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HEAD GATES OF THE LARGEST SINGLE IRRIGATION UNDERTAKING ON THE CONTINENT.

The Ambursen dam in this project is the longest in the world.

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A POOR MAN'S CHANCE

By

GEORGE H. CUSHING

VERYWHERE land is being spoiled by bad farming. Some of this is done by land owners, who know no better. Most of it is done by land renters, who know better but who rob the soil that they may make money easily -and move away. Canada has the bulk of the unspoiled land on two continents. She will not lease it to have it spoiled. At the same time she wants it farmed. To attract these land renters and to build up a nation of land owners, we built our ready-made farms-farms with houses, barns, fences and wells upon them. Now, in addition, we have decided to loan money to American land renters who are proven farmers, men who have made good and who own certain farm equipment. This renter moves his equipment from one farm to another and pays the same on the new that he would pay as rent on the old. Once there he has become a land owner, and as such is as much concerned with conserving his land.

as he is with increasing his crop. His position is completely changed."

This is the program of Canada's greatest railway as announced by the head of its department of natural resourcesJohn S. Dennis. He tells how easily it is all done.

"The land renter prefers to be a land owner. Anywhere he can get land on payments but he can't go any further with the financing; he can't build his house and other buildings with his ready money. We lend him what he needs; we help him past the corner."

Another thing-something beyond a chance to buy land on payments-is drawing farmers from the United States to Canada. Mr. Dennis expresses it thus:

"Irrigated farms are the oldest kind of farms. Natural rainfall may be too abundant or insufficient: either ruins a crop. Irrigation-especially when its water supply springs from the melting snows on nearby mountaintops-assures a

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A POOR MAN'S CHANCE

ern edge of the bowl some must be pushed out over the western edge; that accounts for the emigration from the United States to western Canada."

For forty years Mr. Dennis has been telling the truth about the vast reaches north of this country, but the tide of population was not ready to overflow from the United States and the railroads were not ready to expand. So the people scoffed and passed on.

Then over the same trail went the Canadian Pacific Railway laying its line to the Pacific Coast.

Then, ten years ago, events seemed to crystallize. The Canadian Pacific took Mr. Dennis into its organization; the United States showed the first signs of overflowing; and the emigration to western Canada began.

As might be expected from a graduate engineer who had spent thirty years on government work, Mr. Dennis would do nothing until he had made an engineer's survey of the controlled land and knew what it contained. This disclosed one strip of 3,000,000 acres which to his mind was ideal for safe exploitation. It was a rectangle of land, the southwest corner of which was cut away by the Bow river and the northeast corner of which gives place to the Red Deer river. Between these streams lay a princely estate of 1,200,000 acres of lowland irrigable with the waters of the Bow river and 1,800,000 acres of uplands, dependent for cultivation upon the rainfall provided by a kindly Providence.

At the point where Bow river ceases to hover along the southern boundary and starts due north, the Canadian Pacific Railway, under the direction of Mr. Dennis, threw up its first dam and built its first irrigation ditches. By organizing a selling force in every part of the United States and England he distributed this land and settlers began to arrive and also to give freight to the railroad.

Working as the head of the irrigation department, Mr. Dennis settled part of that 3,000,000 acres which immediately surrounds Calgary-on the western edge of the Bow river district. There remained the other two strips yet to be irrigated by this water supply from Bow river and to be distributed to land set

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It was about that time that the Canadian Pacific Railway decided that since. its holdings in land and other natural resources had a value of $200,000,000 they were big enough to warrant a general department of their own.

In casting about for the man who could handle this proposition, the Canadian Pacific ran over the records of those who had been serving the company. Mr. Dennis had built the system near Calgary and had sold the land which was irrigated by the ditches. What is more, he had started people to settle in that district and these settlers were producing freight which produced revenue. He was a natural choice.

One of his first undertakings under the new department was to extend irrigation to a second section of that 3,000,000 acre strip east of Calgary. The keynote of this was the new dam built on a new model and, incidentally, this is

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they need for the crops. Thus the melting snows from the mountaintops will assure a steady supply of water; the dam assures a full reservoir; and the full reservoir assures that the irrigation canals will water the land. This means that this irrigation project cannot fail.

In conference with his agents at Chicago and again in the western department, Mr. Dennis asked the question:

"How can we get settlers into western Canada and especially into the Bow river reservation?"

The answer almost unanimously was: "Help them to finance the purchase of that land."

One shrewd agent who had been through the central eastern portion of the United States, made this statement:

"The original owners of those farmsthe men who made the agricultural sections of those states famous-are no longer tillers of the soil. They have grown old and having made money have moved to the cities. Their sons have gone into other kinds of business, mostly in the cities. The old homesteads have been turned over to land renters. These renters, with no incentive to save the soil, are taking each year's crop in the easiest and most profitable way. For a temporary policy that is good enough but. as a long-time method it does not work

farming implements; and a little money. They could make the first payment on a farm and work it until it began to yield but they could not undertake to break the virgin soil, build the houses, the barns and the fences and in addition meet the expense of moving."

Right there, Mr. Dennis put in a word: "Suppose we loaned them enough money to do these things, how many men could you move to western Canada?"

The answer was again almost unani

mous:

"All you could possibly care for."

So far as Mr. Dennis was concerned, that ended it; he was ready to go ahead with the financing. But, the Canadian Pacific Railway had to be taken into consideration. It has seventeen thousand miles of railroad-the only carrier reaching from coast to coast on this continent. That means big business with big methods. It means big departments and big department heads with big men on a big and austere board sitting over them to direct their movements. It means that nothing is considered but things which involve good business methods with a profit as the result. This board sits at Montreal and passes upon the programs which come up from any one of the departments upon that far flung line. To Montreal Mr. Dennis went as the apostle

A POOR MAN'S CHANCE

of the prairies to plead the cause of the farm renter of the United States and of England. He wanted the big railroad to lend them money and he put it convincingly:

"You understand, gentlemen, that the money lenders will not advance money upon unimproved real estate. You know too that the banks of Canada cannot do so, being circumscribed in their transactions by proper and safe laws. Yet there are no such restrictions against this railroad. We have money which we can lend. If we should buy bonds with itthus lending it to other corporations-we would get but four per cent. By lending this money to these new farmers we can get six per cent-two per cent more than we could get elsewhere. It is, for us, a good business proposition.

"At the same time the borrowers are becoming grain and general produce growers and that means eastbound freight for us. They will need home comforts and farm implements; that will mean west bound freight for us. Every new settler adds to the traffic of this railroad."

"How much money will it take?" put in a practical director.

"It will cost about $2,000 to put up a small but comfortable house, a barn, to sink a well, and to build fence around the place. It might take $2,500. To

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finance the location of two hundred and fifty new farmers on our land, on readymade farms, would cost $500,000 the first year."

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"If these men are going to work it out, as Mr. Dennis says they are, I think we ought to be willing to lend them a little money until they get started," said one of the directors. 'Almost any business man will lend his partner enough money to help him buy a house if that house is going to make the partner more dependable. I can see no reason why a railroad which has the money, should not do the same thing with the men who want to make new homes, open new farms and create for it new traffic."

With that statement the thing was done. The Canadian Pacific Railway set aside, to be spent this year, $500,000. Next year it may set aside $5,000,000. It was a good business move at that. By loaning this money at six per cent the railroad gets two per cent more, or $10,000, than it could get by loaning it in any other way. In addition, it sells two hundred and fifty farms and establishes two hundred and fifty new sources of traffic. It was a good business move for the Canadian Pacific Railway-no one of the officials claims it is anything. more or less. But, it also gives two hundred and fifty men an opportunity to work farms for themselves.

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