My grandfather did his undergraduate degree at Mt. Allison University in Sackville N.B. After his first year, he was seriously short of cash and thought he could make some easy money selling books door-to-door. He was twenty at the time and had never been outside rural New Brunswick. He came east to Toronto in June, 1925 and then was assigned the town of Polk in Pennsylvania as his territory. Although he didn’t make any money, he was able to use his experience as fodder for an English composition exercise when he went back to school.
I post this because, like all windows into the past, it allows us to reflect on the present. Two observations are worth noting:
1) Although we claim to live in a neoliberal post-NAFTA relationship with the U.S., the U.S.-Canada border was far more porous before World War II. (See my grandfather’s account of walking past a sleeping U.S. border guard.) My grandfather was free to work without impediment in the U.S. as he did in succeeding years while studying at Boston Divinity School. Imagine the red tape a Canadian faces today in order to work the U.S. Think of what a hassle crossing the border can be.
2) Although modern book publishers lament the dwindling status of the physical book, there are some elements of the publishing industry that have always been dodgy and deserve an eNail in their coffin. Wikipedia has done us all a great service by putting an end to the largely exploitative practices of the Encyclopedia business.
Here’s my grandfather’s account:
AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE
In my last essay I mentioned the desire for travel which seems to be born in so many of us; indeed all of us. It seems to me, however, that in no one is this desire so manifest as in the college student. As new avenues of knowledge open up the student becomes dissatisfied with mere book learning, and longs for the experience gained by getting out into the world, seeing new places and meeting new people. Then, too, most college students are at some time in their college “short of funds,” or in other words “on the rocks,” or “dead broke,” and therefore they are led to do various kinds of work in the vacation to earn enough money for at least a quarter of the next year.
Influenced by the two reasons stated in the last paragraph, I was led to try the book agency business as I hoped to make more that way than by ordinary work, and not being content to try it near home, I decided to go to Ontario. The headquarters of the firm that I was selling for being at Toronto, I went there for a few days’ training. I had an aunt living in Toronto and enjoyed my stay there very much. After training there for little over a week, along with a student from Toronto University by the name of Campbell, who had also been lured into the “get-rich-quick” scheme, I started for the territory which we had selected which was in northern Pennsylvania. We had picked for our headquarters a town, Polk, which the map that we were using said, had a population of three thousand people.
After an uneventful trip, save for nearly missing the boat at Toronto and the train at Buffalo and for leaving my raincoat on the trolley that ran from Lewiston to Niagara Falls, as a result of which I must confess that I haven’t seen it since, we arrived at Ashtabula, Ohio, and boarded the train which was to carry us on the last leg of our journey. It was now evening and the extreme heat which had held sway all day was scarcely less perceptible. As a result I remained on the rear platform of the coach to keep cool. Campbell was inside, and when I went in the conductor and the brakeman began joking with us about the place to which we were going and which, as you will remember, the map had informed us had three thousand inhabitants. Upon our inquiries we learned that Polk contained the State Institution for the feeble-minded in which there were two thousand four hundred of the population, and there was not even a hotel there. However , we succeeded in finding a place to stay for the night at the house where the station agent boarded. It was a very nice place too, and I made it my headquarters while I was in Pennsylvania which was a little over a week. Campbell went on to Franklin, about five miles farther, which is a town about the size of Fredericton.
Franklin and Polk are beautifully situated in valleys among high hills covered with deciduous trees. There is hardly an evergreen left in that part of Pennsylvania. Owing to the very low price of coal which, if I remember rightly was about $3.50 a ton, to the fact that the soil was poor for farming and to the fact that the people made a living from the oil wells on their places, very little land was cleared in the adjacent country except the clearings around the houses. The houses in the towns looked quite respectable, but a great many of the houses near Polk were merely put together and that was all. A great many were merely covered with tar paper, although frequently the owners seemed to be quite well off. Of course being on a line about five hundred miles south of us, the winters are not as severe and the houses do not have to be as strongly built.
It might be well to mention how the oil is obtained and sold. A man may have several pumps on various parts of his place. These pumps are driven by rods radiating from an equal number of eccentrics on a single axle which is turned by a motor of about twelve horse power in a building as central as possible. The motor gets its oil from the oil pumped. The pumps are connected by pipes to a tank on that man’s place which may hold a hundred barrels or so and this in turn is connected by a pipe to the pumping station which may be several miles away. Thus all a man had to do is to run his engine a short time each day — depending on the quantity of oil his wells yield — and when his tank gets full, notify the pumping station which pumps the oil to the refineries which are situated in towns and cities often several miles from the pumping station.
I was quite successful in taking orders for books, but was a poor hand at collecting deposits, so I ran out of money. Campbell also almost had the same trouble but he only received three orders. Under the circumstances we decided to start for Toronto. But here a difficulty arose. We had only enough money to get one of us there and, as a result, having decided to stick together, we decided on walking and getting car rides. It was very easy to get a ride there so we looked forward to the trip with pleasant anticipation. Both of us could have got money by sending for it, but thinking it would be a good adventure we started out from Franklin about half past eleven on the eleventh day of June, after having expressed our suitcases.
It was a beautiful day not too warm, not too cool, just one of those days that makes a person glad to be alive. The Alleghany River, flowing between high hills made a picture which one must see to appreciate. Along the bank of the river Campbell and I made our way for a distance of some four miles to where a company of men were laying concrete along a state road. The state roads of New York and Pennsylvania are nearly all concrete and are fine for motoring. Upon arriving at the place where the men were working and inquiring to see if we could get work — although I think we could have got work — we turned around and went back deciding to walk through to Queenston and depend on getting lifts. In the first place I did not have suitable clothes for that kind of work, in the second place we would have to walk four miles to work each morning, although I suppose we could have taken the trolley which ran past on its way to Oil City, and have had to take lunch. In the third place, I don’t think that either of us cared to work at that kind of job just then anyway. When we arrived at Franklin from whence we had set out, after having spent part of our remaining cash to express our suitcases to Toronto and having had a small lunch in a lunch car opposite the Y.M.C.A. building, we set out on our adventure in high spirits.
The distance to Erie (a city on the south shore of Lake Erie) is about seventy miles, from Erie to Buffalo about ninety miles, and from Buffalo to Queenston about thirty-five miles.
The journey from Franklin to Erie was quite successful as we got quite a number of rides. I started to write down a description of the cars that picked us up but did not continue it. I wish now that I had. At one time it would be a Ford truck, at another a sedan, and once even a wrecking outfit from a garage.
We arrived in Erie about seven o’clock in the evening and after getting a little something to eat at a restaurant we struck out for Buffalo. Here, however the trouble commenced. We were on the State road from Cleveland to Buffalo and on this road motorists do not like to pick up pedestrians, especially after dark, for in doing some have been robbed and even killed. After plodding along until one or two o’clock in the morning, we lay down under an apple tree by the side of the roadside and tried to sleep but the weather which had been so hot only a few days before was anything but hot at night. In fact it was far too cool for comfort. We only had one raincoat between us as I had lost mine and I did not even have a vest on, having expressed it in my suitcase. I finally grew so cold that I left Campbell and went on a little to see if I could find a better place. I did not , however, so we decided to go on. After walking for an hour or so, we came to a sign board which we thought might offer us some shelter from the wind, so we lay down again but it was so cold that in about half an hour’s time we got up and traveled on. At about daybreak we went into a barn and sat down for a few minutes but that is all the rest we got that night.
The morning found us still undiscouraged but we had begun to realize that we had undertaken more than we had bargained for. We got a meagre breakfast in North East: a town in the north-east corner of Pennsylvania which, I suppose accounts for the name. Then we started on again. At eleven o’clock I was still walking. We had separated earlier in the morning. I had gone ahead of Campbell as we thought it easier for one to get a drive than for two; also if the person behind got a lift he could, if possible get the driver to pick up the one ahead, each of us, of course, running the risk of getting separated from the other for the remainder of the trip. We had tried this the afternoon before and it had proved successful, but this time he got a ride and I didn’t with the result that we were separated for some little time.
My! how slowly the miles went by. At about half-past eleven, my feet being almost blistered from walking on the hot concrete and being so tired that I could hardly walk, I decided that I would stop and try to get work enough to earn sufficient money to get to Queenston where I could get a Canadian Postal Note, which I was carrying, cashed. This would give me sufficient money to buy a ticket and take the steamer to Toronto. So I went to a house and knocked on the door, but as no one answered the knock I decided to go on a little farther. It was lucky for me that I so decided for I got a ride and overtook Campbell sitting dejectedly by the side of the road. We picked him up and went on to a little town about four ahead of where we picked Campbell up. This was as far as our driver was going so we had to get out again; but a few minutes later we got a ten mile lift by a commercial traveler.
At this point a road branches off to Dunkirk, a town on the south shore of lake Erie two or three miles off the main road. The driver advised us to walk on ahead on the main road as he had to stop at Dunkirk for an hour. He said that he was going on to Buffalo and that if we got no ride in the meantime he would pick us up again. However we did not go far enough, being so tired, and as a result did not get to the place where the road from Dunkirk comes back onto the main road in time to catch him. We knew, however, that he had to stop for an hour in Silver Creek, a town about ten miles farther on, and we decided that we would have to get there before he left, so, after hailing several cars, one finally stopped, and as it was going to Buffalo we got a forty mile drive which helped us considerably.
We were again set upon our feet in about the centre of the city of Buffalo. All that we had had to eat since morning was a banana and a half apiece which had been given to us by one of our drivers. However, we immediately boarded a street-car which went six or seven miles on our way. Then came the old story, walking, which by this time had become painful. It is wonderful, though, what a person can stand if he has a definite aim in view. Toronto was our goal and towards it we kept going for several hours more. We got two small rides of about two miles each but that was all out of the whole distance to Queenston which would be nearly thirty miles from the place where we got off the street-car. Stopping occasionally for a drink of water, we kept on. This road was lined with cars, sometimes extending for a quarter of a mile without a break. This made it a little dangerous as there was no sidewalk and the road was none too wide. At about eleven that evening we approached what appeared to be a town. We came to a midway and purchased a couple of cones which comprised our supper. Upon inquiring if we were entering Niagara Falls we found to our dismay that it was only Neptune Beach and when we asked how much farther it was to Niagara Falls we were informed that it was six miles. We walked another hour when I decided that I could go no farther. The road was thickly settled here, but we finally succeeded in finding a vacant lot and I lay down in the tall grass. I had intended on getting on the raincoat with Campbell but was so tired I fell asleep immediately.
Two and a half hours later I awoke nearly frozen as a cold damp wind was blowing over the Niagara River and I was chilled to the bone. Since Campbell was nearly as cold there was only one thing to do: keep on walking, which we did and soon warmed up again. In about an hour’s time we reached Niagara Falls after having a dispute as to the direction we were traveling and about the Northern Lights, and after walking through one of the smokiest regions that I was in or ever hope to be. We went into a restaurant and indulged in a cup of coffee apiece. Our money supply was now so low that we did not dare take the trolley to Queenston for fear that we would not have enough left to purchase our tickets for the trip across the lake.
Shortly after we left the restaurant, we met a policeman who asked where we were going, and upon being informed, he told us where we could find the International Bridge, but we first went into the park. Here we sat down for awhile, and then went over and had a good look at the Falls which, in the soft light of an early summer morning, presented a magnificent spectacle to one unused to the splendor of the mighty Niagara Falls. Thence we proceeded to the bridge. The American customs officer, who should have collected the toll, was sleeping peacefully in the office at the end of the bridge so we did not disturb him, but went across where we met the Canadian officer who wanted to know where our tickets were. We informed him about the slumbers of his fellow officer and he, after asking a few questions and charging us ten cents toll apiece pointed out the way to Queenston. We trudged on and had time to go up to the Heights and view the park in which is situated Brock’s Monument and Laura Secord’s monument, before going to the village to board the steamer.
Brock’s monument stands one hundred and eighty-five feet high and can be seen for miles around. I did not get to the top of the monument as it was too early in the morning to gain admittance, but one had a wonderful view even from the “Heights.” It seemed hard to imagine that a hundred and fifteen years ago a great battle took place on that very ground where now such a beautiful park is situated.
We arrived in Queenston village over an hour before the first boat of the day left for Toronto. I got the Postal Note cashed and we bought the tickets which cost us a little less than we anticipated, so we had money enough to get a substantial breakfast.
We both slept nearly the whole distance across the lake and I had to wake Campbell up when we entered Toronto Harbour, or he might be sleeping yet. The way that the trip had turned out it seemed that Divine Providence had kept watch over us for that night it poured. I do not know what on earth we would have done had it rained the previous night, but the fact remains that it didn’t.
Well we may have lost money on the trip but the experience was worth it. I may say that Campbell was a continuing Presbyterian, so the subject of church union was a bit sensitive at the time and while we touched on it we did not discuss it in depth.
From Toronto I went and tried again near Burnt River, Ontario. The people there were of Scottish ancestry which showed when I tried to sell books. But when it came to a place to stay over night and with one couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Plett, over the week-end, they couldn’t have been kinder. So, after a futile week, I returned to Fredericton and with one more attempt at selling books in the Springhill area, gave up and spent the rest of the summer haying with the Harrisons in Maugerville at $9.00 a week, room and board.
R.W. Barker