Because the settlers from Lewis and Harris received
substantial financial support their homesteads and livelihoods were under regular surveillance, and their ability to pay back debt or their need for increased assistance was constantly evaluated. The
Imperial colonization board published reports on the conditions in the colony
on a yearly basis from 1890-1906.
The debts the Killarney settlers incurred
through purchasing machinery are a recurrent theme in the reports.
Many of the
crofters have purchased expensive machinery, such as seeders, mowers, rakes,
harrows, ploughs, and binders. I remonstrated with them strongly for incurring
such weighty obligations and pointed out that a binder should cut at least for
crofters’ grain, and that a mower, rake, seeders, and harrow, should serve the
same number of crofter families (ICB 1891, 7).
It is perhaps
a matter for regret that the settlers have acquired so much machinery on
credit. They were warned against doing so, but the allurements of implement
agents seem to have been difficult to withstand, and the scarcity of labour
often makes it difficult to harvest the crops with rapidity, especially if
reliance has to be placed on machinery not entirely under the control of the
farmer (ICB 1892, 4).
I have shown
machinery purchased by crofters to give the Board an idea of the weighty
obligations ($8,779.56) incurred by them. I have taken every opportunity to
point out to crofters how unnecessary it was to go so largely into machinery. I
have tried to convince them that half the quantity would, if used in partnership,
perform the work required. A number of them still contend that ‘each man wants
his own’ and ‘they were not hard to get’
... It will be my intention, should the Board send out any more
crofters, to inform the different implement firms the of the conditions of the
lien given by a crofter to the Board so that they could instruct their
subagents (ICB 1892, 6).
The regretful purchasing of
machinery is just one of the aspects the Imperial Colonization Board employee
criticizes the crofters for. They also do not take on the Board's advice on building
inexpensive types of houses to replace the initial ones erected for them on
their arrival. The board constructed a sample house in the tradition of the ‘German
speaking settlers from Russia’ for the crofters to inspect. Those were dug five
– six feet into the ground and in part even deeper to create a cellar. A double
slanting roof was erected over the ‘hole’ and at its center it was ten- twelve feet above the floor surface. Despite the houses being a third or
at most half of the cost of the initial houses and being described as comfortable,
airy and ‘quite sufficient for the first few years’ (ICB 1890, 10), the
crofters did not adopt this building style, reportedly objecting to living
underground.
These examples of the inspection
of the material acquisitions of the settlers, coupled with the encouragement in
building of inexpensive houses and sharing machinery is a result of the
pressure the colonization board was under to reclaim the money and show that
the scheme was financially viable. Of course that is not to say that the
welfare of the crofters was irrelevant or secondary. However, it stresses the
centrality of the appropriate consumption and production that was expected of
the crofters and points towards the surveillance they were subjected to.
At first inspection, there
furthermore appears to be an inherent contradiction in the ICB’s efforts which
on one hand were supporting the crofters’ towards a better life in Canada, to
modernize their farming methods and encourage their participation in the
capitalist economy and at the other hand to reign that development in, to
promote cooperative farming, sharing of machinery and the building of
inexpensive houses of a relatively simple construction.
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