The indirect assistance given by the Imperial Government to Agriculture in Upper Canada dates from a much earlier period than the encouragement given to Agricultural Societies by the Provincial Government; for we find among the donations of George III. to the U. E. Loyalists the old English plough. It consisted of a small piece of iron fixed to the coulter, having the shape of the letter L, the shank of which went through the wooden beam, the foot forming the point, which was sharpened for use. One handle, and a plank split from a curved piece of timber, which did the duty of a mold-board, completed the rude implement. At that time the traces and leading lines were made of the bark of the elm or bass-wood, which was manufactured by the early settlers into a strong rope. About the year 1808 the “hog-plough” was imported from the United States; and in 1815 a plough with a cast-iron share and mold-board, all in one piece, was one of the first implements, requiring more than an ordinary degree of mechanical skill, which was manufactured in the province. The seeds of improvement were then sown, and while in the address of the President at the Frontenac Cattle Show in 1833, we observe attention called to the necessity for further improvement in the ploughs common throughout the country, we witness, in 1855, splendid fruit at the Paris Exhibition. In a notice of the trial of ploughs at Trappes, the Journal d’Agriculture Pratique makes the following reference to a Canadian plough: “The ploughing tests were brought to a close by a trial of two ploughs equally remarkable—to wit, the plough of Ransome and Sims, of Suffolk, England, and that of Bingham, of Norwich, Upper Canada. The first is of wood and iron, like all the English ploughs, and the results which it produced seemed most satisfactory, but it appeared to require a little more draught than the Howard plough. Bingham’s plough very much resembles the English plough; it is very fine and light in its build; the handles are longer than ordinary, which makes the plough much more easy to manage. The opinion of the French labourers and workmen who were there, appeared, on the whole, very favourable to this plough.”
The following extracts from Mr. Hogan’s book are as truthful as they are eloquent:—
“Great as has been the prosperity of America, and of the settlements which mark the magnificent country just described, yet nature has not been wooed in them without trials, nor have her treasures been won without a struggle worthy of their worth. Those who have been in the habit of passing early clearings in Upper Canada must have been struck with the cheerless and lonely, even desolate appearance of the first settler’s little log hut. In the midst of a dense forest, and with a ‘patch of clearing’ scarcely large enough to let the sun shine in upon him, he looks not unlike a person struggling for existence on a single plank in the middle of an ocean. For weeks, often for months, he sees not the face of a stranger. The same still, and wild, and boundless forest every morning rises up to his view; and his only hope against its shutting him in for life rests in the axe upon his shoulder. A few blades of corn, peeping up between stumps whose very roots interlace, they are so close together, are his sole safeguards against want; whilst the few potato plants, in little far-between ‘hills,’ and which struggle for existence against the briar bush and luxuriant underwood, are to form the seeds of his future plenty. Tall pine trees, girdled and blackened by the fires, stand out as grim monuments of the prevailing loneliness, whilst the forest itself, like an immense wall round a fortress, seems to say to the settler,—‘how can poverty ever expect to escape from such a prison house.’
“That little clearing—for I describe a reality—which to others might afford such slender guarantee for bare subsistence, was nevertheless a source of bright and cheering dreams to that lonely settler. He looked at it, and instead of thinking of its littleness, it was the foundation of great hopes of a large farm and rich cornfields to him. And this very dream, or poetry, or what you will, cheered him at his lonely toil, and made him contented with his rude fire-side. The blades of corn, which you might regard as conveying but a tantalising idea of human comforts, were associated by him with large stacks and full granaries; and the very thought nerved his arm, and made him happy.
“Seven years afterwards I passed that same settler’s cottage—it was in the valley of the Grand River in Upper Canada, not far from the present village of Caledonia. The little log hut was used as a back kitchen to a neat two story frame house, painted white. A large barn stood near by, with stock of every description in its yard. The stumps, round which the blades of corn, when I last saw the place, had so much difficulty in springing up, had nearly all disappeared. Luxuriant Indian corn had sole possession of the place where the potatoes had so hard a struggle against the briar bushes and the underwood. The forest—dense, impenetrable though it seemed—had been pushed far back by the energetic arm of man. A garden, bright with flowers, and enclosed in a neat picket fence, fronted the house; a young orchard spread out in rear. I met a farmer as I was quitting the scene, returning from church with his wife and family. It was on a Sunday, and there was nothing in their appearance, save perhaps a healthy brown colour in their faces, to distinguish them from persons of wealth in cities. The waggon they were in, their horses, harness, dresses, everything about them, in short, indicated comfort and easy circumstances. I enquired of the man—who was the owner of the property I have just been describing? ‘It is mine, sir,’ he replied; ‘I settled on it nine years ago, and have, thank God, had tolerable success.’
“There is, perhaps, no class in the world who live better—I mean who have a greater abundance of the comforts of life—than men having cleared farms, and who know how to make a proper use of them, in Upper Canada. The imports of the country show that they dress not only well, but in many things expensively. You go into a church or meeting-house in any part of the province which has been settled for fifteen or twenty years, and you are struck at once with the fabrics, as well as the style of the dresses worn by both sexes, but especially by the young. The same shawls, and bonnets, and gowns which you see in cities, are worn by the women, whilst the coats of the men are undistinguishable from those worn by professional men and merchants in towns. A circumstance which I witnessed some years ago, in travelling from Simcoe to Brantford—two towns in the interior of the province—will serve to convey an idea of the taste as well as the means of enjoyment of these people. At an ordinary Methodist meeting-house, in the centre of a rural settlement, and ten miles from a village or town, there were twenty-three pleasure carriages, double and single, standing in waiting. The occasion was a quarterly meeting, and these were the conveyances of the farmers who came to attend it. Yet twenty years before, and this was a wilderness; twenty years before, and many of these people were working as labourers, and were not possessed of a pair of oxen; twenty years before, and these things exceeded even their brightest dreams of prosperity.
“The settler who nobly pushes back the giant wilderness, and hews out for himself a home upon the conquered territory, has necessarily but a bony hand and a rough visage to present to advancing civilisation. His children, too, are timid, and wild, and uncouth. But a stranger comes in; buys the little improvement on the next lot to him; has children who are educated, and a wife with refined tastes,—for such people mark, in greater or less numbers, every settlement in Upper Canada. The necessities of the new comer soon bring about an acquaintance with the old pioneer. Their families meet—timid and awkward enough at first, perhaps; but children know not the conventionalities of society, and, happily, are governed by their innocence in their friendships. So they play together, go to school in company; and thus, imperceptibly to themselves, are the tastes and manners of the educated imparted to the rude, and the energy and fortitude of the latter are infused into their more effeminate companions. Manly but ill-tutored success is thus taught how to enjoy its gains, whilst respectable poverty is instructed how to better its condition. That pride occasionally puts itself to inconvenience to prevent these pleasant results, my experience of Canada forces me to admit; and that the jealousy and vanity of mere success sometimes views with unkindness the manner and habit of reduced respectability—never perhaps more exacting than when it is poorest—I must also acknowledge. But that the great law of progress, and the influence of free institutions, break down these exceptional feelings and prejudices, is patent to every close observer of Canadian society. Where the educated and refined undergo the changes incident to laborious occupations—for the constant use of the axe and the plough alters men’s feelings as well as their appearances,—and where rude industry is also changed by the success which gives it the benefit of education, it is impossible for the two classes not to meet. As the one goes down—at least in its occupations,—it meets the other coming up by reason of its successes, and both eventually occupy the same pedestal. I have seen this social problem worked out over and over again in Upper Canada, and have never known the result different. Pride, in America, must ‘stoop to conquer;’ rude industry rises always.
“The manner of living of the Upper Canadian farmer may be summed up in few words. He has plenty, and he enjoys it. The native Canadians almost universally, and a large proportion of the old country people, sit at the same table with their servants or labourers. They eat meat twice, and many of them thrice a day: it being apparently more a matter of taste than of economy as to the number of times. Pork is what they chiefly consume. There being a great abundance of fruit, scarcely a cleared farm is without an orchard; and it is to be found preserved in various ways on every farmer’s table. Milk is in great abundance, even in the early settler’s houses, for where there is little pasture there are sure to be large woods, and ‘brouse,’ or the tops of the branches of trees, supply the place of hay. The sweetest bread I have eaten in America I have eaten in the farmers’ houses of Upper Canada. They usually grind the ‘shorts’ with the flour for home consumption, and as their wheat is among the finest in the world, the bread is at once wholesome and exceedingly delicious. Were I asked what is the characteristic of Canadian farmers, I would unhesitatingly answer ‘Plenty!’”