AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. DAVIDSON. 481 



and to individual Galician settlers, the loans being secured by 

 liens on the land. Beyond these, I know of no direct lending by 

 the Canadian government. 



Yet the Canadian governments, in their own way, are doing 

 a great deal to make the business of farming profitable. The 

 provision of cheap credit is not the sole condition of success, and 

 many of the other conditions are provided. I need not say any- 

 thing about the assistance^ which the government gives in 

 establishing and maintaining creameries and cheese factories, or 

 of the instruction how to make the best use of his opportunities 

 offered the farmer by means of the agents of the departments. 

 From one point of view, this assistance might be regarded as a 

 system of technical education for farmers ; from another point 

 of view, as the quid pro quo given to the farmer who has borne 

 the chief part of the burden of the attempt to build up indus- 

 tries by protection. These, however, are but the beginning of 

 what the government does, and when one contemplates the vast 

 projects upon which we, as a people, have embarked, or are 

 likely to embark, it seems almost necessary to call caution. 

 Practically, the agricultural departments have made it their aim 

 to remove all obstacles in the way of finding a market. It uses 

 its vast power and machinery to form an intelligence bureau in 

 the interests of the farmer. It has improved the means of trans- 

 portation ; it has insisted on coal storage on train and steamer, 

 and it has erected cold storage facilities in farming districts and 

 at seaports ; in some cases it insures the farmer against some of 

 the ravages of nature ; it has brought the best of all markets to 

 his door ; it buys eg^s and butter and poultry from him at a 

 fixed price, and pays over to him any surplus, and events may 

 force it to l.uy the fruit crop in so far as that is intended for 

 export; it buys oats from him on account of the imperial 

 government, and when it succeeds in making a better bargain 

 than anticipated with the steamship companies, hands the profit 

 over to the farmer. And as I write, ray evening paper comes to 

 tell me that in order to encourage poultry-raising in the mari- 

 time provinces, the Dominion Department of Agriculture has 

 decided, in the event of cold storage facilities not being forth- 



