Mr. CRERAR:

But my hon. friend referred to William Booth.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

That was wrong.

Mr. CRERAR:

There was Sir Charles

Booth who carried on some investigations of a private nature in that regard, but the fact nevertheless remains that the purpose of the book from which my hon. friend quoted was to disclose the bad social conditions that existed in Great Britain, which the writer attributed largely to the intemperance of the people; and on a work of that character my hon. friend based his argument against free trade and appealed to my hon. friend from Timiskaming. Now my hon. friend from Timiskaming is a Scotchman, and he is not an ordinary Scotchman, but a Glengarry Scotchman, and a -Glengarry Scotchman, I am told, has always a very keen nose for facts. But fancy my hon. friend the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Meighen) proposing an argument to my hon. friend from Timiskaming (Mr. McDonald), a Scotchman, that he should turn his eyes away from the evils of free trade because some one in the United Kingdom had written a book condemning Scotch whiskey ! That was rather a peculiar argument for my hon. friend to make, and I cannot help thinking that the Minister of the Interior must have slept the night before with the President of the Privy Council (Hon. Mr. Rowell) and assimilated some of that hon. gentleman's theories. And I think that quite possibly my hon. friend the Minister of Immigration and Colonization (Mr. Calder) was in the same bed. If he was, and the three hon. gentlemen had put their heads together, they could not have devised a more preposterous argument than that advanced by the Minister of the Interior. My hon. friend also speaks about the decline in agriculture in Great Britain, and he attributes that decline to the fact that Great Britain is a free-trade country. Now, I have talked to many farmers in Western Canada who have been engaged in agriculture in the Old Country, and in every instance in which I asked the reason why any man had left' the Old Land to come here, the answer was that he had done so in order to escape the exactions of the landlord, who was tak-

Who is Judge Gary?

Mr. CRERAR:

He is head of the United States Steel Corporation. Now, what is the condition of labour in Great Britain? I venture to say that Great Britain has the finest factory laws in the world. She has the greatest system of co-operation in the world, and nowhere has labour achieved the distinction and the place in parliamentary government that it has in Great Britain. There is no comparison between the United States and Great Britain in that regard, and when my hon. friend argues that free trade has had the effect of bringing poverty and distress to the British labouring man he is altogether astray. My hon. friend also quoted land values and the decrease in the agricultural population of Great Britain as an evidence of decline in the industry over there. It is true, according to his statement -and I have no reason to doubt it-that when free trade was adopted in Great Britain 49.8 per cent of the population were agricultural, and in 1913 this was reduced to 21.3 per cent. That is a very considerable reduction, but it is worth while to note that in Canada in 1881, immediately after the adoption of the National Poliey of Protection in this country, the percentage of rural population was 78.9 per cent, and in 1911, after thirty years of protection, it had declined, according to the statistics furnished by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, to 45.5 per cent.

Mr. SMITH:

The farmers were starving in the early years.

Mr. CRERAR:

The figures I am giving

were furnished me by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. I know that my hon. friend in his speech gave different figures. He said that the decline had been from 62 per cent to 54 per cent for the last ten-year period; but I repeat, the figures I have from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics state clearly that from 1881 to 1911 there was a decline from 78.9 per cent to 45.5 per cent.

Mr. MEIGHEN:

I obtained my figures

from the same source, and I fancy that if my hon. friend inquires into the matter he will find that the difference in the figures is due to the fact that the towns and the villages are taken on a different basis.

Mr. CRERAR:

I directed my inquiry personally to the Dominion Statistician, and he gave me the figures as I have cited them. Now, the hon. gentleman also speaks about the decline in the value of farm lands in the United Kingdom, and he compares that country with the United States and Canada during the last seventy years. Of course, there has been a tremendous increase in the total value of farm lands in the United States and Canada during the last fifty years. Why? The country was opening up and new lands were being brought under cultivation, with the result that the aggregate increase in wealth in this respect was very marked. But that is scarcely a fair basis of comparison to take for the United Kingdom. Canada and the United States are new countries and they are not finished countries. Although agriculture may not be very prosperous in Canada we have added to the sum total of the value of cultivated agricultural land because we have new people coming and opening up new land all the time.

My hon. friend also quoted the values of farm lands in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and British Columbia. I do not know from what source his figures were secured but they did strike me as being rather high. He tells us that in British Columbia farm lands have advanced from $74 in 1910 to $174 per acre in 1919, and if I remember his statement aright, in Nova Scotia there has been a considerable increase in farm land values also. I am free to say to my hon. friend that there has been an increase in value in the farm lands of the Prairie Provinces and possibly of British Columbia and the Maritime Provinces as well, but one of the factors in producing that increase is that we have had opened up to us the United States market for Canadian farm products. The argument was advanced, and I think it was advanced with reason, that the reciprocity arrangement suggested in 1911 would add $5 an acre to the value of our farm lands in Western Canada that were producing grain. Well this is one of the reasons for the increase. If my hon. friend goes to the Maritime Provinces he will find that they have a free market in the United States for their potatoes, for their apples, for all classes of agricultural products, whereas, a few years ago, they had to climb over a high tariff wall to get into that country. The result has been to increase the prosperity of the farmers in the Maritime Provinces.

Mr. DAVIDSON:

Is the hon. gentleman in favour of making apples free?

Mr. CEERAR:

Certainly, I am in favour of making apples free. My hon. friend from Annapolis is badly mistaken if he thinks he is putting a poser to me in that regard. My hon. friend (Mr. Meighen) also quoted very largely from the reports of the special committees that were appointed by the Asquith Government to investigate trade conditions in the United Kingdom. It is true these committees were appointed in 1916 and that they were appointed by a Government of which Mr. Asquith was the head. But it was a coalition government; it was not the old Liberal Government in Great Britain. A coalition had been formed in 1915 and there were in that government quite a number of people who had held conflicting tariff views just as I fancy there has been in the Government of Canada in the making of the present Budget. But the fact that -these committees brought in these reports, I submit, is no substantial evidence to support the contention of my hon. friend that free trade has been a failure in Great Britain. Take the committee on iron and steel that he referred to. The report of that committee was dissented from by Sir Hugh Bell, who is one of the greatest iron masters in northern England and who is at the head of one of the biggest iron and steel firms in the United Kingdom. If Sir Hugh Bell took the position that duties on iron and steel coming into the United Kingdom were not desirable, why did he do so? He is a manufacturer; only he could benefit. When that question was put to my hon. friend he said in effect, in reply, that Sir Hugh Bell was wedded to tradition, that he could not get over his old free trade ideas and that in order to stick to them he would rather sacrifice his own financial benefit. I have done business with business men in the United Kingdom and I have never met a harder headed lot of business men any where than I have found in Great Britain. When my hon. friend suggests that the greatest iron master and manufacturer in Great Britain refused to do a thing that would be beneficial to his business simply because he was wedded to tradition his argument rests upon a ridiculous basis. The fact is that Sir Hugh Bell knows that in the long run, duties on iron and steel coming into the United Kingdom would not be in the interest of the iron industry.

I am free to say there is one respect in which the United Kingdom has perhaps lagged behind. It has lagged behind in the matter of technical education. The superiority that Germany and the United States acquired in some fields of manufacture was

due not to their fiscal policy but due very largely to the fact that they had provided in these countries the very finest technical schools that could be found anywhere. They applied chemistry and science to their manufactures in a way that the British manufacturer and business man did not do. But now the tale is changed; Great Britain, as a result of the war, certainly realizes the advantage of technical education and I venture to say will soon bring it within the reach of her people.

I submit again that these committees were appointed at a time of war fervour. The resolutions passed at the Paris conference, I think, in 1916, laid it down as a principle that the Allies would not renew trade with Germany when the war was over. But they have seen the futility of that position and it is not a fair or sound argument to take the reports of these committees that were appointed at that time as evidence of a need of protection in Great Britain. But what has happened to these reports? Where have they gone? These committees were appointed in 1916 and they brought in their reports in 1918. Since that time Mr. Austen Chamberlain, the son of the only British statesman who ever endeavoured to fasten protection in a limited form on the British people in the last seventy years, has brought in two Budgets. Has he made any reference to the reports of these committees? Has he suggested a duty on iron, steel or textiles? He certainly has not. I think we are well aware that in 1918 shortly after the last British election, an effort was made to introduce into the fiscal system of Great Britain anti-dumping duties. What response did it find? There was not a reputable statesman in Great Britain who would take it up and the result was that nothing has been heard of it and I venture to say nothing will be heard of it. I want to read to the House the concluding statement of my hon. friend (Mr. Meighen) in his disquisition on the fallacies of free trade as found in Great Britain. This, to my mind, is an amazing statement; I cannot characterize it in any other words. What does he say?

We are at a stage now where we cannot mistake the teachings of experience. We have seen the result through seventy years in the Old Land. It is traced in the history of their trade returns that turned in 1850, the last decade year when they had a balance in their favour, and every decade year since a balance against them. Free trade has depopulated rural England ; it has filled the emigrant ships with fugitives from her shores; It has scattered the manhood of Great Britain through the fields and workshops of the United States; it has starved and repressed and dwarfed the nascent indus-

[Mr. Cre:'a.r. j

tries of Ireland ; it has reversed the supremacy that Britain held through centuries in the industrial life of the world, and caused her to concede the place to other great competing nations that adopted a different policy. Such is the history of free trade.

To my mind-and I say it in the best of good temper-the Minister of the Interior has never made a more amazing statement than the one I have just quoted. Why, Mr. Speaker, we have just come out of a war that has stressed and tried every country in the world, and what is the result? Where is protectionist Germany to-day? Where is protectionist France and where is protectionist Italy? Where are they- where are they financially? Where does their currency stand in the exchanges of the world? To say that Great Biitain is decadent, in the face of the fact that she not only financed her own part in the war, which was teriffic, but loaned to her Allies over $8,000,000,000 during the war-why, Sir, the thing is beyond belief. If the war has proven anything it has proven the efficacy of the fiscal policy of Great Britain and her financial stability. My hon. friend talks about the depopulation of Great Britain, and the people fleeing from her shores to new pastures! Why, the population of Great Britain increased between 1850 and 1911 from twenty-seven millions to forty-five millions,

Mr. MICHAEL CLARK:

Hear, hear.

Mr. CRERAR:

-and at the same time she sent 12,000,000 of her ^ons in emigrant ships-

Mr. MICHAEL CLARK:

Peopling the

Empire.

Mr. CRERAR:

Hon. Mr. MEIGHEN:

Does my hon.

friend say that John Stuart Mill did not favour a protective tariff if opposed by a protective tariff in other countries? If he denies it, I can give him the quotation in a few minutes.

Mr. CRBRAR:

Mill was in accord with the free trade policy of Great Britain, and I think my hon. friend would have great difficulty in establishing the contrary.

Mr. SMITH:

Did he not go further?

Mr. CRERaR: I will quote other witnesses. Let us take the great statesmen of Great Britain-

Mr. SMITH:

I ask the hon. gentleman did Mill not go further?

Order.