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.

Much more significant, however, was the influx of American settlers,
which reached a great height soon afterwards. Mr Sifton knew that no
settlers could be had anywhere with more enterprise, capital, and
practical experience of western needs than the farmers of the western
and mid-western states. As these states became settled, many farmers
who desired larger scope for their energy or farms for their growing
sons were in the mood to listen to tales of pastures new. Among these
Americans, then, the minister prepared to spread his glad tidings of
the Canadian plains. Agents were appointed for each likely state, with
sub-agents who were paid a commission for every settler who came. The
land of promise was pictured in attractive, compelling booklets, and in
advertisements inserted in seven or eight thousand farm and weekly
papers. All inquiries were {224} systematically followed up. In
co-operation with the railways, free trips were arranged for parties of
farmers and for press associations, to give the personal touch needed
to vitalize the campaign. State and county fairs were utilized to keep
Canada to the fore. Every assis