This simple device for the conquest of aridity had not been discovered when I became a Westerner. But there was no reason why immigration should not have been fostered on wiser lines than those that were followed. The immigration policy of the then Dominion Government, viewed in the light of 1924, is something wonderful to behold; and its literature something terrible to read. It was represented that a British family arriving with seven hundred and twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents could carry their farm until their farm carried them. It was an alluring prospect that the Queen’s Government held out to the Queen’s subjects. The spirit of it was “You tickle the soil with a plowshare, and it giggles you back a fortune.” There wasn’t a word of cautionary advice. The newcomer was to discover his homestead, build a house, buy a yoke of oxen, a wagon and a plow, and watch himself grow rich with his growing grain. It used to be said, with some sediment of truth, no doubt, that Government agents told the confiding Englishman, who had never seen a milkpail, that his oxen would plow the land all day and furnish cream at sunset. There was great need for people in the illimitable, empty country; but there was greater need for very uncommon common sense among those who procured the people. The politician and his henchmen who were thinking of votes risked none of their own money on immigration promotions. But there were other interests, who sincerely desired to settle the prairies with good people, and who obligated their own and others’ finances to that end--the owners of the Manitoba North Western, for example. Over and above their means for raising capital for building the railway, they established companies for furnishing the railway’s territory with the settlers who alone could furnish the railway with the traffic, which alone could keep it alive. The Commercial Colonization Company was chiefly concerned with catching the immigrant. The Canadian Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company financed him, when, at his own charges, he arrived on the scene of his predicted triumph. Legislation was procured under which a lien could be placed on the homestead--the 160 acres of land--while it was still the property of the Canadian Government, and the homesteader was performing the work which, after three years, would secure him a patent. In those days no intending farmer in his senses thought of buying land, when he could get 160 acres free, and could pre-empt another quarter section, with the right to buy it at $2.50 an acre. The emigrant was told a farm would be selected for him, and that the Settlers’ Loan and Trust Company would build a house, dig a well, furnish a yoke of stout and trusty oxen, a wagon, a plow, and other items of a farmer’s outfit, and would ask no payments for two years, by which time, all being fairly well, his crops would at least enable him to live and meet the fixed charges of his debt.