Westward with the Prince of WalesNewton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
History
Westward with the Prince of Wales
Newton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
Canada -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
It is a problem which Britain must share also, if we do not wish to see
Canada growing up a stranger to us in texture, ideals and thought. It
is not an easy problem. Canada's chief need today is for
agriculturists, yet the workers we wish to retain most in this country
are agriculturists. Canada must have her supply, and if we cannot
afford them, she must take what she can from Eastern Europe, or from
America, and very many American farmers, indeed, are moving up to
Canadian lands.
There is always room in a vast country such as Canada for skilled or
willing workers, and we can send them. But the demand is not great at
present, and will not be great until the agriculturist opens up the
land. And the agriculturist is to come from where?
Certainly it is a matter which calls for a great deal of consideration.
IV
The Prince made the usual round of the usual program during his stay,
but his visit to the Grain Exchange was an item that was unique.
He drove on Wednesday, September 10th, to this dramatic place, where
brokers, apparently in a frenzy, shout and wave their hands, while the
price of grain sinks and rises like a trembling balance at their
gestures and shouts.
The pit at which all these hustling buyers and sellers are gathered has
all the romantic qualities of fiction. It is, as far as I am
concerned, one of the few places that live up to the written pictures
of it, for it gave me the authentic thrill that had come to me when I
first read of the Chicago wheat transactions in Frank Norris's novel,
"The Pit."
The Prince drove to the Grain Exchange and was whirled aloft to the
fourth story of the tall building. He entered a big hall in which
babel with modern improvements and complications reigned.
In the centre of this room was the pit proper. It has nothing of the
Stygian about it. It is a hexagon of shallow steps rising from the
floor, and descending on the inner side.
On these steps was a crowd of super-men with voices of rolled steel.
They called out cabalistic formulae of which the most intelligible to
the layman sounded something like:
"May--eighty-three--quarter."
Cold, high and terrible voices seemed to answer:
"Taken."
Hundreds of voices were doing this, amid a storm of cross shoutings,
and under a cloud of tossing hands, that signalled with fingers or with
papers. Cutting across this whirlpool of noise was the frantic
clicking of telegraph instruments. These tickers were worked by four
emotionless gods sitting high up in a judgment seat over the pit.
They had unerring ears. They caught the separate quotations from the
seething maelstrom of sound beneath them, sifted the completed deal
from the mere speculative offer in uncanny fashion, and with their
unresting fingers ticked the message off on an instrument that carried
it to a platform high up on one of the walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account