One recalls how a person feels who is wakened a bit sooner than suits his slumbers.  He passes some crusty comments and asks some criss-cross questions.  The same with Canada regarding Panama.  What’s Panama to us?  How in the world can a cut through a neck of swamp and hills three thousand miles from the back of beyond, have the slightest effect on commerce in Canada?  And if it has, won’t it be to hurt our railroads?  And if Panama does divert traffic from land to water, won’t that divert a share of shipping away from Montreal and St. John and Halifax?

There is no use ever arguing with a cross questioner.  Mr. Hill once said there was no use ever going into frenzies about the rights of the public.  The public would just get exactly what was coming to it.  If it worked for prosperity, it would get it.  If it were not sufficiently alert to see opportunity, it certainly would not be sufficiently alert to grasp opportunity after you had pointed it out.  Your opinion or mine does not count with the churlish questioner.  You have to hurl facts back so hard they waken your questioner up.  Here are the facts.

How can Panama turn the Pacific Coast into a front door instead of a back door?

Almost every big steamship line of England and Germany, also a great many of the small lines from Norway and Belgium and Holland and Spain and Italy, have announced their intention of putting on ships to go by way of Panama to the Orient and to Pacific Coast ports.  Three of those lines have explicitly said that they would call at Pacific ports in Canada if there were traffic and terminals for them.

The steamers coming from the Mediterranean have announced their intention of charging for steerage only five to ten dollars more to the Pacific Coast ports than to the Atlantic ports.  It costs the immigrant from sixteen to twenty-five dollars to go west from Atlantic ports.  It can hardly be doubted that a great many immigrants will save fare by booking directly to Pacific ports.  Of South-of-Europe immigrants, almost seven hundred thousand a year come to United States Atlantic ports, of whom two-thirds remain, one-third, owing to the rigor of winter, going back.  Of those who will come to Pacific ports, they will not be driven back by the rigor of winter.  They will find a region almost similar in climate to their own land and very similar in agriculture.  Hitherto Canada has not made a bid for South-of-Europe immigrants, but, with Panama open, they will come whether Canada bids for them or not.  They are the quickest, cheapest and most competent fruit farmers in the world.  They are also the most turbulent of all European immigrants.  We may like or dislike them.  They are coming to Canada’s shores when the war is over, coming in leaderless hordes.