【英文读物】Seeking Fortune in America.docx
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1、【英文读物】Seeking Fortune in AmericaPREFACEIn the early eighties lads who preferred exercise to examinations looked abroad for work, and parents who feared their failure in competitions agreed with them. Ditties like“To the West, to the West, to the land of the free,Where the mighty Missouri rolls down
2、to the sea,”had long moved our agricultural class America-wards; perhaps the next line“Where a man is a man if hes willing to toil,”did not so much appeal to middle-class youth, but there were always visions of “broncho-busting” and rope-swinging. Moreover, no one in England, of whatever class, knew
3、 what “toil” meant, as understood in Canada and the States.Land was easy to get in those days, free grants of 160 acres on certain conditions of exploitation which were often evaded. After weary search from Iowa northward I reached a rolling country dotted with small lakes and groves, leading up to
4、the beautiful vivalley of the Little Saskatchewan. My driver said that some land which I fancied here was certainly taken up, but I saw a Scotchman ploughing and we foregathered. He told me that the other holders around were “jumping” new grants elsewhere, and that the little “breaking” which they h
5、ad done did not fulfil conditions. Investigation proved this, and I bought two square miles at prairie value from the railway whose line was to traverse this very land. My son eventually did not use it, and, twenty years later, still as “prairie,” it fetched enough to cover the original price plus a
6、ccumulated interest and taxes.My son was right; farming, as I saw it in my wanderings, was not attractive. In Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, the surroundings were delightful, but profits seemed small; while the prairie, from the Canadian Pacific Railway down to Iowa, though certainly productiv
7、e, was to my eyes as heart-breaking as the plains of India.Travelling south from Buffalo, after a visit to the Guelph Agricultural College, which later received my son, a farmer joined me. He was Yankee to look at, but his tongue was Devonshire. It attracted a rough-looking customer in our carriage;
8、 he was Cumberland, and we three exchanged ideas. Cumberland viiwas a wanderer who had worked all over the States up to the Pacific; Devonshire was naturalised, and thereon Cumberland took him to task. Devonshire, he said, had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Devonshire submitted that he c
9、ould live on the pottage, while Cumberland did not seem to thrive on the birthright. Both had been agricultural labourers at home, and now Devonshire had a little holding nestling in one of the lovely vales which we were traversing. He could live thereon, certainly, but what a life! Cumberland, I th
10、ink, had a better time, while able for the varied work which he could always find. Better for either would have been our army, navy, or police. That class does not know the soldiers advantages when he has risen to sergeant and stays in the army.Sore though my sons struggle was he was right not to fa
11、rm. Certainly he lost his capital, but this is the normal English lot in the States; at his mine in Texas a man came for a watchmans job who had started with 4000! Such, it seems, is the “footing” which the gentle, handicapped by their traditions, must necessarily pay. Nevertheless, those traditions
12、 are an asset, as this book shows; so are horsemanship; the athletics and the “straight left” which public viiischools taught in those days if they taught little else; also a straight eye and steady nerve behind a pistol. My sons experience may not tempt others of his class to seek fortune in Americ
13、a, but if they do so they will learn therefrom what to expect, in what spirit to meet it, and what equipment they need.L. J. H. GREY.March 1912.CHAPTER IThousand-poundersOntario Agricultural CollegePolitical MeetingsVolunteer ArtilleryValue of the Agricultural College.The Western States and Province
14、s of North America thrive on our “thousand-pounders” and “remittance-men.” Some years ago in one small prairie town of Iowa there were 105 young Britons on the books of the local club. One of these (dubbed Sitting-bull after a famous brave) was doing fairly well in a milk-walk; a few others earned l
15、ivings as farm hands; the rest were, said the natives, “doing no good.” How should they, unless to the manner born? Four young sons of farmers and parsons, all neighbours from Owersby, Walesby, and other Lincolnshire bys, bought a “raw” farm on instalments in the Red River Valley. A land-seeker was
16、sent there by the owner. “He has not got us yet,” said the lads; “we are ready with our instalment.” But he got 2them at last, with their improvementshomestead, stable, well, and many acres under plough. That is how the “thousand-pounders” nourish the West; not that these Lincolnshire men had so muc
17、h between them, but many collapse with even more capital, for lack of experience. And even afterwards the experience, thus bought at a long price, does not generally lead to much.In 1890, 1280 acres of carefully-chosen land awaited me in Manitoba, bought from and traversed by the Manitoba and North-
18、Western Railway. To qualify myself for farming this land I went to Guelph, in Ontario, Canada.The Ontario Agricultural College is recognised as one of the finest institutions of its kind on the continent of America, because of the thoroughness of its methods and the class of graduates it turns out.
19、There are graduates of this college holding professorships in many of the agricultural colleges of the States, others in charge of large farming interests, and also of some of the largest dairies in the country.Students have come here from Mexico, Argentine, and even from Japan, sent by their respec
20、tive countries. I am sorry to say that the majority of us English students did not come up to the general standard, frittered our time away, and thought more of standing 3high in the estimation of the girls down-town than in that of the professors. The great handicap under which an English student l
21、abours at the college is the fact that he has no practical knowledge of farming while he is trying to learn the technical and scientific part. I could not, for instance, appreciate duly the fact that there were over a hundred different varieties of wheat, when I could not tell wheat from barley grow
22、ing in the fields. At a live-stock examination I once attended, the examiner had two sheep in the room. “Now,” he said, “here are a Cotswold and a Shropshire ram; I want you to give me what are the best points of each class, and then try to find them on the rams in front of you.” I had all the good
23、points of both sheep as per text-book on the tip of my tongue, and got them off in good style, and then proceeded to demonstrate them on the specimens in front of me. When I got through, the examiner said, “Very good indeed, but unfortunately the one you are describing as a Cotswold is the Shropshir
24、e, and vice versa.” And the worst of it is, that to this day I do not know if he was joking or not, as he gave me a “pass.”The college could accommodate about two hundred students, most of whom boarded inside, though this was optional. The course was of three years for the 4degree of B.S.A.Bachelor
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