THE WHEAT LANDS OF CANADA. 775 



people, or by professional statisticians; while the ability to eschew 

 bucket-shop methods, to read correctly, to state facts and to state 

 them clearly, and to criticise with intelligence and entire fairness, 

 is especially desirable." 



Sir W. Crookes is not content with reducing Canada's wheat 

 resources to an insignificant minimum, but he must also retard as 

 much as possible the development even of the small area that he 

 admits to exist, for he says : " The development of this promising 

 area necessarily must be slow, since prairie land can not be laid 

 under wheat in advance of a population sufficient to supply the 

 needful labor at seed time and harvest. As population increases 

 so do home demands for wheat." To say that prairie land can not 

 be laid under wheat in advance of population, and that as popula- 

 tion increases so do home demands for wheat, are mere truisms, but 

 it is incorrect to say that therefore the development must be slow. 

 The rate of development depends entirely upon the rate of increase 

 of population, and that increase depends upon the price of wheat, 

 and the area of production -^411 increase concurrently with the de- 

 mand. According to Mr. Davis — and we will assume that his figures 

 are in this case correct — the population in the United States in four- 

 teen years from 1871 increased forty-four per cent and the culti- 

 vated area one hundred and twelve per cent, and, if that was the 

 case, no estimates, however trustworthy, could have provided for 

 such results. 



It has been perfectly true, as Sir W. Crookes says, that as the 

 wheat area of Manitoba and the Korthwest increased, the wheat 

 area of Ontario and the eastern provinces decreased, but this w^as 

 in consequence of the continued low price of wheat, which led the 

 farmers of Ontario to turn their attention more and more to dairy 

 and mixed farming, substituting hay and root crops for wheat and 

 barley, until the province became a dairying rather than a cereal- 

 producing country; but that this was a movement to suit the times, 

 and that the area available for wheat is no less in consequence, is 

 evidenced by the rapid increase in the wheat acreage in the last 

 two years. The farmer produces what pays him best, and it is 

 certain that before Sir W. Crookes's failure of the wheat supply 

 comes to pass prices will have been such that every acre of land 

 suitable for wheat and that can be spared from other uses will 

 have been taken advantage of; and if this is not the case, then 

 some other staple for food will have been substituted, which will 

 necessarily change the whole economic situation as viewed at 

 present. 



It is also true that " thus .far performance has lagged behind 

 promise," but the reasons for this are the same, and in the low 



