204 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



first sells the land and then starts to spend money in improving the 

 roads, and in organization, all the profit derived from his expenditure 

 will go to those who have purchased the land from him. What ap- 

 plies in the case of the individual owner applies in the case of govern- 

 ments. When a government sells the land without having it prop- 

 erly planned, without constructing adequate means for transporta- 

 tion in advance, without having first provided facilities for rural 

 credit and means of obtaining financial aid in other forms, it must 

 find, when it comes to provide these things after it has sold the land, 

 that it is merely conferring a benefit on the land owners. If these 

 owners be land speculators and not producers the public expenditure 

 and organization may help in retarding instead of increasing produc- 

 tion. The more the government can do to improve its own territory 

 before it disposes of it the sounder will be its investment in the end. The 

 more it can do to plan the land and to develop it for efficient use, 

 the more it can restrict speculation and the less it will have to do to 

 incur unremunerative expenditure in development after land is alien- 

 ated. The government policy in these matters should be directed to 

 help the farmer to make his business more profitable rather than to 

 help to increase land values. 



The present effect of homesteading, as shown in this report, has 

 been to encourage speculation, and that may also be the effect of any 

 government policy to promote co-operation and rural credit, and to 

 subsidize the improvement of homesteaded land, which has not been 

 properly planned at the outset. 



Experiments have been made with various systems of land colon- 

 ization, including the free homestead, homestead purchase, the pro- 

 vincial free land grants, provincial sales, C.P.R. and Hudson's Bay 

 Co. systems. The time has come to make careful investigation of 

 the results of these systems and, in view of their variety in different 

 provinces, this investigation should be made by the Federal Govern- 

 ment. The Australian and other overseas systems require to be 

 studied, especially with regard to conditional purchase schemes, 

 granting of leases, classification of land and administrative machinery. 

 While there are objections to the leasehold system, it possesses the 

 great advantage of restraining injurious speculation and of leaving 

 the farmer's capital free for farming operations. The latter is no 

 small advantage, especially in view of the fact that one of the reasons 

 for failure in farming is due to lack of sufficient capital. If land were 

 planned and more improvements were made than at present, before 

 settlement, it would be easy to get settlers to take up leaseholds. 



