CANADIAN WEALTH

New York Times (1857-1922); Jul 5, 1914;

pg. BR301
CANADIAN WEALTH
Part Played by Railways in
Dominion's Development
HISTORY OF CANADIAN WEALTH.
By
Gustavus
Myers. Chicago: Charles H.
Kerr &. Co.
A
YEAR or so ago
Mr.
Myers gave
himself much pleasure by laying
bare the Inmost secrets of the
Supreme Court. The fact that a Justice
who leaves enough
to pay a supertax is
a rarity
was no bar to the scandalous
revelations. The vice of the Federal Jus-
tices was not venality, but a state of
mind. They were so steeped in class
prejudice
that it was not
necessary
to
bribe them. Their
dishonesty was not
pecuniary,
but mental.
They
are honest
victims of prejudice in favor of the in-
stitutions which they sustain
by
their
decisions. That, it seems to uswith a
change of namesis the
explanation of
Mr.
Myers's
obsession that vice is the
motive of whatever he disapproves. He
thinks there can be no reasonable and
creditable
explanation
of the fact, or
at least of his assertion, that fifty men
j
control one-third of Canada's wealth. I
They control it without
owning
it,
and
that is worse than ownership. They
are
i
trusted by their countrymen, and so have
power
without responsibility. The lead-
ing railways buy up branches and
digest
smaller companies at a meal. Twenty-
six banks each have over a hundred
branches,andsome have several hundreds
apiece. The United States has no branch
banks, and that alone proves that Can-
ada Is betrayed
and impoverished by
its
bankers. That is to say, proves it to
Mr.
Myers
and to those of his readers
who
agree
with him. Those who dis-
agree
are those who believe that branch
banking
has indisputable
merits, and is
better than the system of which the
United States is divesting itself because
of its defects. The industrial concen-
tration is flagrant.
In four
years fifty-
six industrial amalgamations
absorbed
248 concerns and turned $167,000,000
into
$457,000,000.
Canada suffers no such
pain as
Mr. Myers
from these secrets,
whose knowledge
is confined to the own-
ers of the shares and those who deal in
them on the public Exchanges. The arid
volumes beloved of the market-place
throw no searchlight upon the sources of
this iniquity. That is the function of
Mr. Myers, and he has traced the cor
ruption to its historic roots. The primi-
tive fur traders put their profits into
land,
and the land was made valuable
by railways. Myriads
of documents were
searched and their contents put into a
nariative which is not
"
misleading
in
substance,
obsolete in treatment, or spir-
itless In character." That is Mr.
Myers's
estimate of the writings of those
who have preceded
him in this fertile
field. For himself he is content to sup-
ply the raw material for the
knowledge
necessary
to obliterate all that stands
in the way of the
"
full, unshackled, so-
cial, industrial, and intellectual devel-
opment of mankind." That puts Mr.
Myers
into the same class with Senator
La Follette, who has made similar con-
tributions toward the unshackling
of the
United States from the chains of the
Money Trust.
The history
of Canadian wealth can
be
cordially
recommended to those who
liked Senator La Follette's exposure of
American wealth. Never in the
history
of mankind have two communities de-
velopedwith such
rapidityinall that goes
to make life worth living. They have de-
veloped along
similar lines, and that is
sufficient explanation of the faults and
the excesses of the process. In both
countries there are those who cannot
lift their
eyes above the mud, and many
who
delight
to think that
they,
too,
would
have been rich and great if
only they
had not been too honest. No doubt there
are cases where an excess of virtue em-
barrasses
progress in a worldly
sense,
and if the virtue is real there is neither
regret
nor cause for sympathy. Those
whose morality
is
truly robust, and who
are candid with
themselves, know that
the rich malefactor is the
exception, and
that brains and service are the most
common
explanations of accumulations
of wealth.
Mr. Myers's books arerecom-
mended
only to admirers of the muck-
raking school,
because
only they believe
that the masses are poor
because of un-
willingness
to imitate the vices attributed
to the rich. That doctrine is the root of
much
envy, hatred, and uncharitable-
ness, and is noxious rather than meri-
torious In its effects. This is said with-
out
disparagement of the apparent ef-
fort of Mr.
Myers to be accurate. His
facts are not denied, but his inferences
from them will not be admitted
gener-
ally. All he says may be true, and yet
there are other
offsetting facts which
compensate for the blemishes disclosed.
Admittedly there were graft and waste
In the construction of
railways in both
Canada and the United States. Admit-
tedly there has been a squandering of
national resources for undue benefit to
individuals. But what then? The record
would be clearer if there were no such
facts
upon it, but time is of the essence
inthis case. The haste which
ordinarily
makes waste in this case made
profits.
Both nations are richer and the riches
arc better distributed than would have
been the case if
railway construction
had been
delayed for the sake of
pre-
venting profit to the constructors, and
if the
public lands had remained
public
lands, fit
only for cattle ranches rather
than for the.farms which
belong to
mill-
ions, and which feed scores of millions.
COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS
THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS.
By W. P.
Pycraft of the Zoological Dspartment of
the British Museum. Illustrated. New
York:
Henry
Holt & Co. 91.75.
A
great many interesting facts are
brought out by
W. P. Pycraft, an em
inent
English zoologist,
in his book en-"
titled "The Courtship of Animals,"
written, he
says,
not
simply for the en
tertainment of those who have a
liking
for natural history, but also for the
bearing of what it shows upon social
problems now under animated discussion
throughout the world.
It is Mr.
Fycraft's opinion that the
truth of the
saying
that
"
one touch of
nature makes the whole world kin
"
Is
strikingly obvious when we
study
the
"
courtship
"
of animals. "
For,"
he re
marks,
"
the * Beasts that perish,* no
less than man himself, are stirred
by
the same
emotions; the force of love runs
as
high in them as in ourselves; and its
modes of expression are not so different,
though they may
superficially appear to
be so.'* The
proper study of mankind lie
thinks is not man alone, but man, beast,
bird, fish, and insect. As a
sociologist
he
insists on the
pre-eminence of man, clos
ing his chapter "on
"
Mankind in the
Making
"
by remarking:
Among the civilized nations of to
day,
in proportion as the
"
maicness
"
of the community becomes more and
more effete, the victims of sophistry,
and slaves of the shibboleths, so the
inf.uence of the females asserts itself.
And recent events
among
us show
plainly enough that that influence is
the reverse of
good. Having its roots
in
personal vanity and the love of
notoriety, ft Is Intolerant of reason and
self-restraint, and that way madness
lic-s.
There are
something over eighty ex-
"cellent illustrations In Mr.
Pycraft's
book.
The Family and Society
A treatise on "The Family
and So
ciety,"
written by
Prof. John M. Gil
lette of the University
of North Da
kota, is published
as a volume of the
National Social Science series. In it
the author deals Interestingly
with the
functions of the family,
the
origin
of
marriage,
the evolution of the
family,
current conditions affecting
the family,
and the biological phases
of sex that
are observed in the family;
he
says
he
has taken his facts from the best
available authorities,
and that,
to the
measure of h.'s ability,
his work a sci
entific Interpretation of a large body of
reliable data. (A. C, McClurg
& Co.
50
cents.)