In its competition with the United States to attract settlers, the federal government instituted more liberal homesteading arrangements with some ethnic groups. Two communities of Mennonites (numbering about 7,000) from the Russian Ukraine were attracted to southern Manitoba with promises of freedom from military service, subsidized ocean passage, and two blocks of settlement lands consisting of 8 and 17 townships. Further arrangements allowed Mennonite families to live in villages and still earn title to their homesteads without fulfilling the residency requirement.