tickets at one cent a mile. Since the American railroads do not furnish a one cent rate, the Canadian authorities pay the difference. In Alberta alone this cost was $3000

this year.

After the American farmer gets his crop gathered he can go to Canada for six weeks and help in the harvest there. Often renters use this method to become acquainted with a relatively new country that has plenty of land open to homestead. A certain percentage remains but it has been the custom of a greater percentage to return in a year or two to make homes in Canada. Hence, one of the important sources of farm labor has been the people who wish to make their homes in Canada.

I have read somewhere that Canada's wonderful productive record was due to the importation of American farm labor. Canada received 403,000 immigrants in 1913 and 49,000 in 1916, a loss of 354,000. In the meantime she placed 428,000 men under arms and 350,000 in munition factories. Do not the 17,000 farm laborers she borrowed from the United States, after we had harvested our own crops, look rather insignificant? Further, she got 7000 on condition only that she would return an equal number to us. Make no mistake, Canada is helping to win this

war out of her own loins.

Canada's homestead law requires three years' residence. Last year as an extra inducement to obtain farm labor the government offered to accept the season's employment on any farmer's farm in lieu of one year's residence.

How do they manage to prevent an oversupply? The situation is carefully watched and when there are too many laborers in any locality their coming is stopped by notifying the agents in the United States not to furnish the transportation rates. However, once during the past season at Calgary there was an oversupply. The living expenses of a group of men were paid for a couple of weeks until labor was found for them.

Another source of farm labor for the prairie provinces

is eastern Canada. On or about September first, after the harvest season is over in the East, the railroad sells a ticket from any point in that territory to Winnipeg for $12.00. If the purchaser wishes to return within three months and has a signed statement that he has worked for at least 30 days for a farmer, he may buy a return ticket for $18.00.

When I took the train at Winnipeg for Ottawa on October 31, the depot was crowded with harvest hands returning from their work. The passenger agent said that this return stream would continue for eight weeks. One hundred and thirty-five of these harvest hands went on the same train I did, a distance of 1300 miles requiring two days' and nights' travel. One middle-aged man stated he had worked twenty days receiving $4.00 for shocking and $5.00 a day and board for threshing. When asked if he could afford to come that distance, he said, "There was no money in it but it gave me a chance to see the country without being out anything." His son had been there the year before and had stayed the full three months.

Another man from Watertown, New York, said he had been coming every year during the past eight years. As a result, he established his own son on a farm in Saskatchewan. The immigration agent stated that during the past season there had been furnished the prairie provinces 10,000 laborers from the United States, 15,000 from eastern Canada, while 12,000 persons were obtained from the cities. and towns of western Canada.

SHIFTING OCCUPATIONS

A great deal of emphasis was placed not only upon the discontinuance of unnecessary occupations but on the shifting from the cities to the country. Real estate men were hard hit by the collapse of city real estate which had begun before the war broke out. As previously stated there was an almost complete cessation of construction, resumption of which is just now beginning to take

place. Statistics could not be given but actual instances of carpenters, real estate men, lawyers and doctors were mentioned who had not only taken up farming upon the outbreak of the war but had prospered decidedly. The propaganda still continues. Even at late as January 12, the Canadian Food Bulletin says: "The people who are nonproducers must make up for the labor shortage. There must be thorough organization of the free labor of our cities. Tens of thousands more city people must become producers of food. . . . 'Fight or Farm' should be our motto this year.'

Another phase of the changing labor supply is the fact that the prairie provinces are so extensive that there is quite likely to be a partial crop failure somewhere. The people from such regions are in the habit of going into other sections for work. Thus the shortage of labor next year will depend upon the character of the crop. If it is a bumper crop they may have some trouble, but if it is just an ordinary crop they will handle it in some way.

Still another aspect of the transmutation of labor was pointed out by a manufacturer of farm implements in Regina. He employs at various times from 180 to 400 men. He had lost as high as 40 men at a time to other companies who had their business so organized as to be able to pay higher wages. Having, however, made his estimates on established prices for articles the demand for which did not justify an increase, he was compelled to replace his losses from other employers less fortunate than himself. There was thus a shifting all the way along the line from the lowest to the highest paid laborers. He did not know how much slack there was left, but he felt labor had not risen as rapidly as commodities; hence the shifting would need to continue. It is those industries which employ the highest and lowest paid laborers that are vitally affected. The wages of the highest and lowest laborers must be changed. In the intermediate industries it is the men and not the wages that are changed. This man, for example, had the

annoyance of breaking in new men but otherwise, he asserted, he managed to get along without any special loss. Of course, the situation above outlined applies particularly to certain groups of relatively unskilled laborers.

WORKING HARDER

Many observers emphasized the fact that the farm labor problem was being met by the shifting of the population from the city to the country and by the farmer and his family working harder.

Many of the more prosperous farmers and their families do not ordinarily work up to their full capacity. This fact was especially affirmed by a grain dealer and seedsman at Indian Head. He asserted emphatically that the Saskatchewan 1917 grain crop was the most economically produced crop within 15 years despite the high cost of labor, for three reasons:

1. The small amount of straw in proportion to grain. 2. Use of labor-saving machinery.

3. Many farmers worked who did not ordinarily do so. He could name fifty to sixty farmers within ten miles who this season helped to do their own work. When labor could be easily attained at $2.00 a day these men did not work; when it was difficult to obtain labor at $4.00 per day, the farmers did the work. This was a distinct saving.

On the other hand, an observer in eastern Canada remarked that many people had worked too hard, especially women. "They can do this for a while," he said, "but they cannot keep it up. It is like overloading an engine. It will pull the load, but after a while it will begin to knock." The same observer, however, asserted that some farmers had not worked too hard and some were not work. ing as hard as they might.

CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT

The Minister of Agriculture in Alberta advised the farmers last spring to hire their men for nine months in order to have them in the fall to harvest the crops. He advised the use of the men between seed-time and harvest in breaking land and summer fallowing in order to increase the acreage of crops. As the farmers had made money in 1916, they were able to comply. The few months' extra pay was of little consequence compared with the return they would get at present prices.

The Superintendent of the Dominion Experiment Station at Indian Head said that it required one man to about 100 acres of grain seeded. Thus, if a man owned a section of land he would probably seed each year about 400 acres and would require three additional men for six weeks during seeding and an equal number for an equal period during harvest. More than that number were required during threshing but this extra help would be furnished, if desired, by the threshing outfit.

He thought it would be far better if the farmer employed his men throughout the season. It was the itinerant character of the labor, he maintained, that made wages so high.

One of the factors in harvesting crops was the custom of storekeepers in small towns of from 500 to 2000 population, to close their stores at four o'clock in the afternoon. With their clerks and members of the family they would go in automobiles and help some farmer shock his grain, this operation being the "peak load." The party would work, say from four to nine o'clock, it still being broad daylight at the latter hour. The only cost to the farmer was a good supper at the close. Some other night these same people would go out and help another farmer. Sometimes the work would not be as well done as by regular farm hands but the feeling created between country districts and towns was asserted by the Minister of Education of Mani