18 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



cost,* if ^ilways and roads have to be built and public lands alien- 

 ated to assist the process, if the private capital of settlers is sunk in 

 improvements, and several years of energy is applied to the task of 

 development— if all that is done, what must be the loss if the result 

 is anything short of permanent settlement under conditions which 

 not only increase production, but make production profitable to the 

 producer? 



The evidence of population and other statistics, supported by 

 the evidence of observers of social conditions in rural territory, is 

 that all the efforts and expenditures enumerated above have been 

 employed in developing certain areas, and that, instead of permanent 

 settlement, there are to be found in many of these areas depleted 

 population and unoccupied homesteads. A primary cause of this 

 condition appears to have been the forcing into settlement of areas 

 unsuitable for settlement. Where settlement has been successful in 

 Canada, in spite of an indifferent system of planning and settlement, 

 it has been largely because of three factors, first, the great fertility 

 of the soil in areas suitable for agriculture; second, the energy and 

 enterprise of the governments and administrations, and, third, 

 the fine qualities of the settlers. When, as a result of these 

 things, success has come, it has proved the best means of secur- 

 ing additional settlers of the right kind. When, however, in spite of 

 these things, perhaps because of the placing of settlers on poor land, the 

 scattered nature of settlement and the absence of co-operative and dis- 

 tributive facilities owing to forced homesteading, there has been failure, 

 is it not likely that the real causes of that failure will be misunder- 

 stood and that outsiders will assume that the causes lie deeper than 

 inefficiency of organization — that they lie in the general unproductive 

 character of the industry? 



Canada need not fear comparison with any country as 

 a field for successful farming, if its soil and other natural 

 resources get a chance to be properly used, but, for lack of a proper 

 system of development, the capacity of these resources is apt to be 

 and is being underestimated. Whatever the defects of land settle- 

 ment in Canada may be, they are not natural defects of the country 

 or its resources, they are not defects of its settlers as a whole, they are 

 not caused by mal-administration, but they are due to the absence 

 of a proper system of planning and development. Being no deeper 

 than that, they are capable of artificial treatment if we are prepared 

 to learn from the mistakes of the past. 



* In five years ending 1914, the Dominion Government spent $6,725,216 to 

 get 1,661,425 immigrants, or an expenditure of about $4 per head. 



