RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 73 



ture of public funds in the building up of the railway system. Probably 

 the chief trouble has been due to our common sin of doing things as 

 a nation without forethought, comprehensive planning and prelimin- 

 ary organization; but, be that as it may, the money has been spent, 

 and the railways are there, and the problem is not how can we undo 

 what has been done, but how can we make the best of what we have. 

 About §2,000,000,000 has been invested in the railway system of 

 Canada. There are practically unlimited land resources behind that 

 system which, if put to proper use, would justify all that has been 

 spent, and make men forget any lack of wisdom in the spending. 

 But why are these land resources not being put to proper use, when 

 the country is crying out for cheap food and when the railways are 

 in need of freight traffic to enable them to earn operating expenses and 

 fixed charges? Granting that the trunk lines of railways of Canada 

 are unnecessarily duplicated, that some of the trunk lines have insuf- 

 ficient feeders and terminals, and that a large part of the mileage 

 has been constructed at excessive cost; granting, too, tha^t re-organiza- 

 tion and consolidation of the railway companies may be necessary, 

 and that, until more feeders and terminals are provided, probably 

 the greater part of the railway system cannot be successfully operated 

 — granting all this, on the one hand, and on the other hand consider- 

 ing that there are said to be 30,000,000 acres of idle lands in Western 

 Canada alone, a great part contiguous to the railways and of good 

 quality, and that lands in Ontario and Quebec lying within a near 

 radius of the railways are not producing 50 per cent of what they 

 could produce under better conditions, may we not claim that no 

 remedy of the railway situation will be effective which does not in- 

 clude the laying of the foundations of an improved system of land 

 development designed to make the utmost use of the land that lies 

 nearest to the railways? 



There are important national problems regarding distribution 

 of freight and transportation which, while affecting the farmer as a 

 producer, do not directly bear on the relationship of the railways 

 to the system of developing the land. But, generally speaking, it is 

 not the railway system that is deficient in the matter of providing 

 facilities for land settlement — it is the system of land settlement 

 that is deficient in respect of being unable to make proper use of the 

 existing means of distribution by rail. 



All forms of transportation suffer when population is too con- 

 gested in some places and too scattered in others. The problems of 

 transportation are most difficult where there are high buildings and 

 tenement dwellings in the cities and a widely diffused population 



