It is already true, it is becoming increasingly true, that the United States must have Canadian products. They leap over even the barrier of a McKinley tariff. American forests are nearly exhausted--those of Canada are not only still of immense extent, but practically inexhaustible, since nature has reserved by conditions of soil and climate, large areas exclusively for the growth of trees. Canadian waters have well nigh a monopoly of the best fish of the American continent. From Nova Scotia northward gulf and bay swarm with fish which pour downwards {148} from the cold Arctic regions in numbers that never fail, and of the best quality. The lakes and rivers of the north-west might well supply the whole of the centre of the continent with fresh-water fish. On the Pacific the Canadian monopoly is not so complete since the purchase of Alaska by the United States, but the fisheries of British Columbia have a great future. On the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the inland prairie region Canada can supply coal in abundance to regions in the United States without deposits of their own. American brewers find it necessary to have Canadian barley, and are earnestly petitioning Congress to reduce the duty from thirty to the old rate of ten cents per bushel. So too with farm produce of other kinds. American consumers now pay a higher price for the eggs and poultry once drawn from Canada but driven by the McKinley tariff to seek new, and as it turns out, fairly satisfactory markets in Great Britain. That tariff must inevitably result in a largely increased development of manufacturing industry, a closer pressure of consumption upon producing power in the matter of food in the United States, and a consequent increase in the demand, already very noticeable in New England towns, for easy access to Canadian supplies. The freedom of the markets of the continent is likely ere long to be a stronger election cry in the United States than it has been in the Dominion[2]. {149}