Wednesday, 20 January 2016


    Why should there be hard times in a land of plenty? That is a question that would puzzle the smartest man to answer. Take Canada for example, it is rich in everything needful for the comfort of man, and its development has hardly begun. The earth yields bountiful crops of every variety of food and in fruit belts are not surpassed in any country. And it is less than half a century since it has been discovered that its mines are overflowing with wealth. Yet, with all these blessings the cry of hard times comes every few years to bring poverty and want to countless homes. One would to countless homes. One would think that in a city like Hamilton with its four hundred or more factories no able-bodied man  would be compelled to ask for bread for the support of his wife and children. Yet there are hundreds of men walking the streets seeking in vain for work. The factory doors have been closed for weeks and months, and the prospects of them again opening are not very bright for months or more. There is no demand  for the output of the factories and money is so tied up that the managers of factories are not in a position to manufacture in the hope of a future demand for their wares. Every few years this condition exists and there seems to be no way out of it. In the rural communities, they know but little of hard times, and as for the farmers they never feel the pangs of poverty, nor do their children ask in vain for bread for no matter how business is with the town people, the farmer always has something to sell for which he gets cash on demand and the best of prices, and from his overflowing stores there is plenty of everything to feed and clothe his family. While the towns are filled with unemployed men, the farmer cannot hire labor sufficient to gather his crops and every year more than enough is wasted on the farm, on account of the scarcity of labor that would feed many hundreds of town families, and there are thousands of acres of land lying untilled because there are not men willing to leave the uncertainties of city life and go to work in the country. It’s a muddle.




          A couple of weeks ago, a correspondent in the columns of the Spectator had something to say about the nickel industry. Some years ago, the writer of these musings was interested in a passing study of the mining and metallurgical industries of Canada, especially in the province of Ontario. At that time, it was one of the dreams of John Patterson to build a smelting furnace here in Hamilton for the reduction and refining of nickel matte. Indeed, he got so far along in his scheme as to organize a company and erect the necessary buildings in the east end of the city, and there, forom some unaccountable reason, the nickel industry came to a sudden ending before actual smelting had begun. Hamilton then lost a prospective industry that would have been the means of bringing others of its kind to furnish labor and wealth for the city. As we call to mind from the reading of the report, referred to some years ago, native copper was first discovered in Canada about the year 1767 by a trader named Henry, who had passed the winter on Michipicoten Island. Later, a company was organized in England to work mines in Lake Superior country, but the vein of copper was so narrow that the prospectors became discouraged and the attempt was abandoned. No further effort was made for nearly three-quarters of a century, until 1845, when a company was organized in Montreal to explore the minerals on the north shore of Lake Superior. A distance of 500 miles, from Sault Ste. Marie to Pigeon River, was surveyed, but subsequent development proved disappointing. Unprofitable operations were continued at intervals until 1865, during which time large sums of money were expended in developing the Bruce mines. Nickel was first discovered in 1816 in the copper ore in the Wallace mine, on the shore of Lake Huron, but not in sufficient quantities to justify extensive explorations. This was the first recorded discovery of nickel in Canada. Ten years later, nickel and copper ore were discovered six miles north of Whitefish lake, and less than half a mile from the Creighton mine. The Creighton mine, which has become the main source of the nickel supply, was not opened till 1909. In 1892, the International Nickel company, of New Jersey, was organized to consolidate and control the nickel production in Canada.




          Canada has a monopoly of the nickel output, for nickel is only found in one other place in the world in paying quantities. In 1853, the French government took possession of an island of Australia, in the Pacific ocean, and converted it into a convict camp. The island is rich in gold, copper and nickel, and is surrounded on all sides by coral reefs, connecting numerous islets, rocks and banks of sand, rendering navigation so intricate and dangerous that the island can be approached by two openings only. Captain Cook first discovered the island in 1774, and called it New Caledonia. The island covers about six thousand square miles, and in 1890 had a population of 57,000. The mines are worked by the French government with convict labor. New Caledonia is between eight hundred and a thousand miles from the shores of Australia, and its approaches are so dangerous that it is next to impossible for the convicts to make their escape. The nickel output of the New Caledonia mines hardly comes in competition with the output of the Sudbury mines, for the distance which it has to be freighted to the markets in England and New York, being some sixteen or seventeen thousand miles, and the demands of the French government for use of the material in manufactures, etc., substantially gives Canada the control of the markets of the world. In 1907 – the latest data on hand – the value of the nickel sent to the United States was $9,525, 406. There seems to be no end in sight to the output of the mines, and as the years go by, its value increases on account of its application in almost every branch of the steel industry, especially in the making of plates for sea-going vessels.




          In gold and silver mining, Canada has wealth in abundance, and all that seems to be necessary to its development is the investment of more Canadian capital. It does seem strange that in Ontario, with all its richness in copper, nickel, lead, zinc, graphite, mica, talc, corundum, carbide of calcium, salt, peat, petroleum and natural gas, so few of the companies are controlled or managed by Canadian men or capital. In looking over the list of corporations, we find Hamilton men and capital are represented in the Canada Corundum company. It has a paid up capital of $1,106,287. Three Hamilton men are members of the board of directors, C. S. Wilcox, F. H. Whitton and J. Orr Callaghan. The headquarters of the company is in Toronto. The company owns about three thousand acres of corundum lands in Renfrew and Hastings counties. The corundum mill is by far the largest concentrating plant in Canada, and in 1904 gave employment to an average of 200 men. Corundum was first discovered in paying quantities in 1906. Corundum is the second hardest mineral, the only other one equaling or surpassing it being the diamond. As with nickel, cobalt, mica and asbestos, Canada holds a unique position, the deposits being practically unlimited. Another valuable product is carbide of calcium, a discovery made by H. L. Willson, who was born and raised within the sound of the alarm in Hamilton’s fire tower.




          Take the entire territory of the Dominion of Canada, from the Yukon territory to the jumping-off place at Nova Scotia, and the earth is one vast storehouse of undiscovered wealth. The hardy pioneers who have developed its mines have merely scratched the surface, but enough has been done to prove Canada among the richest mining countries in the world. Gold was first discovered in the Yukon in 1878 by a prospector named Holt, and in the first twelve years $122,968,000 worth of the precious metal was added to the wealth of the world. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, silver was discovered near Sault Ste. Marie by a Russian explorer, but it was not till 1855 the first mine was located. The yield was inconsiderable till between the years 1867 and 1870, when an American company acquired from the Montreal Mining company a tract of 107,000 acres, in which was included the famous Silver Islet mine. The province of Quebec is rich in minerals, the one of the greatest value being asbestos , which is especial interest in the mining and industrial world. So far as is known down to the present time, the deposits of asbestos in Quebec are the only ones yet discovered. The asbestos mines are principally controlled by American capital. Petroleum was first discovered in the western part of Canada about the year 1850, but it has been known to exist by the Indians aay back in the early settlement of the country. It has been used for lighting purposes from time immemorial. Petrolea, Bothwell, Leamington and East Tilbury are the principal oil fields in Ontario, and all are located between London and the Detroit river. Sixty years ago, everybody in this section of Canada was talking petroleum, and millions of dollars were sunk in prospecting wells, from which there was but small returns to the investors. George Brown, the editor of the Toronto Globe, was one of the early promoters of the Bothwell field, and sunk quite a lot of money. The pioneers in all such enterprises generally lay the foundation for the fortunes made by the Rockefellers. Hamilton had at least one enthusiast as a promoter in the oil fields at Petrolea and Bothwell. Frederick Watkins, father of Frederick Watkins now living in this city, was at that time doing a prosperous mercantile business in partnership with his brother, Thomas C. and Samuel, but he caught the oil fever and left the selling of dry goods and clothing to his brothers, while he spent weary days and anxious nights boring for oil. After sinking quite an amount of capital, he retired from the oil fields, glad to get back to Hamilton with life and broken down health. The men who developed the Ontario oil fields never made a dollar, but those who came after them reaped the harvest.




          We repeat the question asked in the opening of these musings, Why should there be poverty and hard times in a land of plenty? Ontario is rich in everything necessary to the comfort of man, and there is more wasted every day on the farm and in the homes in towns and cities than would feed the multitude out of work. Hamilton has grown in population far beyond its working capacity at the present time. The war and hard times came together, and, as a result, the four hundred or more industries of Hamilton have had either to close down or run on shorter hours. The cotton mills and the knitting factories and John McPherson’s shoe factory seem to be the favored industries, some of them having to work overtime to fill orders. While Canadian capital is being investedin Mexico and South America, English and American capital is gathering in the wealth from the Ontario mines.




          Canada has sent some thirty or thirty-two thousand of her boys across the seas to help fight the battles of the mother country, and there is an effort to raise nearly as many men to raise the contingent to fifty thousand. That the rolls will soon be filled, there is no doubt, as thousands were disappointed at not being taken on the first call. Just think of it, that in less than two months an army of thirty thousand fighting men could be gathered, drilled and equipped, and all are volunteers! In 1861, when President Lincoln issued the first call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion in the southern states, it took nearly three months to lick them into shape and get them ready for the field of battle. That army had to be equipped and drilled, for the majority of the boys who enlisted had, probably, never fired a gun in their lives. This old muser can speak from experience, for he was one of the 75,000 volunteers, and never but once had fired even a shotgun, and then he killed a poor little bird that was singing so sweetly in a tree across the bay in Oaklands park. The United States was not then as well-prepared for war as was Canada when Colonel Sam Hughes called for thirty thousand men. At the first battle of Bull Run, in July, 1861, the Federals had in the field no larger an army than Canada sent across the seas a couple of weeks ago.


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