men. In its earliest days it was simply an organisation to keep out the bad worker."

"And now it's an organisation to keep out the good workman."

"There were industrial evils-" began the Canadian gentleman.

"Yes," said the Old Timer, "and Trade Unionism was the most unmoral, artificial and dishonest attempt to put things right. Its one cry: We will be employed, but we won't work.'" 'People say," said the Englishwoman, working women are foolish not to combine and join Trade Unionism; they are far too wise to do

so."

"that

"They know something of thrift, at least they ought to, for most of them have had a small purse all their lives, and a good deal to do with it! At any rate they would not tax time and tax energy and build up a tariff wall against their own skilled labourers. Skilled labour! Skilled labour is going to be taxed out of existence, just as most other things are taxed.”

Some young men returning from dinner, and instantly busying themselves with tobacco, were so evidently impatient to join the argument that it seemed almost like cruelty not to allow them to do

SO.

One said: "I am a traveller in hair dye, and I guess there is more of that sold in New York to elderly men than anywhere else in the world. A man of fifty or sixty need hardly seek work. Well, we fake them up to look young, and that is my trade, sir, and a trade of which I may say I am proud."

"Do all who are weak and all who are old go to the wall?" someone asked, to which the young man replied cheerfully, "That's so."

"Economic conditions will always show a certain equation," said the Canadian gentleman," and whether we have a minimum wage or not, the fact remains that a certain justice prevails, we may say automatically, where employment is concerned. A man may demand high wages, but he cannot demand impossible wages.

66

"And what sort of service are they going to give for their pay?" said the Old Timer. And what sort of men is Trade Unionism going to produce? Are they to be men leaning on their tools and smoking cigarettes, or are they to be men using their tools in the way a man loves to use them, with energy and with skill? To limit output is rotten. A man once said to me: 'If I am to do my work well I must work at my own speed. Now I can lay twenty per cent more bricks than I am allowed to lay. But

ain't allowed to finish my work and go, I must dawdle! Well, sir, I can't do my best work when I dawdle, it seems to give me the fidgets.'

The purveyor of hair dye said that he believed in the present system, and another young man, also smoking, backed him up warmly.

"We mean to have high wages and short hours," he said. We mean to get home at five o'clock

in the afternoon."

"Your poor wives!" murmured the English

woman.

"I believe," said the Canadian gentleman, "in a man demanding what wages he likes-that is a matter which will always settle itself."

"Share and share alike," murmured the Old Timer," and as much for the man who works the machine as for the man who invented it. Fools always think that the work of brains is easily done."

"If a man won't give me what I want for turning the handle of a machine," said one of the younger men," I quit.'

"You don't call a man a working-man unless he turns a handle or heaves muck!" flashed the Old Timer.

"I approve of strikes," said a youth who had not yet spoken," and the mistake we make in Canada is that we are obliged to submit things to arbitration before we strike. In London, England, I was on picket duty for a time; it was bully!"

"Strikes are a pleasant remedy, and like all pleasant remedies you may be sure they are dangerous.'

'You spoke just now," said the Canadian gentleman, "of the moral effect on a man of not being allowed to do good work, and I am with you there; but what of the moral effect on an employer who does not permit himself to give just wages?"

Just wages," said the old man, his eyes blazing, "for good work and a fair day's work."

"I go further than you all," said the fat young gentleman. "I think that employees should not only state what their wages should be, but who is to be employed. Now mark you-" he began to saw the air with his hands

"If I make a business," said the Old Timer, "I shall conduct that business. If I make mistakes I shall no doubt suffer for those mistakes, but I shall learn to do better because of them. Nothing was ever learned by interference."

"I approve of liberty!" said two young men.

at once.

For yourselves! And for no one else! Do you know what liberty means, and do you know what law means? Liberty means responsibility, and those

who talk most glibly about it are least aware of the problems involved in it."

Liberty," said one of the young men, hotly, is the right of every individual that lives."

And law," snapped the old man, is a direct interference with the rights of individuals. But there never was liberty without law, and that is what youth has still to learn. Fine words do not help a man much, and men may shout Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity until they are hoarse without getting a whit nearer the truth of things. Liberty means law, and independence is only faintly understood, except in communities, and fraternity can be no more imposed upon people than love can be imposed

upon them."

Everyone," said the Canadian lady, (" starts with the idea that liberty means doing as one likes ; it is an extraordinary view of the subject."

"But more particularly it means doing as badly as he likes," was the quick reply.

66

Whereas of course," went on the lady, “liberty can only mean freedom to do one's best.

66 'I guess I'm going to do as I like, and I don't see who's going to prevent me," the fat young man said.

"No, I don't see who is to prevent it," said the Old Timer quietly.

"When you come calm, George--" said the Canadian gentleman

A waiter in a white coat opened the door and announced the second call for supper.

It was a well staged entrance, and probably just in time.

Chapter II

T

From Toronto to Montreal

HE traveller journeys away from Western Canada with a sense of regret at not having discovered why it should be called the "wild and woolly West," but the train rolls on irresistibly carrying him into a new country which, to his surprise, is not even marked by a different colour on the map. Yet the differences are very obvious and full of interest.

Eastern Canada received its first large influx of British Colonists when the American Loyalists, who had fought under the British flag during the War of Independence, were forced to emigrate to Canada when the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 separated the United States from English rule. There are many people who, when they allude to Canada as being a new country and its inhabitants as new people, seem to forget that there are names to-day in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec which belong to very early ages of English history. These Loyalists were not men of mushroom growth, but could boast a long descent; they had lived on their own property and had enjoyed stately and luxurious homes. They proved themselves willing to give up everything rather than be disloyal to the mother country, and the traveller, arriving at some of the large and beautiful towns in Eastern Canada to-day, is immediately impressed, not only by their magnificent buildings and by their intellectualism, but by the fact that this is not a country of yesterday.