LABOUR AND EMIGRATION 383 



stores, the home-bred cattle are quite insufficient in 

 number, and it is precisely in this part of Scotland, so 

 famous for its breeding, that we have found the 

 strongest opinions in favour of the admission of live 

 stores from Canada. The producer of beef looks 

 upon store cattle as raw material, and his argument 

 is that ordinances obtained under the pretence of keep- 

 ing off disease are used as measures of " protection " 

 in its economic sense, in this case for the protection 

 of the Irish cattle-breeders. Of course both sides 

 play the same game. Canada has declined, on the 

 score of possible infection with " canker," to admit any 

 more Scotch potatoes, which were being imported in 

 spite of the tariff wall, though these potatoes were for 

 consumption and not for seed. 



Sheep are not much seen in the arable part of 

 Aberdeenshire, though we were told of some farms 

 where one or two pairs of horses had been put down 

 and the land laid down to permanent pasture for 

 sheep. 



Labour is becoming a serious problem in Aberdeen ; 

 men are paid 30 to 36 a year and get customary 

 allowances in the shape of oatmeal, milk, potatoes, etc. 

 The married men have cottages ; the single men live 

 in the house or in bothies, where they take their 

 allowances and do for themselves. But the bothy 

 system, rough even to barbarism, is dying out ; it has 

 been a demoralizing and brutalizing mode of life, and 

 one large factor in the great emigration to Canada 

 that still takes place. The district is well provided 

 with small holdings or crofts, some as small as ten 

 acres, so that a hard-working labourer can work his 

 way up from a croft to a considerable farm. But 

 though many such cases can be cited, few men care to 

 face the toil and self-denial involved ; the crofts are 



