I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny
of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw
for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind
the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of
mixed farming going forward all around - let alone irrigation further
West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike
such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in
the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have
them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced.
They were vegetables too - all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the
station.
I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,'
said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend
everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep
ahead of Providence - to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested
in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show.
It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is
narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money
in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now - the
cars won't start yet awhile - I'll just tell you my ideas.'
For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed
farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making
sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of
all things, with proper devotion.
'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men - more men. Yes, and
women.'
They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work
at harvest time - maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run
till they are married.
A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting
others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social
reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised
emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the
land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work
and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast
as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and
taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane
living.
There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh
twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young
feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll
hear of that town if you live.
