That is the formula you constantly see at the end of an advertisement of some town lot--five miles, perhaps, from anywhere. The correct answer varies. If the slump does not come off next year, the lot may be worth double what is being asked for it now. If the slump does come off it will be worth a twentieth, perhaps, of what was given for it. Slump or no slump, this method of building up a city is unsatisfactory. Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg--these have become great as the centres of comparatively populous provinces, in which wealth has been gradually and carefully created by agricultural and industrial enterprises established on a firm basis. The jobs have been waiting for the men. In Vancouver alone, of all big Canadian cities, the men are waiting for the jobs, or, what is worse, waiting in the belief that money comes anyhow, and that jobs are not the prerequisite of money-making. I do not wish to give the impression that Vancouver is full of unemployed people, still less of unemployable ones; merely that many of the people there employed are not engaged in the undertakings that ensure the continuity of a city's prosperity.
Certainly any picture of Vancouver that made it out gloomy would be a mistake. Nothing could be livelier than its streets and its people; and if the slump does not come, and the Jeremiahs are wrong, Vancouver citizens will be justified of any amount of exultation. Already they have most of the things that make citizens pleased and proud--a beautiful site, fine streets, the most splendid of public parks, water-ways innumerable in front, and, behind, a country good to look at and rich in potentialities. Vancouver's industries, even if they do not justify the size of the place, are important and prosperous; and its propinquity to the salmon fisheries and vast timber tracts of British Columbia is something which alone would make a great town. In tone it is new world compared with Victoria, but old world compared with Seattle. There are many English people there. Living is high. No coin under five cents is, of course, in use, and when you start the day by paying that sum for a newspaper marked one cent, you find it difficult to beat down prices during the rest of the day. Apropos of newspapers, I was told of a very successful strike among the paper-boys of Vancouver some little time ago. Many people must have heard { 265} of it, but it is worth retelling. The strike was headed by a youthful organiser, popularly known as Reddy, from the colour of his hair. Reddy was alleged to be thirteen years of age at the time, but Pitt was not so much older when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain. Holding the firm conviction that he and his fellow-workers were entitled to at least two cents out of the five for every paper sold (I am not sure of my figures), Reddy proclaimed a strike, and conducted it so successfully that the newspaper proprietors of Vancouver were compelled to wait upon him humbly, and yield in every particular to his demands. Among historic strikes this seems worthy of a place.