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Scottish Highland Press, February
1894
DISTRESSING
STATE OF AFFAIRS IN THE North-West TERRITOY
A Warning
to Intending Emigrants
A correspondent
– a native of Inverness – writes as follows regarding the
attitude taken up by the Scottish Highlander in connection with the
emigration of crofters and others to the North- West territory:-your
opposition to emigration from Scotland IS justified by the fact that
more destitution exists on this Continent than ever was experienced
in Scotland or England, I will give you facts which probably you have
not heard in Inverness ,
During the last
eleven months there were in the United States 605 banks which closed
their doors; seventy- four rail way companies went into the hands of
receivers in the same time; and a proportionate number of smelters’
manufactories went to the wall, Such is the deplorable state of the
renowned Mackinley protected Republic,
There are over three-million of able-bodied working men at present out
of employed in this country. Thousands of families are confronted with
starvation and would have succumbed to famine, were it not for the kind
action of the philanthropic disposed.
Yet the Tories
will promote and encourage emigration to the North-West Territory, where
it is 50 and 60 degrees below zero for many months of the year.
A crofter can live six months in the Highlands for what he would pay
at the Rocky Mountains for a coon-skin overcoat – which almost
everybody must get in Colorado, far less in the North-West territory.
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