Foremost in numbers were the Ruthenians from Galicia.Most distinctive were the Doukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military service.The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when it took the form of midwinter pilgrimages in nature's garb, and the clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern or southern Europe.Ruthenians and Poles, however, continued to come down to the eve of the Great War, and nearly all settled on western lands.Jewish Poland sent its thousands who settled in the larger cities, until Montreal had more Jews than Jerusalem and its Protestant schools held their Easter holidays in Passover.Italian navvies came also by the thousands, but mainly as birds of passage; and Greeks and men from the Balkan States were limited in numbers.Of the three million immigrants who came to Canada from the beginning of the century to the outbreak of the war, some eight hundred thousand came from continental Europe, and of these the Ruthenians, Jews, Italians, and Scandinavians were the most numerous.
It was in the United States that Canada made the greatest efforts to obtain settlers and that she achieved the most striking success.Beginning in 1897 advertisements were placed in five or six thousand American farm and weekly newspapers.Booklets were distributed by the million.Hundreds of farmer delegates were given free trips through the promised land.Agents were appointed in each likely State, with sub-agents who were paid a bonus on every actual settler.The first settlers sent back word of limitless land to be had for a song, and of No.1 Northern Wheat that ran thirty or forty bushels to the acre.Soon immigration from the States began; the trickle became a trek; the trek, a stampede.In 1896 the immigrants from the United States to Canada had been so few as not to be recorded; in 1897 there were 2000;in 1899, 12,000; in the fiscal year 1902-03, 50,000; and in 1912-13, 139,000.The new immigrants proved to be the best of settlers; nearly all were progressive farmers experienced in western methods and possessed of capital.The countermovement from Canada to the United States never wholly ceased, but it slackened and was much more than offset by this northward rush.
Nothing so helped to confirm Canadian confidence in their own land and to make the outside world share this high estimate as this unimpeachable evidence from over a million American newcomers who found in Canada, between 1897 and 1914, greater opportunities than even the United States could offer.The Ministry then carried its propaganda to Great Britain.
Newspapers, schools, exhibitions were used in ways which startled the stolid Englishman into attention.Circumstances played into the hands of the propagandists, who took advantage of the flow of United States settlers into the West, the Klondike gold fields rush, the presence of Laurier at the Jubilee festivities at London in 1897, Canada's share in the Boer War.British immigrants rose to 50,000 in 1903-04, to 120,000 in 1907-08, and to 150,000 in 1912-13.From 1897 to the outbreak of the war over 1,100,000 Britishers came to Canada.Three out of four were English, the rest mainly Scotch; the Irish, who once had come in tens of thousands and whose descendants still formed the largest element in the English-speaking peoples of Canada, now sent only one man for every twelve from England.The gates of Canadian immigration, however, were not thrown open to all comers.The criminal, the insane and feeble-minded, the diseased, and others likely to become public charges, were barred altogether or allowed to remain provisionally, subject to deportation within three years.Immigrants sent out by British charitable societies were subjected, after 1908, to rigid inspection before leaving England.No immigrant was admitted without sufficient money in his purse to tide over the first few weeks, unless he were going to farm work or responsible relatives.Asiatics were restricted by special regulations.Steadily the bars were raised higher.
Not all the 3,000,000 who came to Canada between 1897 and 1914remained.Many drifted 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 1800entries 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.
