212 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. XI 
dependence of town and country was not a subject that entered into our 
consideration. It is not our purpose to-night to discuss the causes 
which have led to the present high cost of living, but I may say in 
passing that the blame, if blame there is, does not altogether lie with 
the farmer, as many suppose. He suffers with us in the high prices 
that prevail. All the things that he does not actually produce and 
which he must buy, even his concentrated cattle foods—the products of 
milling, etc., have gone up in price and above all the labour that he 
must hire to help him till his soil, put in his crops and harvest them and 
feed his cattle, commands to-day a wage unheard of a few years ago. 
The scarcity and dearness of farm labour is probably to-day the most 
serious problem in agriculture. If therefore the farmer to-day is getting 
somewhat more for his own labour and oversight and his capital invested 
than he did ten years ago, and I think he is, he richly deserves it; com- 
pared with other industries, agricultural labor has been but poorly paid 
in the past. 
It has seemed to me that the question of supply and demand is very 
largely involved in this matter of high prices. For the facts are these, 
that tremendous quantities of Canadian produced food stuffs are going 
overseas to feed our troops and we have the distressing fact to acknow- 
ledge that our food producing population—our rural population— has 
decreased while our food consuming population—the population of our 
cities—has increased. In a word while our food consumption has 
increased, our food production has decreased. During the last decade 
there has been a steady exodus from the farm to the city—a most deplor- 
able condition looking to the future stability and progress of our country, 
which is by nature undoubtedly designed to be a great food producing 
country. 
And you may legitimately ask me why this is so? Why have the 
young men left the farm and sought employment in the city? Many 
answers have been given and the subject is worn well-nigh threadbare. 
Perhaps lack of love for the work has had something to do with it, for 
many of our farm boys have been brought up with the idea that farming 
is merely dirty drudgery with no outlook and no prospects. Many of 
our farmers, with their long experience of toil in reclaiming the forest, 
have encouraged rather than dissuaded their boys to remain on the 
farms. Anything that we can do to inculcate a love of the country, of 
working the soil, a love of plants and animals, will be doing our country 
good service. Perhaps the glamour of the city life offers opportunities 
for activities and amusements and mild excitement that are absent 
in the country. But probably the more immediate cause is the fact 
that the wages of the various industries and city businesses are con- 
