their own feet in Canada, and keep those feet hustling in winter--or
die. It is not a land for people who think; the world owes them a
living. They have to earn the living and earn it hard, and if they
don't earn it, there are neither free soup kitchens nor maudlin
charities to fill idle stomachs with some other man's earnings.

"Why do you think so many young Englishmen fail to make good in
Canada?" I asked a young Yorkshire mill hand who had come to Canada
with his five brothers and homesteaded nearly a thousand acres on the
north bank of the Saskatchewan. The house was built of logs and clay.
There was not a piece of store furniture in it except the stove. The
beds were berths extemporized ship-fashion, with cowhides and
bear-skins for covering. The seats were benches. The table was a
rough-hewn plank. These young factory hands had things reduced to the
simplicity of a Robinson Crusoe. They had come out each with less than
one hundred dollars, but they had their nine hundred and sixty acres
proved up and wintered some ten horses and thirty head of cattle in a
sod and log stable. They had acquired what small ready cash they could
by selling oats and hay to newcomers. The hay they sold at four
dollars a ton, the oats at thirty cents a bushel. The boy I questioned
had all the characteristics of the overworked factory hand--abnormally
large forehead, cramped chest, half-developed limbs. Yet the health of
outdoor life glowed from his face, and he looked as if his muscles had
become knotted whipcords.

"Why do I think so many young Englishmen fail to make good settlers?"
he repeated, changing my question a little. "Because, up to a few
years ago, the wrong kind of people came. The only young Englishmen
who came up to a few years ago were no-goods, who had failed at home.
They were the kind of city scrubs who give up a job when it is hard and