Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1916 — WESTERN CANADA AND THE LAND-HUNGRY [ARTICLE]

WESTERN CANADA AND THE LAND-HUNGRY

It Is Essentially an Agricultural Country. Western Canada is the Mecca of the land-hungry man who wishes to earn a. good living from the soil and save up money to take care of him In his old age without paying 'a fanpy price for the privilege. Western Canada is the great wheat producing section of the North American continent, with an average production of more than 30 bushels to the acre as compared with an average of 17 bushels to the acre In the States. Wheat raising can hardly be made profitable on land that costs from SSO an acre up unless such land will produce a much higher than a 17 bushel average, or unless the,price of the cereal’reaches an excessive fflpire. The initial investment of SSO an acre is more than the average man can afford to make if he expects to raise wheat and to make a success of it. A good homestead of 160 acres can still fee secured free in Western Canada and additional land admirably suited to the raising of wheat can be secured at so low a cost per acre that it can be made extremely profitable. No other part of the world offers such tremendous opportunities at the present time to the ambitious young farmer as the three great provinces of Western Canada. It is worth the while of the landhungry man to cease his depressing search for local cheap land or for land that is not entirely worked out by long cropping and to look outside his own district. Western Canada is a country that should receive the consideration of all such men. The Western Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are essentially agricultural territory. Out of 478 million acres there are 180 million acres of first-class agricultural land actually available for development—a block three and a half times as large as the Jotal land area of Minnesota, and equal to the combined land areas of Minnesota, lowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. But whereas the population di the five states mentioned is fifteen million people, the population of Western Canada is only about one and threequarter millions. It has been said that the average yields per acre of wheat in the United States last year was 17 bushels. This average does not, of course, represent the efficiency which may have been reached by individual fanners or by individual states. However, place against this figure the fact that the, 1015 Western Canadian average—the average from nearly twelve million acres —was over 30 bushels. In the case of the Province of Alberta, the average reached 32.84 bushels per acre. There are already a large number of

American farmers in Western Canada, so that the newcomer could never— the fact that the same language is spoken—feel himself in an alien country. There seems, in fact, a tendency to establish little colonies composed of those coming from the same sections. The characteristics of the country, and the climate and season, are very much the same as tn Minnesota or North Dakota. Social conditions bear a family resemblance. Education is free, and is good; its cost being defrayed partly by taxation, partly by grants from the' Canadian Government, from the sales of school lands, of which, when the country was first surveyed, two sections in every township were allocated. Taxation in every rural district, in many towns and cities, is based practically on land values alone, improvements of all kinds being exempted.—Advertisement