Years ago an ancestor of mine leased a tract of
worthless swamp land for forty-nine years at a penny an acre per year.
By hard labor and perseverance he drained the land and made it
productive. So when the forty-nine years were up and the family sought
an extension of the lease, the rent went up to one pound an acre. This
was pretty hard; but by frugality and perseverance the family still
prospered. At the end of the second forty-nine years the rent demanded
was five pounds an acre. Think of it--twenty-five dollars a year! That
was too much to endure, so my father, then a young blacksmith, was sent
over to Canada to buy land. He bought three farms of a hundred acres
each, one for himself, one for his brother, and one for their father,
paying four dollars an acre. Here again the rich man had the upper hand.
For this same land had been sold by the British Government to
capitalists for twenty-five cents an acre. Of course, my people had no
money to pay cash down, but they quit Scotland nevertheless. They came
over in 1832, in a small sailing vessel, which took four weeks to make
the passage. Then came another struggle. The land was very productive,
but money was scarce and crops brought hardly anything.
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