CHAPTER XV 



THE PROBLEM OF HIGH PRICES ANALYZED 



When Mr. Keeler and the professor had once more settled 

 into their usual corners in the library, the former briefly re- 

 hearsed the several incidents related in the last chapter and told 

 of the enquiries he had been making regarding present farming 

 conditions and what the results were. He said : 



"What do you find elsewhere, professor, in either your travels 

 or reading? Are rural conditions what I find them here? Is 

 there everywhere in old communities in Great Britain and on 

 the Continent this same inertia, bred of an environment seem- 

 ingly incapable of being overcome, altered, or ameliorated? 

 Just imagine my being offered farms at prices not much greater, 

 right along the Lake Shore and railways, than asked for wild 

 prairie land thirty miles away from the nearest railroad in cen- 

 tral Saskatchewan! " 



The professor replied: 



"Unfortunately these very conditions have existed and even 

 yet exist in some old English and Scottish counties; while Ger- 

 many and France receive annual migrations of Russians and 

 Poles, either for the harvest time or as permanent settlers on 

 account of the exodus into the cities in recent years, notably 

 in Germany. Nowhere does the ideal condition exist of a 

 balance between country and city equal to that in Denmark, 

 where there are about 1,000,000 people in the cities and 1,500,- 

 000 in the country and where several ministers of the Crown 

 are simple peasant farmers. 



"I assure you that since you have brought all these matters 

 home to me as a local Ontario problem, I have felt that some of 

 my early generalisations on the subject seem to me now rather 

 academic than practical." 



"But, professor," said Mr. Keeler, "if the Danes in a country 

 surrounded by the ocean can solve the rural problem, surely 

 inasmuch as they are or ought to be affected by the same world- 



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