CANADA 
229 
162; business rents much more — the figure was 234 in 1913. 
An exceptional rise in business rents is a natural outcome of specu- 
lative furore and high business returns (high on the surface at 
least) such as characterize a boom period. 
As has just been stated, the soaring course of domestic prices 
is in contrast with the lagging even tho upward movement of 
export prices. Most Canadian articles of export are of the kind 
which, when sent to foreign countries, constitute but a moderate 
fraction of the total supply there marketed. This is of course 
most clearly the case with wheat, the one outstanding crop of the 
new western region. Its sustained production and exportation 
was almost a matter of necessity. A cheap product of virgin soil, 
it would probably have continued to be placed on the market 
(tho in less amounts) even in face of falling prices. Moreover, 
something more than the mere cheapness of production affected 
the output and the exports. The pioneer farmers of the Canadian 
West had regard not merely to present costs. They were actuated 
not a little by the prospect of future accretion, the wish to secure 
the land and to build a property for the future. It is perhaps going 
too far to put this sort of case in the terms suggested by Professor 
Marshall in describing earlier phenomena of the same kind — 
that to the pioneer wheat is no more than a by-product in the 
process of acquiring the title-deeds.! But one need not be at all 
surprised that wheat grown under these conditions should be 
exported in great and increasing amounts, even tho it showed a 
rise in price not at all as marked as that of other Canadian goods. 
The same situation is seen in the case of flax-seed, also a character- 
istic product of pioneer agriculture.? 
A more normal state of things — 7.e. such as is to be expected 
on a priori grounds — appears in some other products which had 
previously figured largely in Canada’s exports. They ceased so to 
figure, or at least tended toward disappearance. Articles like 
cattle, sheep, horses, bacon, butter, had been among the exports 
* Principles of Economies, Book 5, Ch. 10, § 2 (6th edition). 
¢ See the article, already referred to (pp. 187-188, above), by Mr. W. S. Barker, 
on Flax Fibre and Flax Seed, in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1917.