Rapid industrial expansion is proceeding in other provinces, with a consequent demand for workers of all classes, and altogether, I am sure that the British immigrant of the right stamp—used to work and not expecting to get “good money” without giving a due equivalent for it—may find many an opening in Canada—in the cultivation of the soil, or in some other of the numerous occupations which civilized man has devised for himself. But there comes from British Columbia the warning, which may apply to other provinces also, that “the man without a trade, the clerk, the accountant and the semi-professional” has not a good chance for employment, unless he will do manual work in an emergency, or has means of support “for six months in a year while seeking a situation.” XVII THE WOMAN CANADA NEEDS JUDGING by statistics, it may be averred that Canada needs women in general, especially in some districts, even more than men. At any rate, according to the census taken in 1911 there was, in a total population of a little over seven millions, an excess of males over females of four hundred and thirty-seven thousand, and as each year the immigration returns show the arrival of more men than women (the figures for 1911 were 211,266 males and 82,922 females), the disproportion between the sexes is growing continually greater; but it cannot be said that at present the Dominion makes the same effort to attract women as men. For instance, the bonus given to booking agents is less on a woman than a man, and the only way in which a woman can acquire a free grant of Dominion crown lands is in the character of a widowed mother of a child, or children, under eighteen years of age. Possibly this inequality of opportunity has arisen from the notion that a woman is not suited for doing homestead duties—and many women are not—but as a matter of fact the wife of a struggling newcomer is often left alone for weeks at a time on the homestead, while her husband “hires himself out” to a farmer, or works on a new railway. In British Columbia, as already mentioned, a woman may take up a pre-emption, which is practically the same—so far as the obligations of residence and cultivation are concerned—as the Dominion free grants.