Discussion on Causes of High Prices 25 



Mr. Keeler continued: 



"I confess I was astonished when I had carefully examined 

 these three sets of figures. To think, with a total population in 

 Ontario in 1911 of 2,523,274, and only 450,000 in 1841, that the 

 townships along the lake shore had at this time, in almost every 

 instance, larger populations than in 1911, though all had notably 

 increased in 1861, was something I never dreamed of. But the 

 way in which settlement advanced through these lake ports 

 before the railway came is neatly illustrated by the figures for 

 the rear townships in 1861 as compared with 1841. All had 

 filled to overflowing, and yet the losses in these townships by 

 1911 are even greater than in those along the lake shore." 



To the professor, these figures applied in detail to a special 

 district, were most startling. He, of course, knew of the depop- 

 ulation of Ireland at the time of the famine of 1846, but he knew 

 also that such was due to poverty, disease, and political unrest. 

 He was acquainted, too, with the periods of unusual emigration 

 from England and Scotland; but then these were caused by 

 either commercial depression or bad land laws. But how to 

 explain a situation in a province like Ontario, which had no old- 

 time problems to solve, where peace and plenty, so far as he 

 knew, had existed for many years, and where agriculture always 

 seemed prosperous was to him quite impossible. The question 

 had been much too small an affair for him, whose studies in eco- 

 nomics had been based almost wholly upon European conditions; 

 while, as regards the periodically acute problems in the United 

 States, such were looked upon as a part of European commercial 

 questions and as abnormal, owing to an enormous mass of unas- 

 similated people, and not governed by the operation of ordinary 

 economic laws. 



When, however, Mr. Keeler pointed out that along with this 

 steady lessening of the rural population, there was an equal les- 

 sening of local business, measured by the wholesale dealings of 

 his firm and the wholesale trade generally, and that he learned 

 from the Ontario Bureau of Industry Reports of the decline al- 

 most yearly during the past ten years of the areas in crop in many 

 old counties and of the decrease in the number of cattle and 

 sheep and of less acreage in wheat, barley and oats grown, the 

 professor began to comprehend that perhaps here really was a 



