« Dès que nous prétendons, écrivait un jour P.-H. Simon, découvrir au delà de nos désaccords, une ligne de convergence possible, nous sommes fatalement conduits à parler d'humanisme. Humanisme avec ce que le mot implique assez confusément de confiance dans l'espèce humaine, d'attachement à son passé, d'espérance en son progrès et de disposition à vouloir son bien, semble désigner le carrefour par où passent tous nos itinéraires spirituels… Seulement, quand on veut presser le sens du mot, on s'aperçoit que les difficultés demeurent. Humanisme est une de ces abstractions, dangereuses à force d'être commodes, où l'on peut tout mettre, Marx et l'Evangile, le libre examen et le sentiment de l'autorité, la tradition et la révolution. »

Cependant malgré l'infinie et souvent contradictoire variété des définitions que les auteurs ont jusqu'ici essayées de l'humanisme, il semble qu'on puisse clarifier un peu le sujet en les ramenant toutes à trois types principaux selon qu'on envisage l'humanisme comme philosophie des humanités, comme métaphysique de l'homme ou comme attitude humaine.

The Canadian system of protective tariffs has long been known as the National Policy. Professor Underhill describes this designation as a stroke of genius. We gladly bow to the judgment of Professor Underhill, with one proviso, namely, that we may regard this description of the protective system as a stroke of political genius, and not necessarily as genius in the abstract and absolute. No one can doubt the political sagacity of the appeal made to the Canadian electorate in 1878 which claimed for the Conservatives an exclusive proprietary right to the formula for nation building. In retrospect we can readily recognize the contribution of the protective system to the creation of the Canadian nation. We are, nevertheless, by no means able to identify the protective system as the only nation-building instrument of the past century of Canadian history.

Professor Underhill does not, of course, attribute to Sir John A. Macdonald the genius which he finds implicit in the designation of the protective system as the National Policy. This indicates the exercise of proper caution, for it is clear that Macdonald displayed little originality in thus describing the tariff system. Many years ago Professor O. D. Skelton stressed the evolutionary nature of the concept of the National Policy and referred to the term as “a phrase which Rose devised, Hincks stamped with his approval, and Macdonald made current.”

There is a famous admonition in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France: “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.” Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, and Thomas Paine, whom I have chosen to call the English agrarians and with whose ideas this paper is concerned, were among those whom Burke dismissed in this manner. I believe he did them less than justice. It is true that while Paine has achieved a stature considerably greater than that of “an insect of the hour,” Spence and Ogilvie remain names–unknown names at that–on a crowded roster of minor political thinkers; and in presuming to advance their status, I bear in mind the comment of a reviewer who has referred to the interest “shown in the words and speeches of millenarian pamphleteers, who are often bloated into veritable Platos or premature Marxes.” I hope to avoid the pitfall of exaggeration. Yet I am convinced they merit more attention than they have hitherto received if only because they, alone among their contemporaries, recognized the outstanding social and economic problem of their time and made it the starting-point of their speculation.

During the period 1921-5 Canada's upswing was generally less intense than those abroad and the consequent sharp rise of merchandise exports relative to imports rendered the current account balance on the whole progressively less passive or more active. During the period 1926-9, on the other hand, Canada's upswing was more intense, for the most part, than those abroad; and the resulting relative rise of merchandise imports made the current account balance progressively less active or more passive. This rise of the current account to a peak in 1925 and its continuous fall thereafter was the dominant characteristic of Canada's international accounts during the upswing, the current account balance being the major independent variable. During the years 1922-5 when Canada was ostensibly on the paper standard all the expected short-run adjusting forces were generally in operation. Similarly the short-run adjusting forces expected under gold standard conditions were found in the main in the 1926-9 period. The major adjusting force in both halves of the upswing was the equilibrating movement of long-term capital, in response mainly to differences in the speed of business expansion at home and abroad. Thus the major disturbing factor in Canada's international accounts, the current account, and the major equilibrating factor, long-term capital movements, seem to have had a common cyclical origin. However, adjustment was incomplete in the first half of the upswing, despite primary and secondary (multiplier-accelerator) income effects and favourable price changes–partly because of the contraction of bank loans and the changes in income distribution.

Before World War I a relatively high degree of regional specialization in the production of agricultural commodities had developed throughout the world, and the Canadian prairies had turned to the production of wheat. During the 1920's this structure of regional specialization was seriously undermined and the depression of the 1930's brought disaster to many specialized regions, including the Canadian prairies. Two significant conditions upon which the settlement of the prairies had been premised, relative freedom of trade and an upward trend in the population of Occidental countries, were altered adversely. When, in addition, a series of droughts afflicted the prairies during the 1930's, the economic plight of the region became nothing short of desperate. Its inhabitants felt that they had been “let down” by their own federal government and by the world in general, and they protested in a variety of ways. In Alberta, a dynamic leader spearheaded the Social Credit movement which captured the provincial government, attempted to set up a provincial monetary system, and defaulted on the provincial government debt.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of exports on the economy, particularly in the perspective of the over-all recovery in the thirties. In assessing the conclusions, the reader should note particularly that many other aspects of Canada's dependence on foreign countries, such as capital movements, have had to be neglected. The first part of this paper gives some statistical measurement of the role of exports, stressing both the great importance of exports to several large industries and the lead in exports at the turning points, but also suggesting that both the over-all level of exports and the proportion of an industry's product which is exported may be misleading indicators of the impact of exports on the economy. Changes in the composition of exports, and the reaction of the more or less domestic factors in the economy can affect the force of the stimulus from expanding exports. In particular, the paper suggests that while a rising or high level of exports may be a necessary condition for prosperity, it need not be a sufficient one.

Although it was not his intention, Edward Gibbon once defined the whole duty and substance of any governmental body when he wrote “a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.” Of these attributes and responsibilities the third is not the least important. Nor is this anywhere more true than in the case of the United Nations, an international organization representing and serving sixty diverse states and performing functions both unique and novel. Above all it is true of the United Nations operational agency known as the Technical Assistance Administration.

The executive, that is the organizational and operational, problems of the Technical Assistance Administration break into two distinct categories. There is, first, the exceedingly difficult situation that is created by the administrative weakness of many of the governments of the underdeveloped countries which the TAA has been organized to aid. This weakness may be the result of inexperience, corruption, the general backwardness of the national economy, the primitive cultural structure, personal incompetence, or any combination of these factors. The second type of difficulty is that found in the formidable but essentially straightforward set of problems that will inevitably face an agency staffed by men and women drawn from a variety of national and personal environments, and charged with the conduct of business of an almost unique diversity, in areas globally dispersed.

Few Parts of the world have been so effective in carving the trends of human thought and action as the peripheral regions of the Eurasian land mass. These can be divided into two broad regions: the smaller crescent of European marine powers west of the Dardanelles, and the larger crescent of Asian peninsulas to the southeast. In spite of the earlier cultural and political development of a few areas in the latter, the former have outstripped them in the race and during the last four hundred years have controlled their resources and destiny. Recent events, however, indicate the beginnings of a reversal of this process. While European states seem to some extent to be descending the peak of political and economic power, the South Asian lands are desperately trying to ascend it. The centre of the stage is quickly changing from Europe to Asia.

The South Asian lands extend from the western Mediterranean to the eastern Pacific and cover 80 degrees of longitude and an average of 25 degrees of latitude. Comprising approximately one-tenth of the world's land area, they contain one-third of the world's population. Yet their combined national income is considerably less than that of the United States alone. The average individual monthly income in any of these lands is much less than the average individual daily income in the United States. This great discrepancy, rather than poverty, is the clue to South Asian behaviour and discontent. Poverty and degradation, which have become characteristic of the life of the Asian people, are usually blamed either entirely on the Western powers, or entirely on the Eastern people, depending upon whether one comes from the “subjugated” East or from the “exploiting” West. The very intensity of these two extreme accusations belies them; and truth, as always, is to be found somewhere between. It must be conceded that perhaps there would be fewer hospitals and schools, factories and railways, real and other assets, if the Western powers had not filled the political vacuum in the East; yet at the same time it is unjust to deny that many more of each of these improvements could have been made if political “morality” had been allowed to supersede the merely economic interests of the governing countries.

The two papers to which we have just listened throw a significant light upon the problem of developing underdeveloped areas. Mr. Tayyeb presented some of the material aspects of the conditions encountered in the attempt to integrate industrial activity with the still predominantly agricultural economies of South Asia, and Dr. Keenleyside throughout his thorough description of the problems of administering technical aid rightly discouraged thought that technical assistance amounts to very much more than a reflection of the difficulties which it is its aim to help solve. In my own remarks I should like to combine the two different aspects presented in the papers, namely, the problems of the aid-receiving countries or areas and the problems of the aid-giving nations, in discussing some of the structural characteristics of the economies involved. My aim is to elicit from the material at hand, or even to read into it, some criteria necessary for the formulation of adequate policies in aiding underdéveloped countries. Economic theory, in this context, will be defined as the means by which we establish relationships between data with the aim of understanding the structure and motion of the whole economy in a manner that makes possible the formulation of policy. The institutional flavour will be unmistakable.

Mr. Tayyeb has reminded us of some of the prominent features of South Asia. He suggested that the poverty and degradation characteristic of this area cannot be explained by analysing them solely in terms of the state of subjugation of the Asiatic people, nor solely in terms of European exploitation. “Truth,” he said, “is to be found somewhere between.” The word “between,” I take it, suggests a relationship.