RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 179 



Governments should lay the foundations correctly and provide 

 the skeleton plan for the building up of the social system; after that 

 the strength and beauty of the structure will be the greater in propor- 

 tion as the citizens themselves have been able to do the building 

 without government aid, but subject, of course, to government pro- 

 tection of personal rights and constraint of personal wrong-doing. 



The first object in rural development should be to make rural 

 life healthy and rural industries profitable. The user of the land 

 should be encouraged to secure for himself the full benefit of his enter- 

 prise and energy, subject only to the discharge of his social respon- 

 sibilities and obligations. 



An Imperial Land Settlement Scheme 



The vague proposal which has emanated from a group of public 

 men in England, and which, as it is described in the press of Canada, 

 has for its object the "liquidation of the war debt" of the Empire 

 by the development of the untapped resources of Canada, is evidence 

 of the fact that some men of high business attainments view the ques- 

 tion of land development from an entirely wrong standpoint. Canada 

 needs more capital, and, if the British Treasury will provide any such 

 sum as $200,000,000, as is suggested, to develop the western lands, 

 it will benefit both Great Britain and Canada. But no profit from the 

 expenditure could be expected other than a reasonable interest on 

 the money invested, together with a gradual return of the capital, 

 otherwise the scheme would be economically unsound for Canada. 

 It would simply be a repetition on a large scale of the blunder of the 

 speculator who has tried to grow rich out of selling lands, and found 

 that his chief success lay in keeping lands out of production. Real 

 wealth can only be produced by the user of the land and, in propor- 

 tion as the profits of rural production are absorbed by governments, 

 corporations or individual speculators, beyond what is necessary to 

 pay a reasonable interest on capital, or to give a return for value re- 

 ceived, the source of wealth is cut off by making the industry of land 

 cultivation unprofitable. 



Canada a Great Business Enterprise 



New countries like Canada have more to do with the work of 

 directing the growth of their social organizations than older coun- 

 tries, which are in a more settled condition and have comparatively 

 few natural resources to develop. The governments of Canada arc- 

 engaged not merely in administering the law and regulating public 

 conduct; they are jointly engaged in one of the most stupendous 



