Ernest Brown "To make Democracy Work"
Ernest Brown is well known (more or less) as Edmonton's leading photographer of the pre-WWI era. But perhaps less well known is the fact that he was a political writer and activist, running for the Independent Labour Party in 1921. His papers at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA 1965.124, 270 k (iii)) contain whole book-length manuscripts of his political thoughts and research.
The following is an excerpt revealing an ongoing existential fact about Canadian history and his observations on why many do not apparently see Canada as an attractive place to stay.
Ernest Brown wrote that many people try Canada and then move on, in many cases to the U.S. Immigration does happen but many who come - sometimes at some expense - do not stay. He observed in 1947 that the government in the period before and after 1904 "spent millions of dollars yearly to bring immigrants into the country...but of these, Canada "retained but few."
He calculated in 1947 that if Canada had put a wall around the 3.5 million people that the country had at Confederation (1867) -- barring in-migration and out-migration and allowing only natural increase, Canada would have had more people in 1947 than it did have through relatively-open borders and large-scale immigration.
He wrote that by 1930 natural increase would have given Canada 26M instead of the 9M that it had in that year.
I (Monto) write in 2023 that simple math proves Brown's observation --
assuming a 2-percent growth rate compounded, the Canadian population would double in 36 years. So going from 3.5M in 1867 to 7M in 1903, to 14 million in 1939, to 28 million in 1975, to 56 million in 2011.
(Statistical records actually put Canada's population at 10.4M in 1930, but still that was far short of the 2-percent-growth figure of 14M.)
Meanwhile just last week, Canada applauded itself that it had grown to 40M on June 16, 2023. This figure is 16M short of the population that Canada should have had according to Brown's estimated "natural growth.")
Brown's point - Canada is deprived of pop. growth due to out-migration to the U.S. - was noted as early as 1885 in the Edmonton Bulletin.
The Feb. 14, 1885 issue pointed out that "a very large proportion of the population of the states of Michigan and Minnesota and the territory of Dakota, with a considerable sprinkling in Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kansas" were Canadians. The writer (almost certainly Frank Oliver himself) blamed the out-migration on "the unwise and ever changing land regulations, the enormous reserves [(land held by the HBC and the Crown and not open to local settlement)], the ill treatment of squatters [(pioneers who had settled in the NW prior to government survey)], the discriminating tariff, the railway monopoly, and the lack of political rights (the one statement that has been made and repeated on platform after platform), and on how North-West lands and NW settlers must ultimately pay the whole cost of the CPR."
Brown's point was also noted in the Edmonton Bulletin, December 14, 1896, as reprinted in the Dec. 14, 1926 Edmonton Bulletin ("30 Years Ago" column), collected in the Ernest Brown fonds at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA 1965.124, 400b).
Brown, somewhat like Oliver had done 70 years earlier, then went on to place the blame for Canada's out-migration on poor government policies, exploitative business practices and lack of democracy. Although politics is not too often analysed to any great depth and is almost never discussed intelligently, it has a massive effect on our lives. Just having proper democratic representation is a major thing, as Brown and Oliver both mentioned, and is a thing that voters in Canada have not yet managed to get, even in 2023. (Hence my many blogs on the need for electoral reform!)
Brown:
"While Canada has been spending millions of dollars to attract to her shores a more or less desirable immigration from continental Europe and, systematically and as a matter of policy, ignoring the disposition and destination of her own overflow population, the railway companies of the Northwestern States have pursued an active and successful immigration policy in eastern Canada, diverting the emigration that should have, and would naturally have, filled up [Canada's] North West to rival fields south of the line, building rival communities of our own best blood and brain... (More on these population numbers in the footnote]
It is time that Canada awakened to the true reason for the slow growth of the North West and changed her land and immigration policy accordingly. The North West has not filled up because our own people have during the last 20 years gone to fill up the northwest tier of the Western States, instead of the North West, in the proportion of not less than five to one. It is time we ceased making a wonder out of something that is as plain as noonday to every citizen of ordinary intelligence and experience - only that he does not want to see it. It is time the conspiracy of silence was broken."
"From 1904 to 1914 was a time of building of great railway systems subsidized by the government, [1930] hundreds of miles of track have since been taken up. it was a time in which our school boards spent money like a 'drunken sailor' on large and elaborate school buildings far beyond the demands of the times or the requirements of the present day. City councils were just as lavish in their expenditures while businesses expanded themselves and farmers and private individuals are not far behind.
Come 1914, bankers and loan companies called a halt. Bonds became due. Taxes were increased to meet them. Mortgage payments were demanded. The sins we had done, one by one, we had to pay two by two.
August 1914 and the War, long foreseen by the larger financial institutions managed by older men, fell like a bombshell into the camp of the younger businessmen and small investors. Legislation, or rather orders-in-council, were rushed through for big businesses to save them, one bank being rescued to the tune of $40M. All banks' paper "promises to pay" were made legal tender. The City of Edmonton sinking fund was cleaned out, and "I.O.U.'s" put in their place.
The insurance companies and mortgage loan companies began to make a killing, first on the city dweller, then on the farmer. The then mayor of Edmonton applied to the prov. Legislature and after much lobbying obtained permission for a tax sale. 80,000 out of a total of 110,000 city lots were offered for sale and sold for non-payment of taxes, not to new owners but to the city itself. Some few Jasper Avenue or inside lots going to ones who were already large property owners or to the parasites who were loudest in support of the mayor for the tax sale. Subdivisions were cancelled and reverted to farm lands. The City still held 45,000 lots in 1945.
The War dragged on its weary pace, but like all things it finally came to a finish.
1919-1920, the soldiers who had gone to fight to make the world "safe for democracy" returned to the city to find that, although they were supposed to have protection through a moratorium on foreclosures, found to their dismay they had lost their homes by a technicality - the tax sale. The loan companies, baulked for a time by myself and others from getting foreclosure through the courts, took advantage of one of the generous clauses in their mortgage, appeared at the Land Titles Offices and made affidavit the taxes had not been paid, thus demanded and received title in their companies' name.
And that was that. The mayor's several applications to the province for the tax sale, the 64-page newspapers containing the description of the daily sales, the names of the purchasers, etc, are interesting documents to leave to posterity, so that if at some future date, someone suggests erecting a monument to one of the early leaders of society or captains of industry, they will have a "Who's Who and Why" to know if their wealth came by a bottle of whisky [traded] for a half-breed's scrip, or by the tax sale route, or both.
What's this got to do with democracy?
You may well ask the question but have patience. It took a long time for you to be born, and it has taken you a lifetime to get into the mess you are now in. Therefore you will not be surprised when I tell you that in 1923 when I appeared before the "City fathers," more than half of them denied there was any hardship or suffering among the people of the city or the country. As a result of this acknowledgement of ignorance, I distributed a many-page report I was presenting and then set out specific cases, the number of foreclosures, the number of business failures, bailiffs sales, court judgements and such-like evidence of trade depression.
Yet these were the men who were ruling us. To them, we had delegated this power over our happiness, as we had in a larger measure given to members in the Dominion House for the development of the West, the power over our wealth and resources, even to our life. This is the democratic method.
It may be well for a brief space here to inquire 'What is democracy?' (p. 5)
The word "democracy" comes from two Greek words, which mean "people" "to rule" or government by the people. A system of government to which the sovereign power is vested in the people as a whole and is exercised directly by them or by representatives chosen by them. Put differently, "A democratic government bears the same relation to its people as the committee of a club bears to its members - the State exists for the benefit of the People. A totalitarian government bears the same relation to its people as an Army Command bears to its human and material resources - the People exist for the benefit of the State." (A.A. Milne)
Perhaps the Standard Dictionary definition is as simple and explicit as any: "Political and legal equality; a state of society without class distinction made or favoured by law or custom." Most of the republic of Greece, notably Athens, were in their best periods democracies, if by the word "People" in the definition is meant "citizens."
If this ruling is accepted, what must we think of the city of Winnipeg where only property-owners are allowed to vote for members to the city council. This was Aristotle's method. He said, if all citizens were allowed to vote, they would have mob government.
A more modern author, Professor Burgess of Columbia University, defined democracy as applied to the State as the rule of the majority.
John Stuart Mill, on the other hand, made the rule of all, not of a majority and certainly not of a class, to be the essence of democracy. He said "The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people equally represented."
"Democracy as commonly conceived and hitherto practiced is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people as exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens; the latter is a government of privilege in favour of the numerical majority who alone possess practically any voice in the state' and continues 'This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disenfranchisement of minorities."
Mills then makes a strong plea for proportional representation as a solution for this inequality and said:
"Nothing is more certain that this virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary or natural consequence of freedom, that far from having any connection with democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first principle of democracy - representation in proportion to numbers. It is an essential part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No Real democracy, nothing but a false Show of Democracy, is possible without it."
Dorothy Thompson wrote "If any party becomes so powerful that the minority is unable to find a hearing at all, or if any group of interests becomes so powerful that they can flout the popular will, democracy cannot survive."
Long before the Christian era, in 1050 BC to be exact, democracy of a form flourished in Athens. The Nobles ruled with a council, but all citizens could meet and express assent or dissent. At first these nobles were elected for life, but later a term of ten years was fixed. (p.7)
In Sparta, the constitution of Lycurges, 850 BC, though maintaining the ancient double monarchy, introduced institutions largely democratic. The Kings became little more than presidents of a senate elected by the general assembly of citizens. Please note however that citizens had to be over the age of 60 before they could vote (while we have cut the age to 19). This assembly could accept or reject all laws and decide on war or peace, etc.
BC 594 legislation of Solon created constitutional government admitting all citizens to share in power but giving the higher orders a preponderating influence. This gave way to a dictatorship till the constitution of Clisthenes (509 BC) introduced a complete democracy so far as free citizens went. All such could vote. Ten officers were elected annually. By a law of 478 BC the last property qualification for office was swept away. The continued re-election of capable statesmen gave continuity of brilliant leadership like that of Aristides Limon and Pericles.
The real democracy of the Middle Ages is to be found in the rise of the free cities and centres of Art, Trade and Commerce. Like Florence, Pisa, Venice and Genoa in the south and Hamburg, Nuremberg and Frankfurt in the north. Modern democracy begins with the idea of the brotherhood of man and is developed in theory of the social compact by Locke, Rousseau and the various French writers of the 18th Century.
But all history enters into modern democracy, says Tocqueville, in the introduction to his "Democracy in America":
"We shall scarcely meet with a single great event in the lapse of 700 years that has not turned to the advantage of equality... The gradual development of the equality of condition is therefore a providential fact and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine decree; it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference and all events as well as all men, contribute to it."
The end of civil laws gave the legal functionary a place by the mailed baron. The nobility being exhausted with wars and the lower classes enriched by commerce, the man of money gained position beside the man of birth, education, science and literature, opened any one of a variety of avenues to power. "In the 11th Century, nobility was beyond all price; in the 13th Century, it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270."
But modern democracy descended from our English ancestry. The English parliament was in a sense the continuation or revival of the ancient Witenagemote, or meeting of the wise men (earls) of all England. If it did not rule England in form, it did rule through the purse. The connection between taxation and representation the idea that no man could be taxed save by his consent that and the kindred idea embodied in the Great Charter won from King John in 1215 that no man could be condemned without a trial by his peers - "by the country" like at the basis of English ideas of freedom.
The overthrowing of feudalism the struggle with Charles the revolution of 1688 against james II, the development of constitutional government had made England to an extent democratic by confining its government to a parliament elected by a limited suffrage to represent the people. Thus the beginning of democratic government and its development through the ages which prompted us to write at the beginning of this Chapter "If you want to see monumental failure of democracy under the capitalist system, I would say 'look around you.'"
An increasing number of prominent personages are doubting the advisability of continuation of the so-called democratic system.
(Lecky (Locke?) in his "Democracy and Liberty" says "It must, I think, be added that modern democracy is not favourable to the higher forms of intellectual life. Democracy levels down quite as much as it levels up. The belief in the equality of man, the total abstinence of the spirit of reverence, the fever and the haste are little favourable to the production of great works of beauty or thought of long meditation, sober taste interrupted study. Such works have been produced but in small numbers and under adverse condition.
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By comparison -- U.S. population growth and Canadian growth
Canada grew from 11M in 1935 to 29M in 1995, an advance of 18M --
the U.S. grew by 128M in that time, some of it, according to Brown's observation, from Canada's out-migration. Canada's out-migration, estimated at perhaps more than 16M over the last 150 years, not all of which went to the U.S., is a small amount of U.S.'s massive growth in that period.
U.S. population
(doubling is estimated from figures for nearest decade year)
3.9M 1790
8M 1815 it had more than doubled in about 25 years
16M 1835 it had doubled in about 25 years
32M 1865 it had doubled in about 30 yrs (Canada 1867 3.4M
64M 1895 doubled in 30 yrs (Canada 1895 5M if doubled would've been 6.8M
128M 1935 doubled in 40 years (Canada 1935 11M if doubled would've been 10M
256M 1995 doubled in 60 years (Canada 1995 29M if doubled would've been 22M
So, in conclusion, since 1935 Canada's growth rate has been higher than that of the U.S. but still Canada is growing slower than Ernest Brown's estimated "natural rate" of 2 percent per year.
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put in different words (Nov 2023):
Canada is lucky - we actually have had the same government system for 150 years - never conquered or suffering capital-threatening rebellion, civil war, war of independence or foreign occupation.
I don't know of any other country other than UK that can say that.
But despite this safety and security, Canada is not favoured by many Canadians.
2 percent annual growth (standard rate) from 1867 on would have seen Canada with population today of more than 56M but instead in 2022, we just got to 40M.
and this despite mass in-migration in some years (350,000 came to Canada in 1913).
despite us patting ourselves on our backs - and we are good in many ways -
hundreds of thousands have left Canada for other places - in particular U.S.
I guess that almost every extended family in Canada has a person in the U.S. and that has long been the case.
Canada had very sparse social safety net until 1960s,
first CPP was not until 1920s.
unemployment has been high and wages low, on the average and compared to other places, and especially compared to the U.S. for most of our history as a country.
not all out-migration caused by politics or economics -- the cold, isolation, etc. also played part.
(Cushman's book The Old North Trail says that former Mounties who had deserted were recognizable in the Old West in the U.S. by their peg legs and stump legs from frostbite suffered as they made their way south through a cold Canadian winter. (p. 294) These were examples of just one form of out-migration from Canada in those old days.)
But in federal elections, our FPTP/BV system used from 1867 to 1970, and FPTP since then has not helped things. (We have used STV at the provincial and city levels but only BV or FPP at the national level.) Our electoral system has not given us government that actually has to serve the majority to remain in power so usually it merely reflects its narrow party interests.
The minorty government of 1920s gave us CPP; the minority Pearson governments of the 1960s gave us many other social advances.
But mostly the little people of Canada have suffered under bad government.
And many "voted with their feet" and left.
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