The Rural Voice, 2003-07, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
water wells"
103 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Member of Canadian
and Ontario
Water Well Associations
• Farm
• Industrial
• Suburban
• Municipal
Licensed
by the Ministry
of the Environment
DAVIDSON
WELL DRILLING LTD.
WINGHAM
Serving Ontario Since 1900
519-357-1960 WINGHAM
519-664-1424 WATERLOO
CANADIAN
CO-OPERATIVE
WOOL GROWERS
LIMITED
Now Available
WOOL ADVANCE PAYMENTS
Skirted Fleeces
Well -Packed Sacks
For more information contact:
WINGHAM
WOOL DEPOT
John Farrell
R.R. 2, Wingham, Ontario
Phone/Fax 519-357-1058
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Buying out the competition
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Blyth, ON.
The young businessman was
discouraged when I talked to him one
day last summer. Weary from long
days and nights of trying to keep up
with his workload, he compared
himself to others he knew who
worked in a nearby auto -parts plant.
"I know guys my age who work
their 40 hours a week and make a lot
more than I do when I work a lot
more hours," he said.
I gave him some weak reassur-
ance: "Yes, but would you enjoy
working on an assembly line as much
as you do running your own bus-
iness?" I knew it wasn't exactly a
winning argument. I knew how
hollow it sounds when my wife says
the same thing to me when I compare
my income to those who had jobs
with big business or government.
It was mind-boggling, for instance
to see in a recent Maclean's
magazine article that the average
income of a man with a university
education is more than $70,000. That
means somebody out there is making
a heck of a lot of money to make up
for my letting the side down.
Small business owners, whether
they be farmers or main street shop
proprietors, are finding it increasingly
difficult to encourage their sons and
daughters to keep the family business
going. Farm kids used to have to be
driven away from the family farm by
the impossibility of paying the bills
and making a living. Now kids look
at how hard their parents work and
look at their income and compare it
to an easier life working in jobs off
the farm.
Even some of those jobs look too
hard any more. Who wants to be a
large animal vet, called out at all
hours of the day and night, when you
can make more working office hours
in a clinic looking after dogs and
cats? Who wants to be a general
practitioner delivering babies and
covering emergency ward duties in a
rural area when in a large centre you
can work short hours and have more
time to golf?
It's easy to argue this is a natural
progression of the same drive that
brought most of our forefathers to
this country, seeking an easier life.
We adopted electricity in the home,
tractors, and many other conven-
iences because we wanted an easier
life, so what's wrong with people
seeking the easy lifestyle now?
The problem is that for a society
to be dynamic we must always have
the people and businesses at the top
being challenged by upstart
newcomers. That's what helped
western economies defeat monolithic
communist economies.
In a way, the big companies at the
top have been buying out the
competition by offering such great
compensation. Many of us in
independent business, for instance,
have long begrudged government
employees their pay levels, yet even
governments are having a hard time
keeping employees who can earn
more with big business.
With both governments and big
corporations offering so much mon-
ey, why would anyone want to go
into business for himself or herself?
Well my wife is right, of course.
For some of us the challenge of being
in control of our lives and futures (or
at least feeling we are) is a reward
that's worth more than having a big
paycheque but little control. But we
seem to be breeding a society in
which fewer and fewer people feel
the freedom of running your own
farm or business is more important
than making big bucks and having
lots of leisure time to spend it.
And as Elbert Vandonkersgoed
once said, a society where most
people are employees, not independ-
ent business or crafts people, thinks
differently than a society where
people own their own businesses and
homes. Maybe that's why people are
so passive about being involved in
their world: they've accepted that
they'll trade money for contro1.0