one, and figures do not provide a solution. The United States, like Europe, is overindustrialized, and immigration has been curtailed. Moreover, there is a steady movement of the industrial population from the colder to the more temperate parts of North America, as witness the shifting of the cotton textile industry from Massachusetts to the Carolinas and the beginnings of industrial development in and around Los Angeles. Canada has any quantity of cheap water power and can draw from Europe an unlimited quantity of industrial workers. It would be hard, nevertheless, to point to a single Canadian industry that is at present prevented by American tariff restrictions from securing a big or substantially bigger foothold in the markets of the United States. Canadian agricultural products would benefit, but Canadian agriculture is restricted at the present time, not by lack of markets, but by lack of labor. On the other hand, it is possible to enumerate a number of infant but thriving Canadian industries that are being fostered by the Canadian tariff and would be lost to the United States the moment the customs barrier was lifted. For example, Canada in 1924 employed over eight thousand people in the manufacture of tobacco, seventy thousand in the production of clothing, and eighty-five thousand in the manufacture of industrial equipment. Much of this employment might be lost to the United States if the Canadian tariff bars were to be lowered.

More important is the question of pulp wood. This, if cut on Crown lands, must be manufactured in Canada. Otherwise it can be exported. The result is that Canada manufactures 70 per cent of the pulp wood cut and exports the other 30 per cent to the States. The percentage manufactured in Canada increases yearly, and before

long there will be nothing to prevent her from establishing a monopoly for all North America, not alone of wood pulp, but of paper also. Without artificial protection a much greater percentage of the pulp wood might be shipped to the States and manufactured there.

Those who think otherwise argue that the result of economic union would be to bring American brains and capital into Canada in a way that would result in Canada's not only holding what she now has but increasing her industrial products at the expense of the United States.

Two other factors must be considered. In favor of the economic union is the fact that all boundaries are a source of expense and all customs barriers an unmitigated nuisance. The instinct of Governments is to preserve both; the instinct of the citizen is to do away with them. Against the economic union is the fact that at any time Great Britain, now the consumer of an enormous quantity of Canadian agricultural produce, may go in for protection. Already Canada has done well out of Imperial Preference, for it has given her a virtual monopoly of the Australian automobile market. To have the free run or a strongly preferential run of the British cheese, butter, egg, bacon, and cattle market against present Danish, French, United States, and other competitors would be a tremendous thing. Add to that, as we may, a possible preference over United States and South American exporters of wheat and meat, as well as a preference over Baltic exporters of paper and paper pulp, and enormous vistas of Canadian development and Canadian prosperity are opened.

In the long run, Canadian development means more trained agriculturists not a few more, but hundreds of thousands more—and the great capital

outlay required to settle them on an organized and lasting basis. Great Britain is the only country that can undertake this with advantage to herself as well as to Canada. There are a million and a half unemployed in Britain - many of them becoming rapidly unemployable — and this even though there are more in employment than before the war. The upkeep of these unemployed is costing the country many millions a year; their presence is demoralizing the employed workers. The actual unemployed are not in most cases of the stuff that Canadian farmers can be made of, but if a million of the right kind were shipped to Canada a hiatus would be formed into which the existing surplusage could be absorbed.

Two things are required. Great Britain would have to set up a number of large agricultural training schools for the intended emigrants and give them at least a year's thorough grounding in the principles and practice of scientific farming before sending them out to Canada. A scheme would have to be formulated to settle these agriculturists in village colonies of five hundred to a thousand, each with its cinemas, chapels, concert halls, playgrounds, and other media of social existence,

and with some organized industry giving the opportunity of profitable occupation during the months when there is no farming to be done. Then these settlers would 'stay put.' Otherwise they will simply dribble back to the cities and finally into the United States, or back to England, as so many do at present. To-day Canada loses two of her population in this way out of every five added to it. All this would cost a tremendous amount of money, but the sum would not be a third of the capital value of the sums now expended annually on unemployment relief.

A million immigrants of this class would do a lot to keep Canada British in habit and temperament. The idea is quite practical, but there are no signs that the next few years will evolve a British leader or party with the vision or determination to carry through a scheme of such magnitude. Successive British Governments are much more likely to go on treating Canada as a more or less useful but notto-be-too-much-encouraged Cinderella until she is driven to contract, faute de mieux, a marriage of convenience with the wealthy and eligible fairy prince who dwells on the other side of the lake.

CONFESSION OR NOT?

My father, at the age of twenty, was a fiery young Irishman with three great ambitions: to free Ireland, to abolish stupidity, and to be a great actor. He read omnivorously, studied poetry, literature, and languages passionately, and taught school while he studied law.

In his class, an eighth grade, a little blue-eyed, curly-headed girl, the daughter of a long line of New England Congregationalists and Methodists, took fire from his fire. Two years later, when she was sixteen and he twentytwo, they defied their respective families and were married.

As the children came we were six- each branch of the family fearfully looked us over for horns and tails. My paternal grandmother bitterly regretted thinning the blood of 'the one true faith.' My maternal grandmother, whose ancestors burned witches and papists indiscriminately, loved us devotedly, but had a ready hereditary excuse for any childish deviltry we perpetrated. Aunts, uncles, and cousins were all honestly lined up on one side or the other and never found a common ground.

In the midst of this sectarian whirlpool my parents went their own way. They read, studied, recited poetry, and talked, talked, talked on every question that stirred city or country. At the age of four I listened to Free Silver until someone remembered to put me to bed. Personally I thought free silver would be very nice. From that age to this I have never failed to support some side of each question and some candi

date in each election with enthusiasm.

We lived in the best part of the best ward and went to what was then known as the 'silk petticoat' school. With the advantage of trying to hold our own at the family table, we debated all the questions of the day in the schoolroom. It was n't an easy existence. We were the only 'nice' people who ever went to the Catholic Church, voted for Democrats, and believed in Woman's Rights.

I remember well how bitterly my older sister cried when she debated Free Trade and outpointed her stolid opponent on every phase of the question, and then the class voted twentyseven to two against her.

I myself was only seven when a big ten-year-old boy at dancing-school knocked my bonbons all over the floor because I said saloons should go. His father was a mighty brewer and the brewery now makes candy, but there never was stronger feeling on the prohibition question than on that day. It took the dancing-master and two very embarrassed mothers to separate us. Contrary to all the rules of the feminine game, I did n't cry over my candy, but proceeded to trip him up in the latest approved fashion.

My Irish grandmother marshaled us all to a children's Mass each Sunday at eight-thirty. We loved the ceremony, the candles, the incense, and dear old Father McGill.

My Methodist grandmother picked us up at ten o'clock and took us to Sunday School. We loved to sing lustily, to recite Bible verses, to listen to Bible stories, which we acted out in the afternoon. We loved dear old

Mr. Trueman, a saintly soul whom we called Father Time because of his venerable long white beard.

My Irish grandmother was little and quick. She wore her decent black silk and her bit of a bonnet with an air. "The life,' she would say, 'of an old hat is the cock of it.'

'Now don't be crying,' she would say to one of us. "Think shame to yourself. What will the wee good people be thinking?'

"The wee good people' were a species of canny little fairy who sat about under the leaves and danced in fairy rings o' nights, and who knew if you were afraid of the dark, or forgot your prayers. They would point their fingers at you and laugh at you. They knew things about you that you would n't even tell Grandmother Gordon, so it behooved you to steer a straight course.

'Grandma Gordon,' said my brother one day, 'if 't is wicked not to go to church of a Sunday, how about my daddy?'

'Now, glory be to God, will you listen to the likes of that!' answered she. 'Your father is a grown man and a good man. Say your prayers now that you may be as good.'

My Methodist grandmother was a big, capable woman. She was the one with the hospitable cookie-jar and the big platter of molasses candy. She took care of us when we skinned our knees or had measles. No fairies spied on us when she was about, but a long line of exceptionally upright ancestors did.

'No Emerson ever tells a lie,' was her forthright way of restraining us. Fibs were not in her vocabulary.

'An Emerson washes behind her ears,' was a remark often needed.

'Grandma Emerson,' I said one time, 'all the Emersons go to church except mother. Why does n't she?'

'My dear,' she answered, 'your mother is an unusually good woman.' And for some reason I felt reassured.

The grandmothers grew to be great friends. With the six of us they had inexhaustible material for finding and appropriating family traits.

We were a fleet-footed crew, so we won races when Grandmother Emerson took us took us to the Methodist Sunday School picnic. With great impartiality we repeated our conquests when Grandmother Gordon took us to the Holy Rosary picnic. The year the two picnics fell on the same day the second, fourth, and sixth went with Grandmother Emerson - for she was the better hand at taking care of the baby

and the first, third, and fifth went with Grandmother Gordon. We came the nearest to having a religious argument in the family when we discussed the respective merits of the picnics that night. We signed a peace treaty when my father threatened not to take us to the Irish picnic the next Saturday if we did n't go to sleep.

I think the polite rivalry of the grandmothers each Sunday was a source of great enjoyment to our parents. This competition gave them a chance to talk uninterruptedly for a whole morning.

My father, who was a lawyer, a district attorney, and a judge, and my mother, who raised and educated six children on the rather meagre salaries which go with these offices of honor and distinction, never did finish talking. They had been married thirty years when my father died. My mother was left with so many wide interests, so many vivid points of contact with the world, that after a year or so, during the war, she found herself again in service to the city. I think, though, that she is putting by topics in her mind to talk over when they meet.

During these years of growing up I

never remember my parents going to church but once. A Baptist preacher, a close friend, had urged them to come to hear a particularly fine sermon he had prepared. During their absence my brother broke his arm and my sister ran a crochet hook in her finger. My parents arrived home from church just after the second doctor left, and they found a very wan little family. That night I urged mother never to go to church again, because we expected her home when we got there, and besides, she did n't need it anyway. 'Grandmother Emerson said so.'

We went a controversial way through school and college. We were forced, because of our intimate acquaintance with both sides of what was then a most debatable question, to be on the other side always.

After a heated argument one group of friends would say:

'Well, of course you are sort of Catholic, but you are different,' meaning to be complimentary.

"The black Protestant in you has done you no harm,' would be the final statement in another argument just as heated.

I think I was twelve when I explained at home that people did n't really talk about religion- 'they just got mad.'

"'T would save a deal of bitterness if the world recognized that,' said my father.

So now when I hear a good K. K. K., who was once an A. P. A., and who has never known Father McGill and never had an Irish grandmother, explain the mysterious menace of the Church, I think of Uncle John. Uncle John, the youngest and dearest son of my Grandmother Gordon. Uncle John, an Annapolis man, who gave up a loved career in tireless devotion to an invalid wife. Uncle John, who writes poetry with a mixture of brogue, senti

ment, mystery, and religion, but with a lovely lilt to some of it. Uncle John, who says his long Latin prayers with a sort of slow, melodious chant.

And when the Protestant churches are berated as social centres, as places where argument replaces faith, 'when, by accepting, one could be so content with God,' I think of Aunt Deborah. Aunt Deborah, who sacrificed her own life to be with her mother. Aunt Deborah, who works with little Poles, or Indians, or Mexicans, and wastes no time mourning over their sometimes temporary conversions. Aunt Deborah, who earnestly and devoutly each day addresses God in the somewhat chatty fashion of the Methodist revivalist.

My own religious convictions? Oh, yes. They are the fundamental things I learned from my Irish grandmother. on the way to Mass, and which my Methodist grandmother emphasized on the way to Sunday School, and which my parents practised at home: Believe in God, believe in prayer, tell the truth, shame the Devil, and don't whine.

WE ASK YOU!

JIM is a nice boy with a strong natural urge toward the arts- one of that large appreciative class happy in the artistic temperament, if sometimes puzzled by its sterility. However, he is conscientious and faithful, and had been much excited at getting a position with Kueller and Company, the art dealers, evidently regarding it as having large potential possibilities. But he had lost his job.

'I opened the window and the air blew in on their exhibition of modern art,' he said ruefully.

It seems that the dealers had arranged the show of the season, a traveling collection of modern-school French painting, and at the same time had