Unlike the Atlantic fisheries, the organization of the North American fur trade moved always in the direction of monopoly rather than competition. From its inception, the British trade in what was to become Canada was a tightly controlled monopoly operation conducted by the Hudson's Bay Company. Its only competition came from the French trade, which existed only because of the military forces France could deploy to prevent its commercial operations in North America from being eliminated. The trade in New France went through several phases, some of which involved growing competition as small, independent operators broke away from the officially-sanctioned larger organizations, but these anomalies were short-lived and the centralizing forces of state-sanctioned marketing and finance were always restored. [Case Study #X] Following the British Conquest, as we have seen, the take-over of the trade by English-speaking newcomers was followed by a period of consolidation culminating in the formation of the North-West Company which exercised almost complete control over that branch of the trade until its absorption, vigorously promoted by the British government, in 1821 by the Hudson's Bay Company which thereby finally acquired the full monopolization of the industry its founders had wished for.
In terms of organization the British North American timber industry which developed under the incentives provided by British tariff concessions in the early 19th Century fell somewhere between the fishing and fur industries. The basic operations in the woods, felling trees, squaring them up into timbers, and getting them out to points of access for shipment were easily organized by small firms which had little more to do than find the manpower required and provide the rough camp facilities required to house and feed the workers while they were on the job in the woods. The actual shipping and marketing of the product, however, required somewhat larger organizations capable of raising the necessary short-term financing needed to acquire timber from the primary producers, make the necessary shipping arrangements, and establish marketing relations with dealers in Britain. Not surprisingly, many of these firms were set up as subsidiaries of well-established British timber merchants. [Case Study #X]
Farming in British North America was generally organized along lines familiar to anyone acquainted with present-day farming in North America. With only the exceptions of the seigneurial regime in New France and the peculiar arrangements governing land ownership in Prince Edward Island, owner-operated "family" farming was the norm throughout the colonial period. Unlike the southern colonies in what was to become the United States, there was no "plantation" type of agriculture in which owners of large tracts of land used hired workers or slaves to work the land in the northern colonies. Often informal share-cropping arrangements were made and many operators would employ one or more "hired hands" to assist them in their labours, but in most cases the farmer in British North America owned the land he worked on even if it was mortgaged or he was otherwise sustained by creditors.
Much has been made in the literature on Canadian economic history of the differences (or the absence of differences) between farming in Quebec, with its roots in the seigneurial system of New France, and farming in Ontario. Older histories of Canadian agriculture depicted farming in Quebec as a type of subsistence agriculture in which the largely self-sufficient, uneducated habitant used primitive methods to work his fields, raise some livestock, and only occasionally produce a surplus for sale, his objective being to sustain his probably large family and leave to his sons no less than he had inherited from his father. In Ontario (Upper Canada, Canada West), by contrast, farming was represented as being commercially oriented, with farm owners employing up-to-date technology and specialized cropping practices to produce food not so much for for domestic or local consumption, but for export to outside markets. More recent empirical studies of farming in the two parts of Canada suggest, however, that there were not great differences in agricultural productivity and that the "backwardness" atributed to farmers in Quebec was exaggerated by early commentators. In any event, it is clear that the structure of agricultural organization was not greatly affected by the seigneurial legacy and that the family farm operated much the same throughout the St. Lawrence region in the colonial period.
Mining was of relatively little importance in the period before Confederation, being confined to a few specific regions and serving local, rather than export markets. Most early mining was of coal and construction materials, such as clay, stone, and cement. The most important coal mining centre was on Cape Breton Island where substantial coal reserves were developed by a British firm (the General Mining Association of London) in the 1820s. Although some of the coal produced there was exported to other parts of British North America and some was used as fuel for early steamships, alternative sources of coal, including coal from Britain which came to North America as ballast in cargo ships, was often cheaper, even the Maritime region itself.
Metallic minerals did not become important until later in the 19th Century, although there was some small-scale gold and iron ore mining in the earlier period. The largest metallic mineral operation in pre-Confederation Canada was the St Maurice iron works near Trios Rivieres. The iron ore deposits there were developed by a French company granted both a royal monopoly and subsidies for the purpose, with production beginning in the 1730s. The iron produced was used in a plant built on site which used it to cast stoves, cooking pots and other simple goods. The commercial viability of the operation was fragile at best and within a decade the operation was placed under government ownership. After the British Conquest it remained under public ownership, but was operated by a succession of private firms which leased the facilities from the government. The other significant early iron mining operation was at Marmora in Upper Canada. It was privately owned and operated, but, also experienced chronic financial difficulties, surviving as long as it did by virtue of being integrated into a small local manufacturing and retailing complex. [Case Study #X]
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