to get a job, oft times
spending his summer's earnings before he again gets located with a
farmer the following spring.
This condition of the farming community will, of course, change for the
better from time to time, as farmers engage more in stock raising and
dairying, branches of farming that promise ample remuneration to those
who en¬gage in the same, on account of the cheapness with which coarse
grains and hay can be raised.
There are opportunities, however, on the approach of winter to join
camp outfits that go to the bush in various parts of the province to
cut firewood, or get out ties and saw logs. Experi¬enced axemen make
good wages at this work and return in the spring to labor on farms.
Any careful young man can from the beginning earn and save enough
eachyear to make payment on say 160 acres of land at from $3 to
$5 per acre as payments spread over ten years, and in
these cases would be $60 and $100 respectively each
year.
LABORERS REQUIRED DURING HAYING, HARVESTING AND THRESHING.
It is a well recognized fact the farmers with full equipment of teams
and up-to-date implements can sow a greater area in the spring than
the same force can possibly harvest. There is therefore a special
demand for farm laborers in August, September, October and part of
November, to take off crops and complete threshing the same. For the
past two seasons over 5,000 harvest hands come each year from eastern
provinces to assist in this work. Cheap transport is given by railway
companies to Manitoba and the N. W. T. and turn, so that those coming
earn enough to pay for transportation and still have a fair wage on
returning to their old homes in the east. This demand for men in the
harvest time is likely to in-crease as the area under cultivation
increases. These men come in two or more excursion parties and scatter
over the province and N.W.T. , securing sit¬uations for themselves
without any assistance. If however the labor market becomes congested
at any points, telegraph wires soon inform railway officials and men
are moved to point where they are still wanted.
Again there is a demand each season for strong able-bodied men.
Accustomed to hard work on railroad construction. The probability is
that there will be railroad construction each year for many years to
come, for as new settlements are made railroads must follow until all
parts of the N.W.T. fit for settlement will have a network of rail¬ways
as in Manitoba. These men secure employment from railway contractors
or railway officials.
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FEMALE HELP.
It is impossible to supply the demand for female help throughout
Manitoba and N.W.T. If it were possible and applications were asked
from those desiring help, a thousand applications would be received in
a brief period of time. As it is, applications are frequently received
and the only reply that can be given is: "We regret that nothing can be
done to supply you as we have no one applying, for a situaion.”
The wages for such female help in farmers' homes would vary from $6 to
$10— a month. These servants would be, as it were, one of the family
and would receive the kindest of treatment. The experience of many
farmers' wives has been that their servant girl is most likely, before
many years pass, to get married to a neighboring farmer and become
mistress of her own home. The servant girl now her own mistress,
engages a servant, if one can possibly be secured, to be in turn
robbed of her by a bachelor neighbor. And so the settling of Manitoba
and N.W.T. goes on. The young women who came from Scotland in the early
summer of in charge of Miss Livingstone, sixty in all, have done
exceedingly well. A number of them it is said are now married and have
homes of their own.
There is room for hundreds more of smart, industrious house keepers.
The Girls' Home of Welcome Winnipeg, in charge of Miss Fowler, is
always open and ready to welcome new arrivals until they are rested and
obtain situations.
A MARRIED MAN.
It is generally easy to find a situation for a married man without
children, when husband and wife are both willing to engage in work; the
husband as farm laborer, the wife to assist in the housework, or in
many instances they may find work with a bachelor, when the wife takes
full charge of the house keeping It is not so easy to find a situation
for a married man with two or more children as, at present, few farmers
have a second house on farm to accommodate such a family, and the
farm house is not large enough to accommodate two families A careful,
industrious married man, after one year's experience in Manitoba, often
gets a situation to manage a farm for a resident of a town or village,
everything being supplied to work the farm, the owner either paying
him wages or giving him a share of the crop, which in most years amply
pays for labor. This experiment generally leads to the laborer gaining
control of stock, etc., until he rents the farm for a share of the crop
to be handed over to the owner when threshed. Many men in this way have
in the course of a few years saved enough to start on a homestead or
purchase land for themselves.
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