The Old House and the New—On
a Ruthenian Farm
A Family from Poland
There’s a man driving a dozen cows out to pasture. He has evidently learnt the livestock lesson. Let us pay him a visit. “Yes,” he says, “I learned that much years ago, and it was all right as far as it went. I didn’t keep all my eggs in one basket, and if wheat was poor Mrs. Cow would always keep our heads above water. But that was nothing to what she could do, as I soon found out when I studied the matter, and learned to select and test the cows, and weed out those that didn’t pay for their board. Breeding up, and feeding right, I call this herd my little gold mine.”
Quality, again! Quality all the time.
“And I don’t spend the gold on gas,” he adds, as an automobile speeds by. “Think of it! Over 63,000 passenger autos in this Province alone—one to every three or four grown-up people—40,000 in Alberta, nearly as many in Manitoba, and 32,000 in British Columbia. Every man must judge for himself, but living as I do, only three miles from town, I couldn’t give ‘business’ as an excuse for keeping a car. What with the cost in money, and the time a man is tempted to spend running around when he’s wanted at home, some of us have been kept pretty tight pinched by our cars.”
“You wouldn’t call the West extravagant, on the whole, would you?”
He laughs. “No and Yes. You know as well as I do, we farmers didn’t spend over much on ourselves at the best of times. You wouldn’t call a telephone an extravagance, would you, or a gramophone?” [a]Ten Million Wagon Loads]