68 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



now being made over. We are in the last hours of the 

 older day. Here, again, as in the case of the village 

 crafts, the outcome has been an ultimate economic bene- 

 fit, but an immediate social loss. Severe distress is felt 

 by the class displaced. And the community loses one 

 more of its progressive elements. 



But the decrease in rural population is chiefly due to 

 the removal from the country community of farmers' 

 households. What is the explanation of their removal ? 



One factor in Eastern Canada was the opening up to 

 settlement of the rich wheat lands of Manitoba by the 

 building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885. 

 The beginning of marked depletion of population in 

 Ontario occurs in the following year, 1886. But another 

 and more universal factor had been already at work 

 for a generation, and was, just at that juncture, attain- 

 ing full force. For the art of farming also was revolu- 

 tionized by the introduction of machinery and of power. 

 True, it was as early as 1834 that McCormick invented 

 the reaper. But it was not until the Crystal Palace 

 Exhibition in London in 1861 — that revealer of so 

 many tendencies — that the utility of the reaper was 

 demonstrated. The year 1835 gave us the most primi- 

 tive form of the thresher, but in 1864 the first steam 

 thresher was used. In 1874 the binder came, but not 

 until 1886 did its usefulness begin, when its fingers 

 learned to knot twine instead of, as before, twisting 

 wire. That year, in which the marked exodus of 

 farmers from the Maritime Provinces and Ontario to 

 Manitoba began, may fairly be said to begin a new 

 period in agriculture. The year which brought in the 

 twine-binder brought also the gang-plow and the use of 

 steam power in plowing. In that year came also the 



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