does he do this? He spends next to nothing.
Let me be perfectly specific on how he does it:
I have known Russian, Hebrew, Italian families in the
Northwest who sewed their children into their clothes
for the winter and never permitted a change till spring.
Your Canadian would buy half a dozen suits for his
children in the interval. Your foreigner buys
of furniture and furnishings and comforts practically
nothing for the first few years. He sleeps on
the floor, with straw for a bed, and he occupies houses
twenty-four to a room—which is the actual
report in foreign quarters in the north end of Winnipeg.
Your Canadian requires a house of six rooms for a
family of six. When your foreigner has accumulated
a little capital he buys land or a city tenement.
Your Canadian educates his children, clothes them
a little better, moves into a better house.
When the foreigner buys a block, he moves his whole
family into one room in the basement and does the janitor
and scrubbing and heating work himself or forces his
women to do it for him. When the Canadian buys
a block, he hires a janitor, an engineer, a scrub
woman, and if he moves into the block, he takes one
of the best apartments. It does not take any
guessing to know which of these two will buy a second
block first—especially if the foreigner
lives on peanuts and beer, and the Canadian on beefsteak
and fresh fruit. Nor does it take any guessing
to know which type stands for the higher citizenship—which
will make toward the better nation.
IV
The question is—will Canada remain Canada
when these new races come up to power? And Canada
need not hoot that question; or gather her skirts
self-righteously and exclusively about her and pass
by on the other side. The United States did
that, and to-day certain sections of the foreign vote
are powerful enough to dictate to the President.
Take a little closer look at facts!
Foreigners have never been rushed into Canada as cheap
labor to displace the native born, so they have not,
as in great American industrial centers, lowered the
standard of living for Canadians. They have
come attracted by two magnets that give them great
power: (1) wages so high they can save; (2) land
absolutely free but for the ten-dollar preemption
fee.
In 1881 there were six hundred and sixty-seven Jews
in Canada.
In 1901 there were sixteen thousand. To-day
it is estimated there are twenty thousand each in
Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg. These Jews have
not gone out to the land. They have crowded into
the industrial centers reproducing the housing evils
from which they fled the European Ghetto. There
are sections of Winnipeg and Montreal and Toronto where
the very streets reek of Bowery smells. When
they go to the woods or the land, these people have
not the stamina to stand up to hard work. Yet
in the cities, by hook or crook, by push-cart and trade,
they acquire wealth. On the charity organization
of the cities they impose terrible burdens during
Canada’s long cold winter.