RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 163 



in regard to rural industries is urgently needed, not only to enable 

 the government to appreciate the nature and extent of industrial 

 tendencies, but also to enable them to forecast those directions in 

 which successful new developments are likely to be promoted. 



Opportunities for creating new industrial towns and extending 

 existing towns is not confined to the eastern provinces. In a mem- 

 orandum prepared by Dr. W. W. Andrews on behalf of the Regina 

 Board of Trade, which was prepared for the Dominion's Royal 

 Commission, on the subject of "The Scientific Development of the 

 Natural Resources of Saskatchewan," reference is made to the great 

 opportunities of the western provinces in regard to industrial develop- 

 ment in rural areas in the future. Dr. Andrews points out that the 

 laboratory experiments and analyses in Saskatchewan show that they 

 have clays from which can be produced the finest of eggshell china- 

 ware, porcelaines, pottery, glasses, brick and tiles, which only need 

 cheap fuel to enable them to be manufactured on a commercial basis. 

 He advocates that in the case of pottery a beginning could be made in 

 the manufacture of souvenir pottery in some of the towns, a line of 

 manufacture which might go far to meet a deficiency that is always 

 apparent to visitors to Canada, namely, the absence of any choice 

 in home-made materials which are distinctive of the country and 

 suitable for souvenirs. In many countries an enormous trade is 

 done in small manufactures of this kind. 



Dr. Andrews draws attention to the remarkable developments 

 in the great extension of the use of liquid fuel in automobile and other 

 engines. In Canada we used 15 million gallons of gasolene in 1915. 

 The present alcohol output of Canada, if reduced to concentrated 

 motor spirit, would equal five million gallons, and if all the alcohol 

 factories were used to manufacture motor spirits, they would only 

 provide a third of the liquid fuels required. The present high cost 

 of gasolene is having a serious effect upon many industries ; e.g. Dr. 

 Andrews claims that at least fifteen hundred of the six thousand trac- 

 tors on the farms of Western Canada were idle last spring because it 

 was not profitable to run them. According to his estimate, this 

 represented a loss of 1,800,000 bushels of wheat. 



It is known that alcohol may be profitably used as a fuel in auto- 

 mobiles and if, by its manufacture, we can secure a reduction in the 

 cost of liquid fuel and, at the same time, the utilization of by-pro- 

 ducts of our industries, the matter is one which requires urgent atten- 

 tion on the part of a research commission. Sawdust, straw, pota- 

 toes, artichokes, injured wheat, etc., can all be employed for the pur- 



