THE FARM-PUPIL SWINDLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 48, 28 November 1891, Page 630

THE FARM-PUPIL SWINDLE.

YEAR ago the levelations of the Birchall ' trial at Woodstock, Canada, showed what a lEzr »' swindle had been going on for many years, ,j 7 » and that thousands of victims were scattered over Canada and the I'nited States. It -jl was then believed that the exposures of the Birchall trial would put an end to the business. This has not been the case, however. 1 he farm-pupil swindle in spite of exposure goes on finding new victims every week. For a few months following the Birchall trial there was a cessation of the delusive advertisements in the London newspapers. But then they began again with new names substituted for the old, and a fair sample is the following from a recent number of an English newspaper : Canada farmer, university man, six years in the Colonies, desires to form co-partnership with younger son having small cash capital. Ao experience required, except in handling horses, and work will consist of supervising hands. Farm of 400 acres, is in good hunting country, with plenty of ground and feathered game ; trout and salmon waters near. Applicant can spend three months on tarni before concluding final arrangements. Eight hundred pounds w ill purchase half interest with good annual profits. Address. Finsbury Pavement. This is almost identical with the bait thrown out bj' Reginald Birchall to lure Benwell and Felly to death. To anybody with a knowledge of the conditions of Canadian life or possessing ordinary business sense it would be apparent that some swindle was concealed behind this announcement. In the first place no Canadian farmer spends his time supervising * hands,’ but has to bustle for himself. 1 hen he has little time or money for hunting or fishing, and to make both ends meet he must be a hard worker and a man of experience. It was, however, just such an advertisement as this which induced Benwell and Pelly to pay out about £2OO each before they had even seen tbe ‘ farm,’ and Birchall, of course, knew nothing of farming and never owned a foot of land in Canada or anywhere else. But he knew the social conditions of English life, which is absolutely necessary to any one intending to prosecute the farm-pupil business, and apparently there are others as desperate as he cultivating the same field. There is a thread of social exclusiveness running through these advertisements. The advertiser is a ‘ university man,’ and he desires to meet a ‘ younger son. ’ The younger son is not required to know anything about trade or manual labour. He need only know how to handle horses, which is itself regarded as an aristocratic achievement, although very common in England. Then he is to spend his time * supervising hands,’ although it is not stated how he could supervise them if he knew nothing of farming. The alleged farm is *in a good hunting country.' Now, it is probably true that there is not in the whole of Canada a good hunting country, as those words are understood in England, for foxhunting is meant, and in Canada foxes are hunted with guns instead of by a pack of hounds and red-coated riders. The English love for outdoor sport is strongly appealed to in ail such cases. As in this instance it is nearly always the case that much more is said about hunting, fishing, etc., than about the real nature of the proposed investment. And yet very little difficulty is apparently encountered in finding fresh victims. But the victims of the farm-pupil business are all drawn from the educated classes, who ought to know better. Benwell’s father, for instance, was a wealthy retired army officer, and Felly’s father was a clergyman. Being assured of the * respectability ’of the man with whom their sons were about to enter into partnership, they did not hesitate to pay down large sums of money for a share in a scheme which they did not even take the trouble to investigate.

The farm-pupil business is in Canada meant to include all of these farming swindles which are worked upon the superfluous sons of the upper classes in England, who constitute in themselves a large army of the unemployed. A common scheme that is worked is to secure a lot of these young men to come out to Canada and learn the farming business. They pay £lOO to £3OO apiece. For this they get their cabin passage paid to New York and fare and expenses to some place in Ontario. Arrived at their destination they are met by an alleged farmer who has already received his share of the swag. The farm pupil is then allowed to work on the farm for a year without receiving any wages or but a small nominal sum. The clear profit to the gang when they receive £2OO is over £lBO, for in addi tion to his share of the plunder the ‘farmer’ gets the labour of the pupil for a year for nothing. Of course very few of the farm pupils ever work out the year. Sometimes they discover the swindle in a day or two, but it generally takes them some months to get their eyes open. Then, ashamed to return to their relatives in England with the confession that their career as agriculturists has been a failure, they hang about the province waiting for something to turn up, and laughing at every new farm pupil who arrives in the town. The latter nearly always wears a check suit and a singlebarrelled eye glass. He hangs on to the monocle until his eyes are opened. Then he dropsit into the soup where he has himself fallen, and tries to become a Canadian. The Canadians, who laugh at these new arrivals, have several times tried to break up the farm-pupil business, but it rests upon the ignorance of their own country prevailing in England, and this will not be dissipated. The country about Woodstock is full of these victims of the English game, while others have wandered off to Manitoba and the new provinces of the Northwest. Some of them go into business and a few have made money. The majority of them, however, allect to despise life in the large cities. They want to live in the country as amateur farmers, or hunting ranchmen, in which few of them ever succeed. The supply of these gullible young men in England seems to lie inexhaustible, and a high authority there says the reason they are unlit for serious work is because of the English system of education. They are nearly all highly educated. Birchall, for instance was an Oxford man, but that did not prevent him from becoming a murderer. He had originally been sent to Canada by Ford, Rathbone and Co., of London, the originators of the farm-pupil business, who»e industry was broken up by the Benwell murder. Birchall being sharper than the average farm pupil, quickly saw the swindle, ami after spending two days on a farm near Woodstock he went into business himself. Felly, whom he

nearly succeeded in throwing into the Whirlpool Rapids at Niagara, was a student of Harrow, and Benwell came from Eton. They had an elaborate wardrobe of eight or ten trunks each, with opera glasses, dress suits, smoking jackets, etc., and, of course, the indispensable eye glass. In this they were fair samples of the farm-pupils who are now being induced to come to the same field upon cash payments, for which they get nothing in return. Many of them, it is true, are younger sons or black sheep whose families in England are glad to be rid of them on any terms, but others are only sons just setting out in life, with loving parents ‘at home’ anxious for their welfare. It takes a year or two of poverty and disappointment to knock the nonsense out of most of them. As soon as they get a little hard sense of the Canadian or American variety they are apt to develop lapidly into valuable citizens.