WHY AUSTRALIA WILL BEAT CANADA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 136, 26 October 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHY AUSTRALIA WILL BEAT CANADA

TlU'Tll A*kn."T TUK DOMINION. COXTIiASTS IX I'JONKEKIXC. (Jiy Henry S. (Juliet, in tlie Sydney Sun.) Of ..'ourse it would be absurd to assert or insinuate that Canada is not enormously rich in natural rosoure.es. The prairie is an agricultural mine of iucaloula'oie wealth. Now farmers there might possibly make as much money as new farmers in Australia. Possibly' Jt is by no means certain. The great superiority of Australia lies in the fact that the country is an incomparably happier homing land than the Dominion. They tell you in the north-west that Canada has three seasons—August, September, and winter. Without any exaggeration you can say that the region is for six months stagnant. During the long winter the soil yields nothing to the farmer, and wage-earning is diminished, and in many industries it practically ceases. This is emphasised by the fact that the Australian immigration officer in tireat Britain is able to say to the inquirer: "There is no best time to go to Austialia, Things might bo a little brisker just before harvest, but, generally speaking, wealth production and the labor market are unchanged the whole year through." To appreciate what the Canadian climate is by comparison with Australia, both for human beings and for live stock, you have only to glance at these figures:—

HEAT AND COLD. Those are the figures for 1909. If the Canadian West had Australia's climate its stock-carrying capacity would be incalculable. It would graze the flocks and herds of half the world. But you see scarcely any sheep in the new provinces, and even cattle iind the country almost intolerable. Horses will live in the open all the year through, nosing under the snow for their sustenance, but cattle have to be housed and hand-fed for months at a stretch. And just as live stock feel the climate so do the people. One shudders to think of all the terrible physical sufferings which goes on among the pioneers of the Dominion. We know that the life of the first settlers in Australia is sometimes attended with great hardships, but the trial of heat, scarcity of water, and Hies and mosquitoes, and the occasional bush lire, are as nothing against the long dead season which I comes once a year in Xew Canada. „ I | rode one day past the Calgae- «Ptery, and was puzzled to notice tire large number of newly-dug open graves. There must, I thought, he a serious epidemic at work. But the explanation was that, as it is impossible to dig graves in the frozen •groundiin winter, they must do the ugly Job before the frosts become* severe. At the head works of the great Bow River irrigation scheme I commented to the chief engineer upon the way th» workmen were dashing into thentask. He briefly explained they did not work like that all the summer through, but the contractors were anxious to get as far as they could with the excavations before the frosts came, and made further operations impossible. They would lie compelled to cease all work for several months, except for the concrete, at which they would continue with the assistance of steam-heating.

COMPARATIVE LAXD VALUES. One need not pile up these incidents against tlie climate of the prairie. You can make out a ease, equally .stimulating, from an Australian point of view, against Canadian land values. You still hear today of the "fat and fertile" free grant of 100 acres, but not so much emphasis is laid on it as a couple of* years ago. The truth about Canadian fanning lands is that they are far dearer than land of equal productiveness in Australia. Two years ago. when T asked Canadian land authorities whether 1 could see those gift "fat and fertile" quarter sections, they smiled and waved a hand in the direction of the Xorth Pole. The movement in Canada is now north. They have gone west across the prairie and mountainous British Columbia to the Pacific. The trend is at present further and still further towards the region of perpetual snow and ice. .lust as we in Australia are constantly shifting further inland the line we had "drawn as the boundary of profitable settlement, so is Canada shifting her line northwards. As they travel further into the snow the increasing severity of the cold is compensated for by the increasing certainty of the moisture required for crops. It is quite a mistake to think that Western Canada does not know droughts. I saw many thousands of acres in Southern Alberta, on which the wheat crop had, owing to the absence of rainfall, been too poor to repay harvesting, and had been left ungarnered on the soil. The only cheap land to-day is in the extreme north, where life has an ever-decreasing enjoyment. One ventures to prophesy that there will l),. ;l minimum of permanent home-making in Xew Canada. There will be plenty of money-making. Settlers will continue to stream in there indelinitelv and to stream out again. They will live their wretched frozen life, make money as quickly as possible, and depart to happier climes to enjoy what years are remaining.

BRITISH COLUMBIA. If you want further example of the unattractive ■side' of Canada you have it in liritish -Columbia. One might describe liritish Columbia very accurately as a vast precipitous mountain range, "raced by a few decent valleys. As you go north there is more open country, but there is more cold, liritish Columbia about which so much is heard as an ideal homing country, comprises a few very limited valleys, where men pay extremely high prices for extremely small and rough areas of land. The famous fruitgrowing valleys have a curiously low rainfall, even though they are in the shadow of lofty pine and snow-clad mountains. Irrigation is essential. The canals, or '■ditches" (most things in Canada have American names) wind about the hillsides, and remind you of scenic railways. The application of the water is difficult and costly. And yet British Columbia has attracted, and is still attracting, piles of British capital, and sa far as you can learn those settlers who have become established are doing remarkably well by their orchards. It is no sort of country for a poor man. The capital which would establish you on an irrigation farm in Victoria, or on Crown lands of Queensland and Western Australia, would be utterly inadequate out there. Still. British Columbia prospers and develops. As the current stories on the prairie are of cold, in British Columbia they are of the steepness of the mountain. There is one classic told you bv every settler with a sense of humor. A man fished from a boat in a lake just off the foot of a mountain side. lie was startled by a landslide above him. and a vast mass of boulders and trees and undergrowth thundered down, leapt clean over his head, and plunged into the lake. Presently out of the disturbed waters emerged a man, who, with much unconcern, began to swim casually towards the shore. The fisherman hurried to his assistance. "It's all right, old chap," said the swimmer, •'this is the third durn time. I have slipped off my ranch this year."

NO ATTACK ON* CANADA. These articles are, not intended us ;m attack on Canada. Their moiive i* simply to emphasise the content/ion that Australia is only just beginning her slvcam of immigration. Only a. fool would say that Canada was not destined at .hi early date to carry a huge population, and to yield prodigious wealth. She wins to herself each year hundreds of thousands of new people, ami in their van are the increasing contingent of hard-headed, money-seeking American farmer*, who know what they are doing when they desert the Republic for the Dominion. Half the pens in the world could not harm Canada by writing plainly about her climate and her disabilities. The north-west provinces will have, their crises and their setbacks, but they will continue to progress on a grand giant scale towards national greatness. But rich as they are, and generous as they are to the stranger, they are neither as rich nor as generous as Australia. This fact the restless spirits of the world arc just beginning to discover, and with ;i knowledge of Canada one knows how very long and fruitful are the years which lie close at hand for the Commonwealth.

Canada. Australia. Sliuep ... ... 2,831,000 91,076,000 Cattle ... ... 7,547,000 11,040,000 Horses ... ... -2,118,000 2,023,000