PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT.
THE EAST LONDON SETTLEMENT.
In 1884 that exceedingly wealthy and philanthropic woman, the Baron-
ess Burdett-Coutts, assisted a number of people from the eastern part of
the City of London, England, to emigrate to the Moosomin district. It is
usual to speak of East London, as though it were the headquarters of the
world's slumdom, and the East Londoners were often spoken of as coming
from the slums. This did them an injustice. They came from the poor
working class quarters of the great city which is a very different thing.
To take adult people who never saw a farm, and therefore had absolutely
nothing but city experience to guide them, and endeavor to make pioneer
farmers of them in a new country was certainly to ask a good deal of
human nature if the experiment was to succeed; and yet the experiment
was far from being a failure. Twenty families were sent out and twelve
of them were on their farms four years afterwards, and five had jobs at
small crafts in the town of Moosomin, leaving only three who had dis-
appeared and could not be accounted for. Lady Burdett-Coutts lent each
settler fifty pounds and the North West Land Company, advanced another
fifty pounds, secured by a mortgage.
It is interesting after a long lapse of years to re-visit with one Garth
Grafton, these Londoners in their homes, after they had been four years
on their places. Garth Grafton wrote as follows :-By the way, Garth
Grafton was the pen name of a lady.
"The company made all their initial investments for them, otherwise
an unnecessary amount of the loan would have been spent in foolish lux
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