Wherever I go in Canada I find the people on tiptoe with eagerness for the growth of their country. I do not mean that they are hungry for territory; they already have more than they can use for a century or two. The increases they are praying for are in population, in the size of their towns, in the area of land under cultivation, and in the number of families settling new farms.

For seventy-five years Canada has given a cordial welcome to immigrants and during the last quarter of a century she has been conducting recruiting campaigns to get settlers. But where formerly immigration was only something to be desired, the situation to-day makes the coming of new people an imperative necessity. They are needed not merely to open up rich virgin lands, but to share the burden of carrying the national overhead.

A single fact will make clear this situation. The interest on the Canadian national debt is five times what the total revenues of the government were before the World War. The people are faced with the alternative of having less to live on after their increased taxes are paid, or of dividing their heavier expenses among a larger number of producers. Naturally they prefer the latter.

Canada’s per capita debt mounted from seventy-two dollars in 1914 to three hundred and twenty-two dollars three years after the war, and the total stands to-day at just under three billion dollars. The war has not only multiplied the public debt, but it has also greatly reduced immigration. The population of Canada is now nearly nine million, and if the high rate of increase that prevailed for the five years preceding 1914 is regained it will soon be ten million and more. The national production and revenues in that case will grow proportionately, and the individual share of the burden of taxes and debt will be considerably less.

The prediction of James J. Hill, many years ago, that Canada would have fifty million people by 1950 seems unlikely to be fulfilled, but every Canadian expects the population of his country eventually to reach that figure. The Dominion has four hundred and forty million acres of land suitable for cultivation. Only one fourth of this area is even occupied, and but thirteen per cent. is being tilled. To get men and women on the unoccupied lands is a national policy of the government that enjoys the support of all the people.

Canada’s banner year was 1913, when more than four hundred thousand immigrants settled in the Dominion. During the war not one eighth of this number came in. The annual inflow is now only one fourth what it was the year before the World War, and about as many more are added by natural increase. If there is no radical change in conditions Canada should gain at least a million about every five years. On the other hand, she has lost population by emigration, especially to the United States.

Two racial stocks—British and French—make up eighty-three per cent. of the population. With our “melting pot” example next door, Canada is determined to preserve her race character, and she controls immigration accordingly. She tries to get settlers chiefly from the British Isles, the northern countries of Europe, and the United States. Labourers from Japan and China are no longer admitted, though for many years the head taxes of five hundred dollars on each Chinese who came in paid most of the expenses of promoting general immigration.

We might profit by the way Canada regulates her immigration. In the first place, the government has wide discretion as to what kinds of people shall come in. It can partially close the gates during dull times, and open them wide when times are good. Immigrants are admitted only as the authorities are satisfied that they are fitted to work on the land and that they can become self-supporting. Government agents in foreign countries start immigrants on their way, and others meet them on their arrival. Canada does not allow hordes of foreigners to be thrown into her cities. She guides them out to the land, and helps them to establish themselves there. She has no fixed quota law such as ours, but she is vastly more particular as to whom she admits.

Besides the government, both the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific railways maintain immigration offices abroad. The C. P. R. at one time had practically all Europe covered with agents engaged in drumming for immigrants, whom it brought across the Atlantic in its own steamers, carried through Canada on its own trains, and located on farms along its own lines. When that road was built the company received a grant of twenty-five million acres of government land. Four fifths of these have been sold, but the company still has five million acres for settlers. At the present time, it is selling land for a cash payment of only one seventh of the purchase price, the balance to be paid within thirty-five years.

The government and the railroads spend large sums in advertising Canada as the Land of Great Opportunity. Ottawa and each of the provincial capitals produce literature by the ton. Information bureaus are maintained that answer every conceivable question about the resources and farming conditions in all parts of the Dominion. The government regularly exhibits at fairs in the United States and also in the United Kingdom. It distributes photographs and “movie” films, and sends out lecturers to tell of the glories of Canadian life. It advertises in our American farm journals and plasters the countries of northern Europe with posters. The Canadian Pacific conducts publicity campaigns for the purpose of attracting both tourists and settlers, and for forty years it has been a great force for the settlement and upbuilding of the Dominion.

For many years the bulk of the immigration from overseas has come from the British Isles. During the periods of unemployment in England thousands of jobless men have made a new start on this side of the Atlantic. In one single summer, more than eleven thousand British young men came here to help in the harvest, and all but four hundred decided to stay. Relief societies in England have sent over several thousand destitute boys and girls, who work with farmers for their board, lodging, and schooling. In southern Alberta small parcels of land of from five to ten acres are being reserved for farm labourers who, though putting in most of their time working for others, may thus get a start toward having farms of their own.

The government extended to all British soldiers who served in the World War the same offer she made to her own men to set them up as farmers, and within a few years thirty thousand of them were placed on the land. It also loaned the former soldiers up to seventy-five hundred dollars each, and employed farm experts to train them and to help them get started. Eighty per cent. of them are regarded as making good.

As in the United States, domestic servants are at a premium. Consequently, young unmarried women are urged to come to the country. While in Toronto the other day I saw a party of fifty girls, Scotch, Irish, and English, who had just arrived from overseas under the wing of the Salvation Army. They were bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. Their average age was eighteen. As soon as it was announced that the girls had arrived, the Salvation Army headquarters were surrounded by fashionable motor cars and overrun with Toronto women seeking cooks, maids, and governesses. Like the real bargains at a department store, this supply disappeared within a few hours. Some of the girls admitted privately that they were taking domestic employment only temporarily. They hoped soon to get places in factories or stores, or perhaps to find husbands.

Out in the farming country of Saskatchewan, girls are in as great demand as in Toronto. A record was kept during a period of three years of five hundred and twenty-six girls who were advanced their expenses to Canada. All immediately found household positions, and only six gave up and went home.

Canada estimates that each immigrant settler represents the addition of one thousand dollars to her national wealth. The railroads consider every man who takes up land along their lines worth seven hundred dollars as a producer of traffic. An even higher valuation is placed upon immigrants from the United States, because they usually bring in more cash, farm equipment, and household goods than the Europeans. During the height of the American invasion of Canada, from 1910 to 1914, more than six hundred thousand citizens of the United States, most of them farm folk, came to this country. Many of them had several thousand dollars in cash, realized from the sale of their high-priced farms in the States. They used it to buy the cheap rich new lands of the wheat belt. Allowing a minimum of only one thousand dollars for each American, this immigration from over the border gave Canada more than six hundred million dollars of new money for development. As a distinguished citizen here once observed, this is the cheapest new capital ever discovered; it carries no interest charge and is backed by muscle and brains.

Within the last twenty-five years more than a million Americans have come into Canada, and in the prairie provinces they form a large part of the population. At one time, the government conducted campaigns to persuade the agricultural population of our middle western states to come in. Its land agents had groups of our farmers name committees of their own number to visit Canada at government expense and see for themselves that everything was as they represented. In those days, western Canada enjoyed an old-fashioned land boom such as we had in the States a generation earlier. Fortunes were made by individuals and syndicates in dealing in Canadian lands.

Boom conditions no longer prevail, and the best lands now command a good price, though still much less than equally fertile tracts in the United States. Free lands are still to be had, but only on condition that the settler become a naturalized Canadian citizen. If an immigrant is not suited with the available free land, or if he chooses to retain his nationality, he is given every assistance in the selection and purchase of privately owned lands at a fair price.

Canada has had some curious experiences with colonization, especially with certain European religious sects. Among these were the Mennonites and the Doukhobors from Russia. The latter claimed to be descendants of Shadrach, Meshac, and Abednego, whom Nebuchadnezzar threw into the fiery furnace. They were an offshoot of the Greek Orthodox Church and lived by themselves beyond the Caucasus Mountains. In the early years of this century, when they were having trouble with the Czar’s government, Quakers in the United States and England helped them to emigrate. A grant of two hundred and seventy-five thousand acres of land was secured from the Canadian government, and some seven or eight thousand of these people were transported to Canada. They were located near Yorkton, northwest of Winnipeg, where they established communistic villages and patterned their existence on the life they had led in far-away Russia.

All went well for a time, but the Canadians soon discovered that the Doukhobors were subject to periodic outbreaks of religious fanaticism that had many intolerable features. At times, they were seized with the notion that it was a sin to utilize the labour of animals, and so they turned off all their live stock. At other times, they had the idea that it was wrong to use machinery, and they scrapped their farm tools. But what brought them into most serious conflict with the authorities were the pilgrimages they made to meet Christ on the prairie. It was their notion that they must not appear before Him on his second coming except in their natural condition of complete nakedness. At one time seventeen hundred men, women, and children marched into Yorkton stark naked. At another, six hundred Doukhobors wandered off naked in midwinter. On each occasion of this sort, the police had to round them up and confine them until they became sane enough to put on clothes and conduct themselves normally. Later they moved some of their colonies into British Columbia and many of them returned to Russia.

There are now more than thirty thousand Mennonites in Canada. They were originally Lutherans from Poland and Prussia, who about 1787 accepted refuge in Russia from religious persecution at home. They were favoured for a time by the Russian government, and became prosperous farmers and stock raisers, and also manufacturers. Just before the Canadian Pacific Railway was built, a number of them emigrated to Canada, settling along the Red River Valley in Manitoba. Their migration was financed to the extent of a million dollars by the Canadian government. This the Mennonites later repaid, and their communities thrived and prospered.

After the World War, the Mennonites in Russia suffered severely at the hands of the Soviet government. Their lands, factories, and other possessions were confiscated. Thereupon, with the aid of wealthy Mennonites in Pennsylvania, a fresh emigration to Canada was financed. These Mennonites were taken to southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where they were located on desirable lands. Among them were some who before the revolution in Russia owned farms of from ten to fifteen thousand acres. One man had been worth a half million dollars, and was one of the largest horse breeders in Russia. Of the Mennonites who first came to Canada, some have since gone to Mexico, where they have formed colonies similar to those established in the Dominion.

The immigration offices of Canada are filled with stories of settlers who have made good. Many of these stories are in the form of letters written by the men and the women who have fought and won their battles with the land, some of whom are now wealthy and nationally prominent. Canada is perhaps a generation nearer the pioneer stage than we are, and on her farms of the frontier thousands are to-day laying the foundations of fortunes, as our farmers did when they settled the West. From the human documents I have examined I quote the advice to prospective settlers given by a man who, twelve years after landing from England with one dollar in his pocket, sold out his farm for thirty-five thousand dollars. These, says he, are the secrets of success in Canada: