Big figures these. The West is a big place, as I have observed. That is nothing to brag about. Its bigness should inspire us with a humble determination to do big things with it, and for it, each in our own little corner of it, looking beyond our own little corner, too; for if we have a broad country we are bound to take broad views.
A big country indeed, endowed with land and railways and roads and schools and all the machinery of Government for countless millions of citizens. We hold the West in trust, a sacred trust, not for ourselves and our children alone, but for the millions who might be here to use it with us. We shall gain, as well as they, by their coming; though even if we had nothing to gain, we cannot escape the responsibility of holding a realm so much vaster than we can use.
Our most urgent need is to unearth our hidden wealth, [a]Small Farming for Big Population] to develop our enormous undeveloped resources, of which our uncultivated or half-cultivated land is the greatest part. Our first business, then, is plainly to get population, people able and willing to work. We have to devise new plans of settlement, of land-holding or land arrangement, of agricultural production and agricultural commerce—yes, and agricultural manufacture, so that we shall no longer depend almost wholly on the sale of raw material. Every possible avenue must be explored, every resource of human ingenuity taxed to the utmost, brushing aside all obstructive traditions and conventions, and thoroughly testing every plan with one glimmer of hope in it, to get and keep a large and permanent, because successful and contented, body of people doing this vital work.
It is not the big wheat farm or cattle ranch that means big population, but just the opposite.
Most of the new settlers we can hope to get will be poor. Small farming, and often very small farming, is the only kind possible to them. What of that?
It was the small man, the poor man, with little or no capital beyond his own body and brains, who built up this country from the beginning. It is the small man, reinforcing us in his hundreds of thousands from the mother country and from many other lands, that we must get to build it up with fresh vigor from now on. Yes, and we must give him a better chance than he ever had under the broadcasting, go-as-you-like, sink-or-swim homestead system, which so often allowed him to sink, with grievous loss both to him and to the country.
There is no fear for the wheat supply. Any cutting down of the present wheat acreage, beyond what may [a]A Self-Supporter] be required from time to time to prevent over-production, will be made up for by the multitude of small wheat fields on the multitude of small farms that will now come into existence.
The small farmer, if he thinks and plans his way carefully, is not only self-supporting—able to feed his family even if the rest of the world should sink under the sea, and independent of labor costs, which are the last straw on many a big farmer’s back; he is also independent, to a degree which few yet realize, of the foreign market, and of unfortunate conditions abroad that keep that market down.
Such men are to be found in every Province already. Here is one. He has cut his coat strictly according to his cloth. He does not try to farm one acre more than he can handle with his own small capital, supplemented by very little credit. He works no more land and carries no more stock than he can thoroughly cultivate and care for in normal times by himself, or with such help as his family can give—and occasionally the neighbors, to whom he lends his help in turn. He spares neither brain work nor hand work to produce—not simply the largest quantity, but the most that can be got of the highest quality, so as to secure the highest net cash yield per acre and per hour.
I know his family are well dressed and well fed, for I have more than once dropped in unexpectedly, about meal times. There is always plenty of variety on the table, but you notice, even in winter, that almost everything on the bill of fare was raised right there. A little tea and sugar are their only imports; British Columbian apples are the only food from outside the farm.