[JAMES] AN HISTORICAL WAR CROP 97 






Yield Per Acre | Average Value 
Area Acres Bushels | Bushels price to | per acre 
farmer 
1910 8,863 ,000 132 ,049 ,000 14-89 TE SENTEZ 
1911 11,101,000 230,924,000 20-80 .64 Sei 
1912 10,997 ,000 224,159 ,000 20-38 .62 12.64 
1913 11,015 ,000 231,717,000 21-04 .67 14.10 
1914 10,294 ,000 161,280,000 15-67 22) 19.12 
1915 12 ,986 , 000 376 , 304 , 000 28-98 .83 24.05 



Down to 1910 wheat growing in the West had been for many a 
most profitable business; thousands of wheat growers had made 
money. The prosperity of the West had resulted in the rapid build- 
ing up of scores of towns that became centres of commercial activity. 
The land boom of the West resulted, not only in a steady advance in 
farm-land values, but also in the over-expansion of cities and towns, 
and the money spent on municipal improvements was limited 
only by the possibilities of borrowing. From the table it will be seen 
that the day of dollar wheat had disappeared for a time, due to the 
great increase in world production. Investigation has shown that, 
taking all charges into the reckoning and allowing the wheat grower 
standard wages, it costs on the average about $12.00 to produce 
an acre of wheat.! What, on this basis, does our table show us? 
That for the four years 1910 to 1913 wheat growing in Western 
Canada was not, from the national standpoint, a profitable industry. 
We have here the main explanation why the abnormal and artificial 
expansion of land values, especially in towns and city holdings, must 
collapse and why “hard times’ began to be manifest in 1912 
and 1913. The wheat grower works for only a part of the year. 
For four years tens of thousands of Canadian citizens were working 
only half time; they were producing immense quantities of food and 
selling the same at little, if any, above the cost of production. Most of 
this food was being shipped out of the country. In other words an 
immense amount of Canadian labour was being used to produce cheap 
food for Great Britain; and at the same time the wheat growers were 
consumers of food produced elsewhere in Canada. The writer believes 
that in this is to be found one of the most important factors in the great 
rise in the cost of living in Canada during these four years, and why 
in Canada the cost of living increased more rapidly than in many 
other countries. 

1 See Report on Cost of Living, Ottawa, 1915, Vol. I, pp. 34, 760-772. 
Sec. II, Sig. 7 
