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