fact, the decrease in wheat exports had become so alarming that men like Hill of Great Northern fame and James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, actually predicted that there would come

there did not seem any limit to the world's power to absorb what was produced. The almost limitless timber lands of the northwestern states

urer's argument. "If we had free trade, it would reduce the cost of living," was the gist of the city consumer's argument. Canadian lumber, Canadian meat, Canadian wheat could be brought across and manufactured on the American side. For t

vernor Hughes at Albany and there met President Taft. Of the old guard of free traders, there were still a few in Laurier's Cabinet, and Laurier himself was as profoundly and sincerely a free trader in power as he had been out of office. Enemies aver that the Laurier government now launched reciprocity to divert public attention from criticism of the railroad policy, in which there had undoubtedly been great incompetency and gross extravagance-an extravagance more of a recklessly prosperous era than of d