THE DEVELOPMENT OF WHEAT CULTURE IN NORTH AMERICA. 245 
to 35,000 bushels. He adds the important statement that ‘ there seem 
to be no climatic differences there which are more difficult to be over- 
come than in the immediate vicinity of Edmonton.’ ‘ 
If there be prophecy as to Canada’s future product, her own experts 
must play the part of seer. We have not seen that Dr. Saunders 
retracts or in any way modifies his ‘ reasonable prophecy ’ of 1904— 
that wheat grown on one-fourth of the land suited to it in the Canadian 
North-West, with the yield of Manitoba for the previous decade, would 
bring a crop of more than 800 million bushels, which, as he shows, 
would feed 30,000,000 people in Canada and three times supply the 
import need of Great Britain. If there be such a surplus of good soil 
as three-fourths, this would leave ample room for diversified crops, and 
for such rotations and fallowing as might be needful in future years 
to meet the declining production of the prairie soils. 
Sir William Crookes in 1898 allowed from credible estimates six 
miljion acres of wheat land for Canada in the following twelve years. 
The acreage of 1908, after ten years, but slightly exceeded his figure. 
His fears, however, as to inadequate population to work the wheat lands 
are not likely to be realised. When he read his address at Bristol he 
could not have foreseen that spectacular migration across the border 
from the South, which now plays so large a réle in the North-West. 
In the year 1898 this immigration brought 9,119 settlers into Canada. 
In the fiscal year of 1908-09 the number had risen to 59,832, and 
had become a theme of interest to both countries. Sixty thousand 
settlers, mainly going to wheat farms, and bringing in capital and 
experience, means immediate and large expansion of Canadian wheat, 
and an annual product per capita far exceeding anything that any wheat- ° 
raising country has known. 
The population of Canada has always increased slowly, being 
240,009 in 1801 and rising in 1901 to 5,371,315. But it is precisely 
in the wheat provinces that recent percentages of increase have been 
enormous, so that Canada promises to give herself to a great agricul- 
tural specialty, and remotely, if ever, will come the time when her 
population will press hard upon her productive capacity. Unlike the 
United States, she must confine herself to products of temperate 
climates, and her greatest reliance for exchange must, it would seem, 
be breadstuffs. Immigration into Canada since 1901 has brought more 
than one million people, and if the population in 1908 were 7,000,000, 
there was a per capita production of wheat of 16 bushels. The ratio 
will no doubt be much higher in the near future. 
It is easy to refute prophecies which the event has already nullified, 
but it is, nevertheless, sometimes useful to recall them. In his famous 
address of 1898 Sir William Crookes concedes his statements to be 
alarming, but asserts they are based on stubborn facts, and that 
‘England and all civilised nations are in deadly peril of not having 
enough to eat; . . . as mouths multiply, food resources dwindle; . . . 
our wheat-producing soil is totally unequal to the strain put upon it.’ 
Great Britain then needed 240,000,000 bushels of wheat, of which she 
raised one-fourth and imported the rest. Sir William regards as a 
burning question what to do to avert starvation if crops should fail or 
nations combine in hostility, especially in view of the world’s increase 
of bread-eaters. The wheat-growing area was strictly limited ; there was 
no land left in the United States without cutting into maize, hay, and 
