Although I did not keep account of the matter, I have no hesitation in saying that in my travelling I have met more dealers in real estate than of any other class of men. One sat with me in the train between Hamilton and Toronto and dwelt on the advantages of real-estate investments in the Mountain City. Even foreign laborers who are unable to speak English are making thousands in real estate. In the observation car, travelling from Montreal to Boston, one of my fellow-passengers was an international real-estate agent. He had opened subdivisions in Seattle, Winnipeg, London, Montreal, and Brooklyn. He was one of the most optimistic men I have ever met. He could see possibilities even in the swamps that we passed and in the rocky slopes of New Hampshire and Vermont that were revealed through the car windows. I suspect that he would not hesitate to open a subdivision on the planet Mars, with a frontage on the leading canal, if he could get an astronomer to furnish him with a map and blue-prints. If he should decide to do this he would have no trouble selling corner lots, for the country is full of men and women who buy real estate on maps.
In New York I found friends debating whether to sell the homes they had established, by thrift and industry, so that they could take advantage of boom prices.
In Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg it had been the same. Not only city properties, but farm lands were for sale everywhere. The friends I visited were all dealing in real estate on the side—no matter what their professions might be. This preoccupation led to some amusing consequences, and I have a happy recollection of one joyous half-hour in a mining town in British Columbia. I had been visiting a great smelter in the company of an engineer who dealt in real estate on the side.
As we were leaving the smelter he introduced me to the smoke expert of the institution. That sounds innocent enough, for, like me, you probably do not know what a "smoke expert" is. I asked for explanations, and right there the trouble began. I found that the "smoke expert" is really a botanical pathologist, whose business it is to show that smelter smoke does not cause all the damage that afflicts the crops of farmers and orchardists within a radius of fifty miles. As the real-estate agent had been telling me that British Columbia is entirely free from all bugs, blights, and pests, my interest was aroused at once.
"Do you mean to tell me that there really are blights and destructive fungi in this province?" I asked incredulously.
The "smoke expert" made a gesture of despair.
"The place is simply full of them."
"Come on! Don't listen to him!" yelled the real-estate man, recognizing the mistake he had made. "He's the damnedest liar in British Columbia."
"Wait a minute," I replied. "I want to know. That is what I am here for. Now, tell me please, please, what orchard pests there are?"