THE LURE OF CANADA

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8190, 3 August 1912, Page 12

THE LURE OF CANADA

A DAY’S DRIVE WITH THE DOMINION'S WAGGON. (By G. Ward Price.) ALYTH. PERTHSHIRE. Rich scents pi liowers and damp earth, set ireo bi" tnc nigm s warm rain, lloated .n through the windows of the AirLe Anus. . , ~ , . A perfect spring morning, and it had brought an appetite that three boiied eggs and two iried whitings had only liexled. But the greys were being put in down in the yard, so there was no time tor more.

"What a fine pair!” is what people exclaim when they first see the grey mares tiiat take the Canadian Government's exhibitiou cart ail over Scotland, from. Glasgow to John o’ Groat's. X ? iiteen-two high, seven and nine years old, upstanding, proud mures, both of thorn, and matched to the last dapple. Fresh as paint they look as they come out of the stable in the tight, hard condition that ten to fifteen miles' daily work and good feeding bring. Minnie, bred at Balmoral, catches sight of me, a stranger, and decides at once that it is her duty, as a mare born in the purple, to show her spirit, bo she begins to nlfect groat dread of the etabiepa:l by the wall. ''Como on, lass I" says Jock, the ostler. "The pail. Don't you see that alarming pail?" urged Minnie with pricked ears, eyes wide, and nostrils stretched. But at last, alter much fuss and makebelieve fidgeting, she lets us "hitch" her up. . TEACHING THE PEOPLE TO EMIGRATE.

I had come to Aiyth to drive round for a fow days in this waggon and pair, for while 1 was trying to find out why Scots should bo leaving their country at such a rate that 4357 sailed for Canada during the month of March and 2698 to Australia and the United States, one of the many reasons given to me was that during the last few years very efficient agencies have been at work teaching the people to emigrate. The Canadian Government especially, and even some of the Canadian Provincial Governments, have sent emigration officers to Scotland, who move about the country delivering limelight lectures, and, ex-farmers themselves, giving advice to the laborer who ohafes under the narrow conditions of his homeland and is looking for a new country of great opportunity, And the thing that comes right home to even the lonliest cottar in the Highlands is the light Canadian farm waggon, fitted out with specimens of Canadian wheat and oats and peas, in which I have been driving about Perthshire and Forfarshire in the company of Mr Hugh MoKerraoher, the cheery, sunburnt whimsical agent of the Dominion Government, who goes up and down Scotland and the Hebrides, telling everyone he meets' in Lowland road or Highland glen about the good things of Canada. There were three women and several boys waiting for us outside the first little group of cottages we came to, and one of Itheir menfolk coming homo from the farm to a delayed breakfast was soon there. “THENKIN’ ABOOT CANADA.” They wero very interested in the grain samples, and took a lot of Canadian pamphlets to road. "On ay," they said, they had been ‘‘thenkiu’ aboot Canada.” One of the families in the little oottage-block (had a son there. The boys, at least, bough-headed, l sun-tanned young urchins lof twelve or fourteen, would certainly go [when they were a few years older, and if they could only get the passage money (together one of tho households was ready (to go as a family any time. As we drove all tho day long through (that beautiful country known as the Howe of Strathmore—some of the richest land that the sun shines on, and beauti'fal beyond telling in the spring sunshine, with its brilliant .grass and trees and fresh green crops hashing against the chocolate of the tilth and the dark blue of the for hills—it was astonishing that we scarcely spoke to a soul who had not a relative or a farmer workmate doing well in Canada and did not admit that they were thinking of following them. Telegraph linesmen .and stonebreakers, farm hands of all kinds, even the maidservant at a wayside public-house, while tho boots at the hotel where we lunched is sailing this month. The dwellers in this remote countryside talk of Moose Jaw and Saskatoon City with as much familiarity as I mention Richmond. There was a sort of irony in nearing (Scots ploughmen tell over in their slow,: (plaintive dialect the reasons why they' are determined to leave Scotland while one was looking all the time over a broad, fair vale, rich with the promise of crops and green with miles of raspberry fields. The same sort of reason everywhere, ‘because they could get A 6 a month all found in Canada and a bare .£3 in Scotland; because Jock Lunan, who went out with two sons three years ago, is fanning 500 acres, and has sent Peter Henderson, who used to be Jock’s mato, his passage money to come out and work-for him; because tho children are growing up and there’s nothing to put them to. No one great underlying grievance, no resentment against landlords, only the mighty attraction of the better wages ot a country where land is free, and the magic ptospect of being independent and i a farmer instead of a farm servant. . A GREAT SCOTCH FARM.

I was taken to see a farm in the Howe of Strathmore, which I should imagine is one of the best equipped in the world. You can see the red granite stead.ng from miles away, standing in the middle of a level thousand acres of compact, arable land. It is Cupar Grange, the property of Mr James Duncan, of Burma and .London, and it is a magnificent example of what good work a rich man can do for British labor and the national resources who is prepared to put h'-s money into the land lor aims higher than commercial. Everything in that solid red granite pile of farm buildings that can be dm eu from a turbine on the river near by is done by electricity. An electric binder puts bundles of hay on a belt that carries them to wherever they are needed m byre or stable. There are electric hay-cutting machines and fanning mills;• e\en the oil-cako for the cattle is broken up by an electrically driven machine. As I talked with Mr Stormont, the fine old, broad-shouldered, grizzled Soots farmer who is the baillie of the estate, about the way in which the men of the farm are treated —high wages, every Saturday a half-holidax from noon, and generous presents at Cnristmas and other times, it was brought clearly home to me how r.ch men can earn the gratitude of the best laboring blood of tne country by building up such rich farming estates as Cupar Grange. .