Today the face of Saskatchewan is changing, as oil derricks thrust skyward in Canada’s

wheat province.

THE LAST -
GREAT WEST’

By TOM McEWEN

Te story of the great harvest migrations of half a cen-
tury ago, in which tens of thousands of workers came yearly
to the “Last Great West” of Canada’s wheat belt to make a
“stake,” is composed of excerpts from Tom McEwen’s new
book, The Forge Glows Red, now nearing completion.

It is the story of an era now long past, which posed a
lesson for worker and farmer alike, the need of organization
and unity against a common enemy.

“And the fields that gleam like a golden stream,
And the slaves that toil ‘amain;

Are thine, are thine, O’ Master mine,

To the uttermost measure of gain.”

(Alf Budden,
x

x

EAR after year they came,

with the unerring certainty
of a homing pigeon. East from
beyond the Atlantic the fac-
tories, mines and mills of
Britain spewed them out by
the thousands as from an over-
gorged stomach, into the maw
of the West. Far south from
the sweeps of the Rio Grande
they surged northwards, gath-
ering numbers as they came,
up through the “Bible Belt”
and the Dakotas.

West on the Pacific slope
they gathered, from Esquimalt
to Frisco, up and down to
Vancouver and out into the
“Last Great West.”

“Sixty thousand men want-
ed; seventy thousand men
wanted; harvest excursions
leave daily from Vancouver
and Montreal. Travel via CPR,
Canada’s premier railway.
Special one - way. rates; one
cent per mile. Stooking $4 a
day, threshing $6. No exper-
ience necessary. One hundred
and sixty acres of virgin land
awaits the intrepid settler.
Make your harvest excursion
a profitable investment; let
the CPR show you.”

It was a gala day on Main
Street and business was rubb-

in The Slave Of The Farm)
nm

ing its hands in anticipation.

Huge streamers blazoned forth

like the advance advertis-

ments of a Barnum arid Bailey

circus.

“Reduced harvest _ sale;
everything for the harvester
here. Get your supplies here
and go West, Gloves and Hats
at rock-bottom prices.”

Decrepit automobiles of
every conceivable make, held
together by sheer will power
and haywire. displaying license
plates from every state down
to Mexico, added their quota
of eager sweating humanity.
The rusty skeleton of an old
abandoned “Tin Lizzie,” brok-
en beyond repair and left to
rest on the edge of a rutted
prairie trail, marked the
course of a great continental
migration to win a _ yearly
“stake” before it was pushed
aside to make way for the on-
rush of mechanical progress.

Sleepy prairie hamlets were
jolted out of their lethargy
with the coming of the har-
vester army. Railway sidings
and stations became the cen-
tres of argument, hard bar-
gain, and painful awakening.

“You fellows want a job

stooking? I’m paying.the going

wages. Can’t pay a green man
five dollars a day.”

“But they told us back East
that the wages were five dol-
lars‘a day and board ...:

“Can’t help what they told
you, how many of you want
to go out stooking? I~ can’t
argue here all day .. .”

The first bitter pill of dis-
illusionment for the migratory

_ harvester. The glib promises of

transport agents, immigration
barkers, colonization sharks,
shattered by hard reality on
a lonely prairie siding. But
the harvester horde came year

after year, eager and en-
thusiastic, their hopes and
fears, disappointments and

successes, stamping an indel-
ible pattern upon an era of
Canadian development.

' Sweeping on with the har-
vester trek as its vast army
converged on a‘sea of golden
grain came another force often
weak and insignificant at the
beginning, but gaining
strength and momentum with
the advance of the migratory
horde.

“Society is,divided into two
classes—the exploiter and the
exploited . _ . between them
there is nothing in common.”

A ruddy-faced square-built’
worker with a husky voice and
an inexhaustable energy came
each year with the harvester
army, often just a little ahead
of it, like the advance agent
preparing the billing for a
mighty drama.

Sometimes when a harvester
crew had retired to the caboose
for the night and were just
‘hitting the hay’ a quiet husky
voice would break into the
silence, a husky voice with a
lovable Scots burr.

“Hello boys, is this outfit
organized? Here’s a little pam-
phlet to help you fight. And
read that preamble boys: ‘So-
ciety is divided into two classes
...” And here are some songs,
sing them when you feel low.

I’m Sam Scarlett, organizer for

the Agricultural Workers of
the IWW. Stick together boys,
and you can win the same
wages as other outfits. Organ-
ized, you can talk to John

Farmer, and he’ll listen.”
Sam Scarlett, one of whose

‘ Scottish ancestors rode at the
“head of the famed Light Bri-

gade ‘600” at Balaclava, rode
the crest of the harvester wave
year after. year from Mexico
to the Alberta foothills, to
bring organization and class
consciousness to a great mi-
gratory harvester army.

“Get out your hymn books
fellow workers. We'll begin
the meeting with Pie In The
Sky.”

Threshing; the crowning act
in the great drama of the
West. The magnetic centre of
attraction, the altar of hopes
and fears; the stamping ground
of sheriff and shylock, the focal
point of the lions of finance,
with their attendant hyenas
hovering in the background,
waiting to feed on the offal
of the kill and pick the bones
clean. A centre of complex
and conflicting emotions, in
which men sweated and hoped

_ and swore as they struggled

to grasp their share of the
spoils from a bountiful Nature
—and wished for ‘‘next year.”

Ten thousand machines
pouring their stream of straw
skywards in a cloud -of dust
which turns the glare of the
sun to a yellow haze. Eighty
thousand men, sweating and
swearing and dreaming, drive
their sweat and dust - caked
teams through an endless ex-
panse of gold, Day after day,
from dark to dark and long
after, as though driven by a
mighty invisible foree, the

-harvester army fed the vora-
cious machine.

Day by day the straw poured
skywards, and its golden
stream into the no less vora-
cious maw of the grain plun-
derbund. And the dreams and
hopes of the toilers were
written in crude figures on
barn doors, on wagon sides, or
wherever the stub of a pencil
could find a smooth surface,

“Great West.”

traction. i

Through the haze and &
dust and heat the West looks
resolutely towards “next
while its stubbed pencil made
rapid calculations how t0 get
there. And while it did 18%
“reckoning” the West drove : a
migratory workers to grea!
and greater effort, subtractin
from night and calling it da;

“We'll run as long as we ©
see a stook.” y i

“The hell you will. What do”
expect of a man.” a.

“A day’s work.” an

“What do you call a day? 7

Every year in their thou’ 9)
ands and tens of thousands
they came; from the East. and
the West and South, outd
the “Last Great West.”
the West welcomed.them,
ed them, drove - them,
damned them, while 4
Street speculated on their ¢
ing and going, and recore
their passage on its cash |
isters. . ae

And when they had fed #S
last sheaf to the hungry ™*
chine and its droning hum id
ceased, and the reckoning
the barn door had been CO
pleted, they melted @
They had shorn the wide
panse of Canada’s prairies
its fruits, gathered their litle”
“stakes” and departed, the#
trail marked by the red blaz
of burning straw stacks,
dening the lowering sky of #
winter night. The last fune
pyre of their passing.

On-the old Battleford
on the banks of the Saskal-
chewan lay an ancient hu!
of what was once an auto-
mobile, bearing the plates
Nebraska, USA. Across
battered rear one could :
the fading legend, “The La% |
The harv
legion of which it was a D®
comes no more. Like it, thet
are scrapped, and its legen
the closing of an era.

and the rule was always subs

be
amen
ae Ze

Hundreds of thqusands of people have come to visit tie
Saskatchewan Natural History Museum since it opened in”

May, 1955. It is dedicated “. .

. to the honor of all pioneers —

who came from many lands to settle this part of Canada.”

June 26, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—P