety of circumstances,
constantly fluctuating in value; is offset by indebtedness which may
never be the same one hour with another; is easy to transfer, and by
simple delivery is, in fact, transferred continually from one locality
to another, and from the protection and laws of one State to the
sovereignty and jurisdiction of some other. It is not to be wondered,
therefore, that all attempts to value and assess this description of
property have proved exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that nearly every
civilized community, with the exception of the States of the Federal
Union, have long ago abandoned the project as something wholly
inexpedient and impracticable.