Canada's growing prosperity did
not merely bring greater individual intercourse; it made the
United States as a whole less patronizing in its dealings with
its neighbor and Canada less querulous and thin-skinned.
In this more favorable temper many old issues were cleared off
the slate. The northeastern fisheries question, revived by a
conflict between Newfoundland and the United States as to treaty
privileges, was referred to the Hague Court in 1909. The verdict
of the arbitrators recognized a measure of right in the
contentions of both sides. A detailed settlement was prescribed
which was accepted without demur in the United States,
Newfoundland, and Canada alike. Pelagic sealing in the North
Pacific was barred in 1911 by an international agreement between
the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia. Less success
attended the attempt to arrange joint action to regulate and
conserve the fisheries of the Great Lakes and the salmon
fisheries of the Pacific, for the treaty drawn up in 1911 by the
experts from both countries failed to pass the United States
Senate.
But the most striking development of the decade was the
businesslike and neighborly solution found for the settlement of
the boundary waters controversy. The growing demands for the use
of streams such as the Niagara, the St. Lawrence, and the Sault
for power purposes, and of western border rivers for irrigation
schemes, made it essential to take joint action to reconcile not
merely the conflicting claims from the opposite sides of the
border but the conflicting claims of power and navigation and
other interests in each country.
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