warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The
compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy
but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were set up, it was
accepted by the laity.

With this thorny question out of the way, the Government turned to
what it recognized as its greatest task, the promotion of the country's
material prosperity. For years industry had been at a standstill.
Exports and imports had ceased to expand; railway building had halted;
emigrants outnumbered immigrants. The West, the center of so many
hopes, the object of so many sacrifices, had not proved the El Dorado so
eagerly sought by fortune hunters and home builders. There were little
over two hundred thousand white men west of the Great Lakes. Homesteads
had been offered freely; but in 1896 only eighteen hundred were taken
up, and less than a third of these by Canadians from the East. The stock
of the Canadian Pacific was selling at fifty. All but a few had begun to
lose faith in the promise of the West.

Then suddenly a change came. The failure of the West to lure pioneers
was not due to poverty of soil or lack of natural riches: its resources
were greater than the most reckless orator had dreamed. It was merely
that its time had not come and that the men in charge of the country's
affairs had not thrown enough energy into the task of speeding the
coming of that time. Now fortune worked with Canada, not against it. The
long and steady fall of prices, and particularly of the prices of farm
products, ended; and a rapid rise began to make farming pay once more.
The good free lands of the United States had nearly all been taken up.
Canada's West was now the last great reserve of free and fertile land.
Improvements in farming methods made it possible to cope with the
peculiar problems of prairie husbandry. British capital, moreover, no
longer found so ready an outlet in the United States, which was now
financing its own development; and it had suffered severe losses in
Argentine smashes and Australian droughts. Capital, therefore, was free
to turn to Canada.

But it was not enough merely to have the resources; it was essential to
display them and to disclose their value. Canada needed millions of
men of the right stock, and fortunately there were millions who needed
Canada. The work of the Government was to put the facts before these
potential settlers. The new Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton,
him