Students of Canadian agricultural policy encounter many anomalies. Even superficial study indicates that Canadian farmers have not influenced governmental policy in any measure proportional to their share of Canadian population. Very little effort has been made to understand and explain the historical place of the Canadian farmer's voice in the councils of the nation. The hardy perennial verdict that agriculture is Canada's basic industry adds nothing to our understanding of the question.

Within the scope of a brief paper only a few points can be touched upon. This analysis is limited to a consideration of the use of royal commissions of inquiry in the formulation of Canadian agricultural policy. It is further limited to the period after 1900. In fact the second limitation is embodied in the first, for, with negligible exceptions, only after 1900 were royal commissions used in the formulation of Canadian agricultural policy.

We are to consider, then, the period during which the central economic fact for the Dominion of Canada was the establishment of the prairie wheat economy. The most cursory examination of the relationships which existed between farmers and the governments of this period calls attention to the very considerable number of royal commissions of inquiry appointed by Dominion and provincial governments to deal with some phase or other of what we loosely call “the agricultural problem.”

It appears that very little has been written about the multi-product firm. What has been done is largely an extension of single-product theory to those multi-product firms which have their origin in related demands and related supplies. For example, the utilities of two or more products may be so interrelated as to produce a joint demand. In such event, if the products are linked in a technical sense, as, say, the pieces and pawns of a chess-set, then they will be marketed by a single firm, usually under a name inclusive of the component products. If there is no such technical link, still the products (e.g., knives and forks) are more likely to be produced by a single firm than are unrelated products. Again, regardless of demand, the production of one product by a firm may necessarily result in the production of other products. To take the classic example of joint supply, the production of wool entails the production of mutton.

Each of these cases presents special analytic difficulties, notably problems of cost imputation. Various writers have essayed solutions, some of which have found their way into text-books, and some of which (by no means a separate class) are still matters of controversy.

The present paper, however, is not concerned with the extension of single-product theory to multi-product situations. Rather, it is an effort to analyse those features of the multi-product firm which belong to it as such. In effect, this means that it concerns costs and receipts peculiar to the multi-product firm, other costs and receipts being considered as given. This approach serves to emphasize those factors which give rise to the multi-product firm and which limit its size. It must be remembered that all firms are potentially producers of all products. Single-product theory demonstrates why no single-product firm expands its production without limit, and shows on what grounds a choice of output is made. Multi-product theory is required to show why expansion by variation is also limited, and on what grounds a choice of output is made when there is no restriction of the number of products.

Various observers of the North American scene have called attention to the problem of mass passivity and political apathy in our culture. Myrdal has pointed out that the masses in America “are accustomed to being static and receptive. They are not daring but long for security. They do not know how to cooperate and how to pool risks and sacrifices for a common goal. They do not meet much. They do not organize. They do not speak for themselves: they are the listeners in America. They seldom elect representatives from their own midst to Congress, to state legislatures or to city councils. They rather support friendly leaders from the upper strata, particularly lawyers.”

Myrdal's description of American mass passivity is an accurate one for most parts of the United States and Canada. There are, however, certain areas on this continent where the political behaviour of the people contradicts the assertion that the American lower economic classes, the workers and farmers, are politically apathetic. The Wheat Belt regions of the United States and Canada have repeatedly given rise to large-scale “class-conscious” political organizations which were genuine mass movements. The Greenback, Populist, and Non-Partisan League organizations in the United States, and the Progressive party and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) in western Canada involved large numbers of people in agrarian political action. The recent success of the C.C.F. in attaining power in the Wheat Belt province of Saskatchewan is the latest instance of a mass North American “people's party.”

It is too often assumed that the social legislation which has been hammered out in the British Parliament of the last two years is the product of some purely socialistic blue-print. In reality it is the culmination of a process dating back to the first decade of the twentieth century, which has been carried out by Liberal, then Conservative and now Socialist governments over the whole period from 1907 to 1947. Although there are differences of opinion on the timing of this process, and on many administrative and legislative details, the broad pattern of development has almost common acceptance. In its essence this pattern is simple. It is no less than the replacement of the Elizabethan Poor Law, with its emphasis on the relief of poverty, by a more modern structure of social legislation intended to ensure the freedom of the individual from the major evils of a modern industrial society. These evils have been aptly summarized by Sir William (now Lord) Beveridge: “physical Want, … Disease which often causes that Want and brings many other troubles in its train, … Ignorance which no democracy can afford among its citizens, … Squalor which arises mainly through the haphazard distribution of industry and population, and Idleness which destroys wealth and corrupts men, whether they are well fed or not, when they are idle.”

The accompanying table sets out the steps in this process of social change in the chronological sequence of the legislative measures by which it has been achieved. In order to prevent the confusion of over-elaborate detail, this tabulation gives only the major changes as they occurred. To have included, for example, the complete tally of unemployment insurance acts from 1911 to 1944 would have been unprofitable and would have obscured the issue.

The outstanding characteristic of Canadian labour journals is the shortness of their lives. They have been born to ride the crest of a rising membership within the union, and have fallen with the union into the slough of a business cycle recession, or been snuffed out by technological change, or simply by apathy. Numerous small papers arise almost weekly, while as many more pass out of existence without notice. Nearly 250 labour journals have been established in Canada since 1867 and fewer than seventy are publishing today. Accordingly any directory of the labour press is subject to the inaccuracies consequent upon the high mortality among such publications.

But the labour press is meriting more and more careful consideration. A greater number of labour organs, of, by, and for the working man, are being published today than ever before. And what the labour press is saying to its readers is of importance, for Canadian union members comprise approximately 10 per cent of the adult population of Canada.

The directory contains essential information concerning 239 labour publications, the majority of which are, or were, official organs of Canadian or international labour organizations, while the remainder are sponsored by fraternal groups, political parties, and private individuals. Some few of these latter publications, while written for the labouring man, are definitely anti-union in character. The criterion for inclusion in this directory was not whether a publication was pro-union or anti-union, but rather whether it was addressed primarily to the working people of Canada.