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1
November 25, 1907.]
DEARER BREAD.
(Daily Press, November 19th.) What would the English-speaking peoples do without their periodical and popolar scares"? One is tempted to the conclusion that their journals have discovered a long felt want," and that they are merely cater ing for a species of magazine and newspaper readers' literary dram-drinks. It is perhaps stimulating to them to find their favour ite penny-a-liner quoting men like Sir WILLIAM CROOKES or Professor SYLVANUS THOMPSON, to the effect that "the day when our daily bread supply will cease is not far dis ant." This is the latest variant on the ever popular theme of anticipated trouble. The end of the world is a conception already too stale to provoke the desired thrill; even the cooling and congealing of the sun has been
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT. vention of the self-binding harvester, which armaments, the presence at the deliberations copes with the crops of vast areas abroad, of a special representative of the Imperial and of leviathan cargo-ships, which can
Government having been regarded practi- bring in one trip as much wheat as an cally as a mere formality. If ever there average English county used to produce in a was anything tangible in the bigie of vear, made bread, comparatively speaking, Canada throwing in its lot be eath the as cheap as matches." People have been Stars and Stripes, an apparition which getting it at a very little over cost, be Canadians themselves have laughed at more cause of the exploitation of the large virgin than any others, this is the way to lay plains where, by the way, the yield per it once for all. The colonials of the acre is only about half that obtained by the Dominion were unlikely to rest 010- English cultivator-from eight to twenty tent with anything short of reil bushels against over thirty bushels. At responsibility. They may fairly engritu present the potential production is practite themselves now on enjoying that cally unlimited; it is not that which affects enviable status, when their Premier the price, but vice versa. Freightage, by despatches to a country nowhere near their sea at least, is at a minimum, s that was not an essential factor in the recent rise. It is the middlemen gamblers who do it, and they can only do hurt up to a certain
to
prophesied too often; the failure of the coal point. The effect of their manipulations | Country than it can even to themselves
for
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is to stimulate or depress the producers' activity. In spite of them, however, the production will follow demand. It over. took it before, and the home pro lucers had to retire from the business, because, simply speaking, bread had become too cheap. It is even now a long way off being too dear.
A NOTABLE MISSION.
own borders an official of their own negotiat directly concerning a detail of policy which may actually be held to involve more important consequences to the Mother
-a detail admittedly of the most awk. ward ramifications and possibilities. Mr. LEMIEUX is at present the cynosure of the United Kingdom as well as of his own vide land, and London under EDWARD VII. may he said to be watching his progress with an affectionate concern similar perhaps to that it showed in the fourteenth century for the carver of the gallant son of the Third EDWARD. It is a distinct foutber for colonial caps to
find that their King- foreign capital by one of themselves as well Emperor may be directly represented at a
as hy an emissary sent directly from his own presence.
WOMAN, EAST AND WEST.
(Daily Press, November 21st.) ONE of the pharisaic complacences with which the white man is fond of illustrating his superiority over the " heathen relates to the status of woman. His formul. is
(Daily Press, November 20th.) Ottawa, announced in one of our recent The arrival in Japan of Mr. LEMIEUX of
telegrams from our Tokyo correspondent, is an event of considerable significance to more colonies than Canada, though to Hong- kong, as a Crown Colony, it does not hold out any special reason of congratulation or for hope. The official position of Mr. LEMIEUX at home was that of Postinaster- General of Canada, but his present position in Japan is that of Envoy Extraordinary from the Canadian Government. He is in Tokyo for the purpose of negotiating that the respect paid to women is an un- a settlement of the difficulty regarding failing gauge of a nation's civilization. In Japanese immigration in the Dominion. China and Japan, he proclaims, woman does Apparently he is in a position to ignore His not yet occupy the pedestal of her white Britannic Majesty's resident representative, sister. Ergo. China and Japan are to that Sir CLAUDE MACDONALD, and to deal direct extent uncivilized. The missionary lately with the Japanese Foreign Office. As the has been expressing especial concern for Times put it, when his imminent departure the education and emancipation of woran was announced, he did not go to Japau
as in these parts. It should do the white a Canadian envoy of the Imperial Govern-
man no harm to consider and ponder the ment," but as "au Imperial euvoy of the question more seriously; to take less for Canadian Government,' a distinction em granted and to ask himself whether it i‹ bodying a great deal of difference. Th always advisable in the interests of true incident marks the stage to which Colonial knowledge to criticise the manners and administration has advanced on its pro- customs of a foreign country from the gress towards a system tending more than point of view of the manners and custom fast federation is not, as experience has any other to Imperial unity. Hard and
-particularly the taken for granted man- ners and customs-of his own. There are proved, the best or most durable arrange-educated and enlightened Chinese, by no means to be dubbed mere re-actionaries,
喜喜
supply is good for an annual airing; but best of all, because Intest of all, the imminent failure of our wheat supply is " trump card. The recent rise in the price of wheat has caused it to be trotted out in most of the prints received by recent maile, and as typical of the rest we may quote the Review of Reviews, which says:- "The wheat-growing area of the world, we are apt to forget, is strictly limited in extent, for wheat will only grow in temperate countries. The present production of the wheat-growing lands is sufficient to provide bread 666 000,000 people. The months to be filled already number 585,00 1,000. We are therefore, dangerously nearing the food limit. As bread- esters have been increasing at double the rate of the area of wheat under cultivation, the da when we shall starve cannot be for removed. At present it is the white races, the wheat. eaters, who dominate the world. What will be their fate when wheat fails? Will their berit. age pass to the esters of rice, the food of the yellow peoples of the earth? This is an alarming prospect which should stimulate the white wheat-eating races to energetic efforts to increase the yield of wheat per acre."
This very ingeniously gives a Yellow Peril flavour to the up-to-date scar”.
What has provoked the latter? A small increase. in the price of an already very clean staple, and the said increase is due, not necessarily to inevitable shortage of supply, but to the elements of speculation and panic in the commercialism that specially deals with the commodity. If we cared to take the scure. hend attitude toward the subject, we would sooner suggest that the race is likely to die out before its wheat supply need do so. But neither is quite so near the stage of dissolution as all that. A mouth ago, whe oatmeal was quoted twopence a pound, do biscuits twopence halfpenny, and besteak a shilling, white breid was only a penny to threehalfpence a pound. The highest andment, and the policy of leading-string best product of the grain grower, miller and baker was in a position to stand a increase of cost to the consumer, and this increase will stimulate production nud tend to adjust matters automatically once more. It is true the population of the United Kingdom has increased by fifty per cent in the last three decades, and that its production of wheat bas in the BRIDG period dropped from fifty per cent of the amount consumed to about twenty per cent. This was not inevitable. There is still the land. It was not worked outt There are acres and #cres still
• which, where wheat growing is concerned, may be counted as virgin soil. Nor does it need the fi-cal experiments of Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN to increase the output. The stuff could and can be imported so cheaply, under free trade, that it simply was no worth growing at hom, and the people turned to more profitable work. The in-
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11 new woman of Japan has lost charm, and has not improved her status, by acting on the suggestion of the medalers. In China we have yet to see the results of the
too tightly held has evidently been dropped. } who in this matter hold that the missionaries Canada's demand that its power be re-might do worse than let well alone. In cognised to control the negotiation of such Japan it seems indisputable that they have treaties as exclusively or principally affect done worse by not letting well alone. The its own territory is now granted, it only tacitly. Until the present occasion, the Imperial Government has not conceded such power except in what may be called petty cases, affairs unt Imperially important, as the subject matter of Mr. LEMIEUX'S mission is. Canadian Ministers, acting in conjunction with the British Ambassador at the foreign capital of the country con- cerned, have negotiated a few commercial treaties with Europ-ao Powers. There was for instance, the recent Convention between Canada and France. In dealing with the Government of the United States, with whom a long series of negotiations was naturally inevitable, the Canadian Govern ment has been aliosed a more or less fr. hand even in matters affecting undeniably Imperial interests, such as boundaries and
reform; but when they do appear, we do not expect either the men or women of China will be found to have benefi td. There is neither spice nor necessity for an extended comparison of the status of womanhood East and West, but a rapid review of several poiuts usually ra ́sed will show that the difference, exist chiefly in
and name only. After centuries of " respect,
generations of education, we fint Occidental women s ill dissatisfied : still,
"
live Oliver Twist, asking for more. His own womenfolk therefore prick the bubble of the white man's boast that his treatment of them places him on a higher