CANADA.

Kawhia Settler and Raglan Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 361, 15 May 1908, Page 2

CANADA.

(TO THE EDITOR.) Sir, —For the last eighteen years, three train loads per day of se tiers left Winnipeg for the West, aud still the crowd goes West from Winnipeg, always and ever Westward, and melts into tbe vast expanses of Manitoba. Sashatchewan, Alberta, Assiniboia, and Columbia, and is lost to view. From a comfortable seat in the palace caf the country looks uninhabited. Now and again is seen a solitary figure driving six horses in a gang plow. AU along there are brown patches of cai> tie, tbe successors of the buffalos, that roamed the prairies only 40 years ago. Now and then a threshing machine, and at night distant Area burning stacks of straw. North-West Canada has 170,000,000, acres of arable land, and less than 10,000,000, are under cultivation. Tbe long line of freight cars creeping to tbe East are now loaded with cattle, horses and wheat. Who raised the cattle and horses and grew the wheat? Why the emigrants who have been going out West for i eighteen years with their fimiliea, their little bags of brown br«ad and in» finat-e links of cologna, and worlds of high hope. For a few years did the railroad sent loaded cars only Westward, then they began to haul loaded cars tbe other way. Now the difficulty is to ger enough cars to carry the ca de, horses and grain to tbe seaboard When tbe Canadian Pacific was planned it wv? said to b a vain speculation to get m >ney ou* of ,ae peckets of tbe b inkers in Loud n. Why the railroad ran through a country where no-body lived I The courage, the faith, the determinati' , n, the persistency of these builders of Empire is a poem unwritten. The wea th of the country is yet practically untapped. Tbe high hopes ..f lhe emigrants were not founded on moonshine, I knnw a man who took up 190 acres five years ago. Tbe first crop was 2000 bushels of wheat, s< Id at 60 cents (2i 61) a bushel. This man now owns G2O acres, and this year sold 8000 but-Uebi al U 2d (1 dollar) per bushel. He now devotee bU tune

io rearing Olydesdats burses and Ayr- ’ shire cattle and leaves the bard work to others, N- <■, otmp-ire Canadian methods to New Zealand. Our . emigrr.ntß-or sniUlvr.? come, here and Btart operations vi h road or railway. In Canada ihe railwaysand roads precede all settlement. Whose fault is this? Ours. We don’t take enough interest in politic?, and have no poli’ir -l Union. We allow ourselves and our business to be second in importance to that o£ the towns and united industrial unions, and until we onite and vote to a man for representatives from our own Empire building class wo must be contented to remain as we are at presenw (nly a secondary consideration and the beasts of burden to our present Parliament. The Far mers Union is at present of no political value, and we must beforo next general election make our Union political, and select a settler capable of battling for us in Perliament. We can then expect and get roads and railways. Sell the Government lands io pay the national debt and make by this relief a reduction in import duties, thus cheapening the cost of living to the inhabitants of this Dominion. Also we could give the natives advantage of all our laws, after having individualised their lands.—Yours, etc., G. H. MACKENZIE.