CHAPTER XIV
A PRAIRIE TOWN AND THE PRAIRIE POLICE
Any one who knows the plains of Canada is aware that they rise in three tiers, the rise having a westward trend, and that the scenery of them varies as greatly as does the vegetation. Any one who has only been through the Canadian plains in the train is under the impression that, save for a bit of rolling country here and there in the distance, they are as level as a billiard table; and that, except that parts are cultivated and other parts are not, they look the same almost from start to finish.
The moral is obvious. Do not suppose that from the train you can see even the surface of the world.
This seemingly endless flat land, then, holds hills and gullies, rivers and lakes—everything indeed but trees. But what am I saying? There are heaps of trees in reality. Only they have a habit of concealing themselves, and those who want to see them in haste should perhaps take a guide.
There is more monotony in the towns of the plains, I think, than in the plains themselves. Not but what these towns must have differences known to their inhabitants. A man who lived in Moosejaw might conceivably deny that he could feel equally at home in Regina. A citizen of Regina would not dream of admitting that he could find his way blindfold about Moosejaw. Nevertheless all these little towns are singularly alike in construction. It is reasonable that they should be. They are all centres of a country engaged in a single great industry—the raising of wheat. Other things are raised, but in such small quantities, comparatively, that they do not count. And the people engaged in this great industry of wheat-raising are on a particular equality as regards the work they do, the leisure they have, and the tastes that result from the combination of that work and leisure. Some are richer, some poorer, some are wise, some foolish, but mostly they are working together pretty hard. The towns represent the places where they come after their work to bargain and be amused. Moreover, as I suggested in a previous chapter, the model for all other towns of the plains has always been Winnipeg, and Winnipeg is the embodiment of the notion that a city may be a finer city than Chicago if it only tries hard enough.
Architecturally, Winnipeg looks as though it always has allowed, and always will allow, for its own expansion. Other great cities have grown up anyhow, usually on lines that suggest that their greatness was thrust upon them unexpectedly. Winnipeg too has grown big—beyond all expectation one would have thought—yet it suggests in its lines that it never felt, even in those far-off days when Main Street was the Hudson Bay trail, that it would be anything but tremendous. Very likely it is an accident that Winnipeg did possess this power of expanding and Winnipegers did not deliberately foresee and provide for its future vastness. Be this as it may, the towns of the plains are not going to leave anything to chance. They are so planned, that when the time comes they will be ready to outdo Winnipeg. They rather expect to outdo Winnipeg. They even warn you that they will. Here is an example. I got out at some little station on the plains—let us call it Thebes. I don't think there is a Thebes in existence, but if not, it will come along soon, for the classics as well as the Indian languages are being ransacked to provide names for Canada's thousands of new-born towns. I prefer the classical or Indian-named towns to those that bear hybrid titles like Higgsville. I saw at once that Thebes consisted of about twenty shacks and a store. It was all there, just outside the station, and beyond was level prairie again, with one or two farmhouses on the horizon—wooden boxes, like bathing-machines off their wheels to look at.
I should not have been impressed by the greatness of Thebes, present or future, had I not, just by the ticket office, come upon a great placard, calling attention to a plan of the district marked off in square blocks in red and black cross lines. Beneath were two fanciful spheres, side by side, such as statisticians use—a large one marked Winnipeg, a smaller one marked Thebes: also, the following notification:—
'In 1870 Winnipeg had 240 inhabitants.
In 1910 Winnipeg has 180,000 inhabitants.
In 1910 Thebes has 74 inhabitants.
How many will Thebes have in 1925?
Buy a Thebes town lot.'
It may be that the method is an American one, recalling that by which Martin Chuzzlewit was persuaded to buy a lot in Eden city. An old-fashioned Englishman, straight from the old country, might even now be scared by it, and decide on the strength of it not to become a citizen of Thebes. He need not be scared. He can dislike the advertisement if he chooses, but he should bear in mind that by just such advertisements men were attracted to prosperity in the States as much as to adversity—even in the Dickens period—that real cities as well as sham ones were built up by them, and that anyway most of the Canadian land thus advertised is of an easily ascertainable value. He should remember, too, that a man nowadays, certainly in the new world, is not presumed to take every advertisement he sees as Bible truth. A smart advertisement, such as the Thebes one, is to a Canadian or American simply a proof that whoever it is wishes to sell Thebes town lots is a go-ahead person who clearly wants to do business, who probably knows how business ought to be done, who is likely to come to the point of doing it more quickly and ably than a man who won't even take the trouble to attract attention. No doubt the purchase of town lots is bound to be a speculative business. These little prairie villages may or may not become Winnipegs. Of the particular chances a man must satisfy himself. That there are chances is a certainty; and the advertiser is only clothing that certainty in what he considers an attractive garb.