tance was given to make it easy for the
settler to transport his effects and to select his new home.

As a result of these aggressive efforts, the ranks of incoming
Americans, negligible in the earlier years, rose to astounding
proportions--from seven hundred in 1897 to fifteen thousand in 1900 and
one hundred thousand in 1911. This influx had a decisive effect on the
West. It was not only what these well-to-do, progressive settlers
achieved themselves that counted, but the effect of their example upon
others. Every American who preferred Canada to his own land persuaded
an Englishman or a Scotsman that the star of empire was passing to the
north.

Backed by this convincing argument, Mr Sifton now turned to the United
Kingdom. For many years his predecessors had directed their chief
efforts to this field. Early in the eighties a large influx of British
and Irish immigrants had come, but most of them had quickly passed to
the United States. In the {225} nineties scarcely ten thousand a year
crossed from the crowded British Isles to Canada, while the United
States secured thirty or forty thousand. Now conditions were soon
reversed. The immigration campaign was lifted out of the routine and
dry rot into which it had fallen. Advertisements of a kind new to
British readers were inserted in the press, the schools were filled
with attractive literature, and patriotic and philanthropic agencies
were brought into service. Typical of this activity was the erection
of a great arch of wheat in the Strand, London, during the Coronation
ceremonies of 1902. Its visible munificence and its modest mottoes,
'Canada the granary of the Empire' and 'Canada offers 160 acres free to
every man,' carried a telling message to millions. From nine or ten
thousand in the nineties British immigration into Canada rose to fifty
thousand in 1904 and over a hundred and twenty thousand in 1911.
Australia soon followed Canada's example, with the result that whereas
in 1900 only one of every three emigrants who left the British Isles
remained under the flag, a dozen years later the proportions had grown
to four out of every five. This was empire-building of the most
practical kind.

{226}

This incoming of English-speaking peoples also brought its problems.
The Americans contributed largely to the rise of the 'subdivision
expert,' though in this matter of land speculation the native sons soon
bettered their instructors. The British immig