“One case was a very choice piece of land near to the social and educational advantages of a large town, and another enjoyed the same favourable position but was not quite such good land throughout, but had the very best grazing where it could not be used for cereals or root crops. In the one case the payments ($30 an acre) were completed in seven years, and in the other ($15) five years were found sufficient to acquire a clean bill of the rights to the property, and both men are wealthy citizens to-day. This does give assurance that is certainly needed in the face of the misrepresentative and conflicting statements which have been circulated in the Motherland, where it is impossible to verify on the spot one account or another. It provides an opening at once for the family or for the young couple without children, who are rightly advised that they should not take up a homestead at a point far distant from social life, at least until they have had experience, which they can only acquire by living in close touch with neighbours who are farming to some purpose.
“Candidly, the homesteads now available, and until the railway system has been further developed, are too far away from the railway track. But it is only a question of a few years of legitimate development until these points have been opened up, where some of the finest land on the continent will be brought within easy reach of the world’s markets. In the meantime, and while the new-comer is gaining experience and paying by his labour for a piece of land that can never depreciate in value, he is not precluded from selecting and acquiring his homestead. But the writer cannot advise penniless individuals to come out in the hope of taking up homestead duties at a remote point from the railway with the expectation of making good on it right away. The man with a bit of capital cannot fail to employ it to far better purpose in Canada than he is ever likely to use it at home. He need not ‘risk’ it until he has had every opportunity to test his investments on the spot. It is broadly on the land, the value of which by the legitimate process continues to increase with every season in which it has come under the hand of the cultivator. In the more thickly populated centres land values have increased enormously within the short period of five years; many of these, no doubt, have been rushed up to a fictitious figure by real estate jobbers, but where large manufacturing and wholesale houses have been compelled to establish themselves in response to a demand that is almost unprecedented in its all but instantaneous growth, these values are at once legitimate and permanent.”