: 



ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 125 



anada has had four long years for the study of this problem. Her 

 ounded and discharged have been coming back in a steady stream dur- 

 ing this time, and plans for education and assimilation have had time 

 be tested. Perhaps the most successful plan is that of the Canadian 

 Pacific Railway Company, which seeks to induce the soldier to take 

 up farming. The benefits of this plan are two-fold : it takes care of 

 the soldier and it ensures an increase in food production. 



"This scheme is an amplification of the company's successful Ready 

 Made Farm project. It aims to place the returned soldier on a farm 

 provided with living and working equipments. The farms are grouped 

 into communities known as 'Soldier Colonies/ Only soldiers may 

 settle in these colonies. By this ruling the new farmers will be sur- 

 rounded by their comrades-in-arms and a close community spirit is 

 fostered. The colonies contain from twenty-five to fifty farms, and are 

 located in southern Alberta. Some are irrigated, others can easily be 

 ade so. Each colony has a central or demonstration farm under the 

 care of an agricultural expert whose advice and help are at the settler's 

 call, while this farm serves as a social center. 



"Each farm is equipped with a house, barn and well, is partly fenced 

 and broken, in some cases seeded. Each soldier is provided with live 

 stock and machinery sufficient to operate his 80 or 160 acres. If he 

 lacks the money to see him through the first year, the company will 

 advance the necessary funds. No payments are required for three 

 years. The terms are very easy, being so planned that the soldier 

 farmers will have a good start on the road to prosperity before being 

 called upon for a substantial payment." 



There is the menace to farmers, the seeds of sure panic 

 through overproduction. Canada is only one of the great 

 undeveloped American countries that will now be opened 

 up for soldier homesteads. 



The question now is : Are the farmers who have invested 

 a lifetime of labor in building up a valuable home and those 

 who have paid thousands of dollars for one, going to allow 

 its value reduced to nothing by these government and rail- 

 road-financed and free-land farmers as did the farmers in 

 similar cases years ago? Are they willing to see the value 

 taken out of all their crops and products and labor and re- 

 duced to the privations of a panic for years without an effort 

 to avert it? If they are not, they have no time to spare in 

 beginning to save themselves. The menace is here. 



