1912] Rural Depopulation in Southern Ontario. 265 



from roughly 7,000 persons to less than 4,000 in the half-century, when, 

 at a low rate of natural increase and making no allowance for immi- 

 gration, that population should now be 11,000? Where are the missing 

 7,000 people? The answer is easy enough: either in the country districts 

 of Western Canada and the United States, or in Canadian and American 

 cities. 



In the settlement of the North American continent, the young men 

 of each community have as they grew up become the founders, the 

 pioneers of still other communities further West, even as far as San 

 Francisco, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert. The great North American 

 continent, with its unrivalled transportation system; inhabited by men 

 of one race who spoke one language and lived under similar institutions, 

 has become what I should call a single labour market of area unparalleled 

 in the history of the world. Labour has been more mobile here than 

 elsewhere, and it is one of the first principles of political economy that, 

 other things being equal, the greatest production takes place where labour 

 is most mobile — moves most freely to those localities where it is most 

 needed and is best rewarded. The West needs these labourers worse 

 than does Chinguacousy ; it rewards them better. Their per capita 

 production of wealth is greater in the West than in their home township. 

 They could not have produced so much nor earned so much in Ching- 

 uacousy as they produce and earn in the West. Therefore they go West. 



This mobility of labour on the North American continent is mainly 

 due to the predominance of a single language. The English-speaking 

 labourer finds himself at home wherever he goes, and is consequently 

 ready to go anywhere. This, however, is not the case with the French- 

 Canadians. The barriers of language and religion, the distaste for mi- 

 gration into an alien community and the ignorance of the economic 

 conditions and opportunities of that community — make them cling 

 to their native place. This fact at least partially explains the greater 

 density of the French-speaking rural population. It also explains why 

 the growing French population floods the Eastern Townships and the 

 Ottawa River counties of Ontario in preference to going West. 



The great mobility of labour and the "call of the West" — ^which is 

 really the call of the economic opportunities there — will account for 

 Chinguacousy 's loss of her natural increase of the past fifty 

 years, which we have estimated at 4,000 persons. But they are hardly 

 sufficient to account for the loss of nearly half the population resident in 

 the township in 1861. To explain this absolute decrease of population 

 we must compare the methods of production in use at the two periods. 



