ABSTRACT
The decades before World War I were a remarkable period in Canada’s economic history. Although settlement of the prairies began in earnest after 1896, the entire period back to 1871 witnessed substantial growth in per capita incomes.1 By all accounts this growth accelerated after 1896 as western development responded to rising wheat prices, the development of red fife wheat and the chilled steel plow, and the lack of opportunities for further expansion on the northern subhumid plains.2 Railroad expansion accelerated after the Canadian Pacific Railroad monopoly expired in 1888 and a diffused process of growth was evident in many areas of the country down to World War I. Canadian growth was accompanied throughout by inflows of capital and labor that increased dramatically early in the twentieth century.
