RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 39 



bad living conditions. The death rate among miners in Canada is 

 higher than in any other country. A mining population needs more 

 government control than the population of the cities and agricultural 

 districts and they usually suffer from having a low standard of hous- 

 ing and sanitary conditions, and an absence of social facilities which 

 diminishes their producing power and moral stability.* The respon- 

 sibility for securing improvement of these conditions rests partly 

 with the mining corporations, but in a greater degree with the govern- 

 ing authorities who are primarily interested in the public welfare. 

 Where mining is carried on in the neighbourhood of fertile land, 

 such as in the valleys of British Columbia, there are opportunities 

 for creating healthy and permanent towns without much aid from 

 the government or the mining operators; but in more barren regions, 

 where mining is profitable, but where farming cannot be made suc- 

 cessful, it is more difficult to secure healthy conditions of settlement, 

 and it is in such areas that the responsibility of the government and 

 the operating companies are greatest. In recent years some mining 

 corporations have recognized the need for improved housing con- 

 ditions and have laid out and built model villages around their mines. 



New developments are also taking place in connection with the 

 lumber industry which seem likely to revive its prosperity on lines 

 which will be productive of permanent settlement. With the growth 

 of the pulp industry and the building of new mills in proximity 

 to the available timber limits, and at points where ample water- 

 power is available, many opportunities are now arising for plann- 

 ing and developing new towns in rural territory. Under the old 

 conditions the workers engaged in this industry lived in temporary 

 lumber camps in the winter and migrated to the saw-mill in the 

 town or worked on the farms in the summer. As is shown in the 

 investigation made into the Trent Watershed regions the forest areas 

 are poorly adapted for successful farming and the combination 

 of lumbering and farming in such areas often produces poverty and 

 degeneration. On the other hand the unsettled and migratory ten- 

 dencies of the lumber worker who, after having accumulated the 

 savings of a winter's work in the bush, returns to the city, cause him 



* The problem presented to the operator (of mines) is how to obtain labour, 

 and, after obtaining it, make it efficient and keep it contented. One of the great 

 drawbacks to this is due in a great measure to the fact that mining operations are 

 usually carried on in out of the way and unattractive places; again, as the life of 

 the mine is limited, there is little or nothing to encourage the labouring-man to settle 

 down and establish a home. — W. J. Dick, in the Eighth Annual Report of the Com- 

 mission of Conservation. 



