The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1872-04-27
An Emigrant Colony.

An EmigTant Colony.
rather remarkable party If emigrants
left the Merst.y IN Tuesday evening, in the
fine Allan steamer HISTORIAN, for the
United States. As II is the first If a series
which viii depart from England, il is not
by any means unworthy of a special notice
at our hands. Every one knows the usual
order uf emigrant the poor. hopeful Irish
man. and the patient, pl"dding, large fam
ilied Scandinavian. Their figures are fa-
miliar enough in our streets as they pass
along, not heavily laden, ponr fellows,
with worldly IossessIons. but leIring
hearts hopeful that by golng to the West
they are seeking better fates than the old
country had iii store for them. The emi-
grants We refer tu. however, as having left
on Tuesday, are, for one thing, exclusively
English, and almost exclusively from the
English farming class that is to say, far
mers and their sons and connections not
agricultural laborers. but men having at the
same time practical experience and the
means Of applying it in new land The
value Of such men to the United States
need not be dllated upon, especially when,
as i'll this case. they bear with them consid-
cradle sums OF capital They are. in fact.
colony of emigrant farmers. who. finding
themselves cramped in the old country,
have gone to see whether there is room for
them to swing their arms in the new world
The explanation of this movement for a
movement in fact il is was afforded to us
by fine old specimen of the English gen
tleman farmer, having his 500 or 600 acres
Of Lincolnshire land III hand, and having
farmed it. shot over it. and hunted over it
for the last thirty or forty years. He was
sending out three of his sons with the col
onists, and gave as his reason for doing so
that it was impossible in England to obtain
farms for them, the competition being so
keen and the rents so high that he had de-
termined to let them have land of their own
i'll one Of the Western States, where it can
be got cheap, instead Of keeping them idling
about at home. with their knowledge Of
agriculture running t. rust.
The knowledge that there must be a
good many men III the same position as our
Lincolnshire farmer seems to have struck
the acute emigration agents of the Western
States, and, in particular, the agents Of the
State Of Nebraska and Of the railway com
pany which traverses the State This COM
pany is the Burlington and Missouri River
Railroad Company; and its agents have
been hard at work in the agricultural dis
tricts Of England, during the last winter,
lecturing and by other means showing the
advantages to British farmers sons Of going
to central Western State, where there is
nothing but prairie land, and where that
land can be obtained contiguous to a rail
way, at reasonable price and upon reason
able terms. The first fruit of that work
was the emigrant colony, the first section
Of which started on Tuesday evening The
colony has been carefully organized so as to
include in it no persons whom the French
would describe as useless mouths The
idea has been to get young, unmarried
men, the sons Of farmers, to form the
staple Of the colony. There is, of course,
an infusion Of heads Of families. There is,
for instance, a farmer from the Channel
Islands, who has preferred to transfer his
capital and his family to the central West
ern State Of Nebraska. The colony in
cludes small number Of mechanics, par
ticularly wheelwrights, blacksmiths, men
who can shoe horses, and few handicrafts-
men. Ii Is accompanied by clergyman,
who, with hss family, intends to settle with
the colony Nearly all the emigrants have
made arrangements for the purchase of
land, and their lots are as nearly as possi-
BILE contiguous. and all are situated at Lin
coin, the capital Of Nebraska, and are in
tersected by the railway of the State, the
Burlington and Missouri River Railroad
The section Of the colony which embark
cd on Tuesday numbered 145 persons, of
\
pied intermediate berths, and Ill were
steerage passengers. The number of cabin
and intermediate passengers shows, in some
sort, that the people are not poverty y-strick-
60, a. emigrants often are and this is fur
ther attested by the fact that they took out
with them in drafts, realized from their
cash brought to Liverpool, q sum of no less
than flO,O0O. Their appearance spoke
even more than this, and one could hardly
help thinking it was pity that England
should be losing such sons, except that they
will not by any means be lost in the United
States.
A gentleman accustomed to deal with
eInigrants all his life was more than struck
he was quite astOnished-at the look of
these colonists until it was explained to
him. The three sons of the Lancashire
farmer looked indeed the beau ideal of the
Saxon race, which goes out to conquer and
subdue, and we had to do no more than
look at them to be convinced that it was no
sentimental journey" that they were up
on 1t may be mentioned that the bulk Of
the hrst section Of the colony il from Lin
colnahire and the home counties. Their
destination, n already stated, is Lincoln
City, in Nebraska, whittier they will pro-
ceed by waY Of Baltimore the nort 70