Conservation of moisture in cultivated soil was thought to be entirely a matter for unassisted Divine Providence. It was found to be good to let a third of the broken ground lie fallow each year—to give it a rest, and to clean it of weeds. The farmer saw last year’s stubble swiftly hidden by weeds in May and early June. Towards the end of June he plowed the weeds in, using a logging or other chain from his off-horse’s whippletree to the coulter, with a dragging loop to pull the long plants straight into the furrow, and entirely bury them. The heavier the green crop plowed in, the more, when rotted, it enriched the soil. But the heavier the weeds, the stronger their roots and the easier for the sun to dry out the loose covering soil. When the summer-fallow had been plowed, the farmer left it untouched. The sun thoroughly dried the land. Rains in the fall, and the melting snows of spring did the less soaking because of the more drying of the torrid summer time.
Experience has changed all that, thanks mainly to the experiments of a wheat-grower below the line, who became famous as “Dry-Farming Campbell”. The wise farmer, with his gang plow, turning two or more furrows at a time, harrows as he plows, and makes a mulch of finely powdered soil, through which the sun cannot suck up the moisture as he did through unmulched soil. By frequent harrowing during the summer the mulch is kept efficient, and the moisture wonderfully conserved. Next year, if there is drought all around, the sower will confidently expect twenty bushels from each acre of his dry-farmed land.
This simple device for the conquest of aridity had not been discovered when I became a Westerner. But there was no reason why immigration should not have been fostered on wiser lines than those that were followed. The immigration policy of the then Dominion Government, viewed in the light of 1924, is something wonderful to behold; and its literature something terrible to read. It was represented that a British family arriving with seven hundred and twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents could carry their farm until their farm carried them.
It was an alluring prospect that the Queen’s Government held out to the Queen’s subjects. The spirit of it was “You tickle the soil with a plowshare, and it giggles you back a fortune.” There wasn’t a word of cautionary advice. The newcomer was to discover his homestead, build a house, buy a yoke of oxen, a wagon and a plow, and watch himself grow rich with his growing grain. It used to be said, with some sediment of truth, no doubt, that Government agents told the confiding Englishman, who had never seen a milkpail, that his oxen would plow the land all day and furnish cream at sunset.
There was great need for people in the illimitable, empty country; but there was greater need for very uncommon common sense among those who procured the people. The politician and his henchmen who were thinking of votes risked none of their own money on immigration promotions. But there were other interests, who sincerely desired to settle the prairies with good people, and who obligated their own and others’ finances to that end—the owners of the Manitoba North Western, for example.
Over and above their means for raising capital for building the railway, they established companies for furnishing the railway’s territory with the settlers who alone could furnish the railway with the traffic, which alone could keep it alive. The Commercial Colonization Company was chiefly concerned with catching the immigrant. The Canadian Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company financed him, when, at his own charges, he arrived on the scene of his predicted triumph.
Legislation was procured under which a lien could be placed on the homestead—the 160 acres of land—while it was still the property of the Canadian Government, and the homesteader was performing the work which, after three years, would secure him a patent. In those days no intending farmer in his senses thought of buying land, when he could get 160 acres free, and could pre-empt another quarter section, with the right to buy it at $2.50 an acre.
The emigrant was told a farm would be selected for him, and that the Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company would build a house, dig a well, furnish a yoke of stout and trusty oxen, a wagon, a plow, and other items of a farmer’s outfit, and would ask no payments for two years, by which time, all being fairly well, his crops would at least enable him to live and meet the fixed charges of his debt.
The improvements, gear, and interest due for two years would absorb $600, and the homestead would be obligated to that extent. That was a very good scheme, on paper, as most financial schemes are. But it lacked two essentials of success—the right selection of people, and the right initiation of them into the mysteries of wresting a living from an unknown soil, and a capricious, misunderstood climate.