CHAPTER XV.
Getting hold of an Ontario farm—How a man without a capital may succeed—Superiority of farming to a mechanical trade—A man with $10,000 can have more enjoyment in Ontario than anywhere else—Comparison with other countries—Small amount of waste land in Ontario—The help of the farmer’s wife—“Where are your peasants?”—Independence of the Ontario farmer—Complaints of emigrants unfounded—An example of success.
It was far more difficult for our early settlers in Ontario to pay for their lands by their own exertions, even at the low prices then prevailing, than it is to-day at their greatly increased values. When Ontario lands could be purchased for $4.00 or $5.00 per acre, there was no market for their produce to any extent, and money was extremely difficult to get. Not only the absence of markets was against our settlers, but though they owned a farm it was wholly unproductive and useless until cleared of timber. So it was harder to pay the $4.00 per acre then than it is to pay $80 per acre to-day. A man without capital to-day in Ontario can start on a 100-acre farm, and pay for it off the farm in a series of years, by his own and his wife’s exertions. Of course, he will need a little more to start with in the first instance than his forefathers did, for he must needs make a small payment down in order that he may mortgage the farm to get the balance of the purchase money. Since money is now being loaned on farm security at five and six per cent., he can yearly more than pay his interest and reduce his principal, so that his burdens are daily becoming lighter. His wife and himself pulling together and practising economy invariably succeed on productive farms, and pay for them. We sometimes wonder at our forefathers that they did not take up more land when it was so cheap, but forget that even its cheapness, as it seems to us to-day, was no guide to them as to its being cheap. Grain in early times did not bring money, when these prices prevailed, nor would timber. Furs and potash were the only commodities commanding cash. Hence it was almost an impossibility for an ordinary man to pay for more than 100 acres from his own exertions. To-day, even at $80 per acre on a mortgaged farm, everything he can grow will sell for money, and with his family’s help, and with the growth and increase of his stock, he is bound to succeed.
Even if he must needs practise economy it does not follow that he may not enjoy himself, as the time goes on, while he is paying for his farm. The press will, for a few dollars yearly, give him amusement and pleasure at home. If his means are particularly straitened, even $5.00 per year for weeklies will furnish him the cheapest and best contemporary readings possibly obtainable for the money. Then if he or his wife be at all musically inclined, the evening of relaxation, after the hard day’s work be done, can be pleasantly put in by a song or two, accompanied on an organ, if he has got so far along as to afford one; and he rises with the sun next morning, rested, invigorated, and ready for the next day’s work. And as every harvest comes in its turn he feels gladly thankful that the mortgage is being gradually lifted. Living as he does, and putting forth these efforts to save, he must have good habits. Good habits will invariably give him good health, and life is a pleasure to him, even under the cloud of a mortgage. Slavery some people will term this life, while under the mortgage. If one would get money one must save, and if one be well cared for, housed, clad and fed while saving, he can surely put up with the hard work, for always ahead is the goal of having a 100-acre farm paid for, which will make him independent for life. The mechanic emigrant who comes to us from Britain is not sufficiently versatile to change his mode of life to go on a farm and succeed until he has been here a few years. Having been in our midst a few years he gets his eyes opened, and learns in a measure “to be a jack-of all trades,” and then many of such former mechanics do succeed on farms and pay for them. Our native-born Canadian, who follows some mechanical trade when the mechanical labor market is over-supplied, is making a serious mistake. Very naturally many of our young men drift into this life, for their work is over at six o’clock, and they can wash, dress and walk the streets when their farmer brother at home is yet in the fields. While the mechanic goes through life with tolerable ease upon his day’s wages, as a rule he is not saving much for his declining days; but his farmer brother invariably is. His farmer brother will have soiled hands, and wear his working clothes the whole day through, and cannot go about the streets in the evenings, nor attend so many places of amusement, but he enjoys himself just as well at home, and he is saving for a rainy day. If trade be dull and shops shut down in the middle of winter, he is quite indifferent, for his cellar is well supplied, and his fields are ploughed ready for next spring’s sowing. Prices for his grain may be low, but still he has his living, and no one to call master, and is as free and independent as any king upon a throne. Writers on political economy tell us that all true wealth must be produced from the soil. Now, if this be true, then the nearer we get to the soil at first hand the better off we must be. I have already endeavored to show that those on the soil lead the most independent, free and healthy lives, and since Ontario has lots more of lands yet for the farmer, let those out of work and with no very bright or sure prospects before them, go on those lands. Many workmen could remedy the scarcity of employment in the winter, and their having not much to live upon, following strikes of trades-unions, if they would cultivate the soil. If the mechanical labor market be overstocked, the common-sense remedy would be to lessen the supply. Here with us the proper way to lessen the supply is for our smart mechanics, who know our country and its conditions, to get away from the towns upon farms; and if in the course of time such persons, succeeding in their new calling (which I have tried to prove is not a life of slavery, but of hard toil and self-denial, and wealth and independence), as succeed they must if they put forth the necessary effort, and pay for their first 100 acres, there is no law or moral obstacle to their buying 200 or 400 more if they can. Should they not be able to work so much land, surely they are at perfect liberty to rent it to others, and enjoy the rents and profits from it as the result of their labors. Very few farmers fail in Ontario; so very few, in fact, that our former bankruptcy law did not provide for the farmers’ failure at all. They invariably succeed, and the instances of old decrepit farmers, with nothing to support them in their declining years, are so very few that any reader hereof cannot call to mind very many examples. Reader, you will have to think twice before you can point to an old, infirm farmer with nothing to support him in Ontario. I only wish I could say as much for the mechanic. Even with the good wages they get, it is almost a superhuman task to save a competency for that period of life which must come to all of us surviving, when our limbs become too stiff to obey our will, and too weak to maintain the strain of toil. But I did not set out to write of the mechanical trades or kindred subjects; I am only trying to induce more mechanics to go upon farms and be independent of bosses, strikes or trades-unions.
My observation of travel in continental Europe, Britain and the United States gives me the ground to fearlessly state that in Ontario a man with a capital of $10,000 can enjoy more and be more independent than he can in those countries.
Say his farm costs $8,000, or $80 per acre; but from my intimate knowledge of lands in Ontario, I would not limit myself to that price. Good land is always the cheapest, and I would not hesitate in paying $100 per acre, and more, if the productiveness of the farm will warrant it. But assuming $80 per acre to be the average for a good farm; now add to this $2,000 upon the 100-acre farm for stock, implements, etc., so that the entire $10,000 is fully invested. Upon this 100-acre farm, paid for, the farmer can enjoy as good a living as can be got in any other calling in life. It can’t be done in Britain, but it can be done here. If I would settle on such a priced farm in Germany, in the first place it would not begin to be as productive as the Ontario farm, and besides, my growing sons would have to be soldiers for three years upon reaching manhood, or leave the country. The best lands to be found in Austria are in Hungary, which is a wheat country, and not one whit better than ours, of a like fertility, and at least two and a half or three times the price. In France I have noticed that by the most rigid and grinding economy the small peasant will lay up a competency. But the economy practised by the French peasant is something our people cannot and will not use. The usual conveniences and amenities of life the French peasant knows not of; a cloth is never laid upon the table, and the bread for the mid-day meal is usually cut from the loaf in advance for each person, and laid beside the plate. A full spread, with meat and other dishes, literally filling the table, so that there is plenty left after the meal is partaken of, they know not of; still they live, and secure a competency in a small way.
Rural life in Ontario is far preferable to anything these countries can produce. We are not forced to be soldiers, and we can buy and own absolutely the land which we cultivate. But there is another point, not usually thought of in regard to Ontario farming. That is its certainty. We never get a failure of crops, for although our crops may be more plentiful some years than others, we never fail really. We never get any serious drouths nor floods, and our cattle are never diseased, as they are in several States of the Union. Our taxes are so small a matter that we do not generally give them a second thought. Nor are our winters so severe that our stock will be injured by the cold; nor will our children coming from or going to school be caught in blizzards. But the farmer who prepares his land properly, and puts forth an effort in downright earnest, is bound to succeed.
He is eligible to any office within the gift of the people, if he be that way inclined, and he does not take off his hat to any lord or duke in the land. Literally he is master of his own situation; an honest, fearless, loyal, independent yeoman, with himself and his family absolutely provided for, and above all want. Pulling up and moving away he never thinks of. He has his home, and knows what a home is and should be. The temptation to go upon some cheap lands out west, where grasshoppers are possible to destroy his year’s crop, he does not even think of. The western American’s ease and little regret in pulling up and leaving for a little farther west he cannot understand.
He sticks to his home, and yearly improves it and adds to its value, and is ready to fight for it if need be. Ontario runs away south into the best States—agriculturally—of the Union. Even some American writers honestly assert that it is better situated (north of the lakes) than their own lands in the same latitude, south of the lakes. For a fact, we know Ontario gets less snow than northern New York or Ohio does, and the seasons are not nearly so trying in Toronto as they are in Buffalo. Granted, first, that the reader knows of the richness of Ontario’s lands and its little waste places, and also of the downright hard work of its people and their love of home, if you will then take up the map and note how Ontario is situated—surrounded by water and having a summer nearly as long as that of the north half of France—you can come to no other conclusion but that, with a capital of $10,000 in a farm and appurtenances, in Ontario one can enjoy most and be the surest of success.
One great fact which distinguishes Ontario is its little waste land. Draw a line from Lake Simcoe to Belleville, and all that portion of old Ontario west of that line possesses less waste land than any tract of country of equal size known in the world. There are no mountain wastes nor extensive marshes within this space, but nicely undulating lands with frequent streams, and almost naturally drained. Farms in Ontario are 100 acres each, ordinarily, and the 100-acre farmer is a man generally to be respected. He brings his family up respectably, and educates them at the common school so that they are capable of filling almost any position in after life in which they may be placed. Such farmers are intelligent and more or less travelled. Last summer I recollect being the guest of a Yorkshire farmer who farmed 560 acres of Yorkshire lands. He was a man of sixty-five, wealthy, and had been on the farm all his lifetime. During this time he had been to London only twice, at some horse shows. The River Tweed, dividing England from Scotland, was only two hours distant from him by rail, and yet he had never crossed it. As to going over to Ireland, he had never even thought of it. Our Ontario farmer comes to our provincial shows, and jostles among city people now and again in our different cities, and thus gets his rough corners rubbed off. And he is far more than the equal in intelligence of any yeoman in the Old World of anything like his means.