Tonight I am going to exercise the prerogative of the President to make an address to a large extent unornamented by the extensive documentation and citations which perhaps too often go by the name of scholarship. My primary theme is our immigration policy. In developing this, I am going to deal mainly with the period from 1896 to 1910, since that is the period over which policy shifted from one at least theoretically laissez-faire to the selective policy inherent in the Immigration Act of 1910. My method will be to consider for a space the characters of two men, to follow that by narrative and analysis respecting the changes which occurred and then to draw together what seem to me to be the morals of the story.

When Clifford Sifton took over the Ministry of the Interior in the autumn of 1896, entry to Canada was proscribed to three classes of persons only: the diseased; the criminal or vicious; and those likely to become public charges. Even these might find entry not too difficult if they went the right way about gaining it. The controls exercised under the law by the Minister covered only entries by ocean ports and here the general assumption was that only steerage passengers were immigrants. There was no control over those who entered by railway. Once immigrants coming by steamship had passed inspection and had become “landed immigrants” deportations were administered by the Department of the Interior with the assistance of the Department of Justice and generally on complaint of the municipal authorities. It was only after Clifford Sifton had left the cabinet in early 1905 that a sequence of events occurred forcing a series of restrictive measures which were finally embodied in the Immigration Act of 1910.

Any attempt to assess the direction of social change in a particular society is a risky business at best. Yet, inasmuch as sociology, in its official texts on method, rests its claim to scientific status on its predictive capacities, it must somehow, sometimes, take this risk and say something about what are the significant changes occurring in the social organization of a society. In order to achieve any such general assessment the social analyst needs, it seems to me, to consider the society as a whole, and through time.

Sociologists are generally reluctant to view the whole of a society as a proper subject of study and reluctant also to study social phenomena through time. Indeed, what is at present felt to be adequate methodology, or should we say prestigeful methodology, requires living respondents whose answers can be given statistical treatment, and therefore becomes largely irrelevant for studies with historical dimensions; and while it may be quite useful in measuring change it is quite helpless of itself to account for it. Furthermore its preference for piecemeal and detailed verifications makes it a rather awkward instrument to use when dealing with general analyses. Anthropologists, by tradition, have commonly achieved such analyses in the case of less complex cultures. Even they, however, when confronted with large societies, have tended either to adopt the sociological habit of narrow investigation or to postulate that an image of the larger whole can be gleaned through the minute study of a particular instance, a particular cell such as a village, or a town. In choosing the first alternative, they abdicate what seems to have been a traditional objective of anthropology. In the second case, they stand in danger of missing the target through oversimplification.

At a congress of the International Political Science Association held at The Hague in 1952, Professor Georges Langrod delivered a paper entitled “Local Government and Democracy,” subsequently published in the British journal Public Administration. The incisive logic and unorthodox conclusions of that paper seemed at the time to demolish, once for all, the justification of local representative government commonly found in much traditional liberal political theory. Mr. Keith Panter-Brick, facing a skilled prosecutor, and doing the best he could with a difficult case, replied in a later issue of the same journal. Dr. Leo Moulin next entered the discussion in defence of Langrod, and Panter-Brick wrote a second rejoinder. I felt that the contest, although conducted with flair by all parties, left far too many important questions unsettled. The object of this paper, however, is not to reopen points raised in dispute by the recent combatants; it is rather to suggest that the problems connected with the theory of local self-government ought to be approached in different terms.

The question to be considered refers to the relation between local self-government and democracy. By local self-government is meant that system of subordinate local authorities which has developed in many modern states. Each unit of local government in any system is assumed to possess the following characteristics: a given territory and population; an institutional structure for legislative, executive, or administrative purposes; a separate legal identity; a range of power and functions authorized by delegation from the appropriate central or intermediate legislature; and lastly, within the ambit of such delegation, autonomy—including fiscal autonomy—subject always, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, to the limitations of common law such as the test of reasonableness.

In 1921, when I came to Canada, Canadian economics was “colonial” in character; English and American influences blended but there was little native thought or work. The re-establishment of the Canadian Political Science Association in 1929 (it had been founded in 1913 and had foundered in 1914) was a symptom of the growing strength of the native elements, and it quickly contributed towards further strengthening of these elements. Harold Innis had foreseen this and worked hard but quietly for the development of the Association. He had recognized, too, the necessity for a Canadian outlet for Canadian writing on economics; not because the Canadian papers then being written could not be published in English and American periodicals but because he foresaw a great stimulus to Canadian economists to write more when they had their own journal. The example of the Canadian Historical Review with its effect on Canadian historical scholarship was not without influence. With the support of E. J. Urwick, Harold Innis had been able in 1928 to establish Contributions to Canadian Economics, published by the University of Toronto Press. Then in 1930 came the first of the new Proceedings of the Canadian Political Science Association (called volume II, since volume I had been published in 1913), edited by Clifford Curtis and printed by the Jackson Press in Kingston.

The publication of an English translation of Friedrich Meinecke's Die Idee der Staatsraeson has stimulated a renewal of interest in the political ideas of Germany's most eminent twentieth-century historian. Particularly in the United States, newly emerged from isolation and suddenly finding itself at the centre of world power and world conflict, thinking people have been seeking a more satisfying approach to the intellectual and moral dilemmas posed by the possession of great power and great responsibility. The old confidence in an inevitable progress and in an uncomplicated harmony between reason, power, and morality has vanished with the elimination of the geographic and strategic barriers which once insulated America from the harsher realities of world politics.

In such a situation, the reflections of a scholar who probed more deeply than any of his contemporaries into the ethical problems of foreign policy are peculiarly appropriate. Meinecke's sense of the tragic conflict between political necessity and moral principle can now find an understanding response in a country which has borne the terrible responsibility of making the crucial decisions in the long series of crises since 1945–Hiroshima, Berlin, Korea, Hungary, Suez, and again Berlin. Each of these crises has harboured complex ethical as well as expediential challenges. All have demonstrated the ambiguity of both moral and political standards of conduct. It was precisely this ambiguity of standards to which Meinecke addressed his thought. His reflections have, if anything, more significance today than when they first found expression.

In the new states of Southeast Asia the idea of parliamentary government has usually been closely linked with the struggle for national independence, yet with the latter a reality in most of the area, there has come a curious disillusionment with the actual values of the former. Thus, during the 1920's and 1930's in what was then called the Netherlands East Indies, nationalists agitated on behalf of “Indonesia berparlemèn” (a parliament for Indonesia), but today we find leading Indonesian public figures, such as President Sukarno, declaring that Western-style parliamentary government has failed in Indonesia, and that what the country needs is a governmental system “in harmony with the Indonesian soul,” that is, a “democracy with leadership,” or a “guided democracy.” The following pages will seek to suggest some of the causes of this disenchantment with the principle of representative government in Indonesia, by focusing on its historic origins and functions during these, Indonesia's first, years of national independence.

When on August 17, 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, acting on behalf of “the people of Indonesia,” formally proclaimed the independence of their nation, they confronted a condition of widespread popular inexperience in the art of representative government. It was not until 1918 that a rudimentary parliamentary body for all of Indonesia (the so-called Volksraad, or People's Council) had been established, in line with the plans, in great variety and often confusingly contradictory, of the Dutch colonial policy-makers to give their East Indian possessions a greater degree of autonomy.

For one year after liberation in 1945, Czechoslovakia seemed to offer a picture of relative harmony between the political forces of democracy and communism personified by Eduard Beneš, the President, and Klement Gottwald, deputy Prime Minister, and leader of the Communist party. The themes of continuity and revolution, introduced during the wartime struggle for national liberation and developed for one post-war year in apparent concord, were soon to break off in open disharmony. Profound divergences appeared within the National Front of the six political parties concerning the course to be followed in future. On the Communist side there was a wish to complete a revolution that remained, in their view, unfinished. On the non-Communist side, there was a desire to end the course of drastic change and to establish order and legal stability on the Western pattern. These differences were for some time hidden by, or at least subordinated to, the unity symbolized by the National Front. By late 1947 what amounted to a deadlock had resulted, and prospects of continuing co-operation of Communists and non-Communists were slight. The climax in February, 1948, to be correctly appreciated, must be placed in the context of this deep and protracted crisis.

The first year of the liberated republic was one of reconstruction and revolution. The legal order was restored, with substantial new elements incorporated. The main organs of government were reconstituted, sometimes in greatly changed form. The punishment of war criminals, and the purification of Czech and Slovak life of “fascist elements,” were begun, through special “people's tribunals.” The property confiscated from German and Czech “traitors” was placed under “national administration.” Extensive nationalization of industry was begun, and a system of planning was prepared.

Economics first appeared in a Canadian university curriculum more than eighty years ago; thirty years later several universities were offering groups of courses in economics that could qualify a student for the equivalent of an honours degree in economics; but it is only in the past thirty-five years that a steady flow of scholarly writing in Canadian economics has developed. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of this Journal provides an appropriate occasion to review briefly the expansion of economic scholarship in Canada.

The first university course in political economy to be offered in Canada was in 1878 when the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University introduced a course of lectures based on Adam Smith, Mill, and Jevons. Ten years later, in 1888, Adam Shortt was appointed lecturer in political economy and in 1891 he became the Sir John A. Macdonald Professor of Political Science. The University of Toronto appointed its first professor of political science in 1888, and (Sir) William Ashley gave lectures in both political economy and constitutional history. McGill entered the field in 1899 when Dr. LeRossignol of Colorado was appointed visiting professor for one year. In 1900 Stephen Leacock was appointed lecturer in political science, and in 1901 (Sir) William Flux was brought over from England to occupy McGill's first chair in economics. The succeeding chairs of political economy in Canadian universities were occupied by A. L. McCrimmon at McMaster in 1904, E. Bouchette at Montreal in 1907, and A. B. Clark at Manitoba in 1909.

“Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” Lionel Robbins' well-known definition of their subject is one which most economists would probably accept, at least as a description of their workaday activities. The definition allows—and it was specifically framed by its author to allow—for the pursuit of other ends than purely material ends; but in practice economists devote themselves predominantly to the study of the allocation of material means between ends conceived and defined in material terms. Inherent in the way economists set about their task is the implicit assumption that material means are scarce and material wants are pressing—in short that economic society is materially poor, and resources must not be wasted.

This assumption permeates the theoretical apparatus of the subject; it also directs what economists have to say about economic policy. In the debate which has been going on over the general problem of inflation, for example, economists have been divided between those who stress the loss of production and potential growth of output that results from anything less than full employment of labour, and those who stress the loss of production and potential growth of output that results from the misallocation of resources brought about by inflation. Again, in making comparisons between the Russian and Western economic systems, economists have generally tended to accept as their standard of performance the rate of growth of output per head, a standard which gives away most of the positive points on the Western side. In both cases, the adoption of the output standard implicitly assumes that the economic problem is of prime importance.

The iron and steel industry of the United Kingdom is unique in at least three respects which are important in any examination of its present condition and prospects. It is the world's oldest capitalistic iron and steel industry. It is widely dispersed geographically—a factor which distinguishes it particularly from the steel industries of other western European countries with which it is most in competition. Finally it has experienced what must surely be the most extended period of changing economic and political circumstances to which any industry in a predominantly private enterprise nation has been subjected in modern times.

While the intention here is to concentrate upon the political economy of the industry in recent years, it is useful to begin with some review of relevant geographical, structural, and historical factors. The structure of the industry is summarized in Table I.

The geographical dispersion of the industry contrasts rather sharply with the concentration of German steel in the Ruhr and of the French industry in Lorraine. It is, however, not difficult to explain in terms of the original wide-spread occurrence of coal and iron in Great Britain and of the specialized steel-making and steel-using skills which have developed in various parts of the country since 1850, even earlier in the instance of Sheffield. In Scotland and to some extent on the northeast coast and around Sheffield the industry has continued strong mainly because of the market for steel and the supply of specialized labour and knowledge, which has survived the exhaustion of coal or iron ore in these districts. In fact both the northeast coast and Yorkshire retain important reserves of coal, and other more recent considerations have helped to sustain and expand production in these sectors.

It is well to state explicitly at the outset that the society considered in this essay is the sovereign democratic state, that is, a modern Western nation, where law is made and enforced by a responsible government within the context of representative institutions. Only a free society living under democratic government confronts or deals with social problems—problems of and for society as a unit. It is assumed that public opinion is committed to the general ideal of a practical maximum of individual freedom and freedom of association, hence to a minimum of enforced or “jural” law, prescribing or restricting personal conduct. That is, it holds to the ideal of association by free agreement or assent, subject to the state and its laws. The concepts are imprecise, and to make them workable and definite is a major function of law and government.

The field of association to be chiefly considered here is that of “economic” relations. In the form now prevalent in the Western world, free economic association is a historical novelty, in origin closely intertwined with democracy or political freedom. It will be argued that these and other modes of freedom are in fact inseparable aspects of “liberal” culture. “Liberal” culture arose through a radical and historically swift transformation of the order which prevailed in mediaeval Western Europe. Without looking farther back in history, what is important is the antithetical character in essential respects of mediaeval and contemporary society in their structure and operation and in their accepted ideals.

In discussing the formulation of the programmes presented to Canada by the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties in the general election of 1957 I shall pay little attention to the substance of what was offered. My concern will be almost exclusively to seek out the ways in which the platforms were formulated, and to draw some conclusions in the form of a hypothesis concerning the role of Canadian parties in reconciling the sometimes opposing pulls of our cabinet and federal systems.

For more than twenty years one party had been in, the other out, of power: this circumstance necessarily made for profound differences in the way in which each shaped its programme before and during the campaign. The Liberals did little more than point to their record. The central theme of their campaign was that the party had done well in the past and, if returned, would continue doing equally well in the future. The Liberal programme, such as it was, was that of the Government. Not fashioned to suit the exigencies of the 1957 election, it had, in the main, evolved gradually as the consequence of the continuous interaction of the cabinet and the leading experts in the civil service.

The cabinet contains representatives of the various provinces and major regions of the country, yet departmental responsibilities make it difficult for the leading ministers to be fully sensitive to the varied shifts of opinion within the party. It is perhaps possible to make too much of the distinction between the cabinet and the party in the cabinet system: the cabinet is composed of the party leaders. But there seems to have been a tendency for the Liberal party, so long in power, to leave much of the formulating of policy to the leaders who could utilize the skill and knowledge of the civil service. Much of what had, in the years immediately before the election, been called Liberal policies or the Liberal programme was actually the product of the intimate co-operation of leading civil servants and their ministers.

The Radcliffe Committee was appointed by Treasury Minute in May, 1957, “to inquire into the working of the monetary and credit system … [of the United Kingdom], … and to make recommendations.” It held eighty-eight meetings, collected three volumes of written evidence and one volume of evidence given orally, compiled new statistical information, and finally on July 30, 1959, presented a unanimous report to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. The public saw the Report three weeks later.

The prestigious composition of the Committee and the controversial ground which it was required to investigate alone ensured widespread attention for the Report. But the virtual flood of detailed comment emanating from academic economists and financial journalists in the United Kingdom is not entirely explained by this; nor even by the Committee's controversial views on matters of monetary theory and central banking practice. Because the views of the Committee on monetary policy and theory are not always fully developed, and in some instances appear to be ambiguous and contradictory, the Report offers limitless opportunities for articles on “What Radcliffe Really Meant,” including, of course, analyses of the essential deficiencies of the interpretations suggested. Unfortunately, the Report is such that the views of the Committee are easily misinterpreted, a danger of which this writer is aware, but one which he may not have succeeded in avoiding in every instance.

It was a strange caricature of the Red Indians which emerged as the “noble savage” from the scrutiny of the statesmen and the philosophes of the second half of the eighteenth century. “Mild and hospitable when at peace, though merciless in war beyond any known degree of human ferocity,” the “Indian was indebted to no one but himself; his virtues, his vices and his prejudices were his own work; he had grown up in the wild independence of his nature.” So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, emphasizing a great truth but suggesting an important untruth. For the Indian was indeed independent in spirit, and his vices and many of his virtues were alien to Europeans. But however independent his nature might be, he was not economically independent. The Chipewa chief who met Alexander Henry at Michilimackinac in 1761 expressed much of the splendid independence of the Indians: “Englishman, though you have conquered the French, you have not yet conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance: and we will part with them to none.” Alexander Henry, however, was present at Michilimackinac precisely because he knew that the Indians were not independent economically; he had gone up, and he stayed up through the dangers and vicissitudes of Pontiac's rebellion, because there was no doubt at all that, despite his savagery and despite his independence, the Indian would trade for European goods as soon as they were brought within his grasp.

The external economic relations of a country over time can be most effectively examined by a historical study of the balance of payments and, accordingly, economists studying countries whose growth has been fundamentally influenced by their international economic relations have evinced a growing interest in such studies. This interest is not new. Albert Gallatin, Adam Seybert, and Ezra Seaman recognized the importance of America's external relations in the early nineteenth century and attempted to estimate the components of a balance of payments. Better known are the studies of Robert Giffen and C. K. Hobson on British international economic relations. Giffen's and Hobson's works were pioneering efforts at constructing estimates of the various service items and have served as a point of departure for more recent efforts. For the United States, the early essays by Worthy P. Sterns and the classic study of Charles Bullock, John H. Williams, and Rufus Tucker which followed were landmarks in the analysis of the balance of payments just as the studies by J. Viner of Canada and H. D. White of France were for those countries. As a result of these studies, the techniques of estimating the separate components of the balance of payments have been refined and significantly improved. In almost every case the transport account has been the most important service item and has received a great deal of attention. Yet not one of the studies mentioned above is satisfactory on this account, and the error in the estimate of shipping earnings in most of them has been of significant proportions. The errors in these studies stem from two sources, an inadequate understanding of the determinants of shipping debits and credits over time and inadequate data. This paper will analyse the determinants of shipping earnings in the context of the two general methods of estimating earnings, and examine critically the estimate of shipping earnings in existing studies.

The mode of succession has long been recognized as one of the principal factors in determining the stability of a given political system and a key datum in the analysis of power relations within such a system. Essentially, the problem can be stated as involving (a) the technique of choosing a successor to a political leader, and (b) the successor's legitimization in the legal, traditional, or charismatic sense. This paper will deal primarily with the technique of succession in the Soviet system, touching only marginally on the question of legitimization. While drawing analogies from the post-Lenin succession crisis, the paper will attempt to identify the factors that shaped the nature and the course of the post-Stalin power struggle and the technique that ensured Khrushchev's victory over his rivals. Needless to say, limitations of evidence have introduced a considerable speculative element into the discussion, and some of the generalizations are therefore, at best, only tentative hypotheses that will have to be tested against such empirical evidence as may become available in the future.

Although modern constitutionalism has largely resolved the problem of succession by legally defining the technique of succession and making the technique the criterion of legitimacy, the very nature of the totalitarian dictatorship that emerged in Russia after 1917 precludes a constitutional solution to the problem. “… dictatorship,” Lenin wrote in 1920, “means neither more nor less than unlimited power resting directly on force, not limited by anything, not restrained by any laws or any absolute rules.”

Monopolistic firms pay higher wages than competitive firms, according to J. W. Garbarino and J. K. Galbraith. Some writers believe that monopolistic firms balance the interests of employees, consumers, suppliers, and stockholders rather than maximize profits, a belief which suggests that they are generous employers rather than competitive firms who must strive for high profits. A few economists, in the taxonomic tradition, have suggested the possibility of high wages under monopoly, without expressing any opinion on the matter. The usual belief that monopolists take from the poor and give to the rich thus may be wrong. A finding that monopolists pay high wages also would imply that, for them, profit maximization takes second place to goals associated with public responsibility.

In the main stream of neo-classical theory is the opposite view that wages are low under monopoly. The exposition by Mrs. Joan Robinson assumes an upward-sloping supply curve of labour not only to each industry but also to each firm. Labour economists in recent years have followed Mrs. Robinson in stressing the prevalence of monopsony. It may be shown that product monopolists are likely to have more monopsony power than competitive firms, so, according to neo-classical theory, monopolists transfer income from the poor to the rich through low wages as well as through high prices.

I propose to test the proposition that monopoly raises wages and the opposite—that it lowers them—by comparing average annual earnings in Canadian monopolistic industries with those in matched United States industries which are competitive, or less monopolistic. The theories together with the evidence on which they are based will be presented first.