Discussion on Causes of High Prices 23 



Now Joseph Keeler had not been at all satisfied with the pro- 

 fessor's ponderous platitudes, and was resolved to go much more 

 closely into the study of what had now become for him an ab- 

 sorbing question. Inviting the professor to spend the next 

 Saturday evening with him, Mr. Keeler bade a general "Good- 

 night!" and walked home, revolving many things in his mind, 

 like Ulysses by the loud-resounding sea. 



With the next Saturday evening came the professor and, set- 

 tled in a comfortable armchair in Mr. Keeler's study with a pipe 

 and a glass of some supporting Scotch, he listened while Mr. 

 Keeler set before him certain phases of the problem which they 

 had been discussing as they bore upon commercial affairs, and 

 told then of the series of incidents that had taken him to the old 

 town on Presqu'Isle Bay, and the new light in which the whole 

 problem was beginning to appear to himself, as he read from the 

 past into the present history of the beginnings of settlement and 

 of the development of Upper Canada. He said: 



"You know, professor, I was a lad of only five years when my 

 father left the old town down on the Bay, where he had been for 

 years with his father, a general merchant, supplying the incom- 

 ing settlers going to the back townships with all kinds of goods 

 on credit, and taking in return their potash, timber, grain and 

 farm produce. His father before him, a farmer, had gradually 

 gone into business, as, having been the son of one of the earliest 

 settlers, he had grown to a man of local importance and was con- 

 sulted by the newcomers, who so often needed some temporary 

 assistance, and could only pay for it with produce, there being 

 but little money in those times. As I have now learned, my 

 father was but one of a series of merchants in those old lake 

 ports of the early days, which extended from Cornwall to To- 

 ronto. As the settlement of their townships was only possible 

 through these ports, so up from each at every five to ten miles 

 were government roads, and the local squabbles of rival towns 

 for the expenditure of public funds on their particular roads to 

 the back country were even more strenuous than those for local 

 railways today. 



"In most of these larger villages or towns was a government 

 land agent; but especially important was this appointment in 

 the district or county towns, where were the registry offices. 



