In pre-war days corporations paid a Dominion income tax of 15 per cent on net income, or 17 per cent if they consolidated their returns with those of subsidiaries. In the case of unincorporated businesses—partnerships and sole proprietorships—income tax was levied on the individual incomes of the persons participating in the business; no tax was levied on the business as a unit. Under present taxation schedules, the corporation income tax stands at 18 per cent; 20 per cent for companies making consolidated returns. Proprietorships pay higher taxes through the steeply increased individual income tax rates. And, finally, the excess profits tax has been superimposed on the previous tax structure.

The excess profits tax applies to all businesses, incorporated and unincorporated. In addition to the taxes assessed under the Income War Tax Act, they have paid up to the present either a flat rate on their total profits (in 1940, 12 per cent for all businesses; in 1941, 22 per cent in the case of corporations, 15 per cent in the case of other businesses) or 75 per cent on profits in excess of pre-war profits, whichever tax was the larger. The provisions listed in the Income War Tax Act for the exemption of educational, charitable, labour, farmers', and other such organizations apply equally to this tax. Otherwise it was assessed in 1940 and 1941 against every business in Canada having a profit, before any payments to partners, proprietors, or shareholders, of more than $5000, with the proviso that any part of the tax which would reduce the profit thus defined to less than $5000 was not to be paid.

In his work on group settlement in western Canada Professor C. A. Dawson has described five major ethnic-religious groups but he has not treated one very distinctive Canadian people, the Hutterites, who prefer to be known as the Hutterian Brethren. There is a sociological study of this group by the Canadian Mental Health Association and several monographs on various aspects of Hutterite life have been published in the United States, but on their settlement in western Canada there is only an unpublished M.A. thesis. My purpose here is to outline briefly the coming of the Hutterites to Canada, their economic and social habits, and the problems they present to western Canada.

The first Hutterites came to Canada in a delegation of three which arrived in Winnipeg in May, 1898, to explore the possibilities of moving the seven existing colonies from South Dakota to western Canada. The delegation was welcomed by the Commissioner of Immigration in Winnipeg and was supplied with free transportation to see southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. On their return to South Dakota members of the delegation reported that though they had some doubts about the weather and the land they were “resolved to make a trial” at settling in Canada, if their requirements concerning schooling, military service, and freedom of religion were met by the federal government. Meanwhile a government agent was sent to the Hutterite colonies by the Department of the Interior to encourage the proposed move and to make a report on the Hutterities.

No apology need be offered for continuing the discussion of either civil liberties or emergency powers, exhausting and exhausted as the topics may now seem to have become. The very fact that such wide interest has been aroused by the agitation conducted by defenders of civil liberties in recent months indicates a growing realization that there is something at stake here requiring careful consideration and alert watchfulness. Whether one views civil liberty as flowing from numerous aspects of a well-balanced constitutional system of government, as the present writer does, or as the special area of distinctively designated fundamentals laid out to-protect individual rights, as many of the most vocal libertarians seem to do, every person must recognize the peculiar and intimate relation subsisting between civil liberty and constitutionalism. The preservation of the liberty of the subject is the distinguishing feature of all systems properly called constitutional and marks them off quite definitely from all forms of arbitrary government, no matter how the latter may be designated politically, socially, or economically. And at the present time no one can fail to observe that the unregulated and uncontrolled exercise of emergency powers constitutes one of the most serious threats to civil liberty as long understood and that it poses a most difficult problem for the constitutionalist.

It is unnecessary to enter here upon any consideration of the nature or elements of civil liberty; still less is it necessary to embark on a defence of liberty or to ask why freedom matters. Liberty has been claimed on so many grounds —religious, rational, economic, national, and ethical—and has spawned such a volume of defences, from Milton's Areopagitica to Laski's Liberty in the Modern State, that one is entitled to assume that adequate exposition has been made and the goal denned in general terms acceptable to all sharing the historic concepts of western civilization. Nevertheless, it ought to be noted that the very same sources from which libertarian doctrines emanate are also quite frequently the springs of its repression, namely, some religious dogmas, some economic doctrines, some national cults, and social gospels of various types.

Varied programmes of research are now commonplace in, or in connection with, the military establishments of most of the larger countries of the world. In the United States, and to some extent in Canada, this is true also of the social sciences. The institutional setting of research is of peculiar interest to sociologists, particularly since rapid and extensive changes have recently been characteristic of military organizations. The main concern of this paper is, therefore, to describe and interpret some of the processes of change observed in the course of the work of the Defence Scientific Service with the Canadian Army during the past five years. A brief introduction notes the recent growth of the Army, the involvement in military affairs of large numbers of scientists, including some social scientists, and suggests the importance of the military as an area for the sociological study of work.

I have interpreted the rather facetious title given me by the programme committee as permission to speak rather light-heartedly, even irresponsibly, about a few of the changes in the formal methods of analysis in the field of economic theory; to speak of fashions in tools, fashions in gadgets, fashions, if you will forgive me, in models.

In the 1920's Professor J. M. Clark supported the thesis that economic theory has developed by replacing worn and outgrown half-truths by new half-truths, that correspond more closely with increased knowledge, changing points of view, and different circumstances. Sir Dennis Robertson reviewed the first volume of the Survey of Contemporary Economics, called his review “A Revolutionist's Handbook,” and enumerated seven revolutions; but his phrasing is ironical. In his posthumous work on the History of Economic Analysis Professor Schumpeter has contended, with some success I think, that advances in economic analysis have been more consistent and less fluctuating than changes in the field of economic doctrine, economic systems, or economic thought. Fashions change, then, even in the methods of economic theory, but there is a good deal of continuity too. Many of the most widely useful tools of economic theory have changed very little in the last generation, or even in the last century; some have been in use for many centuries. Nevertheless, there have been many important changes too. Periodically, as attention comes to be focussed on a particular sort of problem, old tools are repaired, polished up, and put in the shop window; or new ones are invented.

Dominion aids to Canadian wheat marketing extend back at least to the beginnings of the western wheat trade and have been of three traditional types, viz.: (1) regulation, (2) investigation, and (3) elevator operation on a limited scale. Regulation of the Canadian grain trade has long been of a quality unsurpassed in other grain producing countries and has evolved in recent decades through repeated revisions of the Canada Grain Act. Investigation dealing specifically with the western wheat trade has involved a notable series of royal commissions commencing with the present century. Elevator operation by the Dominion Government started in 1913 with experimentation and compromise as its objects, and the Dominion Government still retains substantial interests in interior and other terminal elevator plants. In addition to the customary federal aids to wheat marketing before 1929, mention should be made of the exceptional intervention accompanying the Board of Grain Supervisors, which marketed part of the 1916 wheat crop and the crops of 1917 and 1918, and the first Canadian Wheat Board, which marketed the crop of 1919.

Important as the above-mentioned aids have been in shaping the destiny of the Canadian grain trade, they form a striking contrast in simplicity compared with the interventions of the decade4 herein considered. Dominion regulation, investigation, and elevator operation have continued to the present time, but the notable innovations in Dominion activity after 1929 lie beyond the traditional categories and include more or less sustained sorties in attempted stabilization, in bonusing, in international consultation, and in various types of wheat board operation. Dominion aids to wheat marketing, of special significance from 1929 to 1939, may therefore be classified as follows: (1) stabilization activities, (2) bonus payments, (3) international consultation and agreement, (4) wheat board operations; and since several important federal investigations of the grain trade took place within the decade, there should be added (5) investigation. These topics have, for the most part, been analysed individually and at short range in various current writings, so that factual material may here be reduced to a minimum and the emphasis placed upon interpretation in perspective.

This paper is limited to a narrow portion of the field of economic growth. Its purpose is to discover how growth in the labour force, capital accumulation, and technological change have affected the movements of factor prices (particularly the return to capital) in a private enterprise economy. The question of what may happen to the return on capital, and indeed to all factor prices, is an old one. There is now material to provide some evidence of what has happened.

The first part of the paper deals briefly with the theory of the matter and provides a rough model. The second part explores the dimensions which quantitative data for the United States for a period of 100 years put on the variables and parameters of the model. Finally there are some comments related to the possible bearing of the results on future changes in the economic variables dealt with. The analysis is entirely for the long period.

It is evident from the discussion that I assume that factor prices are determined by the factors' marginal productivities.

In what follows I take much that is commonly accepted for granted and use many obiter dicta, some of which are justified in footnotes.

This case study of union-management co-operation at the Toronto factory of Lever Brothers Limited was undertaken for several reasons. It is an example of the union-management co-operation in which increases in productive efficiency were brought about solely by savings in man-power requirements. Further it is a case of the fulfilment of a collective bargaining demand by co-operation. These two facts, in themselves, are highly unusual. Although this case of co-operation took place during the war and was influenced by war-time conditions, it is in no way a part of the general war-time pattern of labour-management co-operation, stimulated in Canada by the Industrial Production Co-operation Board and in the United States by the War Production Drive.

Historically, industrial relations can be divided into an area of conflict of interest or collective bargaining and an area of mutuality of interest or co-operation. Employee representation tried to integrate these areas, but without the presence of an independent union, management tended to determine unilaterally the conditions of employment. Union-management co-operation later developed the area of mutuality in parts of the railroad, clothing, steel, and printing industries, but with the exception of the clothing industry, little integration was affected with the area of bargaining. During the recent war labour-management co-operation had a mushroom growth, but little attempt was made to integrate the two areas of industrial relations. In Canada, particularly, the role of the union on the co-operation committees was largely undefined. Co-operation at Lever Brothers is significant because it provides a clearcut case of integration between co-operation on productive efficiency and bargaining on wages and hours. Co-operation arose as a result of a demand by the bargaining agency for increased wages and shorter hours, while their achievement was brought about by the joint action of union and management. This, then, provides an example of union-management relations which may have profound implications for the achievement of industrial peace.

The first part of this paper is given over to a discussion of definitions, terminology, and objectives in income analysis. The second part deals with methods and sources of material in the study of cash income. The third part describes some results obtained to date in this work. “Agricultural income” is defined as the value of goods and services produced on farms which become available during a given period for consumption or investment, after providing for the maintenance and replacement of goods and services employed in production. Since the national income is the final test of the state of economic activity, it is essential that the national income data be as complete and accurate as possible. The completeness and accuracy of the national income estimate are dependent upon the completeness and accuracy of the estimates for the various industries. The income from agriculture should, therefore, be carefully appraised. The second main objective in measuring agricultural income is to enable a comparison of changes in the well-being of those engaged in farming with changes in the well-being of those engaged in other industries. These objectives constitute the important reasons for undertaking income analysis. The measurements of individual farm returns, such as labour income, labour earnings, or variations of gross or net income, are commonly used in studying the efficiency of management in the farm business. For this purpose they are very useful, but their field of service is definitely limited.