YOUR OPPORTUNITY
Contentment is not necessarily achieved by accomplishments that benefit the world—the world outside the small sphere in which we move; but when accompanied by such accomplishments how the satisfaction broadens! The genius whose inventions have been of service to mankind is in a plane far above that of the simple-minded individual who finds contentment in the little things of life affecting himself alone.
Feeding the world is no mean accomplishment. Nor is it a vain or trifling boast to say that this is what the farmer of Western Canada has started out to do. He is sure to find contentment. Part of his contentment will be the consciousness of doing world-wide good; part of it will be the personal enjoyment of an inspiring liberty and independence. Afield and abroad his friends will learn what he is doing. Soon they too will become partners in a work that not only betters their own condition, but ministers to the needs of the whole world in the raising of products that go to "feed the world."
It is to those who desire this broad contentment that the Canadian Government extends the heartiest welcome, and to such men it offers the vast opportunities of a country richer in possibilities than any other in the present century. To the man on the farm in other regions, whom success has followed with slow tread; to the farmer's son, who has watched with unsatisfied eye the unrequited efforts of his forbears, seeing the life that has made his mother a "drudge," noting the struggle which has stooped his father's shoulders, dimmed his vision, dwarfed his spirit, and returned nothing but existence and a meagre bank account—it is to these men, father and son, that the opportunities of Western Canada are presented. To them an invitation is extended to secure the contentment found in personal progress and world-wide benefaction.
The possibilities of Western Canada are no longer new and untried. Twelve or fifteen years of cultivation have made it a vital, living land, and placed it on the level with the greatest of the food-producing countries. That same redundant energy will shortly make it the richly laden "bread basket" not of England only, but of the entire world.
Here every condition is a health bringer as well as a wealth bringer. A few months in this "New World" to which you are invited and where rejuvenating physical and mental changes are wrought; where before hard work was drudgery, it is now a delight; where nothing but fresh trouble darkened the horizon, the outlook is now a rainbow of promise. Industry is seasoned with the compelling spirit of adventure, and the thought of the coming harvest constantly lightens the burden of labor.
The crowded city dweller, curbing those natural desires for home-building that are as natural as breathing, will find in Western Canada a country where nothing is so plentiful as space. And in building his home here he is surely laying the foundation for a competence, and very often for a fortune. Along with prosperity there is abounding happiness and good fellowship in the farming communities. The homesteader, beginning in a modest way, rears his first habitation with practical and serviceable ends in view. His next-door neighbours are ready and willing to help him put a roof over his head. There is a splendid lend-a-hand sentiment mixed with the vigorous climate. The first harvest, like all succeeding harvests, comes quickly, because the soil is a lightning producer. All summer long the settler has dreamed of nothing but acres of waving grain; with the autumn the sight of hopes fulfilled compensates him for his months of toil. In due time the crop is harvested and marketed, the debts are wiped out, and the settler proudly opens his bank account.
When he has turned the golden grain into the golden coin of the realm he realizes for the first time what it means to be liberally paid for the work of his hand and brain. The reward of the farmer in Western Canada is sure; and as the soil responds faithfully to his husbandry, year after year, he looks back upon the old conditions he has left with devout thankfulness that they are past.