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Canada and the United States: The First Centuries

THE EARLY CANADIAN EXPERIENCE

Records from Canada are scarce before the eighteenth century, but some general comments can be made about the regulations which existed at that time.

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The French Revolution

During the twenty months between May 1793 and December 1794, the revolutionary government of the new French Republic tried almost every experiment in wage and price controls which has been attempted before or since.

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The Nineteenth Century: One Success, One Failure

In the industrialized nations, at least, the nineteenth century, as we all know, was the great era of relatively free trade. For a brief period in world history, the ideas of Adam Smith were widely accepted in the most prosperous parts of the earth.

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The First World War

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 the most widespread and extensive system of economic controls in history began to go into effect. Before the war was over all the major industrialized nations had enacted regulations governing production, distribution, profits, prices and, in many cases, wages.

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Three Nations Between the Wars

NEW ZEALAND

The government of New Zealand experimented quite widely with controls both during and between the two world wars. In July 1918, for example, the government of that country set down regulations for the fixing of prices (and the rationing of supplies) of gasoline. The controls were, however, short-lived and during the period of their enforcement, the supply of motor fuel was very erratic, causing serious shortage at one instant, and severe glut the next.

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