of it is prepared in co-operative creameries), and this is why it is slow in finding a market in Europe. The manifest success of the co-operative cheese factories in Ontario induced the Canadian Government to take the initiative of introducing them in other provinces of the Dominion as well, and a very reasonable plan was hit upon by Professor Robertson-the plan of taking the initiative of a cheese factory, and to operate it for a few years by a Government agent, but to withdraw as soon as the farmers had been initiated in the management of the factory,15 This plan having admirably succeeded in Prince Edward Island, Professor Robertson and the Dairymen's Association of the North-west were busy last year in introducing the same system in Alberta, both for cheese-making and the fabrication of butter. I have visited one of their creameries on the Calgary-Edmonton Railway at Innisfail, and from what I saw of the machinery, the cold-storage room, and the keen intelligence of the young operator, I have no doubt that Canadian creamery butter will soon win a good reputation in Europe. It has already a good sale in British Columbia, and last year part of it was sold for export to Britain, at a price which made the farmers quite sanguine as regards the future.16 Last summer, several thousands of immigrants, chiefly Germanspeaking Austrians and partly Little Russians (Ruthenes), came again from Galicia, and they were directed in the eastern part of the fertile belt along the new Dauphin line. Many, if not most of them, had no money to start with, and worked on the railway line, Is The people of Prince Edward Island had failed in their attempt to make profitable cheese. Then the Government, or rather Professor Robertson, stepped in; they supplied the plant for a co-operative cheese factory, and the farmers supplied the building. A Government agent operated the creamery, charging the farmers ltd. per pound of fabricated cheese. Next year eleven cheese factories were established, and they were operated at §d. per pound. Two years later, there were twenty-eight cheese factories and two creameries in existence. Then the Government withdrew, notwithstanding the loud protests of the farmers, from sixteen of the largest establishments, leaving them to be conducted by the farmers themselves. To quote Professor Robertson's own words from one of his speeches, the result was 'that the directors say these factories are conducted better than when he (Professor Robertson) conducted them. He could well believe it. In reality, local management should prove more economical than Government management.' (Annual Report of the Dairymen's Association of the North-west Territories, 1896–97.) 16 That this country is the paradise of the middleman is well known; but the following is so pretty an illustration of that truth that I must quote it. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who spent the winter in Bromley used to get his butter by parcel post from Bavaria. He used to send 10s. to the creamery, and to get in return about 10 lbs. of excellent butter, superior to what could be got from the best London dealers for 1s. 6d. the lb., and certainly without the 10 to 15 per cent. of water which is now so often forced into butter by means of special machinery. The 10 lbs. cost him 10s. 8d. (10s., plus 6d. for the money order and 24d. for the letter), and the creamery got 10s., minus 2s. 2d. for the 11 lbs. parcel-that is, a little over 9d. per lb. I am almost tempted to advise my lady readers to get their butter from Innisfail. costly luxury! The distance is about 5,200 miles, but the middleman is such a 6 6 earning from 38. 5d. to 48. a day (74d. more if they provided their own food), and those who had succeeded in saving sixty or seventy dollars hastened to take a quarter-section.' Their wives were building in the meantime sod huts or cabins to spend the winter. With the little they had they did not hesitate to start as farmers; but the unanimous consensus of opinion is that every settler's family ought to have at least 100l. or more to start with. The farmers' testimonies' which are given in emigration pamphlets, and in which some farmers describe how, having begun with next to nothing, they became more or less prosperous, are undoubtedly genuine. But the emigration agencies themselves state the case quite fairly in one of their pamphlets (Farming and Ranching in Western Canada.) 'The country,' they write, affords a vast field for experienced farmers who can bring money with them to make the first improvements on the land, to provide themselves with stock and implements, and to carry their families through the first year.' The Swedes, who thrive very well at Wetaskiwin, and are held in the North-west in high esteem as farmers, add to their praises of the country that a small capital of 100%. clear to start with' is necessary. Many Little Russians, who never saw such a lot of money in their life, will certainly start with very much less than that: a hut, a Russian stove of beaten clay, a Galician plough, and a pair of oxen, and perhaps a horse which they will have broken themselves (they are admired in Canada for that art), will be all their capital; and many of them will succeed. But this cannot be taken as a rule. In addition to the travelling expenses, which are considerable, some money, which represents a lot for the European peasant, is the more necessary as there is little chance to earn much in the winter, while in the summer the settler has his hands full with his own work. This necessity of having some money for the start, coupled with a fear of the cold Canadian winter, must have been the chief reason why the colonisation of the North-west was so slow-so much slower, at any rate, than was expected twenty years ago. The climate of Canada is certainly very healthy-a dry cold winter, with plenty of snow, being evidently preferable to the cold and moist winter of, let us say, Scotland. Russians would find it most enjoyable, the more so as the autumn lasts longer and is more beautiful than in Middle Russia. But men who were not born in Eastern or Northern Europe prefer a warmer climate, and the prospect of being buried in snow and of keeping their cattle indoors for four months, deters them; while on the other side the East European peasants who are accustomed to long winters are too poor, as a rule, to pay the expenses of a long journey and to save something to start with. It seems, therefore, that unless some system of aid to immigrants be organised, the current of emigration from Europe will continue to flow towards more congenial latitudes. The dominant impression which Canada has left upon the members of the British Association is certainly one of vastness, of immensity, of unfathomable resources. Millions and millions of men could find their living in all parts of the country, and after a number of years of hard pioneer work they could find well-being. I mean, of course, millions of agriculturists; because-as the British Columbia Board of Trade puts it-workmen and artisans will only be required in proportion to the development of agriculture. 17 'More farmers' is therefore the general outcry in Canada; and, in fact, in every province, there is no end of land which only waits for men's labour and enterprise to be covered with corn-fields or orchards. In British Columbia, in the very heart of the highlands, and along the Pacific coast, more and more settlers are wanted. Beautiful stretches of fertile arable land are enclosed between the parallel ranges of mountains, and, if each of them has some special inconveniences, it has, on the other side, its own special advantages.18 The rich Steppeland about Vernon and on the shores of Lake Okanagan only requires some irrigation to secure beautiful cereal and fruit crops every year, without failure, and wealthy little towns already grow in that valley. In other places, such as the Kootenay district, or the Cariboo district, in which last the climatic conditions are less favourable than at Vernon, there is a continuous demand for all sorts of farm produce in the miners' camps. In the valley of the Fraser River, where the land must be cleared at a considerable expense from under the virgin forest, all sorts of fruit are grown so well, up to an altitude of 1,000 feet on the southern hill-slopes (at the Agassiz experimental farm), that half-cleared land fetches European prices15l. and 20l. per acre. Even along the sea-coast, whereto a Norwegian and a Danish colony immigrated last year, there are plenty of spots where agricultural settlements of several thousand men could easily become prosperous. On the other side of the great plain, in West Ontario, there is again plenty of land which, after having been cleared from under the forest, could give prosperity. Behind the rocky, glaciated granite and gneiss hillocks which are seen as the train moves along the shores of Lake Superior, there are lots of spots and areas where farming is possible and is in great demand for supplying the needs of the mining population. 19 And so on. 17 Eighteenth Annual Report of the British Columbia Board of Trade,' Victoria, 1897; Fifth Report of the Department of Agriculture of British Columbia,' 1895–96, Victoria, 1897. 18 Both are fairly stated, I must say, in a description of the province issued by the Local Board of Trade, in its Eighteenth Annual Report, 1897. See also the Yearly Reports of the Department of Agriculture. 19 See Official Handbook of Canada,' 1897; Northern Districts of Ontario, Canada,' 4th edition, prepared by J. M. Gibson, Commissioner of Crown Lands for Ontario, Toronto, 1897. In Canada, contrary to Ricardo's theory, all sorts of lands, of all degrees of fertility and offering all possible gradations of difficulty for culture, are occupied at the very same time. While nearly two millions of acres remain untouched by the plough in South Manitoba, where grain may be sown, in case of need, even upon the simply overturned sod of the prairie, lands requiring infinitely more labour before they may be ploughed are eagerly occupied and cultivated. The thick forests of Quebec and Ontario are cleared, irrigation canals are dug in Alberta, the wood coppices of the Saskatchewan are burned and the soil ploughed, and even infinite pains are taken in clearing land in British Columbia from the gigantic trees which cover it. So varied are the tastes of men and their appreciations of the natural advantages of different regions, to say nothing of chance, which plays such a part in human decisions. But agriculture, cattle-breeding and dairying are not the only natural resources of Canada. There are inexhaustible resources everywhere: in the woods for transforming trees into boards, doors, windows and houses; in the rivers and the lakes for fishing; in the mountains for mining; and so on. In every direction, more men, more intelligence, more activity are required to utilise the resources offered by nature. But here I must pause and ask: Is Canada alone in that condition? Without leaving the American continent, can we not say the same about immense portions of the States? of Mexico? of South America? In the eastern hemisphere, the geographical counterpart of Canada-Siberia-stands in exactly the same position. It has the same millions of acres of unoccupied prairies; the same rivers teaming with salmon on the Pacific border; the same inexhaustible mining resources. And those who know Africa would surely say the same about the Black Continent. The fact is that, after having roamed over big countries like Canada or Siberia, we begin to realise how uninhabited our globe is up to the present date: how rich mankind could be if social obstacles did not stand everywhere in the way of utilising the gifts of nature. When I see, however, the tremendous and seldom realised amount of labour which the pioneer has to accomplish when he settles in a new land, be it even in the richest prairie; when I think of the fifteen to twenty years of hard work—the best part of the life of a generation which must be given to bring a wilderness into a semi-civilised state; when I measure all the amount of labourwhich is immense that is applied to the soil in Canada, a great question rises before me: Surely it is desirable that mankind. should spread all over the globe, that it should take possession of it and carry on its civilisation, such as it is, to the remotest parts of the earth. This expansion has widened the circle of ideas, it has opened to thought wider horizons, it has shattered many traditions of old. But, looking on the matter from the point Vol. XLIII-No. 253 M M of view of economy-of well-being and means to attain it would it not have been better to apply a considerable part of that energy at home? I take, as an instance, the results that a few hundred French peasants have obtained in a small village near Paris, where stone quarries were transformed into beautiful apricot-tree and cherry-tree gardens; or the marvellous utilisation for beautiful orchards of every inch of land which was made along the banks of the middle Rhône; I look next upon the uncultivated, waste fields which these isles and immense spaces all over Europe are so well provided with; and I ask myself, what would be England and Scotland like to if one-tenth part only of the energy that has been spent in conquering wild lands in Canada had been given to the land of these isles? What if the Galicians whom I saw at Edmonton had been allowed to work with the same energy upon the land of Galicia? I understand the Icelander who exchanges his polar island for a settlement in Manitoba, or the Norwegian who moves from his subpolar fjord to a fjord in British Columbia. But what has driven the Mennonite from the South Russian Steppe to the Manitoba Steppe, where he sighs after the blossom and the fruit of his apple and cherry trees? What drives the Galician to Saskatchewan, the Swede to Alberta, and the Scotchman to Ontario? The social conditions alone drive them from lands which badly want the work of their hands, but to which they are not allowed to give it. If only Canada could avoid creating the same conditions! But I am afraid she also is making rapid strides towards the building up of the same land monopolies which now drive the European peasants out of Europe. P. KROPOTKIN. |