DEVELOPMENT OF CANADA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10006, 31 March 1910, Page 4

DEVELOPMENT OF CANADA.

While in New Zealand we are content to keep our waste lands locked up, thereby arresting progress and checking prosperity, Canada is booming in a murvellous manner, because of her vigorous land settlement policy, and enlightened efforts to attract population. Mr Smithers, chairman of the Grand Trunk railway, in a recent speech, gave some interesting facts regarding the progress Canada is making. Dealing with the resources of Canada, he said that j her railway mileage was now 24,100, exceeding that of Great Britain and Ireland by 1,000 miles. The wheat crop of Western Canada last year was a record, amounting to 144,000,000 bushels, as compared with 64,000,000 bushels in 1905, and a very remarkable feature was the rapidity of the extension of wheat growing in Saskatchewan. If we took the crops of all Canada, wheat had risen from 84,000,000 bushels in 1901 to 168,000,000 in 1908, oats from 122,000,000 in 1901 to 355,000,000 in 1909, and barley from 24,000,000 in 1901, to 57,000,000 in 1909^

It was calculated that the actual cash value of wheat alone to the farmers of the three western pro- I vinces In 1909 was 106,000,000 dollars. According to the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, the total bank clearings of the 14 Canadian clearing-houses for 1909 were 5,204 million dollars against 4,142 million dollars in 1908. The total value of all minerals produced in 1908, as shown by the preliminary Government report, was 87,000,000 dollars. He left to the imagination the value of the timber, cattle, dairy produce, and fruit and fisheries Americans have no delusion regarding the marvellous potentialities ot Canada. Colonel John Conrad has returned to Nsw York after prospecting in Sackatchewan, where he has bought a ranch, and he urges the claims of Saskatchewan as eloquently as any Canadian. "An astonishing thing," Colonel, Conrad . continues, "that I saw up there once was the arrival of a trainload sf American emigrants, who had brought on the same train their horses, waggons, and a steam plough. They arrived in i the morning, pitched their tents, unloaded the train, and that afternoon the steam plough was working. One immigrant like that is worth a dozen foreigners. The development that is going, on in that part of Canada is beyond belief. It is the greatest boom any country ever had, and it will continue for many years. Why, it is no unusual thing for a farmer to make enough money out of his first year's crop to pay for his whole farm, and give him a handsome margin. You can get Government land for 5s an acre, '* and you can buy all the other land you want from £1 12s to £2 an acre. Then lumber mills and flour mills are going up in every direction. What is helping the country; there is the tremendous railroad building that is going on. Tt is the richest farming country in the world, and abounds in game."