RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 143 



research bodies are being created to advance the interests of agri- 

 culture and the social organization of the rural districts. Com- 

 mendable activity is being shown by the Federal and Provincial 

 Departments of Agriculture to promote education and to encourage 

 production by improved organization. It is not a purpose of the 

 present report to deal with these questions in any comprehensive 

 way but we have to consider them in outline so as to judge how far 

 the success of the efforts being made are hampered by want of proper 

 planning and development of the land; we have to consider whether, 

 if the governments had originally exercised their proper functions 

 in preventing forced, haphazard and speculative settlement of land, 

 their present efforts to promote rural organization and increase rural 

 production would have been less necessary, or, alternatively, would 

 have yielded better results. 



In recent years, at least, it has not been for want of government 

 aid or direction, nor for want of inclination and ability on the part of 

 the farmers themselves, in any serious degree, that difficulties have 

 arisen in providing social and educational facilities in rural districts 

 and in securing co-operative action on the part of farmers. The 

 main causes of these difficulties have been the scattered nature of 

 the settlement, the using up of capital in speculation which should 

 have been devoted to production, the placing of men on unsuitable 

 land, and the inadequate means of communication. The primary 

 and most important duty of governments which control the disposal of the 

 public domain, is to so plan and dispose of it that the resultant social 

 development will largely take care of itself: in so far as this primary 

 duty may be neglected the governments have to artificially promote the 

 social development to make up for the neglect, or else to witness consequent 

 failure and decay. 



Rural Co-Operation in Canada 



Co-operation is essential to the success of modern industry in 

 any form; indeed, it is open to argument that, in so far as the city- 

 has grown at the expense of the country, the chief reason has been 

 that co-operative organization has developed in the city more rapidly 

 than in the country. But that defect is being gradually removed, 

 either as a result of greater enlightenment or the awakening of the 

 sense of self-preservation on the part of the farmers. 



Some of the most successful farming enterprises in the Dominion 

 have achieved their success as the result of co-operation. A notable 

 example is the successful organization of the Grain Growers' Asso- 

 ciation. The successes of the co-operative elevators, the Government 



