subject of ’timber stealing’. Outlining the stages by which the ’young timber-getter’ was seduced into the activity (which need not have involved the theft of someone else's timber), he portrays it as a kind of ’rake’s progress':

The young timber-getter is allured by the hope of being well paid for his winter's work; 100 tons of timber, at from 15 to 20 shillings per ton, will yield a large sum, and procure implements, stock, and clothing for his family; and perhaps he promises himself that when he has procured such and such things, he will cleave to his proper business and best interest, his farming. He bargains with a merchant, obtains credit, and commences operations; but it is cold work in the woods, he must have spirits and there must be two tables. In the family his food would be scarcely missed; not so what he requires when in camp, to which it is inconvenient to carry potatoes; bread must be the substitute, and meat for fish. Bye and bye comes settling day, the pleasing dream is ended; the high per- centage of the store—keeper, and his own incautious neglect in learning and setting down the cost of every article he buys, bring the astonished man into debt; which, if honest, he feels to be a galling bondage. What shall he do! He is resolved to go to the woods during summer as well as winter to get rid of the balance; the farm is much neglected, the cows come not home; they lose their milk; all things go wrong for want of the master's eye and hand, and his home looks like a desolation. And is not this, Mr. Editor, the too general

result? 917

This moralistic view of lumbering was based not only on some of the observable effects of the trade (especially the connection between lumbering and alcohol abuse payment to lumberers was often in the form of rum”), but also because it was seen to violate a second economic principle (second, that is, to the paramount position of agriculture as the economic basis of the colony): in Samuel Hill's words, "the principle of the just division of Iabor”, with the result that it distracted the pioneer farmer into lumbering causing him to neglect his farm — as is described above by the anonymous letter-writer?”

917

Anon. 1826.

918 There is little comment on this in the lumbering sources for

Prince Edward Island. One bit of evidence that l have come across is Blakeley's (1976) comment that in the 1830s Samuel Cunard and Company of Halifax was importing rum from the West Indies to supply the “lumbering operations in Prince Edward Island and Mirimichi".

9‘9 According to Wynn (1981) (p. 83) it was the conventional wisdom of the day that farming was “the only secure foundation for growth“, and that lumbering was an “adventitious enterprise“ that drew men away from agriculture and was on that account opprobrious.

141

In fact, Hill was being somewhat disingenuous, for when he came to comment on the island’s ship- building industry, he praised it as ”contributing to the general welfare of the colony”, saying that, unlike lumbering, it did not violate the ’principle’, since those involved in it rarely ”follow [any] other

occupation” — it seems that in his view ship- builders and shipwrights were unlikely to be farmers. Even so, he was choosing to

conveniently ignore the fact that the ships produced on the island could not have been built with0ut the timber taken from the forest by the very men whom he was castigating for doing so. This negative attitude may also have been fed at times by a streak of envy, allied to snobbery, in the island’s professional and landed class, who resented the high wages that were paid to the timber-makers.920

Such a moral view, however, was not universal. Ironically, exactly twenty years earlier, Samuel

Hill’s father, John, had expressed the very opposite view about would-be farmers participating in lumbering.921 In fact, he

emphatically encouraged them to do so, describing timbering in winter as "a most beneficial employment", providing the new settler with a means of both paying the rent on his land and buying store goods.922 923

Then in the 1850s, the traditional antagonism towards lumbering and ship-building came once

92° An example is the comment in 1809 of J. M. DesBarres, the

son of the lieutenant-governor, that "the pay given to those people [i.e. “the Farmers", and “every Boy that can hold an axe"] is immense, much more so than the first familys have to support themselves in appearance &c", [Bumsted 1982 (p. 192), citing J. M. DesBarres to Sir William Dolben, DesBarres Papers, PAC Vol. 14.]

92‘ [Hill] 1819. 9” Wynn (1981) (pp. 82-84), in a recent study of lumbering in New Brunswick, came to a conclusion that is in agreement with that of John Hill: Wynn considered that, on balance, getting involved in lumbering had benefits for the small farmers of that colony, providing them with a cash income that could be applied to their farming operations.

”3 I note also that even John MacGregor. in one of the few positive statements that he made about lumbering, was forced to acknowledge an ‘exception' to his generally negative views of the trade, commenting that “many young men of steady habits who went from Prince Edward Island, and other places, to Mirimichi, for the express purpose of making money, had joined the lumbering parties for two or three years; and after saving their earnings, returned and purchased lands etc. on which they now live very comfortably’ (MacGregor 1828, p. 168 [not extracted]). Also [Lawson] (1877-1878) refers to “spending the winter at lumbering in the woods" of Mirimichi as a profitable activity in past years for “the young men" of Lots 12, 13 and 14.