"So long as the American States had free, fertile lands, it was natural that population should flow into the Republic. America, in the mind of Europe, was the land of promise and the home of freedom, and the United States was America. Canada was but a fringe of inhospitable British territory, where the spring came late and summer was brief, and winter was long and stern. The first great impulse to settlement came with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but an even more material factor in Canadian development was the comparative exhaustion of the free land of the Western States and the increasing reputation of the Canadian West as a wheat-growing country. If the 20th century belongs to Canada, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier has said, it is primarily because the American Republic has become a far less formidable competitor for British and European immigration, and because thousands of American farmers have discovered that they can sell their improved farms at good prices and secure lands of equal value in Canada for themselves and their sons with a very small investment of capital. {65} "The total immigration since 1901 is estimated at 1,200,000. In that year it was 49,149. It rose in 1902 to 67,379. Thence there was a steady increase until 1907, when the figures were 262,469. In 1908 the total immigration was between 140, 000 and 142,000, and for this year the estimate is 200,000. British immigrants began to come in considerable Volume in 1901, when there were 17,269 arrivals. The best year was 1907, when the number reported was 120,182, as compared with 83,975 from the Continent of Europe and 58,312 from the United States. The decline in 1908 was chiefly in British and European immigration. Between 50,000 and 55,000 came from across the border, which was a greater number than came from either Britain or Europe. This year it is estimated that 70,000 Americans will come into the country. They will take up between 20,000 and 25,000 homesteads, and as it is considered that they bring property to the average value of $1,000 each this would give a total new capital of $70,000,000. In 1907, the year in which we had our greatest Volume of immigration, there were 178,500 British and Americans as compared with 84,000 from the Continent of Europe. For the last year there were 100,000 British and Americans and not a third as many from Europe.