dollars to thirty dollars.

Such profits are the best advertisement for a propaganda. There
followed a land boom compared to which the gold boom had been mild.
American settlers came in special cars, in special trains, in relays of
special trains. Before Canada had wakened up to it fifty thousand
American settlers had trekked across the border. You met them in Peace
River. You met them at Athabasca. You met them on far reaches of the
Saskatchewan. And land jumped in value from five dollars to fifteen
dollars, from fifteen dollars to thirty dollars an acre. When Canada's
yearly immigration reached the proportions of four hundred
thousand--half Americans--it is not exaggerating to say the prairie
took fire. Villages grew into cities overnight. Edmonton and Calgary
and Moose Jaw and Regina--formerly jumping-off places into a
no-man's-land--became metropolitan cities of twenty-five to fifty
thousand people. If every American settler averaged fifteen hundred
dollars on his person at this period--as customs entries prove--it may
be confidently set down that his value as a producer and worker was
another fifteen hundred dollars. Wheat exports jumped to over one
hundred million dollars a year. Flour mills and elevators financed by
western American capital strung across the prairie like beads on a
string.

If this was an "Americanizing of Canada," it was not a bad thing.
Every part of Canada felt the quickened pulse. Two more
transcontinental railroads had to be built. All-red routes of
round-the-globe steam ships were established; all-red round-the-world
cables were laid. The quickened pulse was Canada's passing from
hobble-de-hoy adolescence with a chip on the shoulder and a tremor in
the throat to big strong, silent, self-confident manhood.