¹ See Silberling, N. J., Dynamics of Business (New York, 1943), chaps. 9 and 10.Google Scholar

² It should be noted that use of the term “cycle” does not imply belief in an inevitable periodic process of construction, but only the absence of stability at any level. Timing and amplitude of each cycle will vary with the character of the economic opportunities that induced it. In the absence of urban opportunities, as, for example, in the Maritimes from 1920 to 1940, there will be no cycle and the concomitant stagnation in urban residential building and real estate activity could persist indefinitely.

³ Riggleman, J. R., “Building Cycles in the United States, 1875–1932,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1933, 179; C. D. Long, Building Cycles and the Theory of Investment (Princeton, N.J., 1940); W. H. Newman, “The Building Industry and Business Cycles,” Journal of Business Studies, 1935; Homer Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (Chicago, 1933); G. F. Warren and F. A. Pearson, World Prices and the Building Industry (New York, 1937).Google Scholar

⁴ After 1885 the index is based on values of permits issued in major cities, adjusted for changes in the cost of construction. Before 1886 the index is based on numbers of permits for new buildings in Montreal. The index is described in section A of the Appendix below.

⁵ Over the years there have been changes in most cities in the types of building for which permits were required, the area within which the law applied, and the enforcement of the law. It is known that some builders understate the anticipated cost in the hope of getting a lower tax assessment, while others, speculative builders for example, may overstate the cost to dupe prospective buyers. The completion of the structures will lag behind the issue of the permits three or four months for modest dwellings and up to several years for large projects like hotels and office buildings. Also the permits are not always used and the lapse rate varies over the building cycle. Most types of public building and engineering construction are not fully covered by permits and rural construction is not covered at all.

⁶ Cf. section B in the Appendix below.

⁷ Before the mid-nineties frequent complaints about these shortcomings in the permit law appeared in early issues of Canadian Architect and Builder (vault records, Hugh C. MacLean Publishing Co., Toronto).Google Scholar

⁸ The predominance of transfers, mortgages, and discharges of mortgages in total registrations may be seen in the table of Toronto and York registrations in the Appendix below.

⁹ The number of mortgages discharged followed a similar pattern; the only differences being a lag in the peak during the twenties (1925) and a smaller amplitude in the cycles.

¹⁰ The records gave values until 1924. Thereafter values were calculable for the Toronto region from tax records. The present writer compiled value series for the period 1895 to 1924 and secured the values for later years from a study undertaken for Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation by H. L. Buckley. Cf. Appendix, section B.

¹¹ MacLean, M. C., Analysis of the Stages in the Growth of Population in Canada (Ottawa, 1935).Google Scholar

¹² In 1871 less than 20 per cent of the population lived in incorporated villages, towns, and cities. It was not yet clearly established that Toronto and not some other of the several large towns on the north shore of Lake Ontario would become the metropolitan centre of Ontario. Hamilton did not enter its period of rapid growth until after the protective tariff was introduced, in 1879. The population of Quebec, the second city in 1871, was relatively stable for the thirty years following Confederation.

¹³ Persons per household were applied to total population to calculate households at each census date: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, V, 2 and I, 5.

¹⁴ Jerome establishes conclusively, it seems to the writer, that before the restrictions on international migrations became severe movements of population into and out of the United States in the short run were induced by short-period industrial fluctuations. Cf. Jerome, H., Migration and Business Cycles (New York, 1926).Google Scholar

¹⁵ This notion is accepted by C. D. Long. After a most detailed examination of building permit cycles in the United States, Long is left for explanation of the long cycles with “the psychological feeling on the part of business men concerning the life of assets in a ‘progressive business.’ In a new country such as the United States ‘psychological life’ would be shorter and replacements would recover sooner, than would be true in old and mature countries. This may account for shorter building cycles in this country than in Europe. ” Cf. Long, , Building Cycles, 165.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Dynamics of Business, 176, 178, 187–9, 227.

¹⁷ There are some parallels between the present residential building boom and that of the twenties. The impacts of war and new resource developments appear in both, and the suburban spread of larger cities reflecting changes in tastes and techniques continues. But there are new factors operating in our export market and also greater government participation in the provision of housing. Most important is the need for housing that accumulated during the thirties, and during the war among the urban population. Also there has been a large movement from farms of the redundant farm labour force held back by a decade of depression. Another substantial farm movement is that of commercial grain farmers into urban residence.

¹⁸ Two population studies were used: MacLean, M. C., Analysis of the Stages in the Growth of Population in Canada, and The Growth of Canadian Population (Ottawa, 1949).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The remarkably high level of concealed unemployment on Canadian farms in the thirties was not fully recognized until the war was well underway. In spite of the movement of thousands of the agricultural population into the armed services and industrial employment, physical agricultural output was expanded to record levels.

²⁰ MacLean, M. C., Analysis of the Stages in the Growth of Population in Canada, 14–48.Google Scholar

²¹ Some showed large declines; none increased by as much as 14 per cent, the minimum rate of expected native increase according to MacLean.

²² 174,542 in the four cities proper.

²³ The excitement [in Winnipeg] during the fall of 1881 amongst real estate owners was intense. Nothing to equal it had ever before occurred on Canadian or British soil. Thousands of dollars were made in a few minutes. Vast fortunes were secured in a day…. Real estate agents became as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore…. In the evening after the stores and other places of business are closed, the hotels and real-estate auction rooms are the centres around which the great mass of the people congregate. The excitement then is even more intense than during the day—and many of the largest transactions take place.” From Macoun's History of the North West, written in 1882 and quoted in Bank of Nova Scotia, Monthly Review, Nov., 1937.

²⁴ In the same paper for October 31, 1891: “There are certain facts in connection with real estate matters in this city with regard to which there is no difference of opinion. That there has been over-speculation can be easily ascertained by reference to the Court of Revision, and the related experience of too sanguine speculators.” In a later editorial appears evidence not only of excessive subdividing and land speculation but of excessive building as well: “[the number] of unoccupied houses proves that the building trade has been overdone and that, in order to facilitate a too rapid increase in the value of their land, owners and speculators have been putting up houses on it to an extent which now threatens many people with disaster.”

²⁵ MacLean, , Analysis of the Stages in the Growth of Population in Canada, 32.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., 33.

²⁷ Coats, R. H., Cost of Living Report, II (Ottawa, 1915), 956.Google Scholar

²⁸ There may well have been a series of shifts: eastern farmers going into eastern cities may have been replaced by foreign immigrants; farm population in rural counties in the neighbourhood of cities may have absorbed labour and so on. However, whatever the immediate background of individual movements, the cities and towns grew rapidly.

²⁹ Industrial production was still in the handicraft stage and was widely scattered in the small towns and villages of the rural economy. Urbanization and the factory system proceeded together after the tariff of 1879 and railways became adjuncts of industry as well as of commerce; trade had been the basis of the port cities.

³⁰ Calendar year figures on immigrant arrivals were available in the Canada Year Book. A three-year moving average has been applied to eliminate minor fluctuations.

³¹ Compare Silberling, Dynamics of Business, 188–9.

³² London data are those of Spensley, J. C. for Metropolitan Police District, 1871 to 1918, reported in “Urban Housing Problems,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 03, 1918, taken here from Warren and Pearson, World Prices, 119. The Montreal data are available at the Montreal Archives.Google Scholar

³³ Cairncross, A. K. reports the number of houses built in Glasgow, 1870 to 1914, in Review of Economic Studies, 10, 1934. Charts of his data in Warren and Pearson, 120, show one cycle beginning in 1865, reaching a peak in the mid-seventies, dropping to a trough in the early eighties: that is, in phase with the North American cycle of that period. However, a second longer cycle got into phase with the London cycle from 1890 to 1913, except for a double peak at the turn of the century caused by a sharp, short drop in one year. The contrary movement of the Glasgow and London building fluctuations before the eighties may also be explained by internal population movements. In another interesting article in the Manchester School (1949), Dr. Cairncross analyses internal migration in England and Wales from census data, 1841 to 1911. There was movement from southern towns, dominated by London, to northern towns during this period. The southern towns experienced net losses in both the seventies and the eighties. Northern towns gained in the seventies, then also lost in the eighties. In the nineties the northern towns continued to lose and the movement from north to south, which had been evident since 1841, came to an end. The outflow from southern towns almost ceased. Emigration, which had been very heavy in the eighties, was temporarily checked.Google Scholar

³⁴ Cf. Cairncross, “Home and Foreign Investment in Great Britain, 1870–1913” (doctoral thesis, Library of the University of Cambridge), chap. ix. Also Cooney, E. W., “Capital Exports, and Investment in Building in Britain and the U.S.A.,” Economica, 11 1949, 347–54. This article treats capital flows as the prime mover. New resources—frontier opportunities in North America—attracted both labour and capital. About two-thirds of all emigrants from the British Isles from 1870 to 1913 sailed for North America. Time series compiled by Dr. Cairncross on British and Irish passengers to the United States and English and Scottish emigrants both show long cycles like those of American building. Both came out of major troughs in the seventies and nineties two or three years before recovery from similar troughs in American building. It is significant that the flow of capital from the United Kingdom recovered from its major trough at the same time in the seventies but four years later in the nineties.Google Scholar

³⁵ The wartime trough of 1918 is the one exception.