in Washington by Sir Allen Aylesworth, Minister of Justice, and Mr. L. P. Brodeur, Minister of Marine, who came to consult with the United States authorities as to Fisheries regulations under the recent Hague Award; by Hon. G. P. Graham, Minister of Railways, who was discussing with the Inter-State Commerce Commission the formation of an international Railway organization; and by Mr. Mackenzie King, Minister of Labour, who was announced to speak before the Civic Federation. All were, no doubt, deeply, though indirectly, interested in the Reciprocity negotiations. By the 16th it appeared from the mixed-up and diverse press reports that some conclusion had really been arrived at in the continuous discussion of the past week and a curious despatch appeared on that date in the Montreal Star which after events made significant. After stating that the American and Canadian negotiators were being deluged with suggestions regarding the Tariff situation the correspondent went on as follows: "Nearly every man who sees President Taft or Secretary Knox on the subject makes strong representations as to what he wants done. In the case of Mr. Fielding, the people most anxious and persistent in pressing their views are those who want nothing done.'

On Jan. 18th Mr. Pepper told a Canadian press representative that there would be a Treaty "satisfactory to both countries" and on the following day it was understood that the arrangement had been practically made, subject to approval by the Governments and Legislatures concerned. The conclusion of the Conference took place on the 21st when an official announcement was made as to the fact of an Agreement while details were promised for the 26th. As finally made public the arangement was in the form of an Agreement, stated in official correspondence of Jan. 21, 1911, which enclosed approved schedules of specific rates to be presented by the Governments concerned to their respective legislative bodies for acceptance. The following are the salient and essential clauses of the correspondence (1) in a letter signed by Messrs. Fielding and Paterson and addressed to Mr. Secretary Knox and (2) in a reply signed by Mr. Knox and addressed to the two Canadian Ministers:

I. THE CANADIAN LETTER.

The negotiations initiated by the President several months ago through your communications to His Excellency, the British Ambassador, respecting a reciprocal tariff arrangement between the United States and Canada and since carried on directly between representatives of the Governments of the two countries have now, we are happy to say, reached a stage which gives reasonable assurance of a conclusion satisfactory to both countries. We desire to set forth what we understand to be the contemplated arrangement and to ask you to confirm it.

It is agreed that the desired tariff changes shall not take the formal shape of a treaty but that the Governments of the two countries will use their utmost efforts to bring about such changes by concurrent legislation at Washington and Ottawa. The Governments of the two countries having made this Agreement from the conviction that, if confirmed by the necessary legislative authorities, it will benefit the people on both sides of the

ure.

border-line, we may reasonably hope and expect that the arrangement, if so confirmed, will remain in operation for a considerable period. Only this expectation on the part of both Governments would justify the time and labour that have been employed in the maturing of the proposed measNevertheless, it is distinctly understood that we do not attempt to bind for the future the action of the United States Congress or the Parliament of Canada, but that each of these authorities shall be absolutely free to make any change of tariff policy or of any other matter covered by the present arrangement that may be deemed expedient. We look for the continuance of the arrangement not because either party is bound to it, but because of our conviction that the more liberal trade policy thus to be established will be viewed by the people of the United States and Canada as one which will strengthen the friendly relations now happily prevailing and promote the commercial interests of both countries.

With respect to the discussions that have taken place concerning the duties upon the several grades of pulp, printing-paper, etc.-mechanically ground wood-pulp, chemical wood-pulp, bleached and unbleached, newsprinting paper and other printing paper and board made from wood-pulp of the value not exceeding four cents per pound at the place of shipment— we note that you desire to provide that such articles from Canada shall be made free of duty in the United States only upon certain conditions respecting the shipment of pulp-wood from Canada. It is necessary that we should point out that this is a matter in which we are not in a position to make any agreement. The restrictions at present existing in Canada are of a Provincial character. They have been adopted by several of the Frovinces with regard to what are believed to be Provincial interests. We have neither the right nor the desire to interfere with the Provincial authorities in the free exercise of their constitutional powers in the administration of their public lands. The provisions you are proposing to make respecting the conditions upon which these classes of pulp and paper may be imported into the United States free of duty must necessarily be for the present inoperative. Whether the Provincial Governments will desire to in any way modify their regulations with a view to securing the free admissions of pulp and paper from their Provinces into the markets of the United States must be a question for the Provincial authorities to decide. In the meantime the present duties on pulp and paper imported from the United States into Canada will remain. Whenever pulp and paper of the classes already mentioned are admitted into the United States free of duty from all parts of Canada, then similar articles, when imported from the United States, shall be admitted into Canada free of duty.

II. THE UNITED STATES LETTER.

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of this date in relation to the negotiations initiated by the President several months ago for a reciprocal trade arrangement between the United States and Canada, in which you set forth and ask me to confirm your understanding of the results of our recent conferences in continuation of those negotiations. I take great pleasure in replying that your statement of the proposed arrangement is entirely in accord with my understanding of it. It is a matter of some regret on our part that we have been unable to adjust our differences on the subject of wood-pulp, pulp-wood and printpaper. We recognize the difficulties to which you refer growing out of the nature of the relations between the Dominion and Provincial Governments and for the present we must be content with the conditional arrangement which has been proposed in Schedule "A" attached to your letter.

I fully appreciate the importance, to which you call attention, of not permitting a too rigid Customs administration to interfere with the suc cessful operation of our Agreement, if it is approved by the Congress of the United States and the Parliament of Canada, and I desire to confirm your statement of our understanding on this point. I am satisfied that the spirit evinced on both sides gives assurance that every effort will be

made to secure the full measure of benefit which is contemplated in entering into this arrangement. The assurance that you give that the Dominion Government proposes to require only a nominal fee from the fishing vessels of the United States for the privilege in Canadian waters for which heretofore a charge of $1.50 per ton for each vessel has been required is most gratifying. I heartily concur in your statement of the purposes inspiring the negotiations and in the views expressed by you as to the mutual benefits to be derived by both countries in the event our work is confirmed, and I take this opportunity to assure you, on behalf of the President, of his appreciation of the cordial spirit in which you have met us in these negotiations.

In the Canadian part of the correspondence paragraphs five to nine, inclusive, merely specified the Schedules under which was given (a) the long list of products or articles to be admitted free into both countries; (b) similar lists of articles on which duties were materally lowered or re-arranged but not abolished; (c and d) Special Items. The concluding paragraphs of the letter referred to the proposal for conciliatory customs regulations and a reduction in Fishing licenses on the Atlantic Coast to which Mr. Secretay Knox referred in his reply. It was also provided that the Agreement was to be submitted to the United States Congress and the Dominion Parliament simultaneously and that it need not come into operation in either country until it became law in the other. The Schedules were as follows and indicate what a wide ground the arrangement covered and the importance of the issues involved:

SCHEDULE "A."-FREE ADMISSION TO BOTH COUNTRIES.

Live animals, viz.: cattle, horses and mules, swine, sheep, lambs, and all other live animals; Poultry, dead or alive.

Wheat, rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat; dried pease and beans, edible; corn, sweet corn or maize; Hay, straw and cow-pease; Fresh vegetables, viz., potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, turnips, onions, cabbages and all other vegetables in their natural state; Fresh fruits, viz.: apples, pears, peaches, grapes, berries and all other edible fruits in their natural state; Dried fruits, viz.: apples, peaches, pears, and apricots, dried, desiccated or evaporated; Dairy products, viz.: butter, cheese, and fresh milk and cream; Eggs, of barnyard fowl, in the shell; Honey; Cotton-seed oil; Seeds, viz.: Flaxseed or linseed, cotton-seed, and other oil seeds; grass seed, including timothy and clover seed; garden, field and other seed not herein otherwise provided for, when in packages weighing over one pound each (not including flower-seeds).

Fish of all kinds, fresh, frozen, packed in ice, salted or preserved in any form, except sardines and other fish preserved in oil and shell fish of all kinds, including oysters, lobsters and clams in any state, fresh or packed, and coverings of the foregoing; seal, herring, whale, and other fish oil including cod oil.

Salt. Mineral waters, natural, not in bottles or jugs.

Timber, hewn, sided or squared otherwise than by sawing, and round timber used for spars or in building wharfs; sawed boards, planks, deals and other lumber, not further manufactured than sawed. Paving posts; railroad ties and telephone, trolley, electric light and telegraph poles of cedar or other woods; wooden staves of all kinds, not further manufactured than listed or jointed, and stave-bolts, pickets and palings.

Plaster rock or gypsum, crude, not ground; mica, manufactured or rough-trimmed only, and mica ground or bolted; feldspar, crude, powdered or ground; asbestos not further manufactured than ground; Fluorspar,

crude, not ground; glycerine, crude not purified; talc, ground, bolted, or precipitated and naturally or artificially, not for toilet use; sulphate of soda, or salt cake and soda ash; extracts of hemlock-bark; carbon electrodes.

Brass in bars and rods, in coil or otherwise, not less than six feet in length, or brass in strips, sheets or plates, not polished, planished or coated; cream separators of every description and parts thereof imported for repair of the foregoing; rolled iron or steel sheets, or plates, number fourteen gauge or thinner, galvanized or coated with zinc, tin or other metal, or not; crucible cast-steel wire valued at not less than six cents per pound; galvanized iron or steel wire, curved or not, numbers nine, twelve, and thirteen wire gauge; type-casting and type-setting machines and parts thereof, adapted for use in printing offices; barbed fencing wire of iron or steel, galvanized or not; coke; round-rolled wire rods in the coil of iron or steel, not over three-eighths of an inch in diameter and not smaller than number six wire gauge.

Pulp-wood mechanically ground; pulp of wood, chemical, bleached or unbleached; newsprint paper, and other paper, and paper board manufactured from mechanical wood-pulp or from chemical wood-pulp, or of which such pulp is the component material of chief value, coloured in the pulp, or not coloured, and valued at not more than four cents per pound, not including printed or decorated wall-paper; provided that such paper and board valued at four cents per pound or less and wood-pulp being the products of Canada when imported therefrom directly into the United States shall be admitted free of duty, on the condition precedent that no export duty, export license fee, or other export charge of any kind whatsoever (whether in the form of additional charge or license fee or otherwise) or any prohibition or restriction in any way of the exportation (whether by law, order, regulation, contractual relation or otherwise, directly or indirectly) shall have been imposed upon such paper, board or wood-pulp, or the wood used in the manufacture of such paper, board or wood-pulp, or the wood-pulp used in the manufacture of such paper or board; provided also that such wood-pulp, paper or board, being the products of the United States, shall only be admitted free of duty into Canada from the United States when such wood-pulp, paper or board, being the products of Canada, are admitted from all parts of Canada free of duty into the United States.

It is also understood that fish-oil, whale-oil, seal-oil and fish of all kinds, being the product of fisheries carried on by the fishermen of the United States shall be admitted into Canada as the product of the United States and similarly that fish-oil, whale-oil, seal-oil and fish of all kinds, being the product of fisheries carried on by the fishermen of Canada shall be admitted into the United States as the product of Canada.

SCHEDULE" B."-LOWER AND IDENTICAL DUTIES.

Fresh meats; bacon and hams not in tins or jars; meats of all kinds, dried, smoked or salted; canned meats and poultry; extract of meat; lard and compounds thereof and tallow; egg yolk, egg and blood albumen; Fish (except shell-fish) packed in oil, or in tin boxes or cans; tomatoes and other vegetables, including corn in cans or other air-tight packages; wheat flour and semolina and rye flour, oatmeal and rolled oats, corn meal.

Barley malt; barley pot, pearled and patent; buckwheat flour or meal; split pease, dried and prepared cereal foods; bran middlings; macaroni and vermicelli; biscuits, wafers and cakes when sweetened; Biscuit wafers, cakes, and other baked articles when combined with chocolate, nuts, fruits, or confectionery; also candied peel; candied pop-corn, candied nuts, candied fruits or sugar candy and confectionery of all kinds; maple sugar and maple syrup; pickles, including pickled nuts, sauces of all kinds, and fish paste or sauce; cherry juice and prune juice or prune wine, and other fruit juices and fruit syrup, non-alcoholic; Mineral waters and imitations of natural waters; essential oils; grape vines; gooseberry, raspberry and currant bushes.

Farm waggons, and finished parts thereof; ploughs, tooth and disc harrows, harvesters, reapers and other agricultural implements; grindstones of sandstone; freestone, granite, sandstone, limestone and other monumental or building stone; roofing slates; vitrified paving blocks, not ornamental, and paving blocks of stone; oxide of iron, as a colour; asbestos further manufactured than ground, manufactures of asbestos or articles of which asbestos is the component material or chief value, including woven fabrics wholly or in chief value of asbestos; printing ink; cutlery, plated or not; bells and gongs; brass corners and rules for printer; basins, urinals and other plumbing fixtures; bath-tubs, sinks and laundry tubs; brass band instruments; clocks, watches, time recorders, clock and watchkeys, clock cases and clock movements; printers' wooden cases and cabinets, wood floor; canoes and small boats of wood; feathers, crude and not dressed; antiseptic, surgical dressings; surgical trusses, pessaries and suspensory bandages of all kinds; plate glass, not bevelled, in sheets or panes, motor vehicles other than for railways and tramways and automobiles and parts thereof, not including rubber tire; iron or steel digesters for the manufacture of wood-pulp; musical instrument cases, fancy cases or boxes, purses, etc., composed wholly or in chief value of leather.

SCHEDULE" C."-SPECIAL RATES INTO UNITED STATES.

Aluminum in crude form; aluminum in plates, sheets, bars and rods; laths, shingles, sawed boards, planks, deals and other lumber; iron-ore; coal slack or culm of all kinds.

SCHEDULE "D."-SPECIAL RATES INTO Canada.

Cement, Portland, and hydraulic, or water lime; fruit trees. Condensed milk; biscuits without added sweetening; fruits in airtight cans; peanuts, coal, bituminous, round and run of mine.

Presentation

of Agreement

It could not be said on Jan. 26th when Mr. Fielding, Minister of Finance, the Canadian father to Parliament of the Reciprocity Agreement, presented the result of and Congress the negotiations with the United States to Parliament that there was any lack of interest in the subject. Canada was beginning to be aroused, apathy in the consideration of what so many had thought to be merely an abstract subject of discussion had vanished, Reciprocity was now a political, international, and individual factor, the keenest interest was everywhere felt in the still-unknown terms of the Agreement and this interest was reflected in a House of Commons filled with alert members, and galleries packed by interested crowds. The correspondent of the Montreal Herald (Lib.) described the House as aware, within ten minutes, that history was being made. "The limited list had swelled and swelled and swelled and as it grew to the proportions of a nation's commerce, and members leaned forward to catch every word, triumph was written on the faces of the Liberals and dismay painted on the visages of the Opposition. There was not much cheering. Interest was too keen to tolerate interruption. But there were occasions when enthusiasm mastered curiosity. Free fish, free wheat, oats, barley, and buckwheat, free potatoes, free dairy products and free hay conceded by the United States brought forth a tumult of appreciation which for a moment halted the Fin