By Sir Clifford Sifton Liberal MLA,
Attorney General, Federal Minister of the Interior, Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs.
Reprinted with permission from Maclean's Magazine. "The Immigrants Canada Wants," April 1, 1922, pp. 16, 32-4.
It is a consoling thought, sanctified by long usage, that if
everything is not satisfactory with regard to Immigration it can
always be blamed on the government or the tariff. The fact
remains, however, that a country can only get the kind of
immigrants which are suitable to it and can only hold and
assimilate them if they have been wisely chosen . . .
. . . People who do not know anything at all about the policy which was
followed by the department of the Interior under my direction
quite commonly make the statement that my policy for Immigration
was quantity and not quality. As a matter of fact that statement
is the direct opposite of the fact. In those days settlers were
sought from three sources; one was the United States. The American
settlers did not need sifting; they were of the finest quality and
the most desirable settlers. In Great Britain we confined our
efforts very largely to the North of England and Scotland, and for
the purpose of sifting the settlers we doubled the bonuses to the
agents in the North of England, and cut them down as much as
possible in the South. The result was that we got a fairly steady
stream of people from the North of England and from Scotland and
they were the very best settlers in the world. I do not wish to
suggest that we did not get many very excellent people from the
more southerly portions of England, but they were people who came
on their own initiative largely, which was the best possible
guarantee of success.
Our work was largely done in the North. Then, came the continent -
where the great emigrating center was Hamburg.
Steamships go there to load up with people who are desirous of
leaving Europe. The situation is a peculiar one. If one should
examine twenty people who turn up at Hamburg to emigrate he might
find one escaped murderer, three or four wasters and
ne'er-do-wells, some very poor shop-keepers, artisans or laborers
and there might be one or two stout, hardy peasants in sheep-skin
coats. Obviously the peasants are the men that are wanted here.
Now, with regard to these twenty men, no one knows anything about
them except the shipping agents. These men are sent in from
outlying local agencies all over Europe. They arrive at Hamburg
and the booking agents have their names and full descriptions of
who they are and where they came from. No one else has this
information.
We made an arrangement with the booking agencies in Hamburg, under
which they winnowed out this flood of people, picked out the
agriculturists and peasants and sent them to Canada, sending
nobody else. We paid, I think, $5 per head for the farmer and $2
per head for the other members of the family.
This arrangement was carried out through the agents of a Company
known as the North Atlantic Trading Company which was merely a
company incorporated by the agents and employees of the booking
houses. The steamship companies did not like this arrangement. The
Canadian steamship agents did not like it. The result of the
arrangement was that they lost a lot of business because
immigration which was not useful to us was sent to other countries
in very large volume. Eventually a political agitation was begun
against the North Atlantic Trading Company and the government
finally cancelled the contract and abandoned my policy. The policy
was completely and perfectly successful while it lasted. There was
not one-half of one per cent of the people we got from Hamburg who
were not actual agriculturists. Almost without exception they went
on farms and practically without exception they are on farms yet,
if they are alive. If not, their children are there.
About the same time that this contract was cancelled the
government also altered my policy with respect to the distinction
between the North of England and Scotland, on the one hand, and
the South of England on the other. They equalized the bonus all
over. The result of these two changes was to let loose the flood
of emigration without any selection whatever. The number was much
greater and the quality was infinitely worse. I made an
investigation a few years afterwards in regard to the immigration
into Alberta; and my conclusion was that not one in five of the
people who went to Alberta was going on the land.
The Quality Standard
When I speak of quality I have in mind, I think, something that is
quite different from what is in the mind of the average writer or
speaker upon the question of Immigration. I think a stalwart
peasant in a sheep-skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers
have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a
half-dozen children, is good quality. A Trades Union artisan who
will not work more than eight hours a day and will not work that
long if he can help it, will not work on a farm at all and has to
be fed by the public when his work is slack is, in my judgment,
quantity and very bad quantity. I am indifferent as to whether or
not he is British born. It matters not what his nationality is;
such men are not wanted in Canada, and the more of them we get the
more trouble we shall have.
For some years after the changes in policy which followed my
retirement from office, Canada received wholesale arrivals of all
kinds of immigrants. As above stated, there was no selection.
Particularly from the continent it is quite clear that we received
a considerable portion of the off-scourings and dregs of society.
They formed colonies in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and
other places and some of them and their children have been
furnishing work for the police ever since.
The situation at Hamburg is practically the same now as it was
then, except that there is a larger proportion of ne'er-do-wells
and scalawags who desire to get away from Europe. The peasants can
be brought there and they wish to emigrate, but it is imperative
that an effective method be adopted for making a selection. We
want the peasants and agriculturists; we do not want the wasters
and criminals . . .
Men for the Clay Belt
. . . I have a very emphatic opinion, based on my observation of
something like thirty years, about the class of settlers that are
not wanted in Canada. It is said there are millions of town
dwellers, artisans, small shopkeepers, laborers and so forth on
the continent of Europe who are anxious to come to Canada.
Everyone will sympathize with their condition and desire that they
should find a place where they will lead a happier life; but we do
not want them in Canada under any conditions whatever. These
people are essentially town dwellers. They have no idea in the
world of going out in a country like Canada and fighting the
battle of the pioneer. If they come here they will swell the ranks
of the unemployed; they will create slums; they will never go upon
the land; they will not add anything to the production of the
country and we shall have an insoluble problem and festering sore
upon our hands which, if the experience of the past is any guide,
will remain as long as Canada endures.
There is talk, also, about getting a large number of people from
the manufacturing towns of England and Scotland. We do not want
mechanics from the Clyde-riotous, turbulent, and with an
insatiable appetite for whiskey. We do not want artisans from the
southern towns of England who know absolutely nothing about
farming. There is nothing in these schemes suggested for educating
them and making farmers of them, and then sending them out to
fight the battle of the pioneer's life. It is the next thing to a
crime to put these men under such conditions. The pioneers have to
be of the toughest fibre that can be found. Let no one imagine
that you can get people in huge numbers from the towns and make
farmers of them. If an attempt is made to do so there will be a
worse problem created than that which exists now. I may be told
that there are some cases in which mechanics and townspeople have
been successful. The Barr colony, for instance. That is quite
true. But they were not gathered up by immigration propaganda,
spoonfed and coddled into coming to Canada. They were people who
came themselves, paid their own way, stood on their own feet, and,
imbued with the determination to make a home and the true spirit
of the pioneer, in many cases they succeeded admirably. Let it not
be imagined from this fact that you can gather up tens of
thousands of people who have neither any desire for, nor
adaptability to, the life which is ahead of them and turn them
into farmers. It takes two generations to convert a town-bred
population into an agricultural one, and it is not likely to be
done on any considerable scale except under the pressure of
starvation. In any event it takes two generations to do it. Canada
has no time for that operation. We have not two generations to
spare ...
What We Can Assimilate
I am of the deliberate opinion that about 500,000 farmers could be
actually put on land in the next ten years by a thorough,
systematic and energetic organization, backed with all needful
legal authority and money. If four are allowed to a family, that
would represent two million people actually added to the
agricultural population in ten years. Twenty years from now it
would represent, with natural increase, a population of six or
seven million. If that is done, then the railway problem is
solved and the problem of the payment of the national debt is
solved, provided the government ceases to make fresh additions to
the debt by extravagant expenditures.
There is the practical question of ways and means. Where and how
shall we get these settlers? So far as the United States is
concerned I am quite clear in my views as to the methods that
should be adopted. The organization, which I instituted in the
United States has been carried on ever since in more or less the
same shape. It has been most effective and has performed services
of incalculable value, but it is getting out-of-date. Of late
years there have grown up in the United States a considerable
number of land and colonization companies. They undertake the
movement of people from densely populated states, to places where
the land is unoccupied or where the population is very sparse.
These companies are managed by very clever men and they have very
able and expert staffs. Their men are highly paid and thoroughly
know the conditions in their several states. If I were working for
the purpose of getting American settlers into our North West I
should endeavor to work through these organizations . . .
Other Sources of Immigration
As to the other places from which settlers can be procured, I
could turn loose the organization upon the North of England and
Scotland. There are some young mechanics in the North of England
and Scottish towns who have been born on the land and brought up
farmers. Very nearly all of them are willing to emigrate. I would
search out individually every one of these men that can be got, as
well as farm laborers and the sons of small farmers. I would make
a most intensive search, because experience shows that these men
are of the very best blood in the world and every one of them that
can be procured is an asset to the country.
In Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, Belgium, Bohemia, Hungary and Galicia there are hundreds
of thousands of hardy peasants, men of the type above described,
farmers for ten or fifteen generations, who are anxious to leave
Europe and start life under better conditions in a new country.
These men are workers. They have been bred for generations to work
from daylight to dark. They have never done anything else and they
never expect to do anything else. We have some hundreds of
thousands of them in Canada now and they are among our most useful
and productive people.
