EMIGRATION TO CANADA [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It
is reasonable to expect the prairie farmer to welcome an immigrant. I have seen hundreds of acres of wheat land in Manitoba with the sheaves cut and lying down for weeks (until they were picked up to be thrashed) because the farmers were unable to obtain men to stook them. It is a common thing in this Province to see one man farming 320 acres single handed. I know of one farmer who owned 480 acres (all under cultivation), and he told me that for some years the only hired help he had was a boy to harrow in the spring and the usual threshing gang in the Fall. He did the whole of the work himself owing to the difficulty of getting help. It was not surprising that at the age of about forty or forty-five he was sick and tired of it all.
I knew an old Irishman, aged eighty, who owned a farm of 320 acres in Manitoba, with horses, cattle, and implements, but he could get no help until a young Englishman (from London with one season's experience ont there) came along in the spring and took the job in hand. But for this English- man there would have been no erop that year. The stables and cattle-barn had not been cleaned out all the winter (there was no one to do it), and the manure was piled so high that the horns of the cattle touched the roof of the barn. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it is true for I saw it myself. It was certainly an exceptional case ; but the 320 acre farm being worked by one man is not uncommon. And, again, I say it is reasonable to expect the prairie farmer to welcome an immigrant.—I am, Sir, &c., EX-GUNNER.
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