The ultimate consumer, of course, is the one who pays the freight
and stands the cost of all this. Hence we have the swift growth
of American discontent with living conditions. There is no longer
land for free homes in America. This is no longer a land of
opportunity. It is no longer a poor man's country. We have
arrived all too swiftly upon the ways of the Old World. And
today, in spite of our love of peace, we are in an Old World's
war!
The insatiable demand of Americans for cheap lands assumed a
certain international phase at the period lying between 1900 and
1913 or later--the years of the last great boom in Canadian
lands. The Dominion Government, represented by shrewd and
enterprising men able to handle large undertakings, saw with a
certain satisfaction of its own the swift passing from the market
of all the cheap lands of the United States. It was proved to the
satisfaction of all that very large tracts of the Canadian plains
also would raise wheat, quite as well as had the prairies of
Montana or Dakota. The Canadian railroads, with lands to sell,
began to advertise the wheat industry in Alberta and
Saskatchewan.
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