RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 19 



Our governments have already used the wisdom that comes from 

 experience to control such natural resources as our water-powers, and 

 have made advances in the direction of guaranteeing the proper util- 

 ization and development of our forests. Indiscriminate use of 

 mineral resources in Canada cannot now be made without considera- 

 tion of the public welfare. Generally in respect of these water-powers, 

 mines and forests great progress has been made in regard to reason- 

 able government control, and in regard to scientific development 

 and efficiency in utilizing the products. It is in respect of the land 

 — the greatest and most valuable of our natural resources — that 

 we are most backward in our system of directing and organizing 

 development. 



It might be more profitable for the government of the country, 

 and in any event the matter is worthy of earnest consideration, to 

 adopt the policy which is being pursued in Australia, of purchasing 

 private lands near to railways and re-settling them, in preference to 

 pushing the development of new territory. Corporations like the 

 Southern Alberta Land Company and the Western Canada Land 

 Company, which own large areas of western lands, and are now in 

 liquidation, might be prepared to sell out at a reasonable price. 

 If such lands can be acquired and settled on a profitable basis would 

 it not be better to suspend the free homestead system in remote dis- 

 tricts for a time? Homesteads should only be given where there is 

 a certainty that they can be put to profitable use. Abandoned lands 

 should be carefully surveyed, and, where they are forsaken solely 

 for want of capital to improve them, they might first be improved 

 and then re-settled. These questions, together with that of the sizes 

 of holdings for homestead purposes, should be the subject of careful 

 investigation at least; and all such land should be classified and plan- 

 ned to make it adaptable to the best use. 



In 1909 the then President Roosevelt of the United States ap- 

 pointed a commission to enquire into the conditions of country life 

 in that country. In the summary of its proposed remedies for the 

 most prominent deficiencies, it made the following as its first recom- 

 mendation:* 



'The encouragement of a system of thoroughgoing surveys of 

 all agricultural regions in order to take stock and to collect local 

 facts, with the idea of providing a basis on which to develop a scien- 

 tifically and economically sound country life." 



A similar thoroughgoing survey is needed in Canada, but it is 

 necessary, if good results are to be secured, that such a survey should 



* Report of Commission on Country Life, page 20. 



