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Things Which Should Be Done And Things Which Cannot

Regina Leader
August 16, 1894. p.4

When His Honor the Lieut.-Governor of Quebec was Prime Minister of that province he went in for a policy of creameries and the result is to day that every farmer in Lower Canada has money and is happy and prosperous. The Government of Canada has shown itself alive to the interests of the farmers of the North-West by sending round travelling dairies. We had one here a short time ago; one will again be here this month. A creamery has been established at Moose Jaw; Hon. Mr. Perley himself has established a most successful creamery at Wolseley. At Innisfail in the Red Deer country the farmers by joint action have established a creamery. The machinery was put up in May last and it is now turning out one thousand pounds of butter a day, 6000 pounds a week. On Sundays the cows give milk too but the farmers use this for their domestic supply. They are sending butter to British Columbia already. Mr. West, a merchant of Innisfail went west on Thursday to Victoria with a carload, 20,000 lbs. of butter. It is their determination to establish a butter trade with China and Japan. Already China is taking flour from Vancouver and this means North-West flour. At Innisfail they also make cheese and have at the creamery 7,000 lbs. of cheese. There are five separators at different points to which the farmers bring milk and from these the Central Creamery is supplied. Making butter economically is a matter of science and the travelling dairies will show how to get all that is possible out of the milk. By ordinary methods we believe it takes 28 lbs. of milk to make one pound of butter. But the travelling dairy will show how a pound of butter can be had from 22 lbs. of milk. One man has established a private creamery at Battleford and it is working well. There is nothing like private enterprise; but we believe a dairy policy may be established on sound principles which, without impairing self-reliance, will yield satisfactory results. Next year we should like to see a creamery at Lumsden, one at Long Lake, one at Balcony and one at Boggy Creek. There is an ideal spot on the Creek and if the C.P.R. would build its North-West dairy there and now it could do nothing better. Such factories would make the farmer independent in great part of a grain crop.

But grain has and will be successfully grown on these fertile plains. South of Regina there is a flowing well which could be made useful over a small tract for irrigation. Where one flowing well is found others can be found. Many years ago it was suggested that a work could and should be constructed at the elbow of the South Saskatchewan by which the water which once flowed down the Qu�Appelle river would be made to resume its former channel. Even without this by a system of damming it is possible a good deal could be done. Again abundant water can be had in most parts by boring wells and in some of the States wells and windmill pumps have been successfully used for irrigation. No farming is so successful as farming by means of irrigation for it is never problematical. Something in this direction must and will be done.

We find a misconception prevailing. A gentleman said to us last week, �Has it not been decided to send no more money up here?� He mistook the carping and penurious criticism of the Reformers for the policy of the government.

We have always held from the first that the full powers and the means of a Province should be given to the Territories and we want to see the resources placed within the reach of the Executive to start out on practical policies of a purely local character. Until that is done the Ottawa government will always be looked to for action properly belonging to a local administration.

We know that there is at the present moment much discouragement. But we believe that those who �peg away� notwithstanding will in the end find their faith and courage justified.

We do hope persons will abstain from deceiving and distracting people�s minds with impractical ideas. Take this extraordinary notion that when times are hard the salaries of civil servants in the Territories should be docked and what was taken from them applied to certain ends. Suppose there was any justice in the idea how could it be carried out? And if it could be carried out what would it effect? Some of the clerks have salaries so small that they are not on a level with what is paid by private firms to men for doing clerical work. These could not be touched. A half a dozen at most are paid a salary above this minimum. First we must conclude that government and parliament are all incompetent or these men by their skill, knowledge and capacity are worth these salaries and some would certainly resign if any attempt were made to interfere with them. But suppose they would not what would it effect? Fifty dollars here; a hundred there; perhaps $500 might be had. Distribute this over various points in the North-West and you have a few fractions. But fancy a government treating its employees and officers in a way no private firm acts. Whether a printing office has a good year or a bad year the foreman has to be paid the same; the editor the same, the bookkeeper the same. Any man filling the minds of people with such ideas is doing a positive wickedness.

The per capita taxation of Canada for all purposes is less than six dollars a head -- $5.81 if we remember. How much does each of us pay? Some men pay a great deal more than this -- twice, ten, thirty, forty times, a hundred times that amount. Others pay a great deal less than the per capita amount. A man can if he likes pay only a fractional amount. Let him drink no beer, no whiskey; smoke no tobacco; wear home manufactured goods; eat beef, mutton or bacon, bread and oatmeal; drink tea, -- and he does not pay a cent into the consolidated revenue of Canada out of which the clerks and officers are paid.

If any man wants to test the absurdity of this absurd policy of docking the salaries of civil servants let him ask some leading man in the Opposition -- say Mr. Laurier -- to make it a plank in his platform and he will see what answer he will get.

We want to see the cost of government reduced to a minimum consistent with efficiency. We wish to see all our citizens taking the closest possible interest in all affairs connected with government and policy, but we don�t want to see notions perfectly absurd ventilated.

The Conservative government has spared nothing on the North-West. If mistakes were made in legislation and administration in by-gone years these were traceable not to want of desire on the part of the Conservative Government to do us all the good it could but to the incompetency of individual ministers -- an incompetency very marked when Mr. MacKenzie was in power as can easily be demonstrated by laying bare vicious orders in council and absurd legislation.

If it were just to dock civil servants� salaries when crops were bad and apply the paltry fraction to certain ends during the seven lean years, would it not follow when the seven full years came there should be a dividing up with the civil servants? We repeat, however, that the salaries paid civil servants at Ottawa and in the outside service are below the level paid men of similar attainments in private business.

The salary of the manager of a great insurance company is larger than that of a prime minister; in one or two cases many times larger, as is the salary of a bank manager. The salary of an assistant manager will be higher than that of a deputy minister. The salary of the secretary in large concerns is often from $3,000 to $5,000 a year, sometimes more. No government would be so expensive as a government with a lot of incompetents.

It must be remembered the farmer is the foundation of everything; he is the beginning; without him we could not live or move or have our physical and civic life, and when he in any district suffers we all suffer with him. Any large failure of crop is felt the world over; strikes the heart of distant cities; failures occur; the wholesale man, the retailer, the mechanic, all suffer, because first the farmer has not produced the wealth expected from the ground, and secondly in the rise in the cost of living -- a rise that affects the civil servant as well as others, for he too is a customer. The policy we have alluded to is petty beyond contempt, even if there was any justice or common sense in it, which there is not.

We repeat we want to see economy but we want to see wise and practical schemes of economy. Take the policy of doing away with Lieut.-Governors, or abolishing the Senate, these are possible projects and projects which may be rationally discussed, and if abolition should prove to be wise a considerable saving would be effected; the result would not be illusion; there would at all events be a real tangible result. Neither, however, could be accomplished without an address from both houses of parliament to her majesty praying that the Imperial parliament should amend the British North America Act as to abolish the Senate and Lieut.-Governors. Some are in favor of abolishing the Senate as it is and giving us a Senate drawing its power direct from the people. To do this would, as we see in the United States, take away from the lower house in proportion as it strengthened the Senate, and we might see a state of things such as we witness to-day in the States -- the will of the people balked by a senate in which capitalists and monopolists had got -- not been appointed, as our present senators are. These are sometimes called worn out politicians, which may be a satirical way of saying they are mostly old men; but it is much better to have old politicians with their instinctive dread of any influence other than the political, than the monopolists such as you have in the U.S., Senate with their tiger determination to serve their private interests. If anything is to be done with the Senate it should be abolished -- a task probably of fifty years� agitation. It is said they do no good. Let a man go to Ottawa and attend their committees and he will see they do good work. But it may prove on discussion wise to urge this policy. It is not and cannot be a very practical North-West issue for some time. But it is right to discuss it, and it may properly form part of a large programme for the whole Dominion. The present writer twenty years ago advocated the abolition of Lieutenant-Governors and getting the Chief Justice to assent to bills. Still at our stage in the Territories we should frame a policy in accordance with our conditions. If Lieut.-Governors were abolished we should at our present stage have to have an officer of the same functions in the Territories, call him what we might. Farmers have found that the system of farming in Ontario would not succeed here, and policies which may justly commend themselves to Ontario people might be detrimental to us. For instance the policy of many in Ontario and the policy of the Reformers, especially Sir Richard Cartwright of shutting down on expenditure in the North-West, that it is not precisely in our interest. The $52,000 we got for seed grain did not commend itself to Sir Richard Cartwright, and it was only by physically exhausting him that the vote was carried; he fell asleep and the item passed the committee after a night�s weary fighting

Let us go in for factories and irrigation and all practical and fruitful schemes.