taught to regard as the essentials of
production; but here capital was reduced to the minimum, and ability
left to nature. Many of the young men who took Horace Greeley's advice
and went West knew nothing about farming. I remember writing home that I
was in a country where the rolling stone gathered most moss. Possibly
the method adopted was the quickest way to get rich; living on capital
is all right provided somebody will replace the squandered resources.
While there were ample unoccupied lands, Uncle Sam looked kindly upon
these enterprising pioneers. It was only in the second Roosevelt
Administration that it dawned upon the national conscience that the
nation had some claim to be considered as well as the individual. Of
course all this is changed now; although I am not sure that western
Canada is not being educated in soil exhaustion by some of these
extemporised husbandmen whose habits and temperament lead them to seek
"fresh fields and pastures new." "We are not out here for our health,"
was the reply I got when I showed that my old-fashioned economic sense
was shocked by this substitution of land speculation for farming.

I am aware that this very uneconomic procedure is capable of some
plausible explanations. The opening up of the vast new territory by the
provision of local traffic for transcontinental lines was an object of
national urgency and importance. Nevertheless, I think it must now be
regretted that a little more thought was not given to the general
problem of rural economy, of which transit is but one factor. This may
be that irritating kind of wisdom which comes after the event, but I
cannot help regarding the policy of rewarding railroad enterprises with
unconditional grants of vast areas of agricultural land as one of the
many evidences of the urban domination over rural affairs.

Of the earlier settled portions of this section I cannot speak from
personal knowledge. But a recent magazine article,[3] "The Agrarian
Revolution in the Middle West," follows closely the line of my own
thoughts. In this article Mr. Joseph B. Ross, of Lafayette, Indiana, who
is making a special study of the evolution of American rural life,
considers it in three periods: from 1800 to 1835, from 1835 to 1890, and
from 1890 to the present time. In the middle period he shows how the
most progressive families raised their standard of living steadily with
the growing prosperity of the country. They built themselves stately
ho