fted across the border; many returned to their old homes, their
dreams fulfilled or shattered; yet the vast majority remained. Never
had any country so great a task of assimilation as faced Canada,
with 3,000,000 pouring into a country of 5,000,000 in a dozen years.
Fortunately the great bulk of the newcomers were of the old stocks.

Closely linked with immigration in promoting the prosperity of
the country were the land policy and the railway policy of the
Administration. The system of granting free homesteads to settlers
was continued on an even more generous scale. The 1800 entries for
homesteads in 1896 had become 40,000 ten years later. In 1906 land equal
in area to Massachusetts and Delaware was given away; in 1908 a Wales,
in 1909 five Prince Edward Islands, and in 1910 and 1911 a Belgium, a
Netherlands, and two Montenegros passed from the state to the settler.
Unfortunately not every homesteader became an active farmer, and
production, though mounting fast, could not keep pace with speculation.

Railway building had almost ceased after the completion of the Canadian
Pacific system. Now it revived on a greater scale than ever before. In
the twenty years after 1896 the miles in operation grew from 16,000 to
nearly 40,000. Two new transcontinentals were added, and the older roads
took on a new lease of life. At the end of this period of expansion,
only the United States, Germany, and Russia had railroad mileage
exceeding that of Canada. Much of the building was premature or
duplicated other roads. The scramble for state aid, federal and
provincial, had demoralized Canadian politics. A large part of the notes
the country rashly backed, by the policy of guaranteeing bond issues,
were in time presented for payment. Yet the railway policies of the
period were broadly justified. New country was opened to settlers;
outlets to the sea were provided; capital was obtained in the years when
it was still abundant and cheap; the whole industry of the country
was stimulated; East was bound closer to West and depth was added to
length.*

* During the Great War it became necessary for the Federal
Government to take over both the National Transcontinental,
running from Moncton in New Brunswick to Winnipeg, and the
Canadian Northern, running from ocean to ocean, and to
incorporate both, along with the Intercolonial, in the
Canadian National Railways, a system fourteen thousand miles
in length.