CANADA'S MELTING POT'.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13350, 7 April 1914, Page 2

CANADA'S MELTING POT'.

Whilst England is , lamenting the heavy drain on her rural . population which is now taking place, the excess of emigration over immigration in 1912 having been 336,454, Canada is fast filling up her waste spaces with people seeking in the new land a freer life, a wider scope for energies and enterprise and higher wages • for manual labor. ' Canada to-day seems as near to the young countryman of England as London did to his -father, 'and the .success of so many • of those who have already emigrated haa led toy a very eager desire to seek fortune across the Atlantic. But it is not alone from Great Britain, that they journey to Canada, and herein lies the great . Canadian proposition. An extraordinary word picture of the difficult task which awaits Canada iii -welding into one the varied elements from Europe which are now bubbling within that great melting pot is given by Mrs Donald Shaw in the National. Review. ''Probably very few," she writes, ''are as ypt- fully awake, to the national probjein that is., rapidly crystallising into definite and tangible shape, through the almost overwhelming, flood-tide of immigration which has poured, and is still pouring, into the Dominion. It is safe to cay that nine out. of ten of the Central Europeans, and a good riiajiy of the Britisn, r arrive in aj destitute condition, often having Jborrow- 'i ed the money for their passage money to show to tlie. immigration inspectors. At the. present moment forty-eight different languages are in daily use, in Canada, and practically . every known, re . ligious creed iy represented. /Unless immediate. steps are taken to wield this heterogeneous n^ass of , peoples infb the life of the country, unless they can be Ca.uadianised and Imperialised before the generation whicli has now to be educated comes to^iaturity yery gravo renults to the Dominion and' to. the Empire will inevitably follow." . This is indeed, a crucidl time in the history of Canada." Life in the Dominion ' must -be nladenoblo , than life, in any coutttry ; from which ..the immigrants are drawn If Canada is to maintain <jven lier present placip- among tiie nations', "Take, for instance, t^ Proviriiqe of Quebec," writes Mrs Shaw. ''Here the French population holds the balance of power and the Roman/ Catholic Church is prel dominant.^ One would not like to say that these people present in any/way a menace to the life of th^ -Dominion, but it is a fact that they are, as a general rule, antagonistic toMraperial ideals, and in some districts they are still in such :v state of ignorance. as to be classed as '■-icarcely human' by people who have come in contact with them. In the North- West there is £he great Ruthen-. ian, or Galician, settlement. There are at present over a quarter of a million, Ruthenians in Canada, and they are increasing very rapidly. -These people are thrifty, liard-working, and intelligent. Coming into, the country practically destitute, settled on the poorest and most unproductive of land, living in the most rigorous of ' climates, , they , aro yet be-, coming prosperous arid powerful. Taken all round, physically, morally, and intellectually, the Ruthenians represent the finest type of immigrants that .Canada receives. Physically and featuraUy.they are a, magnificent race. Their intellectual level is quite on an average with tliat of the immigrants from Great Britain, where education has been compulsory ; yet most of the Ruthenians can neither read nor write when they arrive in Canada. Tn the Middle West there are the Italian settlements. In Toronto alone ( the Italian settlement numbers over 18,000 persons, and has been divided into three sections. Tlie Italians are the most useful of Canadian, immigrants. They are amenable, sympathetic, and tractable, hard-working and law-abiding. In Alberta there comes int6 the reckoning another and a more vital and dangerous element, and one, that np one likes to mention or . dwell, upon. Driven out of the United States the .Mormojis are ftfocking .into Alberta ; nlready 14,000 of them are settled on the land, are acquiring property and becoming wealthy, and they will Ue followed, as a natural result, bv

a further influx of their own people. It : is a recogiiised and acknowledged fact amongst those who are studying the racial problem that in the very near future the Mormon® will hold the balance of power as firmly in Alberta aa the French do in Quebec. Going further west to British Columbia we meet with the Oriental. Every ninth person in British Columbia is an Oriental, every fifth male in the population of British Columbia is an Oriental. There are the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Japs, all of them racially, antagonistic to tlie European and the American. In British Columbia, too, there are the Doukhoborg,. a sect of Russian Quakers who in themselves provide material for speculation, and have already necessitated the sitting of a special commission to decide aS| to where the limit can be drawn as regards their acquisition lof property and jo on. They lioye a positive genius for farming. In 1881 there were only 661 Jews in the whole of Canada ;to-day there are over 160,000 and they are coming in at the rate of 7000 a year. In Toronto there are ' 30,000 Jews, . and a good, deal of the best*, town property is owned by them. Now -the Jew would provide no menace to Canada if Canada understood him or knew how to handle him, but she no more knows how to manage him than she knows how to manage the Oriental, the Doukhobor," or the Mormon. A large influx of peoples flooding a- country which is. as yet only in. ita infancy, and which is neither organised nor established, is a very different matter. So far there. has never been, a country which was in the position of Canada to-day^ for the. civilised race is a mere Unit, and is being overwhelmed by an avalanche of racesdrawn from almost every quarter, of globe! How,: then, is thia small unit Of thinking, organised, and civilised people going to remain predominant, and to mould the superabundance of ignorance and diversification of races into one united Canadian whole?. The whole country from sea to sea is in a state of unrest and uneasiness*, both financial, religious and civil. To use /a slang term,. JCanada has bitten ~off more than she can chew.' She asked for immigra-' tion and received ih reply such a deluge of immigration that she is totally unable to cope with :it." . , f" ., . - '■ _ . '