Canada West Part 12

If the settler locates early in the season he may get in a crop of potatoes or oats in May or early June.

=Will a Quarter-Section Pay?=--"Will the tilling of a quarter of a section (160 acres) pay?" when asked of those who have tried it provokes the invariable answer that "It will and does pay." "We, or those following us, will make less than that pay," said one who had proved up on a homestead. Another pointed to the fact that many of those who commenced on homesteads are now owners of other quarters--and even larger areas, showing that they have progressed in obtaining more land, while others still have stuck to the homestead quarter and this year are marketing as much as $2,000 worth of grain and often nearer $3,000.

=Shall You Buy, Rent or Homestead?=--The question is one that Canadian Government officials are frequently asked, especially in the homes of a family of boys who have become interested in Central Canada. If the young man has grit and inexperience let him homestead. Treating this subject in a newspaper article, a correspondent very tersely says, "He will survive the ordeal and gain his experience at less cost."

Another has ample knowledge of farming practice, experience in farm management, but lacks pluck and staying power and the capacity to endure. The food for thought and opportunity for action provided by the management of an improved farm would be just the stimulus required to make him settle into harness and "work out his own salvation in fear and trembling."

Many men make excellent, progressive, broad-gauge farmers, by renting, or buying an improved farm in a settled district and keeping in touch with more advanced thought and methods. Their immediate financial success may not be so great; their ultimate success will be much greater, for they have been saved from narrow-gauge ways and withering at the top.

Let the boy take the route that appeals to him. Don't force him to homestead if he pines to rent. Don't try to keep him at home if homesteading looks good to him. The thing to remember is that success may be achieved by any one of the three routes. If the foundation is all right, hard work the method, and thoroughness the motto, it makes little difference what road is taken--whether homesteading, buying, or renting--Central Canada is big enough, and good farming profitable enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Alfalfa is a crop that is now a.s.sured in any of the Provinces of Western Canada. The above is a Manitoba ill.u.s.tration, but will apply to the other Provinces.]

YOUR OPPORTUNITY

Contentment is not necessarily achieved by accomplishments that benefit the world--the world outside the small sphere in which we move; but when accompanied by such accomplishments how the satisfaction broadens! The genius whose inventions have been of service to mankind is in a plane far above that of the simple-minded individual who finds contentment in the little things of life affecting himself alone.

Feeding the world is no mean accomplishment. Nor is it a vain or trifling boast to say that this is what the farmer of Western Canada has started out to do. He is sure to find contentment. Part of his contentment will be the consciousness of doing world-wide good; part of it will be the personal enjoyment of an inspiring liberty and independence. Afield and abroad his friends will learn what he is doing.

Soon they too will become partners in a work that not only betters their own condition, but ministers to the needs of the whole world in the raising of products that go to "feed the world."

It is to those who desire this broad contentment that the Canadian Government extends the heartiest welcome, and to such men it offers the vast opportunities of a country richer in possibilities than any other in the present century. To the man on the farm in other regions, whom success has followed with slow tread; to the farmer's son, who has watched with unsatisfied eye the unrequited efforts of his forbears, seeing the life that has made his mother a "drudge," noting the struggle which has stooped his father's shoulders, dimmed his vision, dwarfed his spirit, and returned nothing but existence and a meagre bank account--it is to these men, father and son, that the opportunities of Western Canada are presented. To them an invitation is extended to secure the contentment found in personal progress and world-wide benefaction.

The possibilities of Western Canada are no longer new and untried.

Twelve or fifteen years of cultivation have made it a vital, living land, and placed it on the level with the greatest of the food-producing countries. That same redundant energy will shortly make it the richly laden "bread basket" not of England only, but of the entire world.

Here every condition is a health bringer as well as a wealth bringer. A few months in this "New World" to which you are invited and where rejuvenating physical and mental changes are wrought; where before hard work was drudgery, it is now a delight; where nothing but fresh trouble darkened the horizon, the outlook is now a rainbow of promise. Industry is seasoned with the compelling spirit of adventure, and the thought of the coming harvest constantly lightens the burden of labor.

The crowded city dweller, curbing those natural desires for home-building that are as natural as breathing, will find in Western Canada a country where nothing is so plentiful as s.p.a.ce. And in building his home here he is surely laying the foundation for a competence, and very often for a fortune. Along with prosperity there is abounding happiness and good fellowship in the farming communities. The homesteader, beginning in a modest way, rears his first habitation with practical and serviceable ends in view. His next-door neighbours are ready and willing to help him put a roof over his head. There is a splendid lend-a-hand sentiment mixed with the vigorous climate. The first harvest, like all succeeding harvests, comes quickly, because the soil is a lightning producer. All summer long the settler has dreamed of nothing but acres of waving grain; with the autumn the sight of hopes fulfilled compensates him for his months of toil. In due time the crop is harvested and marketed, the debts are wiped out, and the settler proudly opens his bank account.

When he has turned the golden grain into the golden coin of the realm he realizes for the first time what it means to be liberally paid for the work of his hand and brain. The reward of the farmer in Western Canada is sure; and as the soil responds faithfully to his husbandry, year after year, he looks back upon the old conditions he has left with devout thankfulness that they are past.

After the b.u.mper harvest the happy young farmer can send for the wife or the bride-to-be whom he has left "back home." A few years ago "down on the farm" was an expression synonymous with isolation, loneliness and primitive living. Not so to-day. Whatever his previous outlook, the settler in Western Canada cannot go on raising large crops and selling his products for high prices without enlarging his view of life in general and bettering his material conditions. He needs to practice no rigid economy. He can afford to supply his wife and children with all the best the markets provide. An up-to-date farm house in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, or Alberta has very much the same conveniences as the average home of the well-to-do in any other part of the world. Nine times out of ten it is because he feels confident he can increase the comfort and happiness of his wife and children that the settler emigrates to Western Canada.

Western Canada is no longer a land calling only to the hardy young adventurer; it calls to the settler and to his wife and children. And with its invitation goes the promise not only of larger financial returns, but of domestic happiness in a pure, wholesome environment.

Railroads bring to the doors of the settler the fruits of all countries and here is to hand the use of every modern idea and invention. The climate is the most health-giving, all-year kind. There is latent riches in the soil, produced by centuries of acc.u.mulation of decayed vegetation, and the fat producing qualities of the native gra.s.ses are unexcelled in any part of the world.

The soil produces the best qualities of wheat, oats, barley, flax, and all kinds of vegetables and roots in less time than many districts farther south in the states. There are inexhaustible coal deposits and natural gas and oil fields, as yet unknown in extent or production. The Canadian Rockies, forming a western boundary to the great agricultural area, supply the needed mineral and building materials. In the north and west there are immense forests. Lakes and rivers are capable of an enormous development for power purposes, besides supplying an abundance of food and game fishes, and forests and prairies are full of big and small game of all kinds.

But all this is yet undeveloped and unused. All kinds of live stock can be raised here for less money than in the more thickly populated communities.

One Western Canada farmer in 1912 secured a crop of Marquis wheat, yielding 76 bushels per acre. This is spoken of as a record yield, and this is doubtless true, but several cases have been brought to notice where yields almost as large have been produced, and in different parts of the country. During the past year there have been reported many yields of from 35 to 45 bushels of wheat to the acre. Oats, too, were a successful crop and so was the barley and oat crop. Wheat that would yield 40 bushels per acre, would bring on the market 70 cents (a fair figure) per bushel, a gross return of $28 per acre. Allow $12 per acre (an outside figure) there would be a balance of $16 per acre net profit.

This figure should satisfy anyone having land that cost less than $100 per acre.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Owing to the number of questions asked daily, it has been deemed advisable to put in condensed form, such questions as most naturally occur, giving the answers which experience dictates as appropriate, conveying the information commonly asked for. If the reader does not find here the answer to his particular difficulty, a letter to the Superintendent, or to any Government Agent, will secure full particulars.

=1. Where are the lands referred to?=

In Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and in British Columbia.

=2. What kind of land is it?=

The land is mostly prairie (except in British Columbia) and can be secured free from timber and stones, if desired, the soil being the very best alluvial black loam from one to two feet deep, with a clay subsoil.

It is just rolling enough to give good drainage, and in places there is plenty of timber, while some is underlaid with good coal.

=3. If the land is what you say, why is the Government giving it away?=

The Government, knowing that agriculture is the foundation of a progressive country, and that large yields of farm produce insure prosperity in all other branches of business, is doing everything in its power to encourage settlement. It is much better for each man to own his own farm, therefore a free grant of 160 acres is given to every man who will reside upon and cultivate it.

=4. Is it timber or prairie land?=

The province of Manitoba has considerable open prairie, especially in the southwest; towards the centre it is parklike with some timber belts in parts.

The southern parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta are chiefly open prairie with growths of timber along the streams. As you go north or northwest about 20 per cent of the country may be said to be timbered.

=5. Then as to climate?=

The summer days are warm and the nights cool. The fall and spring are most delightful, although it may be said that winter breaks almost into summer, and the latter lasts until October. Winters are pleasant and healthful. There are no pulmonary or other endemic complaints. Snow begins to fall about the middle of November and in March there is generally very little. Near the Rockies the snowfall is not as heavy as farther east, and the chinook winds have a tempering influence. The absence of the snowfall would be regretted by the farmer. Nature has generously provided for every mile of the country, and there is really very little choice with the exception that farther west the climate is somewhat milder.

=6. Is there sufficient rainfall?=

A sufficient supply can be relied upon. The most rain falls in May and June, when most needed.

=7. What are the roads like?=

Bridges and culverts are built where needed, and roadways are usually graded up; but not gravelled or macadamized. The natural prairie road is superior to most manufactured roads, and afford good travelling in ordinary seasons and every fall and winter.

=8. What sort of people are settled there, and is English generally spoken?=

Canadians, English, Scotch, Irish, French, and English-speaking Americans (who are going in, in large numbers), with Germans and Scandinavians. English is the language of the country, and is spoken everywhere.

=9. Will I have to change my citizenship if I go to Canada?=

An alien, before making entry for free homestead land, must declare his intention of becoming a British subject and become naturalized before obtaining patent for his land. In the meanwhile he can hold possession, and exercise right of ownership. If not a British subject he must reside three years to become naturalized. To become a British subject a settler of foreign birth should make application to anyone authorized to administer oaths in a Canadian Court. An alien may purchase land from any of the railway or land companies and hold t.i.tle deed without changing his citizenship.

=10. How about American money?=

American money is taken everywhere in Central Canada at its face value.