Times-promoter. (Hernando, DeSoto County, Miss.) 1898-1970, 1908-08-21
LETTER FROM CANADA
Maj. Dockery Tells Of General Habits and
Customs of Canadians.

l don't know Whether you nave re-
ceived my two former letters or not,
for | never see the paper and rarely
hear from home. l have been run
ming around so much my mail can't
catch up with me.
My letters, if they are printed, fur
nish poor reading know, but if had
the power of description I could in
teres5 your readers with many things
l have seen away up here in Canada.
am at the Lake Erie end of the
Welland Canal and see vessels both
large and small passing all day and
hear them at night, carrying millions
of tons of freight from the east and
from the old world tc the west in the
form Of manufactured products-and
returning with feed stuffs from our
northwestern states and Canada to
the east and to the old world. That
is commerce, and it is immense along
and through the chain of great lakes.
The people of Canada are thrifty
and prosperous. I don't think there
are as many very rich men as we
have, but still there are some Million
aires here, but the wealth seems to
be more generally diffused than with
US, and the people seem happy and
contented. They are Industrious and
all work. The dining rooms of the
hotels and boarding houses are filed
with young ladies of good families.
They are pretty and intelligent and
compare favorably with any young
ladies you meet anywhere. They get
twenty dollars a month here and ]
hear that that is the general pay.
I went last week to cordage fac
tory, in little town ten miles away,
and saw seventeen hundred young
men making rope all the way from
coarse sewing thread to the largest
ships cables. They make tons and
tons of binding twine every day for
the harvest fields. They use only
MANILA grass. The coarse and cheap
from Mexico and the finer is brought
from our Philippines. The grain crop
of the world is now harvested by ma
chinery and is bound with small wire
or twine, and this factory supplies
thousands of tons of Irvine to bind
the wheat crop of Manitoba-which
is now coming to be the great wheat
producing section of the continent.
The wheat is just beginning to ripen
and many thousands of men are
wanted to gather it, The railroads
are giving very low rates to the fields
and the farmers are offering three.
dollars day for men. You must re-
member Manitoba is a thousand miles
away. The grain crop here is about
housed and the hands are moving
farther north.
Glover is the main hay and pasture
crop here. Though large quantities
of timothy, blue grass and alfafa
pronounced here falfy) are grown
here. They grow from eighty to a
hundred bushels of corn to the acre
here, but l went hundred miles
north last week and there corn is a
very uncertain crop, being thousand
feet higher than here, frost frequent
ly catches it. 1t is grown for silage
and cut in green state. They raise
and feed great fields of beets and
have stone barns to keep them in.
was passing through a large field and
asked woman sitting with me what
was growing there. She said we raise
large roots here and use them from
the cellar.
/ went to Guelph, about one hun
dred and fifty miles north, to see the
working of the agricultural college.
AS knew the president and his wife
had most cordial welcome and
was treated most Hospitality, and saw,
/ reckon, the finest college of its kind
anywhere in America. 1t is not for
lawyers, doctors or merchants or
clerks. No boy is received there ex-
cept from the farm and says he is
going back to the farm. There is a
fine system of free schools and fine
universities for educating the masses,
but the agricultural college is es-
pecially for teaching the tillage of
the soil. The production of the crops
that grow in Canada, stock raising
and dairying and the experimental
grounds and crops, the show of cattle,
hogs and horses, the dairy and cheese