1908-9. | THE SETTLEMENT OF NORTHERN ONTARIO. : 463 
I maintain, therefore, that our future relative greatness and position 
in the Dominion will depend on the extension of agriculture. This ex- 
tension can take two forms: more intensive cultivation and better methods 
over the area now under crop; or extension of that area to include the 
large agricultural area still unsettled. Mr. C. C. James, the Deputy 
Minister of Agriculture for Ontario, has pointed out that an increase of 
ten per cent. in the average crop per acre would increase our annual 
wealth by over twenty million dollars ($20,000,000), and there is reason 
to hope that the educational propaganda of the Department of Agricul- 
ture will in a short time produce this result. This may be done, how- 
ever, without any increase in population, as the adaptation of new 
farming machinery and labour-saving devices from time to time enables 
a considerable increase in output without any increase in human labour. 
Fortunately for us, we have a very large area of agricultural land 
still unsettled, and to this we must look for an extension of our population 
and an increase in our national wealth. 
Some years ago, the Legislature passed an Act to Establish Forest 
Reserves for the purpose of growing continuous crops of timber, the prop- 
erty of the Crown, the idea being the adoption of a policy of separating 
for all time the two classes of land, agricultural land and timber land. 
It happens that the land in Ontario that is quite unsuited for agricul- 
ture is the land that lies at the head waters of our rivers, so that in putting 
in forest reserves for permanent timber crops the land which is only 
calculated for that kind of crop, we at the same time, while securing a 
perpetuation of our present provincial income in that particular, protect 
our water powers without encroaching on the land that ought properly 
to be devoted to agricultural purposes. 
A start has been made in the direction of these peimanent reserves, 
and some ten million acres of land, containing a good deal of valuable 
timber, have been placed in reserves. ‘This is probably only a quarter 
or a fifth of the area that should be placed in reserves. 
North of the land that should properly be reserved for forests, lies our 
largest available resource in the way of agricultural land. This will 
approximate, all told, about twenty million acres, sixteen million acres 
of which lie in one block termed, as stated, the Clay Belt. 
The problem, therefore, of an increase in population, and the main- 
tenance of our position as the premier province of Canada, largely centres 
in the satisfactory settling up of this large tract of land. A start has been 
made in this direction. A very large number of townships have been sur- 
