Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1919 — LAND VALUE FIXED [ARTICLE]

LAND VALUE FIXED

Depends Altogether on Power of Giving Wealth, That Is Why the Fertile Acres of West, ern Canada, With Adjacent Markets, Are So Attractive to Settlers. Throughout every portion of the Western Empire lands that are capable of producing axe in great demand. We find that in the States of proved agricultural wealth,- land prices have increased within the past three or. four years’to a degree that ten years ago would not have been thought to be possible. Land that sought buyers at SIOO an acre five years ago is changing hands at S2OO an acre. The secret of this does not lie altogether in the higher prices of farm products, for the expense of production has increased proportionately. The better methods of farming have had a good deal to do with it, and the knowledge that demands for farm products will be sufficiently great for a good many years to come to insure a continuation of the high prices that prevail at present. Then, again, improved machinery, the tractor and other means of economic power will tend to lessen the cost Governing land values, too, are climates, soil, moisture, settlement, rail: roads, markets. Without markets, no matter how much the other factors enter into it the land is merely of speculative value. It is not more than a third of a century since ninety , per cent of the land in Western Canada, now occupied and tilled, and producing enough in one year to give a profit of from twenty-five to thirty dollars per acre, was unoccupied or used as grazing land, and worth very little. These lands today are valuable, and are being sought by settlers who realiza their present and future value. There is no portion of the world that is attracting the same attention. The soil may have improved in the past centuries with the fertilizing given it by nature; the climate has not changed, and the moisture may be considered the same. These are three of the essentials of good land. What they lacked a third of a century ago was markets —a fourth essential. These they have. now. Thus provided, it is not to be wondered at that these millions of acres with their great wealth, which have so long been awaiting the awakening touch of mankind, are now to be found adding to the available wealth of the world. With the advent of railroads, throwing their great trunks of steel across the continent and over the surface of these boundless plains, spreading out their tentacles to remoter parts, the world at large has begun to realize that here was a country possessing all the natural advantages claimed by older communities; that land here just as good or better, acre, for acre, as their own could be had for almost the asking. With the realization of the foregoing facts came the people, who found that a railway had preceded them and markets already existed for anything that—they’’ might care to raise. These markets have greatly expanded and, are capable of still greater expansion, and assure to the agriculturist the prevailing prices of the world. An assured market means added value to every acre of land in Western Canada, and the near future will see lands that are now selling at exceptionally low prices begin to Increase in value, just as they have in Eastern Canada and the United States. —Advertisement.