People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1893 — WHY CANADIANS LEAVE HOME. [ARTICLE]

WHY CANADIANS LEAVE HOME.

The Steady Increase of Taxation Is One Primo Reason. Canadian emigration to Lewiston, Me., is at the rate of one thousand every year. Most ot the arrivals are of French extraction, and the main cause of their exodus is the steady increase of taxation at home, which they are unable to stand. The Lewiston Journal describes the situation from the point of view of the emigrating French-Canadian, thus: “Suppose that you arean inhabitant of the country south of Montreal. You raise some garden stuff that would sell in a city, but there is an inconvenient way to get it into the city. The government road now runs but one train a day up there from the district where the French people live. Plenty of trains come into Montreal from the English districts of New Brunswick. You have a large family of children to support. Glowing accounts come to you of a country to the south where there is plenty to eat and wear, free schools for your children, where the vote of every man counts and the poor man is as honorable as the rich. You will pack up your things and come over if you have thirty dollars for your tickets." One of these people said the other day that his countrymen did not come to Maine because the land was more fertile, but simply because (leaving taxation out of the question) there was no market for their products at home. Let Canada be annexed, he added, and the flow of travel southward would cease at once.