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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE DWELLINGS OF THE WORKING CLASSES IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA. BY THE REV. C. G. NICOLAY. TF the philologist might say, ' tell me the state of language in any country, and I will tell you the political condition and prospects of.that country?' the philanthropist might with equal truth assert, 'tell me...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON THE DWELLINGS OF THE WORKING CLASSES IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA. BY THE REV. C. G. NICOLAY. TF the philologist might say, ' tell me the state of language in any country, and I will tell you the political condition and prospects of.that country?' the philanthropist might with equal truth assert, 'tell me the condition of the dwellings of the working classes, and I will tell you the social state and prospects of the country.' In no place is this more true than in British North America; the dwellings of the working classes there might be assumed as typical of the characteristics peculiar to that country. But who are the working classes ? Are we to understand the term as we should do here ? Are we to look for the day field- labourer, almost ' adstrictus glebse, ' in the agricultural districts?the skilled mechanic and artisan in the towns? Every country has its own form to which labour is adapted. In the British North American provinces, it is in the one case dissimilar, and in the other similar to that with which we are familiar here, for while the mechanic and artisan there differ only from their fellow-workman at home in having higher proportionate wages and better prospects, the agricultural labourer of this country has no fellow there, and the only class which can be compared with that to which he belongs is the settler without money capital, who supplies that, his only want, by occasionally labouring for his richer neighbour, ' adstrictus glebfe, ' indeed, in one sense, for the laud on which he dwells is his own. In many parts of our British North American colonies the custom obtains, once common among ourselves, for the children of the small landowners to join their richer neighhours, live in their houses, and work for them until they have saved enough to settle for t.