72 The Illumination of Joseph Keeler, Esq. 



latter points; but you know them all, since as one of your pro- 

 fessors in the University has recently stated in a report regard- 

 ing high prices, ' The tax on imports of food is a primary cause in 

 prices being higher here in Canada than in Sweden. Intended 

 to protect the Canadian farmer, the development of canning 

 and packing factories has made it possible for a group of men to 

 entirely control the prices at which our farmers must sell their 

 products nearly all possible buyers being in the group and 

 also to maintain the price at which the consumer must buy the 

 same products up to the level of the foreign price plus freight 

 and plus duty. ' 



"I have not said anything to you, professor, about my Ernest; 

 but I believe I shall be doing a wise thing in at any rate the lad's 

 interest in buying a farm and in attempting to cultivate a spirit 

 of mutual help and understanding between myself and neigh- 

 bours in the country with a view to cooperation, and the boy will 

 gradually get fitted into his place and work, if he takes the matter 

 seriously, while spending his winters at the Guelph College, 

 getting the scientific knowledge along with the practical. In- 

 deed, professor, I think some of the blood of my rural ancestry 

 must be warming up, for I am strangely attracted to this 

 problem, and you may expect shortly to see me a lord of a few 

 cheap acres. It does seem very ridiculous that all which we in 

 Canada hear about the landed gentry of England and Germany 

 should fill us with visions of ancient country seats set in splendid 

 parks, surrounded with a happy rural tenantry, while we in 

 Canada see on every side our city merchants imagining that 

 they are the only aristocracy, while the farmers are really 

 classed with our wage-earning warehouse men. It looks as if it 

 is all a difference of opportunity and I would dearly like to see 

 the farmer given one chance, for I cannot believe that the spirit 

 has wholly gone out of that old life down by the Bay, when my 

 grandmother reverting to the early doings always used to say, 

 * Those were halcyon days.'" 



