HIS LIFE AND WORK 



tries have arisen, that were only waste places 

 before. The habitable earth has grown im- 

 mensely larger. There is more room for both 

 wheat and men to grow, and less scope for the 

 forestaller and the monopolist. Just as the 

 Reaper was the advance-machine of civiliza- 

 tion across the prairies of the West, so it is 

 to-day opening up new territories and develop- 

 ing new resources. 



Northwestern Canada, for instance, was a 

 dozen years ago supposed to be a barren wilder- 

 ness of snow and ice, in which none but the 

 hunter and the fur-trader might earn a living. 

 Then several adventurous Minnesotans went 

 across and planted wheat. It grew forty 

 bushels to the acre, and the acres, there were 

 two hundred million of them, were waiting for 

 the plow and almost to be had for the asking. 

 Since then, more than three hundred thousand 

 American farmers have swept across the line 

 and joined in the greatest wheat-rush of this 

 generation. Twelve hundred grain elevators 

 have been built along the line of the Canadian 

 Pacific ; and Chicago self-binders rattled through 



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