The Wheat King

Almon James Cotton(1858-1942) was born in Ontario, and after an unsuccesful farming experience there moved to southern Manitoba in 1888. In Treherne he became known as Manitoba’s “Wheat King” because of the size and quality of his crops. At the turn of the century Cot- ton moved again, this time to the Swan River Valley in Manitoba, where he found sufficient land to provide working farms for all his sons. Unlike most early farmers, Cotton preserved extensive accounts and a massive correspondence, including hundreds of letters to prospective immigrants tothe Canadian West. This volume of selected letters and papers provides an intimate glimpse into the world of the rural prairies before World War I. Cotton’s comments on farming, politics, religion, immigration, and western boosterism – t mention only a few of the major topics he discusses – delivered in the brusk no-nonsense style of the farming community. His remarks shed con- siderable light on a fascinating personality from a key period of western settlement. An avid amateur photographer, Cotton also left a large collection of photographs used to illustrate this volume. PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS OF THE MANITOBA RECORD SOCIETY 1. W. L. Morton, ed., MANITOBA: THE BIRTH OF A PROVINCE. (1965) Available only in paperback edition. 2. Ramsay Cook, ed., THE DAFOE-SIFTON CORRESPONDENCE 1919-1927. (1966) 3. Hartwell Bowsfield, ed., THE JAMES WICKES TAYLOR CORRESPONDENCE 1859-1870. (1968) 4. Katherine Pettipas, ed., THE DIARY OF THE REVEREND HENRY BUDD 1870-1875. (1974) 5. Alan Artibise, ed.. GATEWAY CITY: DOCUMENTS ON THE CITY OF WINNIPEG 1875-1913. (1979) 6. Maria Tippett and Douglas Cole, eds., PHILLIPS IN PRINT: THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF WALTER J. PHILLIPS ON CANADIAN NATURE AND ART. (1982) 7. J.M. Bumsted, ed., THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF LORD SELKIRK, 1799-1809 (1984) Information on obtaining back volumes is available from The Society at 403 Fletcher Argue Building, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg R3T 2N2. Wendy Owen is a graduate student in History of the University of Manitoba, specializing in the agricultural history of the prairie provinces. THE MANITOBA RECORD SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS V O L VIII U M E PRESIDENT Derek Bedson 1st VICE-PRESIDENT A.F.J. Artibise GENERAL EDITOR J.M. Bumsted ASSOCIATE EDITOR H.J. Mays The Manitoba Record Society Winnipeg 1984 No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, information storage and retrieval systems without permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Copyright 1985 Manitoba Records Soceity CONTENTS Editorial Introduction ............................................... ix Letters and Papers of A.J. Cotton .............................. 3 Index........................................................................ 155 To my mother, Eleanor Williams and to the “mother” of this volume, Angie Loat. Almon James Cotton, 1858-1942 Esther Louise Ford and Almon James Cotton on their wedding day, June 2, 1880. INTRODUCTION The history o f the agricultural settlement of the Canadian Northwest has recently been undergoing a renaissance.1 It remains popularly associated, however, with Clifford Sifton’s “men in sheepskin coats,” homesteaders taking advantage of free land, Americans coming to the “Last Best West,” and organized colonization ventures in both the public and private sectors.2 Implicit in this view is the notion that prairie settlement offered an opportunity, far the disinherited and dislocated to start afresh in a region where land was plentiful, cheap, and fertile. While much has been written on ethnic settlement on the prairies, the movement of Anglo-Canadians from the east, particularly from Ontario, has received less attention than it deserves, although these individuals, perhaps best characterized as the “privileged settlers,” dominated many if not most local communities and most aspects of life, especially in Manitoba.3 These privileged settlers were responsible, for transforming Manitoba from a multiracial and bilingual society of metis to a society which replicated and imitated the values, assumptions, and institutions o f Ontario. The Ontario farmer in Manitoba has been most frequently observed from two perspectives. The first, embedded deeply in works of political economy and economic history dealing with the settlement process, views the farmer as a nameless victim, subjected to movements and currents which he improperly understood and seldom controlled.4 The second, embodied in works o f “ r e a l i s t i c ” fiction in the earlier years of the twentieth century, sees the farmer as a tyrannical patriarch, alienated from the land and his surroundings. 5 The letters and papers o f Almon James Cotton (1858-1942) reprinted in this volume, offer some useful corrective to both the anonymous victim and the alienated patriarch approach to the prairie farmer. While the Cotton material deals with all the external and uncontrollable forces, it also demonstrates that Cotton ix THE WHEAT KING was a man with an agricultural strategy, or rather a succession of strategies, which made him successful in his own eves and in those of his neighbours. Cotton’s .first strategy, begun, from his first decision to move to Manitoba in 1888, depended upon hard work and a proper utilization of capital resources. He was content to he a tenant farmer in Treherne, constantly adding new unimproved land to his acreage, and taking first crops off a virgin soil. After 1899, Cotton while still a tenant farmer became known as Manitoba’s “Wheat King,” for in that year he had thrashed 19,000 bushels of number 1 hard Manitoba wheat, filling twenty-eight railway cars. As he became successful and his family grew older, Cotton turned from tenancy to land ownership, seeking a large amount of land in the Swan River Valley, moving therein l901. In his new environment, Cotton operated as a patriarch and a local squire, building up farms for his sons and playing a leading role in the establishment of church, school, roads, railroad, and communications. He even had a turn at politics, although he did not find it very satisfying. Whether at Treherne or Swan River, Cotton was an enthusiastic and experimental farmer, always committed to sound agricultural practices but equally willing to try something new and to learn from others. He was also an enthusiastic correspondent, writing to old, friends in the east, fellow farmers in the west, and a host of other individuals associated with his various economic and other activities. He also carried on an extensive correspondence with prospective newcomers to the prairie west as an unpaid agent of the Department of Immigration. In these letters, as in his others, Cotton mixed discussion of prairie agricultural practices, an unbounded enthusiasm for the West which can only be described as “boosterism,” and his own inimitable opinions on the events of the day. From these letters emerges a personality which gives life to statistics and helps us to understand the thinking of those trans-planted Ontarians who played such an important role in moulding. Manitoba in the half-century after Confederation. Almon James Cotton was born near Port Granby, Ontario, in 1858. Although brought up on a farm, he had gone to work for the railroad upon leaving school, probably because there seemed little future on his family’s holdings, a typical situation for younger sons in older parts of Ontario.6 In 1880 he married Louise Ford, a farmer’s daughter from a neighbouring township, perhaps in anticipation of the inheritance of a small farm, from his grandfather in 1881. Initially Cotton was encouraged by his farming enterprise, and by 1884 - with the help of cash he had earned loading barley onto Lake Erie schooners - he was able to extend his acreage by purchase of the adjacent farm. By the fall of 1887, x Introduction however, the Cotton enterprise was in trouble, and the family decided to leave Ontario, “having farmed down there,” Cotton later recalled, “until we could farm no longer at a profit.”7 A substantial mortgage and exhausted land probably helped account for his problems. He eventually sold his farm for $1,400 less than he had paid for it, and embarked , for Manitoba in 1888. The land to which Cotton migrated in 1888 belonged to Major William McLean, a Port Hope businessman. McLean had visited Manitoba in the summer of 1887 and purchased land about a mile outside Treherne, a village seventy miles southwest of Winnipeg. A speculator, McLean sought someone to bring his land under cultivation. He was willing to give a five-year lease in return, for an annual rental of one dollar payable at the end of the year and the acquisition of all improvements - broken land, fences and buildings - at the conclusion of the lease. Although such an arrangement does not at , first glance appear attractive, Cotton accepted it. He wrote to a neighbouring, farmer in Treherne to enquire about the quality of the land, but when assured it was fertile he signed the lease.8 Cotton would continue to rent this land until he left Treherne in 1901, later paying its taxes and performing statute labour connected with its possession. While many Canadians dismissed tenancy as exploitation. Cotton always regarded it as the ideal way to begin as a farmer. He was grateful to McLean and attempted unsuccessfully to extend McLean’s terms to others in the Swan River Valley. Doubtless aware that part of his problem in Ontario had come ,from a large mortgage, Cotton moved to Manitoba with none of his capital tied up in land and no financial responsibilities resulting from its ownership. Cotton did not come to Treherne without capital. He auctioned his farm animals, implements, and equipment, with prices ranging from 25c for a seed box to $75 for a Massey binder to $145 for a bay horse.9 He did not sell all his animals and implements, however, and in March of 1888 he packed a rail car with goods and set off west.

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