462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A CANADIAN CHAPTER IN AGRAKIAN AGITATION. 



By GEOKGE ILES. 



WHEN agrarian agitation is mentioned, one expects to hear of 

 Ireland, the Isle of Skye, Scotland, or England. That Ameri- 

 can communities have been, and are, little troubled by disputes be- 

 tween landlord and tenant, is taken for matter of course, and not 

 without reason. When fertile wild land could be had for nothing 

 till within recent years, the struggle between proprietors and w T ould- 

 be proprietors could seldom become very severe. Questions as to 

 the ultimate ownership of land are still practically in abeyance in 

 the New World. Yet America has furnished interesting instances of 

 agrarian agitation. Prodigal grants of land at nominal prices to colo- 

 nizing corporations and railway companies have induced bitter and 

 increasing complaints in the United States and Canada. Mr. Henry 

 George's attacks on landed proprietorship originated from observation 

 of the grasping policy of Calif ornian owners of counties who waited 

 idly for their property to acquire value from the neighborhood of in- 

 dustrious settlers. In a new country such holdings are very grievous 

 to working settlers. Large uncultivated blocks separate farmers from 

 their markets, add much to local taxation for roads and bridges, and 

 materially enhance the difficulties of maintaining district schools. 

 Hence, in the New Northwest, both American and Canadian, the ad- 

 vantages obtained from railways, aided by large land grants, are not 

 procured without some sacrifices. These sacrifices are, however, ren- 

 dered temporary by the alacrity of railway companies in settling their 

 lands with a view to developing traffic. Colonization companies, so 

 called, are everywhere less eager to part with their tracts, and the diffi- 

 culties arising from this fact sometimes occasion distinct agrarian agi- 

 tation. In Ontario, the chief province of the Canadian Dominion, one 

 of the grievances of a generation ago was the possession of extensive 

 areas by the Canada Company, which obtained its holdings at a nomi- 

 nal price on conditions notoriously disregarded. 



It is, however, the agrarian agitation which took place, for more 

 than a century, in Prince Edward Island, the smallest province of 

 Canada, that is to be here sketched. The course of the struggle there 

 between landlord and tenant may have interest in showing how the 

 grantees of lands bestowed for colonization may shirk their engage- 

 ments. And it may also show how the voting privileges of a demo- 

 cratic community modified an opposition to landlords w T hich in Cork 

 or Kerry might have gone to murderous lengths. 



Prince Edward Island is one of the most beautiful agricultural 

 districts of America. Its forests, fields, and meadows, vested in the 

 crown, were in 1767 disposed of according to a method much in vogue 



