28 
C'HAPTER III 
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 
The difference between the immediate resources of a country and 
its potential resources is the measure of the limitations in man’s 
knowledge. Statisticians calculate for us the value of Canada’s 
minerals, its waterpowers, lumber, agricultural and pastoral land, 
fisheries, and fur-bearing animals; and their figures soar with every 
increase in our knowledge, whether it be the production of an earlier- 
ripening wheat or the invention of a cheaper process for refining 
low-grade ores. Just as we have no right to despise the early French- 
Canadian settlers because they did not realize the power that lay 
buried in the Nova Scotia coal-fields, or in the waterfalls on the 
Saguenay river, so they in turn were not justified in scorning, as 
many did, the Indian tribes because they made even less use of the 
potential resources. For the Indians, isolated in a remote corner of 
the New World, had lagged behind in the march of progress, whereas 
the colonists inherited all the knowledge and experience that had 
resulted from the successive civilizations in the Old. If the settlers 
who came over during the first fifty years of colonization had them- 
selves remained isolated during the next two hundred years, in all 
probability they would either have perished or have fallen back into 
a condition not much better than that of the “ sauvages ” around 
them. ^ 
Let us consider, for a moment, some of the advantages the colon- 
ists possessed. They imported with them the seeds of various grains 
and vegetables, such as wheat, oats, rye, barley, potatoes, and turnips, 
and they possessed the knowledge of their cultivation. They knew 
how to irrigate and to fertilize the land, how to rotate their crops. 
They brought steel axes and saws to clear the ground, ploughs and 
oxen to break up the soil, scythes to cut the grain, and vehicles to 
gather in the harvest. Cows, sheep, goats, and poultry provided them 
both meat and clothing. The newcomers could anchor themselves 
to any fertile plot of ground, certain that with reasonable industry 
1 The early Norse colonies in Greenland, established before the time of tireanns, relied on Europe 
for iron, timber, and domestic animals for breeding. They disappeared within little more than a 
century after untHudations ceased and the_\' had to fall back, like the Eskimo, on the resources of their 
local en^'irunment. 
