numbers warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The
compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic
hierarchy but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were
set up, it was accepted by the laity.

With this thorny question out of the way, the Government turned
to what it recognized as its greatest task, the promotion of the
country's material prosperity. For years industry had been at a
standstill. Exports and imports had ceased to expand; railway
building had halted; emigrants outnumbered immigrants. The West,
the center of so many hopes, the object of so many sacrifices,
had not proved the El Dorado so eagerly sought by fortune hunters
and home builders. There were little over two hundred thousand
white men west of the Great Lakes. Homesteads had been offered
freely; but in 1896 only eighteen hundred were taken up, and less
than a third of these by Canadians from the East. The stock of
the Canadian Pacific was selling at fifty. All but a few had
begun to lose faith in the promise of the West.

Then suddenly a change came. The failure of the West to lure
pioneers was not due to poverty of soil or lack of natural
riches: its resources were greater than the most reckless orator
had dreamed. It was merely that its time had not come and that
the men in charge of the country's affairs had not thrown enough
energy into the task of speeding the coming of that time. Now
fortune worked with Canada, not against it. The long and steady
fall of prices, and particularly of the prices of farm products,
ended; and a rapid rise began to make farming pay once more. The
good free lands of the United States had nearly all been taken
up. Canada's West was now the last great reserve of free and