16 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



have practically been a non-producer, as he would be wasting his 

 efforts on an unprofitable business. 



But what is wrong is not that that man and thousands of others 

 have left the soil, but that the opportunities for making profitable use 

 of their skill were not present in the country. What is wrong is 

 that wasteful and inefficient methods have driven the most intelli- 

 gent and energetic men into the towns, and, as a consequence, the 

 absence of these men has perpetuated the wastefulness and ineffi- 

 ciency. What is wrong is not that people go to the cities and towns 

 to find social opportunity, but that they are not able to get that op- 

 portunity on the farm. What is causing deterioration of mind and 

 body in urban communities is not the growth of cities and towns, 

 but the unnecessary overcrowding and bad sanitation which accom- 

 panies that growth as the result of laxity of government. What 

 makes rural depopulation in Canada most serious to the rural dis- 

 tricts themselves is the quality, rather than the quantity, of those 

 who leave the land, and the fact that the capital and energy which 

 have been spent to artificially promote settlement have been so 

 largely wasted. 



As a rural area becomes thinner in population the causes of 

 migration become accentuated, social opportunities and facilities for 

 co-operation and distribution are further lessened, and there is a con- 

 sequent further lowering of the profits of production. It is usually 

 the best of the rural population that is drawn to the city for these 

 reasons and, where the land is of poor quality, the residue becomes 

 more and more impaired in physique, intelligence and morals as the 

 process of depopulation continues. The small wage of the agri- 

 cultural labourer in England, which was first a cause of the best men 

 leaving the rural districts, has become an effect of the lowered 

 efficiency of those who have remained. May not the alleged lack of 

 business capacity of the farmers in some of the older provinces of 

 Canada be an effect of the low profits of the industry, before it 

 becomes a cause? Parallel with low profits to the producer is the 

 anomaly of high costs to the consumer. The high cost of living is 

 a premium paid for lack of efficient development and organization 

 of production. 



It is difficult to determine to what extent Canada as a whole has 

 suffered from movement of population. In so far as it has been en- 

 couraged by injurious speculation, by the sale of farms at high 

 prices for purposes of sub-division, or by the opportunities of making 

 easy money in land-gambling, it has been wholly injurious. In so 

 far as it is the result of the settlement of land which was unsuited for 



