The whole essence of the scheme is the getting hold
of the emigrant while he is young and pliable and before he has become adversely affected by his environment. Experience should have taught us by now how useless it is to send out city-bred adults and expect them to make a success on the land—a policy which in the past has only swelled the ranks of the unemployed in cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto. There are, of course, exceptions to prove the rule. The writer recalls the case of a Londoner who arrived in the immigration sheds in Winnipeg with the proverbial dollar in his pocket and who six years later won against all corners the prize for the best-grown wheat in Saskatchewan ! That recalls a Boer War story. An officer, greatly struck by a man's marvellously long sight and power of picking up the enemy's traces over a huge panorama of brown country, turned to his sergeant and remarked, " Wonderful man that ! Colonial, of course, brought up on the Veld ? " " No, sir, London, Whiteehapel. Barrow-man previous to enlistment." There is nothing the Londoner cannot do, and excel in, from Charlie Chaplin to Universal History.
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