M.—AGRICULTURE. 243 
to be eminently suited to the prairies, and as soon as the railway was 
- completed in 1886 it was taken there by the new settlers and became the 
basis of their prosperity. So strange an accident could not be expected 
again, nor did Canada count upon it, yet it happened. The Dominion 
Experimental Farm was set up in 1886 and its director, William Saunders, 
" began the breeding of new varieties. Many of these, while not sufficiently 
promising to justify multiplication, were kept alive, and one of them, 
after ten years of seclusion, was picked out in 1902 by his son Charles, 
who, regardless of much mild chaffing, applied to all wheats within reach 
his rapid chewing test for quality. This variety was multiplied, and 
from 1910 onwards was distributed under the name of Marquis to the 
prairie provinces and the United States. It ripened earlier than Red 
Fife and so could be grown further north and west ; thus it greatly extended 
the wheat belt of Canada. But even more good fortune was in store, for 
its earlier ripening enabled it to escape the worst ravages of stem rust. 
It has in consequence spread southwards into the United States, and it 
is now probably more extensively grown than any other variety of wheat 
in the world. 
The Canadian plant breeders continued their search for still earlier 
“maturing varieties ; they produced Prelude and Ruby, and now Reward, 
best of all of them in earliness and in resisting stem rust, requiring only 
_ about 100 days from seed-time to harvest, and therefore capable of growing 
much further north than Marquis. Thus has the plant breeder exploited 
the first lucky chance that gave the prairies a suitable wheat, and he has 
produced varieties better and better suited to the northern margin of 
cultivation, and so has pushed the wheat belt into regions counted as 
waste in 1900. 
Man-power was long the limiting factor in Canadian farming, and this 
problem of saving labour has been attacked with devastating thoroughness 
by engineers all the world over. The reaper had come in the 60’s, and 
the binder in the 80’s, but the internal combustion engine has made 
changes vast and dramatic beyond the wildest stretches of the pre-war 
imagination. The tractor and the new cultivating implements at and 
before seeding-time, and the combine at harvesting, have revolutionised 
wheat-growing by dispensing with enormous numbers of men and greatly 
increasing the area of land needed per man as an economic unit for wheat 
farming. Not long ago 160 acres was the economic unit for the family 
farm ; now 320 acres is the lowest limit, and 640 acres is nearer the most 
profitable size. C. W. Peterson in his recent book, ‘ Wheat,’ gives some 
startling figures. In 1911 sixteen persons were needed on the average 
to cultivate 1,000 acres of land in the three prairie provinces. By 1926 
this number had been reduced to eleven. Further reduction has gone on ; 
during the past two years, he says, mechanisation has displaced over 
25,000 men from western farms. Fortunately, there is still land to which 
they can go, for the new machines and the new varieties have enabled 
land hitherto unsuitable to be brought into cultivation; between 1911 
and 1926 the area under crops had risen in the three prairie provinces 
from 17-6 millions to 35 million acres. Already Canada has far outstripped 
the limits set by the experts of thirty years ago, excepting only those of 
: the arch optimist, William Saunders; and no one would now risk his 
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