[shorttI CONSTRUCTION AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY 301 



eggs, fruit, vegetables, housing, fuel, recreation, municipal taxation 

 and service, domestic and other, enormously increased in price during 

 both periods; while foreign supplies in the shape of textiles, machinery 

 and metallic goods and groceries such as sugar, tea, coffee, rice, etc., 

 increased but slightly. 



While, therefore, a great and sudden influx of capital brings at 

 first a very welcome increase in wages and profits, the secondary 

 effects on domestic supplies are not long in developing under increased 

 demand. Thus increased income is soon met and neutralized by in- 

 creased outlay. The note of joy at the opening of a new era of pros- 

 perity changes to a chorus of complaints towards its close. In these 

 respects also there is an exact parallel between the present time and 

 sixty years ago. 



One of the most serious problems connected with such an ex- 

 tensive diffusion of wealth as that involved in the construction of great 

 railroad systems, results in the stimulus given to the growth of cities 

 and towns. In Canada in the fifties, the new railroads not only linked 

 up for the first time and chief towns of the country, but also opened 

 new districts in the rear of the frontier settlements, giving birth to 

 new towns and villages, many of which indulged dreams of metro- 

 politan futures. The effect then was just what it has been during the 

 past decade. Real estate speculation, starting from a genuine need 

 for civic expansion, but afterwards feeding on its own growth, resulted 

 in ever extending subdivisions, incessant transfers of property and 

 the visible growth of more or less mushroom fortunes. During a 

 boom no one can be found who has lost money, but, during the sub- 

 sequent reaction, real estate wrecks strew every civic shore. 



In June 1854, a writer in the Toronto "Globe" dwelt at consider- 

 able length on the rapid increase in prices. "We hear little," he says, 

 "at this moment throughout Canada save the talk of prices rising, real 

 estate and rents going up, mechanics and laborers striking for more 

 wages, provisions growing dearer day by day." It was during this 

 period that Canada experienced her first labor strikes. The con- 

 struction of the Grand Trunk Railway was practically suspended for 

 a time owing to bitterly contested strikes on the part of the workmen. 

 The Great Western and Northern Railways also suffered from the 

 same cause. _ . 



Then as now, however, the building trades led the way in raising 

 wages, with the natural sequence of higher rents and slum tenements. 

 "Mechanics," continues the Globe, "employed in buildings, ask wages 

 so much higher than it has been the custom to pay them that their 

 employers are put to serious embarrassment and loss." This applied, 

 of course, chiefly to those who had undertaken contracts without al- 



