This thesis examines the rate and pattern of settlement of the Canadian Prairies over the period of the 'Wheat Boom'. The principal aim of the work Is to explain the economic reasons for the late start to that settlement. Economic growth of the Canadian Prairies did not begin until almost the turn of the 20th. century, long after the initial occupation of the American West. I hypothesise in this thesis that the delay in the development of the Canadian Prairies was principally due to an initial lack of appropriate technology. The growing season In Canada is shorter than that further south, leaving grain farmers with little time to sow in spring and harvest In the fall. The technology available in 1880 enabled farmers to crop less than 50 acres even in the best areas, making farming uneconomical over most of the Prairie area. The technology available to the Prairie farmer over the period is carefully examined to determine the effects of various changes which occurred. In order to analyze the implications of technological change, a number of representative Prairie farms are modelled using the technique of dynamic linear programming. Five locations which were first occupied on different dates are analyzed, and for each location the value of capitalised rent for a typical new farm is calculated on four dates. The results of these calculations show that in 1880 most Prairie land was economically worthless. Over time all the hypothetical farms showed Increases in value, and settlement appears to have occurred on approximately the date at which the calculated value of the land rose above zero. The reasons for the increases in the value of the land are examined, and the most important exogenous change appears to have been the improvement of mechanical farming equipment. The development of appropriate 'dry-farming' techniques was also important, but it is argued that this was endogenous to Prairie growth. Wheat prices did not begin to increase until about 1904 and therefore were not a cause of the start of the 'Wheat Boom', although they contribute significantly to farming profits by 1910. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

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Between the 1880s and the Great Depression agriculture emerged and matured as the mainstay of the prairie economy. Farm workers were essential to the developing economy and society, but their place in the rural west was ambiguous. / During the pioneering period, labour shortages and accessible land gave farm workers bargaining strength in the labour market and a niche in prairie society. A cooperative working relationship and a shared ideology resulted in a lack of overt conflict between labour and capital. / But as lands were taken, farm workers faced more and more the necessity of remaining as wage labourers. Their position became institutionalized. / The First World War highlighted the conflict that was fundamental to labour-capital relations, as farm workers and farmers alike bolstered their economic positions. Labour and capital entered the post-war decade recognizing the increasing divergence of their aims. Their relationship became more overtly conflictual. / Throughout this transformation, farm workers used strategies to influence the shape and rate of change in the industry and to maintain significant control over their own working lives. They responded as members of the working class, as active agents in relationships with their employers and with capitalism.

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