AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH-WEST CANADA. 227 
land. No general average price can, therefore, be given applicable to 
any year subsequent to 1901. The following statement is, however, 
useful from a comparative point of view :— 
Sales of Lands belonging to Canadian Pacific Railway, 1901 to 1908.! 
Year | Acres Sold Average Price per Acre 
fem pte oidabe zor | 399,808 $3.15 
1902 : é E : 1,362,852 3.26 
1903 : ; : . 2,639,617 ? 3.67 
1904 : : : . | 928,854 4.10 
1905 : 4 f : | 509,386 4.80 
1906 : : : ° | 1,115,743 5.84 
1907 é ; ’ ; | 994,840 ° 5.92 
1908 : ‘ ; ‘ 164,450 9.54 
The total of agricultural lands in the Prairie Provinces still in the 
hands of the Company is 8,777,825 acres. These statistics show an 
advance in price. of about 300 per cent. as between 1901 and 1908 ; they 
show also a sharp advance beginning in 1906, the price of 1908 being 
double that of 1905. As desirable homesteads are now obtainable from 
the Government gratuitously only at an increasing distance from the 
centres of population, further advance in the price of land from these 
relatively low prices must take place, provided the stream of immigration 
is maintained. 
For land outside of the railway land grants, or in favourable positions 
inside of them, prices considerably higher than the averages quoted 
are now being’paid. Land which in 1904 was being transferred at 
$10 to $15 per acre is now probably being transferred at from 
$15 to $20. 
The price of agricultural land in the North-West of Canada is still 
considerably lower than that of similar land in the Western States of 
the Union. 
In Manitoba and in Central Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta the 
loan companies may lend upon the security of land up to about one- 
half of the value placed upon the land by their inspectors, but in 
Southern Alberta it is not customary to lend more than $1,000 upon 
any quarter-section of 160 acres—that is, about $6 per acre; showing 
that the maximum value placed upon land in this region by the loan 
companies is $12 per acre. 
At the present time the amount due to the Canadian Pacific Railway 
in deferred payments upon agricultural land and town-site sales is 
$14,000,000. The amount due to other railways on this account in 
the North-West is about $11,000,000. The total due on deferred pay- 
ments is thus $25,000,000. 
The average price of land sold from all Government land grants— 
Hudson Bay and railway lands—was in 1893 $2.93, in 1895 $1.94, 
1 From the annual reports of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. 
* Including large blocks of land sold to colonisation companies. 
* Including land sold under contracts made previously. The average price 
‘Yor lands actually sold within the year was $8.09 per acre. 
Q 2 
