The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-01-05
cALeARrs .REMIrrANcE MEN.
Ne'er-Do-Well Englishmen Who Live
 on Checks From Home.

as the Fastener conceives it. Frederic Remington is scarcely more than a middle-aged man, but his pictures are no longer contemporary art. In so far as they are pictures of the present at all, this little city of Calgary lives up to them more nearly than any other place. It is more nearly typical of the West of literature and the imagination than any other town.
 Here, spurs and leggins and ridding trousers, flannel shirt ana Tapping hat are the ordinary dress. The cowboy rides his cayuse in all the glory of fringed leather trousers; Indians, real Indians in picturesque blankets, jostle you on the street. And there is all the bizarrerie that one associates with the West. There are little towns near here named Whoop-up. Stand-off, Moose jaw, and n-Who-Stole- -the-Coat. These names are not local slang, they are actually on the map. There is that inevitable accompaniment of the old frontier town, newspaper eccentric in title and most picturque in humor and style The one here is called the Eye-Opener, and is edited by an Eng lishman of distinguished antecedents and university training. There is the leader of the bar. renowned for TO- bust heartiness of manner, bull-of- Bashan voice. and keen Irish wit. rather than for legal subtlety; there is that same old joke about what your name was back East.
 But what gives Calgary renown above all other places as a type of the fast passing West is this: 1t is the capital and metropolis of the country of the remittance man" One hears remittance man. here far more often than you hear college man" in Bos- ton The remittance man is an Eng lishman who neither tolls nor spins, but lives by vertue of a friendly mail that once in so often brings him a check from home. There is no fixed rule about the size of that check, but this can always be said of 1t; it is al- ways less than enough to buy ticket from Calgary to London. At home in England, the remittance man is said 5 to be in Western Canada for the sake Of his health: here in Calgary he is commonly supposed to be here for the sake of family reputation at home. 1s am inclined to a more charitable view of them than the common Calgary op- inion. They wern't born bad. I fancy They are the fruit of social conditions lin England rather than damned by any doctrine of original sin You can read the whale story in Kiplins Gentle man Rankers.. ort"Lost Sheep" It IS no favor to the younger son to raise him in an environment that means champagne and truff1es, the Carlton and Mayfair and all that goes with it; and then turn him loose with just about enough income for beer and frankfurters and all that goes with that.
 His education doesn't fit him for any career whatever; there isn't an occu- patton open to him that would pay him more than 20 shillings a week and if he goes to work in any but q few selected callings, he loses caste. If he's of very rare ealiber, he may go to the colonies. become an empire-b builder. : and later he's heard from. But in the more frequent case he falls into ways that make an eye-sore at home; and by-and-by his people make a more or less definite bargain with him; if he'll go to Western Canada and stay there, they'll send him enough money to keep him. In a few cases, he gets all his moneyin lump. His family gives him enough to set him up on a ranch, and cheerfully announces to friends at home who inquire for him that he's running a ranch in Western Canada. They have cheerful optimism which never inquiries whether or not experince may not be an essential prerequisite running ranch. As often as not, the money that should have started 8 ranch goes over the bar of the Royal Hotel And then the ingenious stories that the mails carry back to London to get another remittance. It was a hard winter and all the cattle were frozen on the range; new stock must be bought. One hears humorous re- petitions of these tales at every turn # in Calgary. I was told by an English man, himself remittance man Of a better sort, that he knew a fellow countrynlan who had several times written home elaborately detailed stories of long sicknesses, substantiat- ed by bills of an amiable and friendly physician. Finally, as a last resort, IIOTSGJlillSs III uC5PSl ctiSik StA-Ds oessity this device must be the last ione, this particular remittance man had a fellow countryman write home to his people a pathetic letter record ing the details of his final sickness and death The letter closed with are quest for funds for burial A cabled answer said to embalm the body and a X week or two later brother arrived whose bereavement was quickly chang ed to indignation These tales of pro- Ef1igacy are the commcnest talk in Cal gary. They say you can find in the lo- x cal pawnshop silver-mou ounted ebony backed hair brushes and all the para phernalia of a London clubnan's dres- sing table, But there is one thing the most profiigate will cling to as firmly X as to his hope of final social redenlp- tion You will find, thy say, dress suits bearing a Bond Street tailor's. trade mark in prairie shacks that contains little else to suggest civilization
 Not all the remittance men are such as this. Some have gone about the way of the country with excellent spirit and business method. They have become prosperous ranchers, and with a complemerlt of Chinese servants serve dinner in courses in their bachelor U =. e-~ gt .r-,. .t~cHt q T. f,r<a