Imagine yourself with me at threshing time, and let us see how the work is done. The wheatfield we choose contains one thousand acres and it is spotted with shocks, or stooks, as they are called here. Each stook consists of a number of sheaves stood upon end on the ground with others so arranged on top that it will shed rain. A half dozen teams are moving over the field gathering up the stooks. As soon as a wagon is loaded it is driven to the thresher, into whose greedy mouth the sheaves are poured continuously from sunrise to sunset. At the same time grain is flowing out of the thresher into the wagons or motor trucks that carry it away.
In the United States wheat is often held by the farmers for a favourable price. In Canada very few farms have their own granaries. The wheat goes from the threshing machine to the local elevator, or, if none is accessible, it is sent directly to the railroad and shipped to Fort William and Port Arthur. There are now elevators at fifteen hundred different places throughout the wheat region. Each of these stations has from one to nine elevators standing out on the landscape, indicating the productiveness of the surrounding country. The elevators of Canada have a total capacity of two hundred and thirty-eight million bushels. There are companies that have chains of such granaries. They will either store the wheat for the farmer, handle it on commission, or buy it from him directly at a price based on the current market value of that in storage at Fort William.
The wheat begins to come to the elevators about the first of September, and by the middle or latter part of October they are well filled. Each has a license, and is inspected regularly by the government. In order to maintain the high standard of western Canadian wheat, every shipment must be weighed and tested by a Dominion weigh-master.
Many of the country elevators are owned by milling companies. The flour industry is centred in Ontario, the largest mill in the Dominion being at Port Colborne at the western end of the Welland Canal. Flour is manufactured in large quantities also at Fort William, Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. Smaller mills exist throughout Canada, and for many years the Hudson’s Bay Company operated one at Fort Vermilion, six hundred miles northwest of Winnipeg. Ten million barrels of flour are annually exported, almost half of which is taken by England.
What Canada gets for her wheat depends not only on her own crop and that of the United States, but on conditions all over the world. Wheat is raised in every part of the globe, and is harvested in one place or another each month of the year. Therefore, a drought in Australia, a frost in Argentina, monsoons in India, new tariff laws in a given country, or a host of other reasons, may cause a drop or a rise in the prices here. In any event, though the price in Canada may be no higher than that paid in the United States, it represents a larger return on the original investment. The Canadian farmer has the advantage of raising his wheat on land that has cost him perhaps only a third of what has been paid by his neighbour across the border.
CHAPTER XXV
THE OPEN DOOR IN CANADA
Wherever I go in Canada I find the people on tiptoe with eagerness for the growth of their country. I do not mean that they are hungry for territory; they already have more than they can use for a century or two. The increases they are praying for are in population, in the size of their towns, in the area of land under cultivation, and in the number of families settling new farms.
For seventy-five years Canada has given a cordial welcome to immigrants and during the last quarter of a century she has been conducting recruiting campaigns to get settlers. But where formerly immigration was only something to be desired, the situation to-day makes the coming of new people an imperative necessity. They are needed not merely to open up rich virgin lands, but to share the burden of carrying the national overhead.
A single fact will make clear this situation. The interest on the Canadian national debt is five times what the total revenues of the government were before the World War. The people are faced with the alternative of having less to live on after their increased taxes are paid, or of dividing their heavier expenses among a larger number of producers. Naturally they prefer the latter.
Canada’s per capita debt mounted from seventy-two dollars in 1914 to three hundred and twenty-two dollars three years after the war, and the total stands to-day at just under three billion dollars. The war has not only multiplied the public debt, but it has also greatly reduced immigration. The population of Canada is now nearly nine million, and if the high rate of increase that prevailed for the five years preceding 1914 is regained it will soon be ten million and more. The national production and revenues in that case will grow proportionately, and the individual share of the burden of taxes and debt will be considerably less.