Americans control nine tenths of the automobile accessory business of Canada, and in their branch plants they make three fifths of the Dominion’s automobiles. Practically all of our well known firms devoted to low and moderate priced cars have big factories in Canada, and they do practically all their exporting to Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, and South Africa through their Canadian branch plants. This export business amounts to more than twenty-five million dollars a year, while the cars made here for the Canadian market represent a value three times as great. In other lines American capital is conspicuous. Half of the Canadian rubber factories are owned by Americans, and nearly half of the meat packing, paint, brass, condensed milk, car construction, and electrical apparatus industries represent American money. American controlled concerns do more than half of all the oil refining, while two hundred and fifty million dollars of our money is invested in the pulp and paper industry. Altogether, it is estimated that American investments in government loans, corporation bonds, land mortgages, and industrial enterprises amount to two thousand five hundred million dollars. Our stake in Canada has been increasing rapidly ever since 1914, and now it nearly equals that of the British. Within a few years it will probably be much greater. Nearly one sixth of all the money we have invested in foreign countries is in Canada, and in return for the capital Canada is now buying from us more than three fifths of her annual thousand million dollar purchases abroad. In fact, her people are our best customers; their purchases of us amount to eighty-three dollars per capita a year as compared with five dollars for all Europe and fifty cents for China. CHAPTER XIV WATERFALLS THAT WORK FOR THE PEOPLE How much do you pay for the electric current that lights your home and runs your heater, vacuum cleaner, and washing machine? In Washington I am charged ten cents a kilowatt hour, and unless you are especially favourably located I venture your bills are figured at about the same rate. To be sure, the monthly expense is not great, but wouldn’t you feel free to use more electricity if your bills were cut down one half or two thirds? That is just what has happened to hundreds of thousands of people in southern Ontario, and I have been devoting the last couple of days to finding out how it was done. I have made a special trip from Toronto to Niagara Falls, and am now writing almost in sight of those mighty waters. I have visited the world’s biggest power station and talked here also with the engineers of the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission, which sells the current to the public at cost. Again I am impressed with the enterprise and the courage of the people of this province, and the way they use their government to get what they want.