456 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
November  12,  1903^ 
they  will  be  of  little  use  unless  each  has  an  outfall,  there¬ 
fore  the  land  should  be  ploughed  in  the  way  that  will  the 
most  assist  to  attain  that  object.  If  preferred,  and  extra 
expense  is  not  objected  to  after  the  ploughing  is  com¬ 
pleted,  two  or  three  deep  grips  may  be  cut  across  the 
ridges  to  carry  the  water  from  the  furrows  to  the  main 
drains.  Under  the  most  favourable  conditions  the  land 
will  be  a  long  time  in  getting  rid  of  the  superfluous  water, 
and  farmers,  instead  of  wringing  their  hands  and  jibbing  at 
the  “  Clerk  of  the  Weather,”  will  be  better  employed  in 
giving  Nature  all  the  assistance  in  their  power. 
Bad  Times  in  the  Villages. 
The  proprietors  of  the  village  stores  are  complaining 
bitterly  of  the  badness  of  the  rural  trade.  They  say  there 
is  no  money  circulating ;  that  cash  is  becoming  scarcer 
every  day,  and  credit  longer.  Can  it  be  wondered  at  ? 
There  is  little  extra  pay  to  be  earned  now  at  harvest  time. 
A  “  small  ”  farmer  told  us  the  other  day  that  when  he  was 
a  labourer  thirty  years  ago,  he  thought  he  did  badly  if  he 
and  his  wife,  aided  by  one  or  two  children,  did  not  earn.  £18 
over  the  corn  harvest.  Now  there  is  little  or  no  mowing, 
no  binding,  and  a  bare  5s.  per  day  for  leading.  Where  a 
labourer  used  to  clear  £15,  clear,  extra  money,  by  harvest 
work,  he  now  gets  2s.  per  day  extra  for  a  fortnight  or  so  ; 
at  most,  not  much  more  than  30s.  Employment  is  much 
more  certain  than  it  used  to  be,  and  taking  one  paii;  of  a 
year  with  the  other,  is  not  so  badly  paid  for ;  but  the 
labourer  gets  no  big  pulls  now.  j 
The  single  waggoners  have  decidedly  the  best  of  it  with 
farmers  at  present.  Their  wages  are  good,  and  the  pur¬ 
chasing  power  of  money  is  high,  but  very  shortly  we  shall 
have  Martinmas  hirings,  and  perhaps  a  reaction  may  take 
place.  Trade  is  slack  in  most  towns,  and  a  goodly  number 
of  single  men  have  lately  returned  to  the  villages  and  are 
now  employed,  when  the  weather  will  allow,  in  Potato 
lifting,  tlireshing,  &c.  Some  of  these  may  require  to  re¬ 
assume  the  duties  of  waggoner.  The  farmer,  short  of 
money,  and  with  little  to  sell,  must  perforce  use  every 
method  of  retrenchment,  and  will  not  hire  two  men  to  feed 
and  pay  where  he  can  make'  one  fulfil  his  purpose.  Seeing 
plenty  of  spare  hands  about  he  will  prefer  to  employ  them 
only  when  urgently  needed.  Neither  the  yearly  men  nor 
the  catch-penny  hands  are  likely  to  earn  so  .much  as  they 
have  been  used  to  do,  and  there  can  be  no  improvement 
in  village  trade  until  there  has  been  another  harvest. 
Village  nrosperity  is  ruled  first  by  the  spending  power  of 
the  inhabitants,  and  that  in  turn  hinges  on  the  wage-paying 
ability  of  the  farmer.  We  have  many  times,  and  very 
recently,  he^d  both  labourers  and  tradesmen  fairly  gloat 
oyer  the  misfortunes  of  farmers.  Is  a  period  of  acute 
distress  to  be  the  means  of  correcting  the  spirit  which  pro¬ 
duces  such  stupid  ill  wilH 
Work  on  the  Home  Farm. 
During  the  past  week  we  have  only  had  one  wet  day,  and 
more  useful  work  has  been  got  through  than  in  any  one  week 
since  early  September. 
We  are  ju.st  finishing  the  Potatoes,  though  there  are  plenty 
of  farmers  who  have  a  week  or  two  of  work  amongst  them  yet. 
As  far  as  can  be  judged,  the  disease  has  not  spread  very  much 
lately  amongst  those  still  in  the  ground,  but  in  many  pies  it 
has  made  great  progress,  and  one  grower  is  very  anxious  to  get 
his  stores  turned  over,  being  very  much  afraid  of  their  collapsing. 
As  we  wrote,  a  month  ago,  it  is  madness  to  put  disease-smitten 
Potatoes  in  big  heaps.  We  have  made  ours  but  6ft  wide  at  the 
base ;  it  is  rather  extravagant  cf  straw,  but  that  is  plentiful 
enough. 
There  is  quite  a  crop  of  draggings  and  harrowings  to  pick 
up  after  the  rows  have  been  lifted  with  every  care,  and  we  fear 
many  tubers  are  .still  left  in  the  land.  Some  w'ill  be  found  after 
the  plough,  but  not  all. 
Careless  stacking  and  dilatoriness  in  thatching  are  being  held 
responsible  for  much  loss.  Threshing  maichine;  men  report 
numerous  case.s  of  six,  eight,  or  ten  quarters  of  wet.  unsaleable, 
ungrindable,  and  almo.st  useless  grain  from  the  I'oof  of  a  stack 
which  had  been  led  in  fair  condition  and  of  which  the  lower  and 
dry  portion  yielded  excelleirt  and  valuable  grain.  It  is  the  want 
of  the  one  nail  again  which  loses  so  much. 
Corn  of  this  kind,  which  cannot  be  ground  and  will  not  keep, 
may  be  given  to  sheep  in.stead  of  cake.  It  also  may  be  given 
sparingly  -to  horses  to  eke  out  other  corn,  and  to  pigs  which 
are  not  too  far  advanced  in  fat  condition.  It  is  useful  in 
moderate  quantitj’  to  both  suckers  and  those  which  have  been 
recently  weaned. 
Having  air  abundance  of  offal  Potatoes,  we  are  steaming  them 
freely  and  giving  our  feeding  pigs  very  little  meal.  .Potatoes 
only  just  touched  with  disease  make  capital  pig  food,  either 
cooked  or  raw.  Pigs  which  will  eat  raw  Potatoes  and  do  well 
on  them  are  valuable  just  now. 
Working  horses  will,  of  course,  be  now  living  entirely  on  dry 
food,  and  should  be  given  a  little  linseed  cake  in  their  water 
during  the  winter.  Crushed  linseed  boiled  is  comparatively 
cheaper,  but  the  boiling  is  rather  troublesome,  and  has  ruined 
many  a  small  pair  in  the  process.  Yearling  horses  and  weaned 
foals  must  have  both  corn  and  a  little  hay,  for  grass  alone  is  not 
good  enough  for  them. 
- - 
Canada  Calls  for  Britons. 
Writing  from  Winnipeg,  Manitoba,  Mr.  Edgar  Wallace,  of 
the  London  “Daily  Mail,”  says:  “The  land  owned  by  the 
Yankee  fanner  in  the  States  is  worth  to  him,  say,  anything  up 
to  150  dollars  an  acre.  From  this  he  derives  something  like 
five  per  cent.,  that  is,  let  us  say,  7.50  dollars  per  acre  a  year. 
He  knows  now  that  in  Canada  there  are  thousands  of  acres  to 
be  had  for  a  third  to  a  half  the  cost  of  his  own  land,  that  will 
yield  the  same  crops  as  his  more  expensive  property  ;  land  that, 
costing  him  fifty  to  seventy-five  dollars  an  acre,  will  return 
7.50  dollars  per  annum.  The  Yankee  does  the  natural  thing. 
He  sells  his  property,  moves  over  into  C'anada,  and  for  the 
money  he  has  received  for  the  sale  of  500  acres  of  American 
farm-land  he  buys  1,000  acres  of  Canadian,  a.s  good,  if  not 
better,  as  the  soil  he  has  sold. 
“  There  must  be  in  England  a  large  number  of  investors  seek¬ 
ing  new  and  profitable  employment  for  their  money,  and  to 
these  I  would  point  out  the  thousand  and  one  opportunities 
for  investment.  I  hesitate  to  urge  an.y  particular  form  that 
investment  should  take ;  I  am  .satisfied  that  any  transaction  in 
real  estate  must  be  profitable,  and  I  am  convinced  that  the 
influx  of  British  capital  into  Canada  would  have  a  most  stimu¬ 
lating  effect  upon  an  already  pro'.sperous  Colony,  and  would 
eventually  result  for  the  good  of  the  Empire.  I  am  no  financier, 
and  do'  not  know  how  far  the  change  would  be  possible ;  but  it 
does  seem  that  if  the  Imperial  conscience  could  only  be 
awakened,  and  if  the  Imperial  Briton  asked  himself  once  a 
day,  ‘How  can  I  help  the  Colonies  ?  ’  as  religiously  as  a  peni¬ 
tent  searches  his  soul  for  sin,  not  only  would  patriotism  become 
beautiful,  but,  better  still,  it  would  be  profitable,  for  thereby 
much  money  now  invested  in  foreign  securities  and  industries 
would  be  diverted  to  the  more  proper  channel  of  Colonial  in¬ 
vestment.  For  Canada,  like  any  other  agricultural  country, 
wants  money  ;  but  unlike  most  countries  similarly  situated,  she 
has  such  excellent  securities  in  her  undeveloped  resources,  and 
her  solvency  is  so  firmly  assured  by  Nature  herself,  that  the 
fulfilment  of  her  requirements  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  time 
as  it  is  a  question  of  source. 
“  And  then,  as  to  men.  Surely  there  are  plenty  of  men  in  the 
British  Isles  who  have  the  health,  the  strength,  and  the  in¬ 
clination  to  work  with  their  hands,  and  hardy  enough  to  rough 
it  in  the  most  glorious  climate  in  the  world  ?  Men  with  sufficient 
of  the  old  adventurous  strain  left  to  leave  the  beaten  track  of 
home  life  and  hew  out  a  path  for  themselves  and  posterity  in 
the  virgin  deptlis  of  this  new  land?  Or  must  Canada  be  left 
to  the  Galician,  the  Russian,  the  Swede,  and  the  Yankee?  One 
would  imagine  that  in  this,  the  most  promising  of  the  British 
Colonies,  the  British  emigrant  would  bo  preponderant.  Take 
the  figures  for  last  year  : 
Inimig  ants  from  United  .States..  .  26,388 
Iniuiiu:rants  from  Great  Britain .  17,259 
Galicians,  Germans  and  Scandinavians  .  10,049 
French,  Ilungarians  and  Austrians .  2,022 
Russians  and  Finlanders  ..  ..  ..  .  3,759 
Other  nationhlitifes .  7,902 
, , '■'n.i ;  ,^0 ! . ;  ’ 
Thus,  outifif-a  total  of  67,379  Great  Britain  furni.shes  less  than 
a  quart.©!'.  -Canada  wants  men — the  right  sort  of  men.  That 
she  can’dfatv  tWTcb''at  many  from  the  United  States  as  she  can 
from  England'  and'”'W;tile.s  (the  figures  are  13,095  to  26,328), 
knowing,  as  we  knfiw,  how  greatly  is  the  .supply  of  labour  in  ex¬ 
cess  of  the  demandrtis  a  standing  teflectiofi  upon  the  manhood 
of  the  Mother  Country,” 
.  Trade  Catalogues  Received. 
, . .  ..  K'  d'l  V  ). ! 
.’ILGR't'ICULTUR  AL  BUILDERS. 
R.  Halliday  and  Co.,  Middleton,  IVIaneliester. 
Henry  Hope  and  Sons,  Ltd.,  55,  Lionel  Street,  Birmingham. 
Messenger , and  Co.,  Ltd.,  Loughborough. 
G.  W.  liiley,  Herne  Hill,  London,  S.E. 
John  Webster,  W'avertree.  Liverpool. 
