onder what this latest
vast migration of Saxon blood portends for future empire. The Jutes
and Angles and Saxons poured into ancient Albion for just one
reason--to acquire each for his own freehold of land. Look at the
ancient words! Freehold of land! For what else have a million and a
half British born come to the free homesteads of Canada? For freehold
of land--land unoppressed by taxes for war lords; land unoppressed by
tithes for landlord; land absolutely free to the worker. That such a
migration should break in waves over Canadian life and leave it
untouched, uninfluenced, unswerved, is as inconceivable as that the
Jutes and Angles and Saxons could have settled in ancient Albion and
not made it their own.

II

For years Canada was regarded chiefly in England as a dumping ground
for slums. "You have broken your mother's heart," thundered an English
magistrate to a young culprit. "You have sent your father in sorrow to
the grave. Why--I ask you--do you not go to Canada?" That such
material did not offer the best fiber for the making of a nation in
Canada did not dawn on this insular magisterial dignitary; and the
sentiments uttered were reflected in the activities of countless
philanthropies that seemed to think the porcine could be transmogrified
into the human by a simple transfer from the pig-sty of their own vices
and failure to the free untrammeled life of a colony. Fortunately
Canada has a climate that kills men who won't work. Men must stand on
their own feet in Canada, and keep those feet hustling in winter--or
die. It is not a land for people who think; the world owes them a
living. They have to earn the living and earn it hard, and if they
don't earn it, there are neither free soup kitchens nor maudlin
charities to fill idle stomachs with some other man's earnings.

"Why do you think so many young Englishmen fail to make good in
Canada?" I asked a young Yorkshire mill hand who had come to Canada
with his five brothers and homesteaded nearly a thousand acres on the
north bank of the Saskatchewan. The house was built of logs and clay.
There was not a piece of store furniture in it except the stove. The
beds were berths extemporized ship-fashion, with cowhides and
bear-skins for covering. The seats were benches. The table was a
rough-hewn plank. These young factory hands had things reduced to the
simplicity of a Robinson Crusoe. They had come out each with less than
one hundred dollar