The new ministers at Ottawa rose to the occasion. They were not content to be 'merely flies on the wheel,' in Sir Richard {221} Cartwright's unlucky phrase of 1876. They adopted a vigorous and many-sided policy for the development of the West and of all Canada. The preferential tariff and the prime minister's European tour admirably prepared the way. The British people now regarded Canada with lively interest, and for the first time the people of the Continent began to realize the potentialities of this new northern land. The general impression thus created was followed up by more specific measures, aiming to bring in men and capital, to extend and cheapen transportation, and to facilitate production. The call for settlers came first. Never has there been so systematic, thorough, and successful a campaign for immigrants as that which was launched and directed by the minister of the Interior, Mr, now Sir Clifford, Sifton. He knew the needs and the possibilities of the West at first hand. He brought to his office a businesslike efficiency and a constructive imagination only too rare at Ottawa. Through Continental Europe, through the United States, through the United Kingdom, with an enthusiasm unparalleled and an insistence which would not be denied, he sent forth the summons for men and women and {222} children to come and people the great plains of the Canadian West. It was from Continental Europe that the first notable accessions came. Western Europe, which in earlier decades had sent its swarms across the sea, now had few emigrants to give. Falling birth-rates, industrial development, or governments' desire to keep at home as much food for powder as might be, had slackened the outward flow. But the east held uncounted millions whom state oppression or economic leanness urged forth. From Russia the Doukhobors or Spirit-Wrestlers, eager to escape from the military service their Quakerlike creed forbade, turned to Canada, and by 1899 over seven thousand of these people were settled in the West. Austrian Poland sent forth each year some four to six thousand Ruthenians, more familiarly known as Galicians. Both contingents brought their problems, but they brought also notable contributions to the western melting-pot. Their clannishness, their differing social ideals, the influence of religious leaders who sought to keep them a people apart, created political and educational difficulties of undoubted seriousness. But they turned to farm production, not to selling real {223} estate, and in a few years many came to appreciate and follow Canadian ways, for good or for ill. And if Doukhobor communistic practices or religious frenzy had their drawbacks, they served to balance the unrestrained individualism and the materialism of other sections of the community, and to add vast potentialities of idealism to the nation's store.