FOREWORD 



I have read with keen interest Dr. Bryce's allegory portray- 

 ing certain social and economic conditions of that great Domin- 

 ion for which all citizens of the United States have so much 

 regard, and with whose welfare and prosperity they are pro- 

 foundly concerned. In the presence of the most awful war 

 hitherto known to mankind, nothing affords an American 

 greater satisfaction than that boundary line, 4,000 miles long 

 between Canada and the United States, which, nominally 

 unfortified, is in fact jealously guarded by essential friendliness, 

 international respect and mutual esteem. 



Dr. Bryce's equipment as the learned and experienced Chief 

 Medical Officer of Immigration of Canada has brought him face 

 to face with those fundamental problems of life and living which 

 within the last half century have put upon the open road a 

 hitherto unexampled number of the human race. These migra- 

 tions are at bottom quests for more liberty, more and better 

 food, and better housing, and all of these have been found, 

 perhaps as never before, in the new world. And yet any close 

 observer cannot fail to be struck with that strange counter 

 migration today, drawing the children of the original immi- 

 grants away from the land and into the cities, which like 

 magnets seem to possess an almost inexplicable attraction. 



For some years Dr. Bryce has been a careful student of rural 

 depopulation and, not content with merely observing phenom- 

 ena, has sought to estimate and to control them. 



The pages which follow will be found to contain many 

 interesting data of population, overpopulation, depopulation, 

 food supply and the like, together with much incidental infor- 

 mation of value such as that which relates how, after the Irish 

 famine of 1846, 5,463 immigrants died of typhus fever on their 

 arrival in the St. Lawrence. 



May this little volume incite to a closer study of these prob- 

 lems many a thoughtful person both in the Dominion and in 

 the United States, for the same problems are confronting both 

 peoples and are found on both sides of the line. 



W. T. SEDGWICK, 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



BOSTON, MASS., May 1, 1915. 



