THE COLONY-BUILDERS. 



THE RAW MATERIALS, AND AN HISTORIC 

 CONTRAST. 



BY WILLIAM E. SMYTHE. 



I can well understand that, if there are readers of the AGE con- 

 templating early settlement somewhere in the West they will want 

 this department to enter at once upon the practical details of its sub- 

 ject and will have scant patience with a discussion of general princi- 

 ples involved. Such persons want to be advised where to go, how to 

 get there, and how to proceed in making their homes. But there is 

 another, and perhaps larger, class of readers who will be interested in 

 the broader social and economic questions connected with colonization. 

 I shall aim to make these papers quite practical as a whole, but I 

 think they would fall short of the mark if they did not begin by set- 

 ting forth the larger conditions with which we mu>t deal in attracting 

 people and organizing colonies. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact 

 that all future communities, like all which are now in existence, are 

 simply a part of the complex economic system of our times and that 

 our colonists must work in some sort of harmony with prevailing 

 forces if they are to succeed. Permit me, thou, to deal here with 

 some general facts and lendencies as a means of laying a foundation 

 on which the superstructures of colony institutions may be intelligent- 

 ly 'and patiently reared through future numbers. 



Careful observation leads me to think that just under the surface 

 of society the colonizing spirit is more universal to-day than it has 

 been in decades or even generations. I believe it is to express itself 

 in new forms and to accomplish higher and hotter results than move- 

 ments which have gone before. Let us examine the raw materials at 

 hand and try to discover how they must be handled to produce results 

 in tuirmony with the economic forces of the present and the future. 



The materials of colonization are land, capital, and people. Of 

 the first there is an abundance in every continent, possibly excepting 

 Europe, though even there internal colonization effort, generously fos- 

 tered by Government, is prospering in several countries. Not only is 

 there abundant land throughout the world suited to agriculture, but 

 ample resources awaiting development in the broadest sense of the 

 term, including pasture, forest, mine, quarry, water power, and sea- 

 coast. The colonization work of the future, it seems to me, will not 

 stop with merely giving people access to little farms, but will aim to 

 open the vast stores of natural wealth upon such terms that the pro- 

 ducing classes may share in the great return. 



