In response to Bill's questions below, I would just like to make a
few observations as I don't have the time to respond in detail. It is
important to set out the region and the timing of land settlement.
In quebec, from which there was heavy outmigration particularly in
the second half of the 19th C, by that time all the good available
agricultural land (which is quite limited in Quebec) was gone I
believe. The outmigration was largely to New England factories
and other timber areas where their experience as lumberers was
utilized. The fact is the land was not available for further settlement
after the settlement of non-seignerial land in the eastern townships.
Ontario was different and the clergy reserves and other restrictions
on land availability probably did slow up settlement somewhat. But
the fact is that a lot of immigrants, particularly from Ireland, came
to Canada as a conduit to the US. (See I think it is Johnson's
study on the County of Ontario on this.) Plus the fact that even if
land were totally free, an immigrant would have to work one or more
years in waged work to get enough money to live on and buy the
capital to pursue farming. Also, until the completion of the canal
system in 1848, there was no economical way to get agricultural
output to market from land much beyond the existing waterways.
Wakefield's scheme was designed to create large estates with
small plots of land around them to provide cheap agricultural wage
labour for the large estates -- a kind of replication of Ireland.
Nevertheless, settlement of Ontario was actually quite rapid. The
canal system was completed in 1848 and within about 20 years
agriculture had reached the limit of cultivation and the colonization
roads were being built into the shield area which could never
support significant intensive agriculture. (Thin soils and rapidly
leached.)
The prairie region is a different story. Free land became available
after 1872, (1/4 section with pre-emption rights to the adjoining 1/4
section.) Still, extensive settlement had to wait until the coming of
railway after 1880-1885 (which were heavily financed by land grants
to the CPR.) Even then, immigration only became a flood after
1897 when commodity prices turned up while interest and shipping
costs went down, the American frontier of free, non-arid land had
closed, and the dry-land technology developed. (See the 'new
economic history' work of Ken Norrie on this question. "The Rate
of Settlement on the Canadian Prairies: 1870-1911".)
So, in summary, I think Bill could be right in that land prices may
have slowed the taking up of land in the second quarter of the 19th
Century but I don't think it was THE significant barrier relative to the
other competitive disadvantages.
Paul
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
Date sent: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:49:47 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Bill Burgess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [PEN-L:12625] Re: free labour in Canada
Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In reply to my suggestion that colonial policy restricted the availability
> of land in 'Canada', and so retarded capitalism relative to that in the US,
> Paul P. asked for any evidence that access to land was more restrictive in
> Canada and retarded settlement.
>
> My evidence is pretty thin (I was hoping Paul would help here). Wakefield's
> Appendix in Lord Durham's Report advocates higher land prices in Canada but
> complains that lower land prices in the US limited how high 'Canadian'
> prices could be set. While Wakefield's specific proposals were not
> implemented, I think the Appendix indicates the US land system was
> considerably freer. I don't think farmers in the US faced the burden they
> did in Canada where at least 1/7 of all land aliented was granted to the
> clergy. R. Gourlet's survey in the early part of the 19th century
> documented that church lands were considered a major obstacle to settlement
> because they were often left 'wild' (no roads through them, etc.) and did
> not pay any taxes. Certainly the colonial land system was a central issue
> in the 1837-38 rebellions (Canada's failed bourgeois-democratic
> revolution), including the issue of feudal tenure in Lower Canada ('Quebec').
>
> I suggested that the colonial land policy caused high out-migration, while
> Paul wrote he instead connected this to Kondratief-wave depressed commodity
> prices. I don't have the data for migration to the US before the 1850s, but
> I understand that during much of the first half of the century migration
> rates to the US from Canada were very high, especially from Lower Canada
> (Quebec) to New England states. Certainly the data does show that in the
> last 4 decades of the 19th century, out-migration from Canada (presumably
> mostly to the US) exceeded in-migration. I assume Canadian farmers produced
> similar commodities as in the northern states. So I wonder whether the
> pattern of commodity prices explains very much here, and if the 'political'
> explanation of land policy is better.
>
> Paul wrote:
>
> >I think I would disagree here. Though the American west settled
> >before the Canadian, the "great American desert" which includes
> >the Palliasers triangle in Canada was not settled until the same
> >time as was the contiguous area of Canada. Fowke, and others,
> >argue (I would say persuasively) that the settlement of this area
> >had to await the development of "dry-land techniques" and the
> >development of crops that could mature within the frost cycle. If I
> >am not mistaken, settlement of the western Canadian prairies did
> >not precede the settlement of the Dakotas, Montana and the
> >contiguous American prairies.
>
> I think this is right, but my suggestion is that the western settlement was
> unlike that in Eastern Canada, that is, it broke with the earlier
> restrictive land policy and instead copied the 'American' pattern. It had
> to, or Britain-Canada would have lost the west to the US. As I think Paul
> wrote, it was the development of the west that spurred industrial
> capitalism in Central Canada. My theory is that industrial capitalism in
> Canada would not have been a generation or more behind that in the US if it
> had a freer land system, e.g. been a democratic republic.
>
> Paul wrote:
>
> >Hold it, is this not one of my prime contentions in this thread -- that
> >exploitation of the aboriginal population is one of the most
> >important modes of primitive accumulation in Canada/UK in this
> >period? If not, I have failed to communicate my main message.
>
> My point is that the land system (seized from Natives, handed out to
> colonial favourites and clergy for speculative profit) is rarely an
> important part of the 'staples' explanation of Canadian political economy.
> Instead of this political-national issue, it focuses on commodity markets
> and the differences between commerical and industrial capital, etc. It
> seems to me these are also the central issues in Paul's account. Again, my
> question is whether the 'political economy of land' shouldn't occupy some
> of the space usually given to the 'political economy of staples'.
>
> Bill Burgess
>
